Anywho, another great promotion to throw your way! A lot of you have heard about Capital One's mileage/reward programs and I wanted to speak to that in this post. In terms of actual mileage redemption for flights, they are pretty low on the totem pole but there are other things that Capital One has going for it that rank it much higher.
We're not people to cash in miles for products. 30k miles equals a flight anywhere in the US with American and yet to cash that in, you could get a $50 radio or something ridiculous. The travel portion of miles is worth much more than the rewards you can get with them. However, Captial One is a bit different. They base their mileage redemption on the cost of the flight and that can add up quickly. Here's the breakdown of their mileage redemption for travel:
15,000 Up to $150.00 35,000 $150.01 to $350.00
60,000 $350.01 to $600.00
100 x travel price More than $600.01
The problem with this is that as airline costs rise, the mileage redemption cost rises as well. Redeeming the "miles" for other products makes much more sense in this case because you can cash out your miles for actual cash, gift cards, etc. and the cost per mile is way better that way.
The best thing about the program is that you can submit reimbursements for travel and have them dock your miles based on costs. For example, you plan on spending 3 nights at a hotel in NYC. Put those 3 nights on your Capital One card and then submit for those to be reimbursed to you and dock your miles instead. Makes that hotel stay even sweeter!
A few weeks ago, Capital One announced it's newest promotion; Match My Miles. They are so convinced that their miles are better, they are willing to match the mileage balance currently in any of the major airline's reward programs for you for free, up to 100k miles. So if you have over 100k miles in your account right now, they'd automatically give you 100k Capital One miles for free.
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So what's the catch? Well, as I said before, unless you're redeeming these for cash, gift cards or travel expenses, the miles for travel are not valuable at all. Plus, you don't really get a say in who you travel with or guaranteed seats on some of the nicer airlines. (Such as with One World Alliances) Also, they are only giving out a certain amount of miles before the promo ends and you have to wait for them to send you a code so you can send in your mileage balance. We are still waiting on this code and hoping the miles don't run out before they send it to us. So time is of the essence here!
And lastly, this is a tough card to get. If you already have a Cap 1 card, call and see if you can get upgraded to the Venture card with this specific promotion. If not, Cap 1 WILL PULL 3 hard hits on your credit to each reporting agency. So unless your credit is great across the board, it may not be worth it to risk 3 hard pulls for this. If it is, and you know that, I think it's worth the risk.
We're waiting on a code and then we will be using this for travel expenses for Bali and Cairns! So that's an additional $1100 savings we weren't expecting, making our Bali hotel stays and Cairns hotel stays totally free. Can't beat free. Ever!!!
So, all in all, this is a great promotion they're doing to get people over to their reward program but make sure you're comparing it to the programs you're already using. For us, it's a great addition to the savings we already take advantage from with American Airlines but we won't be booking a plane ticket using those miles anytime soon. Especially when we've booked tickets to the Caribbean for 17,500 miles before, a flight that costs around $750 total, and that would fall under Cap 1's mileage redemption at 75,000 miles. No brainer!
Link to sign up! http://www.capitaloneventure.com/#/Match_My_Miles
Enjoy! :)
I think airlines should give more free flights to passengers. They have so many empty seats sometimes and it's a great way to give a reward loyal customers, especially when passengers are disgruntled.
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