Have you churned Starwood yet?

5/26/2013 12:18:21 PM

nope not yet - thought they only had 10k

[Edited on May 27, 2013 at 12:50 AM. Reason : ]

5/27/2013 12:46:17 AM

No, 25K

5/27/2013 1:44:33 PM

Someone stole my Freedom card number this weekend. I got a call after the 1st purchase ($150 at a dollar general in alabama) and while we were on the phone they made a 2nd purchase. Luckily I'm obviously not responsible for the charge, they canceled that card, and sent me a new card. However, I'm still not sure how they would have gotten that number.

5/27/2013 2:06:15 PM

Someone probably stole it locally, but was smart enough not use to it locally.

5/28/2013 10:35:55 AM

Sheesh, I think Southwest is the only place with a decent one way rewards redemption.
Fucking Delta..... about to dump 160K miles out of this annoyance
"one way awards do not cost half the price of a roundtrip – they cost the full amount. "
"instead of paying 100,000 miles for a low tier award, you can add on a fake return on a low coach day"

http://thepointsguy.com/2011/02/how-to-book-a-delta-skymiles-award/

[Edited on May 29, 2013 at 12:34 AM. Reason : link]

5/29/2013 12:33:00 AM

Skymiles are the worst, availability-wise too.

5/29/2013 8:03:44 AM

Yeah, I heard that from Bruce, but slowly starting to realize this firsthand

5/29/2013 10:34:36 AM

I normally dont look at my junk mail from credit cards, but this one caught my eye since I was just looking at no-fee cards to build up my credit more.

Anyone have any opinions on the new Discover It card? It looks very similar to the Chase Freedom card. 1% cash back, 5 % rotating quarterly, no annual fee, etc. But it has other things that stand out, specifically no foreign transaction fees.

Not to long ago a few of you recommended getting a few credit cards from different sources that were no fee cards, to keep around for basically forever and to build up my credit. Right now I just have the Citi AA card (which I hope to no-fee card before the annual fee hits), the Chase Freedom, and a SECU credit card. Do you recommend me getting additional cards, and if so what are your thoughts on this one?

The biggest thing drawing me to this one is the no foreign transaction fees. I like to travel, and like the fraud coverage credit cards offer. But all of my cards have foreign transaction fees, so I tend to shy away from them. I also see they have a "student" version of the card, but dont see any big differences between the two.

https://www.discover.com/credit-cards/index.html?ICMPGN=STL_CC_IT

[Edited on May 30, 2013 at 7:07 PM. Reason : link]

5/30/2013 7:07:18 PM

Are there any sign up bonuses offered? It seems like a good card, but hefty sign up bonuses really make a difference imo.....

5/30/2013 8:38:43 PM

Just recently converted my Discover More card to an IT. Don't really use it much with all the Chase cards I got recently but figured a full 1% on all purchases was better than only getting .25% on the first 3000 and then 1% over that. Rotating categories tend to match the Freedom but they're pretty good about automatic credit limit increases every 6mo.

5/30/2013 9:30:54 PM

I got my amex 75K pt bonus, but don't want to sell until all the pts are there.
Shouldn't I have 80K total with the 5K spend?
I tried checking my pts history which was pretty useless except "Total Pending Points: 2,206"
Do I need to pay my bill for those to hit or will it just happen in a few days automatically?
My statement closed today.

5/31/2013 10:45:46 AM

Amex points take forever. I believe they don't post until you pay the bill and the new billing period starts

5/31/2013 8:33:14 PM

Damn, and I was so happy about the 75K bonus hitt asap.
Guess it's smart on their part so you can't buy a bunch of crap and then return it.

5/31/2013 8:44:17 PM

I usually end up sending Amex a message through the website. They almost always manually credit the points within 24 hrs.

6/1/2013 10:46:26 AM

Semi off-topic: Any suggestions on what the best debit/credit card available is for no foreign transaction fees?

6/3/2013 1:26:36 PM

If you call AMEX and tell them you need the points, they will clear them ahead of schedule. Just tell them you will be taking a trip and want the points posted.

6/3/2013 1:46:02 PM

DamnStraight check out this link. http://millionmilesecrets.com/credit-cards/no-foreign-transaction-fee-credit-cards/

Also, check out the post above about the Discover It card. Its a no-fee card very similar to the Chase Freedom. The only draw back is, its discover and its accepted far less places.

6/3/2013 1:54:05 PM

Thanks!

AVAILABLE POINTS are 80,400

6/3/2013 4:12:13 PM

Bruce R Goldberg sent you 1100.00 USD

6/5/2013 1:40:03 PM

That's awesome. I wonder how much he makes flipping them.

6/5/2013 1:42:24 PM

Probably a decent amount. The sellmyrewards people offered $2031 for 127k Chase UR points transferred to United(1.6c/pt) and their site sells those same miles for $2921 (2.3c/pt).

6/5/2013 1:56:21 PM

Prior I was just content with getting 1 cent per point and even then it was somewhat of a pain in the ass.

6/5/2013 3:38:38 PM

^^^there's lots of margin there. Buying points directly from the airlines costs an insane amount of money.

6/6/2013 8:16:37 AM

Yeah, it's such crap. Wish they had pts + cash options like starwood.

6/6/2013 11:31:00 AM

Starwoods has killed their rewards program with recent changes. As a result, we will be cancelling the starwoods card at the end of the year. We have earned about 100k starwoods points, so that should get us in the neighborhood of $2000-$3000 in free hotel stay, but we have to end up staying in super high end hotels and blowing all the points in 3 nights. A lot of the great Category 6 hotels, like the St Regis in Kauai were upgraded from a Cat 6 to Cat 7 with no points+nights available. Before the change, we could stay there for 10 days for $150 a night + points instead of $500+ a night regular rate.

Too many Category 7s now with no Cash+points, or very small availability. And at 35k points a night, you burn through them really quick. We will end up getting our money's worth, however. We'll be staying at a Cat 7 in London that is almost 700 pounds a night for 35k points a night (about 3 cents per points)

[Edited on June 6, 2013 at 1:01 PM. Reason : .]

6/6/2013 12:59:45 PM

Nice, nice. I have about 65K now, may try to get up to 70K and do the nights/flights deal.
http://www.starwoodhotels.com/preferredguest/account/starpoints/redeem/nights_flights.html
Bruce only offered 1.5 c per point for starwood so decided to hold onto them for now.

[Edited on June 6, 2013 at 1:11 PM. Reason : ]

6/6/2013 1:10:55 PM

Surprisingly it looks as though I'm going to get a decent roi on my hilton pts for my chicago trip
$1,507.38 USD or 200,000 pts

6/6/2013 1:46:35 PM

Yeah I'm getting ~$1500 worth of hotel stays for 200k HHonors points in Boston.
Seems the big cities or the all-inclusive resorts are the way to spend HHonors.

6/7/2013 8:18:37 AM

Heard that the Chase Hyatt 2 free room deal was going away soon.
Had trouble accessing the link off their website but was able to get in via another landing page and got approval this morning with bonus confirmed.

6/11/2013 11:09:54 AM

50k Southwest cards are back.

6/12/2013 8:40:14 AM

http://slickdeals.net/f/6085220-Two-Roundtrip-Flights-50k-Points-with-New-Southwest-Airlines-Premier-Plus-Business-Credit-Card-Approval-for-2000-Spent-Within-First-3-Months

I've got a personal Southwest card. Which business card should I get? Also I should use my existing RR account # right?

6/12/2013 10:16:18 AM

Yeah, you def want to use the same rr #.
I already have the comp pass for this year, so I'll probably wait til dec/jan time frame to get two more cards.

6/12/2013 10:25:41 AM

Question: With my AA card - should I go ahead and close it so I can get the points sooner in the future? Or is like Southwest were you can only get the bonus once?

6/12/2013 1:52:02 PM

I'd keep it and offer to close it when applying for another citi card later on.

6/12/2013 11:44:33 PM

Has anyone ever transferred Ultimate Rewards points to British Airways Avios and know how long it takes for the Avios to post?

6/22/2013 7:30:36 PM

I got the Capitol One Cash Rewards card. 1% cashback on everything, and 50% bonus cash back of the cashback that you earned every year. If you spend $500 in the first 3 months, you receive $100 cash back. No annual fee either.

6/22/2013 8:43:03 PM

I like how Capital One sends me an email once a month to tell me I have saved nothing with their rewards and have no rewards.

6/22/2013 10:44:11 PM

I also liked how I enrolled for paperless statements with Capitol One (and my account says that I am enrolled as well) but I still get paper statements in the mail!

6/22/2013 11:18:30 PM

Subject: Brandon Williamson, don't delay - check out your easy savings!

Quote :

"Brandon Williamson Re: Acct. ending in 24** As of 6/20/13 you’ve saved $0.00 this year."

6/23/2013 11:12:16 AM

Quote :

"Has anyone ever transferred Ultimate Rewards points to British Airways Avios and know how long it takes for the Avios to post?"

I answered my own question, it took less than 1 hour for the Avios to post.

6/24/2013 8:27:19 PM

What tricks do you guys use to meet spend?

7/1/2013 2:07:44 PM

^^^

if(savings == 0){
dontsendemail();
}

I'm basically a software developer

I'm Krallum and I approved this message.

7/1/2013 2:20:47 PM

^you're basically worthless

7/1/2013 2:25:46 PM

amz payments, prepaying bills, vanilla reloads

7/1/2013 2:37:42 PM

With amzn payments, do you just fund your account and then deposit back?

7/1/2013 3:08:25 PM

Yeah, two dif amz accounts, two dif addresses, two dif bank accounts,

7/1/2013 3:12:50 PM

Couldn't I do the same thing with paypal? Or is there some kind of fee invovled?

[Edited on July 1, 2013 at 3:26 PM. Reason : 2.9% fee]

7/1/2013 3:22:33 PM

Do the chase hyatt free nights expire one year after you activate the card or one year after the certificates are issued?

7/2/2013 7:28:40 PM

Quote :

"Personal credit cards are protected by law, but business credit cards are not."

Did you guys know that?

7/2/2013 9:34:49 PM