Anatomy of an Award Trip: Acela to Philadelphia

I've mentioned before that Amtrak has some remarkably lucrative award redemptions. Since flexible Ultimate Rewards points transfer instantly into any Amtrak Guest Rewards account, this is a great way to get value out of Ultimate Rewards points. I recently used Ultimate Rewards points to book a short vacation next weekend, taking Amtrak down to Philadelphia. Now that I finally have all my reservations booked, here's a breakdown of all the rewards components.

Getting there: Acela First Class

 I've been living on the East Coast fo a year, but still haven't ridden on one of Amtrak's Acela high speed trains, so I decided to take Acela First Class to Philadelphia's 30th Street Station. A business class redemption costs 8,000 Amtrak Guest Rewards points, and a first class tickets costs 12,000 AGR points, and there are no additional taxes or fees.

If you're interested in riding on Acela, keep in mind their very strict blackout policy: 

On Acela service, weekday travel origination may not occur from any boarding point between start-of-service and 8:59 a.m. inclusive, or between 2:00 p.m. and 5:59 p.m. inclusive (weekend Acela travel is permitted at any time except on any weekend dates defined below). Select Plus and Select Executive members may redeem for travel during blackout dates by using our "rule buster" awards, but Acela blackout times still apply.

The key element here is that blackout times are determined by scheduled boarding time. So an award ticket boarding Acela Express 2167 in Boston at 1:15 PM is legal, while an award ticket boarding the same train at 5:00 PM at New York Penn Station is not.

I'm thrilled to be taking Acela for the first time, and I'll report back here on the experience. 

Total cost: 12,000 Amtrak Guest Rewards points (transferred instantly from Ultimate Rewards). Total value: $259. Value per point: 2.16 cents.

Staying There: Radisson Plaza-Warwick Hotel Philadelphia

For my stay in Philadelphia I used the "last night free" feature of the Club Carlson Business Rewards Visa to book two nights for the price of one: 44,000 Gold Points. 

This hotel is located just a block off the central Rittenhouse Square, where I used to live in Philadelphia. It's walking distance from the train station and all the downtown tourist attractions, shops, restaurants, and sites I'll be visiting while I'm in town. 

I'm a little concerned by the "hotel alert" on Club Carlson's website: 

RENOVATION IS TAKING PLACE WITHIN THE HOTEL. ALL AVAILABLE GUEST ROOMS HAVE BEEN FULLY RENOVATED URBAN ROOM PRODUCT IN ALL GUEST ROOMS WITH REFRIGERATORS NO WORK PERFORMED B/F 9AM OR AFTER 4PM. NO WORK ON WEEKENDS.

They claim there won't be construction on the weekends, so hopefully that means I won't be woken up early by men at work!

Total cost: 44,000 Club Carlson Gold Points. Total value: $435.46. Value per point: 0.99 cents.  This is a really remarkable value, especially considering that the card earns 5 Gold Points per dollar on all purchases!

Getting back: Amtrak Northeast Regional

I decided against spending another 12,000 Ultimate Rewards points to take Acela First Class back from Philadelphia, and instead booked a simple coach class Northeast Regional ticket for 4,000 Amtrak Guest Rewards points. As always, there are no additional taxes or fees on Amtrak redemptions.

Total cost: 4,000 Amtrak Guest Rewards points. Total value: $164. Value per point: 4.1 cents.

Chase United Business Credit Cards

Since I started this site, I've written about what has historically been one of the strongest offers for the United MileagePlus Explorer Card: 55,000 United miles after spending $1,000 in the first 3 months and adding an authorized user to your account. Indeed, it's the offer that I used to sign up for the card late last year. 

Getting that offer has always involved a bit of luck. The most reliable method seemed to be opening a new "private browsing" or "incognito" window, signing into MileagePlus, and then opening this page.

Over at FlyerTalk, this thread appeared back on June 9 pointing out that a similarly lucrative offer is available for the Chase United MileagePlus Business Explorer Card, for 50,000 United MileagePlus miles after spending $2,000 within 3 months of cardmembership, with the $95 annual fee waived the first year. I've verified that the technique described by econwatch in this post works. Again, I recommend beginning the process in a fresh private browsing (Firefox) or incognito (Chrome) window, since your existing browser cookies will  interfere with this offer displaying correctly:

Login to your UAL, 
Products and Services, 
Get Credit Card, 
United MileagePlus Explorer Business Card, 
shows 30K offer, $1K spend in 3mo.
Click on MileagePlus Club Business Card tab, 
click back to MP Explorer Business Card, 
shows 50K offer, $2K spend in 3mo.

I would only point out that the offer for the United MileagePlus Club Business Card is also extremely strong.  The waived annual fee for the first year of card membership means a free year of United Club access, plus 1.5 United miles per dollar spent on the card. While the earning rate isn't quite as lucrative as the 2 Ultimate Rewards points earned per dollar at gas stations with the Chase Ink cards, it is a very strong earning rate in what is arguably the most valuable traditional frequent flyer currency.

GoBank Shutdowns Begin

Note: for background to this post, check out my posts tagged "gobank", especially  "Does GoBank have a monthly swipe reload limit?" "GoBank Customer Care Calls the Free-quent Flyer," and "GoBank Calls Again."

This is very much a developing situation, but according to a number of posts on this FlyerTalk thread (starting towards the bottom of this page), we are starting to see the first GoBank account shutdowns. I want to give my very rough impressions of the situation so far, very subject to ongoing updates:

• Shutdowns appear to be based on statement closing dates. As I reported in this post, I received my second call, the one from GoBank's fraud department threatening me with account closure, shortly after my June statement closed (showing $17,000 in swipe reloads).
• All the reports of shutdowns have been for total monthly load volume exceeding $10,000.
• People have been shut down who mixed in "regular" spending on the cards: restaurants, grocery stores, etc. So shutdowns appear to be based principally on Walmart swipe load volume.

I highly value the ability to unload my Nationwide and US Bank Visa Buxx cards for free using Gobank, so I've scaled back my Walmart swipe reloads to slightly less than $5,000 per month: $3,000 in Visa Buxx loads and roughly $2,000 in MyVanilla Debit Card and Alaska Airlines Debit Card loads. This allows me to still load a full $5,000 per month in Vanilla Reload Network reload cards to my American Express Bluebird card, and requires just 2 trips per month to Walmart.

That's the level I'm comfortable with, and I hope it keeps me out of GoBank's crosshairs for a little while longer.  Share your experiences in the comments: what load volume are you comfortable with going forward?

Is the best card to buy Vanilla Reloads with...

[updated 8/25/13: reader Eric pointed out an error in my calculations below: buying $1,000 in Vanilla Reload cards with the PayPal Debit MasterCard will earn $10.08 in cash back, not $10.79 as I originally wrote. The post has been updated to reflect the slightly higher cost per dollar of manufactured spend.] 

...the PayPal Business Debit MasterCard?

As readers know, I'm fairly obsessed with lowering my cost per dollar of manufactured spend. That's why I've long been intrigued by the PayPal Business Debit MasterCard. The card offers a unique value proposition: it's a 1% cash back card (on signature purchases), that can itself be loaded by credit card (using PayPal Cash reloads).

PayPal Cash reloads are very similar to Vanilla Reload Network reload cards, and in fact are sold in many of the same places, like gas stations and drug stores.  However, they have different limitations: they can only be used to load a PayPal account, loads are limited to $500 per day and $4,000 per rolling 30-day period, and most importantly PayPal will immediately send a warning, then close your account, if you load your PayPal account with a PayPal Cash card and immediately withdraw the money to your linked bank account.

Enter the Business Debit MasterCard. By using this card for online load to my Nationwide and US Bank Visa Buxx cards, I earn 1% cash back on $3,014 ($3,000 in loads, $14 in fees) each month, bringing my total cost for $3,024 in manufactured spend to $7.56, or 0.25 cents per dollar.

That accounts for $3,000 of my monthly load allowance – but PayPal allows up to $4,000 in monthly loads. This has left me scratching my head about what to do with the last $1,000 in PayPal Cash loads, since May 1, when the Wells Fargo Prepaid card lost its usefulness .

The solution was staring me in the face the whole time: buying $1,000 in Vanilla Reload Network reload cards, at a cost of $7.90 in fees, will yield $10.08 in cash back. The $2.18 in profit from that transaction reduces your total cost for the $1,000 in PayPal Cash reload cards to $5.72: a respectable 0.57 cents per dollar in manufactured spend. If you buy your PayPal Cash cards at a store in one of your cards' bonus categories, this can push your cost per point into the low tens of a cent.

Before the comments erupt with sarcasm, let me be perfectly clear: this is not a technique for earning more miles and points, it's a technique for earning miles and points at a lower cost per point. If you're more interested in the number of points you earn, rather than the cost you pay per point, then you're better off simply buying a $0.70 Walmart money order with your remaining $1,000 in monthly PayPal Cash loads. This will raise your cost per dollar to 0.85 cents per point, but you'll be able to manufacture an additional $1,000 per month by purchasing your Vanilla Reloads with a points- or miles-earning credit card instead.

The point is, using techniques like this, and others like it, you control the cost you pay per manufactured mile or point – and that's worth a lot to me.

(N.B. You can also fund your $1,000 monthly free Amazon Payment with your PayPal Business Debit MasterCard and pocket $10, manufacturing $1,000 in spend AND earning $2.10.)

Do this now: register for Chase Freedom (and Discover it) 3rd quarter bonus categories

If you carry a Chase Freedom card, you probably know you need to register each calendar quarter for that quarter's 5% cash back categories. If you've read my eBook book, The Free-quent Flyer's Manifesto, you also know you can move the Ultimate Rewards points you earn with your Freedom card to a flexible Ultimate Rewards-earning card in order to transfer them to one of Chase's airline, hotel, and rail partners, or to redeem them for paid airline tickets at 1.2 cents each.

Finally, if you read my blog regularly you can imagine why I'm excited about the Chase Freedom 3rd quarter bonus categories. After earning 7,500 Ultimate Rewards points in the first week of January, I'm very excited to pay $11.85 for another 7,500 the first week of July.

I want to note that the Discover More/it (depending on whether you got your card before or after the rebranding) 3rd quarter bonus is also gas stations. However, I don't know whether Discover uses the same merchant codes as Visa does, so I can't guarantee that 7-11 purchases will qualify for 5% cash back. I'll make a test purchase in July and report back here on the blog when my statement closes.

In any case, register now for the Chase Freedom and Discover More/it 3rd quarter bonuses, before you forget. 

Barclaycard Arrival redemption follow-up

One of the most frustrating things about having multiple rewards-earning credit cards is the fact that each rewards currency is redeemed in a totally different way, and it's not always clear from a card's promotional material what the redemption process consists of. 

That's why last month I walked through a redemption of Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard miles, so readers could know exactly what they were getting into. But one thing bothered me: in this, the 4th screenshot in that blog post:

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There are 4 redemptions options: the last 4 $25 intervals.

I've subsequently redeemed more points using this card, and discovered that when you don't have enough miles to redeem for the full amount of a charge, only three redemption options are available: the last 3 $25 intervals. 

I don't know exactly what the logic behind this is, but my suspicion is that the 4th redemption "slot" is reserved for redeeming miles for the complete value of a purchase. While partial redemptions are only allowed in 2,500 miles, $25 increments, "complete" redemptions are available in 100 mile, $1 increments:

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Does this have much of a practical impact? Not really, since Arrival miles are worth 1 cent each, so it doesn't make much of a difference in which combination or order they're redeemed.

Except...the next question I intend to investigate is whether after making a partial redemption it's possible to make another redemption for the remaining amount of the same transaction. Since Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard redemptions have a 10% rebate of points used to make travel redemptions, It might be possible to redeem 100,000 points for a $1,000 statement credit, then use the 10,000 point rebate to make an additional $100 redemption against the same $1,100 transaction.

Does anyone have any experience making two redemptions against the same transaction?

Guide to Chase's Ultimate Rewards-earning cards

With all the flurry this week over the increased signup bonuses for Chase's Ink line of small business cards, I realized that even I was having trouble keeping track of all the different Ultimate-rewards earning cards issued by Chase. In case there's anyone else in the same situation, lets take a systematic look at all 7 cards.

While some of the cards are personal cards and some are small business cards, that's a less important distinction than between the fixed-value and flexible Ultimate Rewards points they earn: 

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The Freedom and Sapphire personal cards and Ink Cash and Ink Classic small business cards earn Ultimate Rewards points that cannot be transferred to Chase's travel partners unless you first move them to the Ultimate Rewards account associated with one of the 3 flexible cards. They can be redeemed for cash, gift cards, or paid travel – except the Ink Cash, whose points can only be redeemed for cash.

The next, arguably even more distinction between the cards is the constellation of overlapping bonus categories:

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Since you only need to hold one flexible Ultimate Rewards card in order to convert all your points into flexible points, for 95% of travelers it doesn't make sense to pay more than one $95 annual fee (note that this analysis only applies once the first, fee-free year has elapsed).

Which annual fee should that be? The Sapphire Preferred, Ink Bold, or Ink Plus? The chart above makes clear that the most relevant question is: how much do you intend to spend at gas stations and office supply stores?  If you'll spend more than $25,000, you'll need to either carry an Ink Bold or Plus, or both an Ink Cash and Ink Classic, since each card's $25,000 cap on 2x earnings is counted separately.

The ability to manufacture Ultimate Rewards points at 0.4 cents each is what made me assess the Ink cards as the second best tool for buying Vanilla Reload Network reload cards at gas stations. This is an incredibly lucrative opportunity: the question is to what extent you plan on taking advantage of it.

If you liked this analysis, please consider supporting the blog by ordering a copy of my eBook, the Free-quent Flyer's Manifesto!

The Second Edition of the Free-quent Flyer's Manifesto is now available!

I could not be more excited to announce that the Second Edition of my eBook, The Free-quent Flyer's Manifesto, is now available through Amazon.com! If you've already purchased the Manifesto, thank you! Your copy should be updated automatically in the next 24-48 hours (although if it's not, let me know, since Amazon is a bit unclear on that point).

 If you haven't purchased a copy yet, here are a few of the many reasons you should consider ordering a copy of the Second Edition:

•  It's the only work of its kind. The Manifesto is a careful compilation of the ins and outs of every major American hotel and airline loyalty program. I parsed the details of earning rates, award charts, and elite status so you don't have to. All you have to do is open it to the relevant page.
•  It helps support this site. If you find the groundbreaking work I do here on the blog useful, and want me to continue reporting on the cutting edge of manufactured spend, credit card application techniques, and maximizing your points haul, there's no better way to support the site than buying the book, leaving a positive review, and recommending it to your friends and family. This website is a labor of love, but it also costs money to maintain, and all the money I earn from eBook sales go straight towards paying my hosting costs.
• It's an instant winner. When I run occasional promotions, for example connecting people with the brief-but-lucrative Google Wallet opportunity to manufacture thousands of points for free , every reader who sent me their Amazon receipt got an instant Google Wallet account and the ability to send money using their rewards-earning credit cards.
• It's never been cheaper.  With the release of the still-groundbreaking Second Edition, I've lowered the price from an exorbitant $4.99 to the eminently reasonable $2.99.

If you've already purchased a copy of the Manifesto,  thank you again! If you haven't yet purchased your own copy, there's never been a better time to do so.

An unusually auspicious week for an application cycle

The travel blogosphere erupted this week with word of Chase's increased signup bonuses for their Ink line of small business charge and credit cards. While I'm extremely conservative in the pacing of my credit card applications, and it's been less than 90 days since my last application cycle, I have been eyeing the Ink Bold ever since I discovered Vanilla Reload Network reload cards could be purchased at my local 7-11 store locations, which are coded as "gas stations" by the Visa supplier network and therefore earn 2 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar when purchased with a Chase Ink card.

If you are due for an application cycle, this week became an even more lucrative  window of opportunity with the announcement of enhanced signup bonuses for the Delta Business Platinum American Express. As regular readers know, I signed up for this card back in April with a much lower signup bonus. I use this card to "mileage run from home," earning 20,000 valuable MQM per year and 1.4 SkyMiles per dollar when I spend exactly $50,000 per year on the card.

The new, higher signup bonus, which is supposedly good until July 7, 2013, is for 25,000 bonus SkyMiles and 5,000 MQM after your first purchase, and an additional 30,000 SkyMiles and 15,000 MQM after spending $5,000 on the card within 3 months of card membership.

In other words, this week is a remarkably auspicious time to apply for these two small business credit cards, if you have good credit and haven't applied for credit in the last 90 days: I think it's unlikely that two offers this good will come along again this year.

Bizarre changes to United elite qualification requirements

It's hard for me to objectively evaluate the drastic changes to United elite qualification announced today:

Starting in January 2014, Premier qualification for members living in the United States will include a minimum annual spending level. We will track this new requirement with Premier qualifying dollars (PQD) – dollars spent on most United tickets, including partner flights, and Economy Plus purchases. The changes will not affect Premier qualifying miles (PQM) or Premier qualifying segments (PQS). The new criteria will look like this:

• Premier Silver: [25,000 PQM or 30 PQS] and $2,500 PQD
• Premier Gold: [50,000 PQM or 60 PQS] and $5,000 PQD
• Premier Platinum: [75,000 PQM or 90 PQS] and $7,500 PQD
• Premier 1K: [100,000 PQM or 120 PQS] and $10,000 PQD

On the one hand, these changes very closely parallel the recent changes to Medallion elite status qualification on Delta, my preferred airline. On the other hand, I don't mind meeting the Delta Medallion Qualification Dollar requirement by spending $25,000 on my American Express Delta Platinum Business card, since I also earn 10,000 Medallion Qualification Miles for reaching that threshold. That is to say, by reaching the $25,000 threshold I both earn higher Medallion status and am exempted from Medallion Qualification Dollar requirements.

It's true that the Chase United MileagePlus Explorer card gives 10,000 bonus miles after $25,000 in purchases per calendar year, but those miles don't count towards elite status.

The problem is that it's fantastically more lucrative to make United purchases with a flexible Ultimate Rewards point-earning Chase Sapphire Preferred card than with United's own co-branded credit cards. And that's ignoring the possibility of manufacturing Ultimate Rewards points at gas stations.

My sense is that this change will alienate United flyers in a much more profound way than Medallion Qualification Dollars alienated Delta flyers, in no small part because of United's disastrous customer service. Meanwhile, I'll continue earning Star Alliance Gold status by crediting United and US Airways flights to the Greek airline Aegean Air, giving me free checked bags and lounge access on domestic flights.