IHG Rewards Club "Into the Nights" free nights are surprisingly easy to use

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Reminder: select your rewards for last quarter's IHG Rewards Club promotion

Before I get to the subject of today's post, let me gently remind any readers who reached one or both of their "Into the Nights" thresholds to log into the promotion's site and select either points or free nights as your rewards (after thinking about how you'll actually redeem them). If you don't make a selection by January 31, you'll be award points, rather than the potentially more valuable free nights.

Using free nights is easy and fun

This may be old hat to readers who have an IHG Rewards Club credit card, which gives a free night on each account anniversary, but I had no idea what a free night was or how to use it. It turned out to be easier than I could have imagined.

Once you've selected one or both free nights on the promotion's website, you can immediately navigate to your account page and find "Free Night Status" in the left-hand navigation bar:

Clicking "BOOK FREE NIGHT" will take you to a standard IHG hotel search tool with "Into The Night Free Night" selected as your rate preference:

Search any city and date and you'll see if there's free night availability. In my casual searching I found free room availability everywhere I looked. Here's Prague in June:

Here's Paris in July:

So it appears to me that IHG is not throttling availability above and beyond their usual limitations on award availability: if a room is available on points, it seems to be available using Into the Nights free nights.

Conclusion

There was some initial confusion over just how flexible these promotional free nights would be. As far as I can tell, IHG Rewards Club is allowing them to be used for any standard room that's available with points, so if that's been stopping you from selecting free nights over points, go ahead and make your selection, being sure to do so before January 31, 2015, when you'll be automatically granted the points award, instead.

Confirmed: Chase Freedom bonus excludes Walmart (and probably Target)

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Back on January 2, I reminded readers to register for their first quarter category bonuses, including the Chase Freedom 5% cash back bonus at grocery stores. While the registration page for that bonus says Walmart and Target stores are excluded from the promotion, I mentioned that I wasn't sure whether or how that would be enforced. It was possible, I thought, that they included that language because while some Walmart and Target store locations are coded as grocery stores, others are coded as discount stores and they didn't want to open that can of worms with their customers.

I don't like to let questions like that linger for long, so before taking off for Italy I swung by my local Walmart, coded as a grocery store by Visa and MasterCard, and picked up an international plug adapter (I'm always leaving them in hotel room outlets), paying with my newest Freedom card. After waiting for the transaction to post, I was able to confirm that I earned just 1 Ultimate Rewards point per dollar spent, according to my online account activity:

So now you know: Chase really did code their first quarter promotion to exclude transactions made at Walmart, and I presume at Target as well, so you'll need to keep your eyes open for actual grocery stores where you can make your $1,500 in purchases this quarter.

Guest post: the case AGAINST FlexPerks — because US Bank is just too hard

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[Editor's note: today's post is a guest submission from Trevor, who blogs alongside Joe Cortez at Tagging Miles, a member of the Saverocity blog network (i.e. the good guys). Trevor is a After seeing Trevor's rants about US Bank on Twitter where he is @tmount, I begged him to write a post giving my readers the case against one of my favorite points currencies: the Flexpoints earned by US Bank's Flexperks Travel Rewards credit cards. To his complaints, I can add my own indictment: I have no idea whether Flexperks is supposed to be written with CamelCase (FlexPerks) or without. Enjoy!]

The Free-quent Flyer is big on FlexPerks. I suspect he is in the 1% of maximizers of the FlexPerks program. And why not? On the face, it’s a pretty spectacular program:

FlexPerks Earn rates

So then why I am so down on it? Simply put – the value of points or miles is intrinsically linked to their ease of redeeming.

Now, I’ve got accounts with Chase, American Express, Barclays, Citi, FIA (aka Fidelity AMEX), Discover, and US Bank. The only account I commonly have to reset the password (which is nearly as hard as booking a Korean Air Skypass award), is USBank. So before I can even think of redeeming (and I’ll get there), I’m going through a rigmarole just to check my account. Really, I feel like they should be buying me dinner and drinks – first you ask me my log-in / username, then you ask me who my best childhood friend is, then it’s an image and a password. Ok – so I’ve finally gotten in!

Using FlexPerks

A week or few ago I received a little pamphlet showing me how easy it is to start redeeming my FlexPoints. Maybe it’s just me, but if you have to send out a pamphlet with step by step instructions, maybe it's kind’ve hard?

Pamphlet

The first thing that strikes me about using FlexPerks is that you’re limited to their website to purchase tickets.

US Bank Flight Search

Ok. I get it, they have a partner that they want to guide you toward. Or they want to simplify their accounting. I don’t know, but I get the single option. For all of my — non-mistake fare — revenue travel, I book directly with the airline. Why? Because it gives me that warm fuzzy feeling, like, if I run into a problem before, during, or after travel, I can call the airline, and they can make it right.

I’ve been in the other position. I once went up to Boston on an interview, the ticket was paid for by the company I was interviewing with, and I finished early. I called the airline to try to waitlist on an earlier flight, yet I was told that I had to call Orbitz, because that was who the ticket was booked through. That got me nowhere fast. I ended up flying my ticketed flight after 3 hours in Logan Airport's old terminal (at least I think it was old, it sure looked old).

Back to using FlexPerks – the Free-quent Flyer has a lot of tips and tricks for utilizing FlexPerks, Frequent Miler has some recommendations too. But, when you actually go to make the booking, first you’re faced with points only, not able to make the judgment call as to whether you’re maximizing your points or not.

FlexPerks Results — points cost only

I guess this is the same thing as if you look on ITA Matrix to find a flight you want, then go to buy it on American Airlines’ website, but it just seems like additional clicks that are geared against consumers trying to maximize their value.

You do get the point and dollar cost once you’ve selected your flight, which is good, but it's additional clicks.

Points and Dollars

Is the hassle worth it?

So, to summarize my issues with US Bank:

  • Just logging in is nearly as difficult as it is to book a Korean Air Skypass award;
  • Once you make it in, it’s another few clicks to get to what is essentially an Orbitz search tool;
  • Initial results only provide the required points, it requires an additional click/page load to see what the dollar equivalent of a ticket is.

Talking about the benefits of the US Bank Cash+, yes, you can get up to 5% on charity, but is it worth it?

Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Plus Business credit card no longer available

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Back in December, I wrote that I could no longer find a new application link for the Chase Sapphire credit card, which offered 2 non-flexible Ultimate Rewards per dollar spent on dining, and nothing else. I speculated that Chase had streamlined their Ultimate Rewards-earning credit cards into the terrific no-annual-fee Freedom card and the terrible $95-annual-fee Sapphire Preferred card, and thought that was overall a change for the better.

Since then, I spent a little time cleaning up the permanent pages (found in the right sidebar on every page of my site) where I do my best to keep on top of current credit card application links and signup bonuses, and found an additional change in Chase's credit card lineup.

Changes to Southwest Airlines credit card options

Chase used to offer four Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards co-branded credit cards:

The "Plus" versions of the cards earned 3,000 bonus Rapid Rewards points on each account anniversary, while the "Premier" cards earned 6,000 bonus anniversary points, in addition to a few other benefits – like bonus Tier Qualifying Points – that matter only if you make purchases with the cards, which you should never do.

The existence of 4 Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards credit cards was important since it made it possible to earn a companion pass for four years per applicant by applying for Rapid Rewards credit cards during Chase's recurring 50,000 point signup bonus offers: 2 cards at a time, every 2 years.

I can no longer find a working link to the Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus Business Credit Card.

Once I noticed the change, I did a little light searching and found this MileCards post from December 4, 2014, making the same observation, so the change took place no later than that, although I can't find any contemporaneous announcements, for example from bloggers who had the Plus Business card removed from their affiliate channels.

Conclusion

I don't fly Southwest, but appreciate the amazing value that folks are able to realize by easily and cheaply acquiring the Southwest Companion Pass for years at a time. The lesson I see here is that it's difficult to make predictions, especially about the future, so you should always be thinking about maximizing the opportunities that are currently available, not planning each move years ahead of time. Chase may allow Southwest cards to be churned today, but not tomorrow. And then they may change their minds yet again!

If you can use a Southwest Companion Pass, by all means get one. If another opportunity to acquire one cheaply is available when the first expires, go for it! But don't act with the expectation that every deal will be around forever; on the contrary, every deal's guaranteed to die eventually.

Chase Amtrak Guest Rewards credit card companion coupons

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For years, Flyertalk hosted a "zombie" link to a 32,000 Amtrak Guest Rewards point signup bonus for their Chase co-branded credit card. That link no longer works, and the only publicly advertised offer is for 12,000 Amtrak Guest Rewards points.

If, like me, you like using AGR points for long-haul sleeper accommodations, that offer wasn't worth a hard credit pull even though I find Amtrak Guest Rewards points extraordinarily valuable, typically redeeming them for 3-5 cents or more each.

Amtrak credit card comes with companion coupon

In the latest e-mail I received from Amtrak Guest Rewards, exhorting me to sign up for their co-branded credit card, I noticed a benefit that was new, or at least new to me:

"Apply today and, after you spend $500 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening, earn 12,000 bonus points - enough for a free roundtrip, plus a free companion coupon." [emphasis mine]

So, what's a companion coupon? Digging into the terms and conditions, we find:

"Coupon valid for one (1) free companion fare when traveling with a paid regular (full) adult rail fare. Free companion and paying passenger must travel together at all times and have ticket issued at the same time. Valid for sale and travel completed within one year after qualifying for the companion coupon. Travel blackouts apply: [...] Valid for travel as one (1) one-way or one (1) round trip on one reservation per coupon. Both tickets for roundtrip must be reserved at the same time. Valid for travel on all Amtrak services except joint Amtrak/VIA Rail service and 7000-8999 Thruway series. Free Companion offer may be combined with corporate discounts, but not combined with any other discount, coupon or Amtrak Guest Rewards redemption travel. Offer valid for coach rail fare only (Business class or [sic] Acela); not valid for sleeper accommodations, Upgrades to Business class or First Class is available upon full payment of applicable accommodation charges"

There are four key takeaways here:

  1. The coupon is good on one-way or roundtrip reservations;
  2. The coupon is good for a companion paid fare — it can't be redeemed on an award reservation (unlike, for example, British Airways' companion ticket);
  3. The coupon can be redeemed on Acela in Business class, or on long-haul trains in coach, but not on sleeper accommodations or for Acela's First class.
  4. Acela Business class companion reservations can be upgraded with cash, but not Amtrak Guest Rewards points (a popular use of AGR points is to upgrade Acela Business class reservations).

How should you use an Amtrak companion coupon?

The most valuable use of this companion coupon won't be on long-haul trains, since those trains can be easily and cheaply booked using Amtrak Guest Rewards points transferred from Ultimate Rewards for sleeper accommodations, and those reservations include the maximum number of passengers the sleeper room is designed for (i.e., 2 adults and 2 children for a Family Bedroom reservation).

So let's look at the next-most-expensive Amtrak reservation type the companion coupon can be redeemed for: Acela Business class travel.

After a little light searching, the most expensive Acela roundtrip I found was $532, for a weekend in May, 2015:

On the cheaper side, here's a weekday roundtrip in April, 2015:

That establishes a nominal range of $412 to $532 for the companion coupon's value. However, as always we need to decide what we're actually comparing the Amtrak companion coupon to. The best comparison is booking using Amtrak Guest Rewards points transferred from a flexible Ultimate Rewards-earning credit card. If you go that route, you'll spend 16,000 Ultimate Rewards points per passenger, or 32,000 points for two passengers, and save $412-$532 in cash. If you value your Ultimate Rewards points at more than 1.29 to 1.66 cents each, you'd be better off redeeming a companion coupon and paying the cash value of the first passenger's fare.

Additional considerations

There are a few final things to consider when deciding whether an Amtrak Guest Rewards credit card is right for you, and when and whether to redeem a companion coupon:

  • Amtrak Guest Rewards point redemptions on Acela have additional restrictions, in addition to Amtrak's standard redemption blackout dates. From Amtrak's redemption guidelines: "Weekday redemption travel is not permitted on any Acela Express segment with a scheduled departure between 12:01 a.m. and 8:59 a.m., or between 2:00 p.m. and 5:59 p.m., inclusive, Monday through Friday. Rule Buster redemptions are not exempt from this restriction." As I discovered last year, this rule can be circumvented by traveling to a station with a permitted departure time, like Providence, RI (slightly south of Boston, and therefore with a later departure time on southbound trains). This rule doesn't apply to paid fares or the companion coupon, to the best of my knowledge.
  • You may want to spend money on Amtrak with your Chase Amtrak Guest Rewards credit card. For example, after spending $200 on Amtrak train travel with the credit card, you're able to transfer up to 25,000 Amtrak Guest Rewards points (i.e. Ultimate Rewards points) to 50,000 Hilton HHonors points or 75,000 Choice Privileges points.

Conclusion

I'm still praying that some kind of increased signup bonus will return, so I can sign up for the Chase Amtrak Guest Rewards credit card with a clear conscience. For now, I'm unwilling to sacrifice a hard pull to save just 12,000 Ultimate Rewards points, even though I do redeem Amtrak Guest Rewards points at least 2 or 3 times per year and always receive exceptional value from them.

Chase Ink Plus annual fees: A/B testing or a sign of things to come?

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This evening I was going through my credit card drawer checking my cards for foreign transaction fees in order to decide which cards to bring to Italy tomorrow. Some cards you might not expect to have waived foreign transaction fees do (Chase British Airways) and some you might expect to waive them don't (US Bank Flexperks Travel, although apparently they've recently changed that).

In any case, I was checking the terms and conditions of the Chase Ink Plus card online, and suddenly had a moment of disorientation. Which card's terms and conditions was I looking at?

I did a double-take and checked my own terms and conditions, which show a $95 annual fee. Had Chase quietly raised the annual fee on their Chase Ink Plus credit card?

Not exactly, or at least not yet.

Different offer channels appear to show different annual fees

If you navigate directly to Chase's Ink website in an incognito window or after clearing your browser's cookies, you should find the $95 annual fee offer alive and well. I was able to replicate this consistently.

Additionally, any time you visit the Ink site after viewing the $95 offer — but before clearing your cookies — you'll continue to see the $95 offer.

But sometimes, and only sometimes, if you search for the Ink Plus through Google and click on one of the sponsored links, you'll instead be taken to this version of the offer, featuring a $150 annual fee.

What's going on?

Obviously Chase pays money to sponsor ads in Google search results, so a trivial explanation would be that they're trying to recoup those expenses by charging new customers acquired in that manner more.

More realistically, I think this is the kind of A/B testing that Google AdWords makes so easy for their customers. Since the population of people searching for "Ink Plus" is both large and targeted, you can easily measure the difference in application rates between those who see a $95 versus $150 annual fee. If it turns out that Ink Plus customers are not particularly price sensitive (don't be one of those!), they may ultimately raise the annual fee for all new applicants and even — heaven forbid! — existing cardholders, as American Express did with the Delta Platinum card in 2014.

Conclusion

I'm heading to Italy early tomorrow morning and won't be really around until we check into the Hilton in Venice late tomorrow night (Italy time). Now I have to go finish packing.

Gas station spend: Flexperks Travel or Ink?

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Introduction

I’ve written extensively about the US Bank Flexperks Travel credit cards, which earn 2 Flexpoints per dollar spent in at either gas stations or grocery stores (wherever you spend the most each statement cycle) and 3 Flexpoints per dollar spent with charitable organizations. The American Express version of the card, unlike the Visa Signature version, also gives 2 Flexpoints per dollar spent at restaurants.

Flexpoints can only be redeemed in bands, starting at 10,000 Flexpoints for hotel stays costing up to $150 and 20,000 Flexpoints for paid, mileage-earning flights costing up to $400. Clearly, the value of Flexpoints depends largely on chance: where the cost of your hotel stays and flights falls within each band determines the value of each Flexpoint, and therefore the value of a dollar of manufactured spend put on a Flexpoint-earning credit card.

Redeem Flexpoints for paid air travel

When redeemed for paid air travel, the US Bank Flexperks Travel cards blow the Ink cards and other fixed-value points like Barclaycard Arrival+ miles out of the water. Here's a chart showing the redemption value for paid flights of the three currencies for different levels of gas station spend:

This chart shows Flexpoints quickly lapping both Arrival+ miles and premium Ultimate Rewards points when used to book paid airfare.

Hotel stays muddy the picture

Here's a similar chart I drew up for hotel stays:

This picture is less decisive than the first for two reasons. First, the redemption values of the three currencies are much closer since the value of a Flexpoint maxes out at 1.5 cents, rather than 2 cents, each when redeemed for hotel stays.

That makes Flexpoint windows of opportunity quite small in the lower redemption bands: hotel stays between $151 and $222 will require less manufactured spend with the Arrival+ MasterCard than a Flexperks Travel card, while Ultimate Rewards points earned with an Ink card at gas stations are cheaper for stays costing up to $250. Only stays between $250 and $300 will be earned more cheaply with Flexpoints than the other two currencies.

In the higher redemption bands it does become possible to save real money using Flexpoints instead of the other two currencies, which is certainly something to keep in mind.

The second complication, however, is that hotel stays booked through the Flexperks and Ultimate Rewards travel portals will not typically earn elite-qualifying nights and stays or loyalty points with your hotel. If you make a reservation using your Arrival+ MasterCard, on the other hand, you have the option of booking directly with your hotel of choice or taking advantage of other stackable savings like clicking through TopCashBack to Hotels.com and saving 7% or more on your stay, plus another 10% rebate earned through Hotels.com's loyalty program, Welcome Rewards.

What's a Flexpoint worth?

Of course this analysis so far has ignored the elephant in the room: the fact that flexible Ultimate Rewards points earned with Chase Ink cards can be transferred to Chase's hotel, air, and rail partners and be redeemed for potentially much more than 1.25 cents each.

What would be really useful to know is the value of Ultimate Rewards points that would make it worth earning 2 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent at gas stations rather than 2 Flexpoints per dollar. Then users could look at their own Ultimate Rewards redemption pattern and see whether they get more or less value than that.

At the high end, if you get more than 2 cents in value for every Ultimate Rewards point you transfer, then you should put all your gas station spend on Chase Ink cards since it's strictly impossible to get more than 2 cents in value from Flexpoints.

On the low end, if you get less than 1.1 cents in value from your Ultimate Rewards points, you should put no gas station spend on your Ink cards, since you'd even be better off putting it on an Arrival+ MasterCard with its fixed return of 2.22% cash back.

So what value between 1.1 cents and 2 cents is the right break-even point? What redemption value need you receive from flexible Ultimate Rewards points to speculatively accumulate more of them, rather than Flexpoints you'll be able to redeem for paid flights?

You blog with the data you have, not the data you might like to have

The US Department of Transportation publishes average domestic airfare prices for flights departing from the top 100 domestic airports by passenger volume. I manually coded the second quarter 2014 prices by the corresponding Flexperks Travel redemption band and calculated the value per redeemed Flexpoint.

Unfortunately, this data is necessarily imperfect since the DOT doesn't publish standard deviations, so it's impossible to use the data to generate a range of likely values. But it's the data I have, and using it the value of the average Flexpoint redeemed for the average flight from those airports is 1.62 cents per Flexpoint. While it's possible to "goose" the value of Flexpoints by calling into the reservation center and asking to be booked into the highest fare class within a given redemption band, I think 1.62 cents is as fair a place as any to peg the value of a Flexpoint.

Note that this is not affected by increases or decreases in the price of airfare: it's strictly a measurement of the location of average prices within each redemption tier. Averages are not ideal, or even particularly good, values to use for this purpose but, again, they're the values I have.

Are flexible Ultimate Rewards points worth more than 1.62 cents?

Let me be clear: your own redemptions should drive your earning, not blog posts about First Class suites or island resorts. If you're not going to redeem your Ultimate Rewards points for the same rewards as your favorite aspirational travel bloggers, then whatever valuations he or she comes up with are worse than useless if they cause you to make bad decisions.

Having said that, there are a few generalizations we can make. Seth the Wandering Aramean has recently posted some data from his hotel search tool that gives us some insight into the redemption value of various rewards currencies. As Chase transfer partners, the relevant hotel loyalty programs are:

  • Hyatt Gold Passport. Median point value: 1.681 cents. Average point value: 1.807 cents.
  • Marriott Rewards. Median point value: 0.630 cents. Average point value: 0.699 cents.
  • IHG Rewards. Median point value: 0.564 cents. Average point value: 0.611 cents.

In other words, of the three Chase hotel transfer partners, Hyatt is probably the only one in which it makes sense to speculatively accumulate points for award stays. The extremely limited exception is transferring Ultimate Rewards points to Marriott Rewards in order to "top up" a Hotel + Air package as a backdoor way to transfer Ultimate Rewards points to one of Marriott's numerous airline partners.

Chase's airline transfer partners offer a wide range of potential values:

  • British Airways Avios can be redeemed for expensive short-haul flights on American Airlines, US Airways, or Alaska Airlines.
  • Southwest Airlines miles can be redeemed for up to 1.69 cents on Wanna Get Away fares, or roughly twice that if you have a Companion Pass.
  • United Airlines, Singapore Airlines, and Korean Air (temporarily unavailable for transfers) miles can be redeemed for award travel on Star Alliance, Star Alliance, and SkyTeam flights, respectively.

Finally, if you're interested in long-haul Amtrak travel, Amtrak Guest Rewards offers phenomenal value. 25,000 Amtrak Guest Rewards points is enough for a one-zone bedroom redemption like the City of New Orleans between Chicago and New Orleans or Coast Starlight between Las Angeles and Portland or Seattle. Those are 2-4+ cent per point redemptions, and a fantastic use of Ultimate Rewards points.

Conclusion

I can't answer the question of whether you should put gas station manufactured spend on a Flexperks Travel, Ink, or some other card like the Amex EveryDay Preferred (3 Membership Rewards points at gas stations under certain conditions). But these are the kinds of questions you should ask when making that decision: given your actual travel plans, which currency are you most likely to redeem at the highest value?

Personally, I'd much rather speculatively acquire Flexpoints, since it's a dead certainty that I will, at some point, need to fly somewhere on a paid airline ticket, and I'd much rather do so at a 69% discount (or more) by redeeming Flexpoints than pay full price.

On the other hand, if you have your heart set on a particular Hyatt property, a Marriott Air + Hotel package, a long-haul Amtrak trip or a premium cabin international flight, it's simple enough to figure out whether that redemption is worth more or less than the roughly 1.62 cents per Flexpoint you're giving up by earning Ultimate Rewards points instead.