Earning flexible points at gas stations

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Via Doctor of Credit, the Citi ThankYou Premier card is apparently lowering its annual fee and significantly changing its bonus earning categories by including gas stations in its bonused "travel" category, while increasing its earning rate to 3 ThankYou points per dollar spent there.

This is potentially a huge deal: beginning April 19, 2015, Citi, American Express, and Chase will all offer flexible-point-earning credit cards with sub-$100 annual fees, and all three will bonus purchases at gas stations.

Since the ThankYou Premier card is currently issued as a Visa, my expectation is that in-store purchases at 7-Eleven store locations, whether or not they sell gas, will earn points at the accelerated rate.

The Cards

Here are the cards I have in mind:

  • Chase Ink Plus Visa. 2 flexible Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent at gas stations. $95 annual fee;
  • American Express Amex Everyday Preferred. 2 flexible Membership Rewards points per dollar spent at gas stations, with a 50% bonus during statement cycles you make 30 or more purchases (anywhere) with the card. $95 annual fee;
  • Citi ThankYou Premier. 3 flexible ThankYou points per dollar spent at gas stations. $95 annual fee starting April 19, 2015. Wait until then to apply in order to maximize your earning during your first cardmember year.

Analysis

Let me be clear that it makes no sense to carry all three of these cards on an ongoing basis. On the other hand, both the Chase Ink Plus and Citi ThankYou Premier periodically (for example, right now) offer 50,000 point signup bonuses which may entice you to apply. Once you've crossed the hurdle of signing up for the card, you may well decide to incorporate it into your manufactured spending strategy.

Only Chase Ultimate Rewards points are directly redeemable for cash, while all three points currencies can be redeemed for paid, mileage-earning airline tickets. Additionally, Citi ThankYou points can be redeemed for mortgage or student loan "rebate checks" made out to your loan holder. Membership Rewards points can be monetized by redeeming them for American Express gift cards, although you'll have to pay any costs involved in liquidating them.

Since monetizing these points will yield a maximum value of 1 cent per point, you'll probably be best-served earning these flexible currencies with the intention of redeeming them for flights through their airline transfer partners.

With that in mind, I created this chart to incorporate the relevant information about the three cards:

Conclusion

A glance at this chart suggests a few obvious conclusions:

  • All three flexible points currencies have transfer partners in all three airline alliances;
  • Only Ultimate Rewards can be transferred to United or Korean Air;
  • But only ThankYou and Membership Rewards points can be transferred to Air France KLM Flying Blue points.

Which cards, if any, you decide to apply for and use to manufacture spend at gas stations should depend on the redemptions you plan actually plan to make. But Citi's changes to the ThankYou Premier card are a big step towards leveling the playing field between these three cards.

Do this now: register for Hyatt's Stay More Play More promotion

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Registration is open for the Hyatt Gold Passport Winter/Spring promotion, called "Stay More Play More." Between January 15 and April 30, 2015, you'll earn bonus points based on the specific offer you've been targeted for, presumably depending in part on your history with the program. I was targeted for up to 50,000 bonus points after staying 20 nights during the promotional period:

I don't have any paid Hyatt stays planned for this quarter, so I don't anticipate earning any bonus points through this promotion. If you are interested in directing stays towards Hyatt in order to earn bonus points, but are unsatisfied with the promotion you've been targeted for, head over to Chasing the Points to see some of the other offers available. He suggests contacting Hyatt's social media team in order to register for a different promotion than the one you were targeted for.

On the other hand, if you don't feel like spending that much energy on this promotion, you should still register now, before you forget.

How do transfer bonuses and Travel Together Tickets affect the value of Avios for long-haul British Airways flights?

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Everyone knows that Avios, the awards currency used by British Airways Executive Club, can be redeemed for short-haul domestic flights at sometimes astronomical values. 4,500 or 7,500 Avios for expensive, short-haul flights is one of the great bargains in domestic travel, and makes British Airways one of the most valuable transfer partners for Chase Ultimate Rewards points, which you can quickly and easily transfer over in increments of 1,000 Avios.

The flip side of that are the huge taxes and fees levied on long-haul Avios redemptions on British Airways flights through London, which mean those redemptions, particularly in premium cabins, are almost never worth making compared to Delta or United redemptions connecting in Continental Europe.

I recently mentioned on Twitter my intention to cancel my Chase British Airways Visa, which I received last January under the fantastic signup bonus of 100,000 Avios after spending $20,000 on the card, and someone mentioned that Membership Rewards transfer bonuses (currently 40%) and British Airways Visa Travel Together Tickets might make the card worth keeping. I don’t pay extortionate taxes, fees, and fuel surcharges, and I don’t recommend my readers do either. But I was sufficiently intrigued: how do transfer bonuses, and the British Airways Visa Travel Together ticket, affect the value of Avios for flights on British Airways metal?

Membership Rewards transfer bonuses

Membership Rewards, one of the proprietary points currencies of American Express, can ordinarily be transferred to Executive Club Avios at a 1:1 ratio. Periodically, however, the program offers bonuses on such transfers so that, for example, 1,000 Membership Rewards points can currently be transferred to 1,400 Avios.

Note what this does and doesn’t mean: while the Avios cost (in Membership Rewards points) of such tickets is reduced by 28.6%, the taxes, fees, and surcharges remain the same.

The cost of every ticket can be broken down into two components: the miles and points cost and the dollar cost. Even a paid revenue ticket has a (negative) miles component (the miles you earn from flying), while a domestic award ticket will still have a low dollar cost ($11.20, for example, in taxes and fees).

There should always be some point at which you’ll prefer to book a revenue ticket over an award ticket; if a domestic revenue ticket on United costs $250, you can redeem 20,000 flexible Ultimate Rewards points for the paid ticket rather than transfer 25,000 Ultimate Rewards points to United to book an award ticket: the negative mileage cost of the revenue ticket makes it "cheaper" overall (even with gutted earning on paid United flights).

In the same way, a sufficiently high transfer bonus should make even award tickets with high taxes and fees cheaper than an award ticket booked on a more consumer-friendly airline.

British Airways Visa Travel Together Tickets

Each calendar year you spend $30,000 on a Chase British Airways Visa, you’ll earn a "Travel Together Ticket.” Travel Together Tickets expire two years after they’re issued. These companion tickets:

  • Can only be redeemed on British Airways-operated flights;
  • Must originate and terminate in the United States (no originating in Brazil to dodge fuel surcharges);
  • Can be used for any class of service, or mixed-cabin itineraries;
  • Require the cardholder to travel on the entire itinerary (no selling Travel Together Tickets online!).

Importantly, when booking a companion ticket you’re still required to pay the taxes, fees, and surcharges for each passenger; the companion ticket only discounts the Avios component of your reservation, not the dollar component.

Is it worth it?

Combining the two promotions results in a discount of 64% to the miles component of a two-person reservation (1,000 Membership Rewards points for 2,800 Avios in value), with no discount to the dollar component. Are there itineraries that make such reservations competitive with other points currencies? I compiled the following chart using the actual mileage and dollar award costs for several cities served by British Airways, American Airlines, Delta, United, and their partners.

For each award, I calculated an "imputed redemption value," which is the rate at which a British Airways Visa Travel Together Ticket redemption is buying American AAdvantage miles, Delta Skymiles (or Membership Rewards points), or United Mileage Plus miles (or Chase Ultimate Rewards points). For example, on a roundtrip economy award for two passengers between New York City and Heathrow, passengers redeeming a Travel Together Ticket would pay $999 in order to spend 28,571 Avios instead of 120,000 Skymiles. You could think of this as buying Skymiles at 1.09 cents each, or paying $999 in order to convert 28,571 Avios into 120,000 Skymiles. If you typically redeem your Skymiles for more than 1.09 cents each, you might consider redeeming a Travel Together Ticket instead.

The lower the  IRV, the better value a Travel Together Ticket redemption theoretically is. I've highlighted IRV's below 1 cent per mile in green, between 1 and 2 cents per mile in yellow, and above 2 cents per mile in red.

A few notes on this chart:

  • This chart only shows award tickets I could actually search for and find online. I've indicated where an airline offers a theoretically lower redemption cost, but where I was unable to find a single award seat at that level. We're interested in the actual cost of award tickets, not their theoretical cost;
  • This chart shows the mileage and cash cost of 2 award tickets, since Travel Together Tickets naturally only apply to 2-person reservations;
  • The mileage cost of British Airways awards is given in Membership Rewards points, since this chart shows the combined effects of Membership Rewards transfer bonuses and a Travel Together Ticket. Multiply by 2 to find the cost in Membership Rewards points without a companion ticket, or by 1.4 to find the cost in Avios without a Membership Rewards transfer bonus (or by 2.8 without either);
  • British Airways will charge more Avios, but not (much) more cash, for departures from their other US destinations. To find the cost from those destinations, add the Avios shown at the bottom of the table;
  • Finally, this is a non-representative sample of British Airways destinations. It was chosen only to illustrate the principle; calculate your own imputed redemption values using the actual cities you're interested in traveling between.

Conclusion

I find charts like this useful not because I have any burning desire to visit Johannesburg, Bangalore, or Beijing, but because using concrete figures can help evaluate generalized claims. My key takeaway from this chart is that the headline combined discount of 64% may sound impressive, but how much value you actually receive from a Membership Rewards transfer bonus and Travel Together Ticket will depend entirely on the itinerary you ultimately redeem them for.

On itineraries between the United States and London, where you'll be forced to pay the United Kingdom's Air Passenger Duty regardless of your airline, the mileage savings with Avios can substantially outweigh the increased cash outlay.

Additionally, if your alternative to using British Airways Avios is the AAdvantage program, you'll likely be booking your transatlantic travel through London anyways, and using a Travel Together Ticket and Membership Rewards transfer bonus instead was a better value on almost all the transatlantic routes I examined.

On the other hand, itineraries between the United States and China are so astronomically expensive in both Avios and fuel surcharges on British Airways-operated flights that even the Travel Together Ticket doesn't make an Avios redemption competitive with redemptions through the other three mileage programs.

Looking at this chart, I've even more persuaded to cancel my British Airways Visa. What do my readers think?

Lessons learned after a week in Italy

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I don’t write trip reports because I don’t like reading trip reports. On the other hand, while in Italy I discovered a few things I wasn’t expecting, which might prove useful to readers planning their own trips. So here are my top 6 travel-hackery takeaways from my 8-night trip to Italy.

1) The Hilton Molino Stucky Venice is an incredible place to stay in Venice

I did a fair amount of research on this property before arriving, but I was pleasantly surprised at every turn:

  • It’s incredibly easy to get to. Many reviews and comments about this property point out that the hotel is located on an island, not in “Venice proper.” The “island" is just another one of the landmasses in the Venetian delta, and while it’s not connected to the other island by a bridge, there’s a simple public water transportation system that connects you there directly from the train station and, I believe, the airport as well. If you catch one of the express waterbusses it’s a ride of perhaps 15 minutes from the main Santa Lucia train station.
  • We had buffet breakfast in the restaurant included. Trip Advisor has dozens if not hundreds of reviews from Hilton HHonors Gold and Diamond members who were told they would only receive breakfast in the executive lounge, which would indeed be disappointing, since it’s basically just eggs, bacon, and yoghurt. Some of those reports are as recent as December, but as a Diamond member we had breakfast in the hotel restaurant, which has a staggeringly wide assortment of hot and cold dishes, salads, breads, and meats. I have no explanation for the discrepancy, but that was our experience.
  • The rooms are quiet. Some people complain about noise from the street and from the boats moving around the canals, but we found the windows to provide great sound insulation when closed. It may be much louder during the high season, with revelers coming and going all night long.
  • The views are superb. The side of the building facing the water is in the shape of a “U,” and some people with rooms in the “depressed” part of the “U” complained that they had only obstructed, not clear, views of the city. This may be a bigger problem in the corners, but we were located in the center of the depression and didn’t find our view hurt in any way by seeing the sides of the building. We had a perhaps 160-degree view instead of a “full” 180 degrees.

2) The Radisson Blu es. Hotel in Rome is a very pretty disaster

At 66,000 Club Carlson points ($13,200 in purchases on the US Bank Premier Rewards personal or Business Rewards small business credit cards) for 2 nights in a premium room, this hotel seemed too good to be true. Unfortunately, it was.

The hotel’s owners clearly invested a great deal of money in design, but without paying the slightest attention to function:

  • The room’s outlets require a keycard to be left by the door, so it’s impossible to charge electronics during the day without leaving a key behind.
  • The entire hotel was heated to 70 degrees or so, including the bedrooms (and the minibar). To cool off, we opened the door to our room’s balcony, and tiny insects soon covered every surface.
  • Behind the bed was a “control panel” with buttons labeled with various functions, like controlling the room’s shades. None of them worked as described (our room's shades didn’t even appear to be electric).
  • On our second day, there was apparently a brief power outage and the hotel’s internet stopped working for the rest of our stay. This wouldn’t have been such a problem, except…

3) It’s preposterously hard to get online in Italy

My vague understanding is that this has something to do with Europe’s internet security laws, which require those providing internet access to verify the identity of their customers. Even with that being said, I’ve never had as much trouble getting online in any other European country as I did all over Italy.

My favorite example: the high-speed train we took between Milan and Venice had free on-board wireless internet. All you needed to do was register, and you’d receive your login credentials…via e-mail!

4) You probably don’t need to book train tickets in advance

I booked all our train tickets in advance through ItaliaRail.com, which is useful for scanning for the cheapest departures each day (and purchases are correctly coded as travel with the Barclaycard Arrival+ MasterCard). Once in Italy, for the sake of comparison I checked the prices for same-day tickets, and found they were identical to the advance purchase prices I’d secured online.

One possible exception is if you’re able to find “Two For One Fare” tickets, which are only available on advance purchases. That’s a way to secure real savings, if you’re able to book the trains on which those tickets are available.

5) You probably don’t need to stay at the airport when departing Rome

We had a not-particularly-early morning flight from Rome to Philadelphia, and I thought it would be convenient to stay in Fiumicino, the suburb of Rome where the airport is located. This turned out to be totally unnecessary: the train from Rome’s Termini train station to Fiumicino airport takes just a touch over 30 minutes, and runs every 20 minutes. We ended up having a lovely dinner in Fiumicino on our last night, and paid just $14 for our hotel there thanks to Expedia’s Cyber Monday sale, but in general I’d suggest spending the night in Rome and having a nice dinner there, instead, unless you have a very early morning flight and want to stay at one of the two Hilton properties attached to the airport.

6) Checking in for US (and Israel?)-bound flights from Rome is an insane process

We left Rome on a US Airways-operated flight, which meant we had to check in at Fiumicino’s Terminal 5. Terminal 5 is a giant warehouse with the sole function, as far as I could tell, of handling check-in for US airlines and El Al, the Israeli national carrier.

The procedures in Terminal 5 are what you might come up with if you were taken on a 30-minute tour of a US airport and told to replicate as much of it as possible from memory.

The first step is presenting your passport. This has nothing to do with checking in for your flight; it appears to serve solely to verify your identity. The same person who checks your passport gives you a handful of plastic bags and instructs you to put all the electronics, batteries, and for some reason cables which you plan to carry onto the flight into these plastic bags for security screening.

After pulling out all your electronics and bagging them, the second step is not passing through security. Rather, now you can finally proceed to the airline check-in counters, all while juggling your plastic bags filled with electronics. I don’t know how the other airlines handle this, but the US Airways counters were being overseen by a woman who appeared to be deliberately screwing with the passengers. Before my eyes, she told a passenger to put her carry-on into the bag sizer, turned back to her computer, and then when the passenger told her it had fit replied, “I didn’t see it.” The sooner this airline vanishes from the face of the earth, the better.

Finally you can head to security, which was, after all this rigamarole, much easier than passing through security in the States. We didn’t even have to take off our shoes!

After all this, you hop on a bus that takes you to a completely normal terminal with flights departing all over the world, which is why I suggest Terminal 5 only exists to satisfy the US that some semblance of our security procedures are being followed for US-bound passengers. The fact that you could trade luggage or boarding passes with someone who checked in at the other international terminal appears to have been lost on them.

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.