Can current cardholders get one more TripIt Pro subscription from Barclaycard Arrival+?
/[For reasons I cannot begin to understand, I am camping far from civilization this week. I have a couple posts scheduled, but won't be participating as actively as usual in the comments or on Twitter.]
A few months back the free TripIt Pro subscription I received through my Barclaycard Arrival+ MasterCard expired. I reached out to Barclaycard on Twitter to ask how to renew my subscription, and they told me to "log into the website and from the ‘Account Summary’ page click on the ‘Tripit Pro’ link to activate," then gave me a unique code to use instead of entering my credit card information.
Being lazy and not getting any particular value from TripIt Pro, I didn't act on this information until last week, when the Arrival+ devaluation was made official and free TripIt Pro subscriptions were explicitly discontinued.
Never being one to pay for a benefit I don't use, I logged into my TripIt account and entered the unique code I'd been given, which instantly upgraded my account to TripIt Pro.
The TripIt Pro benefit has been removed from my online account
As indicated by Barclaycard's Twitter team, before the devaluation, "TripIt Pro" was a benefit on the "account summary" page of my Barclaycard Arrival+ card account. Now it's gone.
Current cardholders should still be eligible for free TripIt Pro subscriptions
Since the devaluation goes into effect on November 17 for existing cardholders, if you signed up for the card before the card was rebooted earlier this month, you should still be able to sign up for a free TripIt Pro subscription.
The easiest way is probably to do what I did, and contact @AskBCUS on Twitter to ask for your upgrade code. If you're not a Twitter user, you should be able to call in and ask for an upgrade code.
TripIt Pro is like TripIt, but with lots of text messages
TripIt allows you to organize all your upcoming trips, which I find mildly useful when assembling trips with multiple components, especially multiple airline ticket confirmation numbers. It's genuinely convenient to have them all in one place.
TripIt Pro is like that, but also with lots of text messages throughout each travel day about your inbound and outbound gate assignments and any flight delays. Honestly, it's usually more stressful than it is helpful, knowing ahead of time just how many terminals you need to dash in order to make your connections.
The potentially useful service that TripIt and TripIt Pro don't provide is allow you to easily search for alternative flights on your ticketing carrier. Instead their "alternate flight" search is essentially a Kayak search of all flights between point A and point B.
But TripIt Pro is included in your (hopefully waived) annual fee
As I mentioned yesterday, the worst thing you can do is pay for a benefit and not take advantage of it. So if you signed up for the Arrival+ card on the understanding you'd receive a free TripIt Pro subscription, go ahead and sign up!
You might like it.