Key Ways to Reach Any Minimum Spend

1.  Amazon Payments Option

Amazon Payments will allow you to send up to $1,000 per month to anyone with an email address and Amazon Payment account.

This means that you could reach a $3,000 spend in the first 90 days minimum spend by using Amazon Payments alone (not that I recommend that).  If you were to send money from your account to another person, they could then send the money back to you, and you’d both get a ‘spend’ on your account.

My strategy with Amazon Payments is not to send even transfers of $1,000 per month, but other random amounts every month.

2.  Buy Gift Cards and Upload to Bluebird

I’ve talked about this idea in other posts, but I think many of you undermine the value of a Bluebird account.  Remember, you have until May 21st, 2013 to order your Bluebird checks for free.

As an example, at the time of this writing you can buy Chase gift cards without any fees.  You can buy up to $2,500 worth of gift cards every month.

Let’s say that you signed up for the Ink Bold credit card with a $5,000 minimum spend.  You could buy $2,500 worth of gift cards and then wait a month and buy another $2,500 worth of gift cards, and voilà, you’ve reached a $5,000 minimum spend.

The best way to clear out gift cards is to go to Walmart and load funds to your Bluebird account with your debit card that you bought from Chase (as an example).  You can load up to $1,000 per day and up to $5,000 per month.

Once you’ve uploaded the funds, the possibilities are endless as to how you can ‘spend’ the $5,000.

In this case, you could just use your Bluebird account to pay off your Chase credit card balance.  In the end, you’ve spent $0 to get a $5,000 minimum spend.

Other ways to buy gift cards:

You’ll often see promotions at your local grocery store for buying gift cards.

As an example, my local Albertsons was give $10 off your next grocery shop for buying $100 Visa Gift Card with a $5.95 fee.  I used my card that gives 2x for groceries and was able to essentially get $4.00 off a purchase of $10 worth of groceries and get a $105.95 spend on my credit card.

This week, my local Safeway is offering $10 off the purchase of a $100 American Express gift card.  While American Express gift cards cannot be used to load to Bluebird (because they don’t have PINs), they can be used on Amazon Payments to liquidate your gift cards.

Also, you can shop online at places like giftcardmall.com and buy Visa gift cards.  Until last week, you could also go through a cash back website and get money back for buying gift cards.  That option now seems to be closed.  Even if you had to pay $4.95 per $500 gift card, it would still only cost $29.70 to buy $3,000 worth of gift cards.

My encouragement is this: before dismissing your ability to reach or not reach a minimum spend, ask yourself if there is a way you can use Bluebird + gift cards to help you reach an otherwise unattainable minimum spend.

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• Buy 5,000 – 9,000 miles, get a 25% Bonus.
• Buy 10,000 – 19,000 miles, get a 50% Bonus.
• Buy 20,000 – 29,000 miles, get a 75% Bonus.
• Buy 30,000 – 50,000 miles, get a 100% Bonus.

Depending on your travel plans, there may be some possibility to maximize this for your benefit.  Obviously, the best benefit would be if you wanted to get enough points to reach the next award level threshold.

Example #1: Business class from US to North Asia With a Stop in Europe

A business class flight to North Asia will cost 90,000 US Airways miles.  Through this promotion you’d pay $1,692 for your miles.  In addition, you can expect to pay about $200 in booking fees and taxes.  Thus, for about $1,900 you could outright buy the miles you need for a trip to Asia with a stop in Europe.

I just searched Kayak.com for a flight from DEN – FRA (stop) – NRT (stop) – DEN.  In economy class the best rate I can get is $2,963.  In business class it’s $9685.  Even just a flight from DEN – NRT in economy is $1128.  Thus, for an extra $800ish, you can add on a trip to Europe and fly business class.

Example #2: Economy class off-peak to Europe

If you were to purchase 90,000 miles, that would be enough miles for three economy class off-peak tickets from the US to Europe on US Airways metal if you are a US Airways card holder.  The best price in Feb 2014 from DEN – Rome is $1332.  For three passengers that would be a total of $3996.  Again, if you bought 90,000 miles it would be $1692 plus about $125 per person in taxes and booking fees.  Your total cost would be $2067.  That’s nearly a $2,000 savings.

Example #3: Business class from US to Australia

A business class flight to Australia will cost 110,000 miles.  Obviously, you can’t buy that many with this promotion, but you can buy 100,000 so that if you already have 10,000 in your account it will work.  The total cost for the miles you buy would be $1881.25.  You’ll pay about $200-$250 in booking fees and taxes.  Let’s assume that is a total cost of $2150.  Remember, you can also get a stop in Europe or Asia if you wish.

By comparison, flights from Denver to Brisbane cost $1950 in economy.  Thus, for an extra $200 you can fly business class and get a stop in either Asia or Europe.

Example #4: Economy or business off-peak to South America

If you fly off-peak and use only US Airways operated flights and have a US Airways credit card, you can fly from North America to South America for 30,000 miles in economy or 55,000 miles in business.

If you were to purchase 90,000 miles, that would be enough miles for three economy class off-peak tickets from the US to South America on US Airways metal if you are a US Airways card holder.  The best price in Feb 2014 from DEN – Rio De Janeiro is $1525.  For three passengers that would be a total of $4575.  Again, if you bought 90,000 miles it would be $1692 plus about $115 per person in taxes and booking fees.  Your total cost would be $2037.  That’s nearly a $2,500 savings.

The math also works out in your favor if you’re interested in a business class flight to South America.

By combining a reduced cost to buy miles with some of US Airways’ sweet points, you can get some good value out of the current mileage sale promotion.

Note: With the upcoming merger between American and US Airways, there is no guarantee that these great redemption options will remain, so I wouldn’t speculatively buy these miles.  The miles may eventually end up as American Aadvantage miles; but again, there is no guarantee.

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I had several questions regarding the Miles & More program and Barclays, so I figured I’d address them in a post so you could all access the information in case you have similar questions.

1.  What’s up with Barclay?  Why did they deny me?  Should I apply for a card through Barclaycards?

There are two typical Barclay experiences out there.

Group One: I just keep getting Barclay approvals.

Rapid Travel Chai, as an example, was able to get instant approvals on four Barclay cards in the same day.   His suggestion is to wait six months between US Airways applications.

There are lots of people who report that the US Airways card is churnable (though perhaps the hardest Barcaly card to get).  As an example, you can read about Noobtraveler’s experience.

Group Two: I keep getting approvals with other companies like American Express and Chase, but not Barclay.

Honestly, I’m in this camp.  I do have a US Airways Business card and a personal card.  I recently applied for the Arrival card and a second US Airways card and was denied.  I didn’t even bother to call reconsideration because of reports that your active US Airways card may be closed.  I actually want to keep my US Airways card because, for my $89 each year, I get a 10,000 mile bonus. Plus I can get 5,000 miles off a US Airways award ticket.

Based on my recent experiences, I’d say Barclays is a much more conservative bank than the others.  If you’ve been denied for a Barclay’s card, I suggest you wait six months before trying again.

2.  Can I book United International flights without a fuel surcharge?

That depends.  :)

Million Mile Secrets shares some great insight on the topic.

Basically, if you book flights in the US or flights from the US to Canada, Caribbean, Mexico, and South America, you don’t.  If, however, you are traveling on United to Asia or Europe, you will pay a fuel surcharge of $250 or more.

Interestingly, if you book on US Airways, you won’t pay fuel surcharges so that means flights to Europe on US Airways is a way to get to Europe without the fuel surcharge.

3.  How do I know what flights I can book using Miles & More?

You can use your Miles & More points to book flights on any Star Alliance flights.  Your best bet is to use United.com or ANA’s award search tool to try and find “Saver Award” availability.  If you see saver awards available, you can call Lufthansa and book your flights over the phone.

4.  How many miles will it cost for a trip?

The easiest way to answer that question is to visit the Miles and More Mileage Calculator to see how many miles it will cost in your preferred class of service.

5.  Which is the best link to use?

There has been some discussion online about the difference between the affiliate link and the non-affiliate link floating around. The affiliate link is better because you get 50,000 miles even if you’re approved for the Premier World or Platinum MasterCard.  However, with the other link (you can see that here), you’ll only get 5,000 miles if you’re approved for the lesser Platinum card.

If you have any more questions about the card, I’ll do my best to give you an accurate answer so you can make a wise decision when trying to decide if you should apply for the Lufthansa Premier Miles & More MasterCard.

To leave a comment or easily share the article with your Facebook or Twitter friends click here -> FAQ Miles & More Questions Regarding 50,000 Lufthansa Offer

Well, it seems as though Barclays wants to step things up a little.  They made their first move with the Barclay Arrival World MasterCard.  That card offers 40,000 points after spending $1,000 in the first three months.  Those points can be worth $440 when applied to travel.

Barclay’s most recent increased sign up bonus is for the The Premier Miles & More World MasterCard.

Miles & More Lufthansa 50,000 Bonus Point Offer Details

Earn 20,000 award miles after your first purchase.  Earn an additional 30,000 miles after spending $5,000 in the first 90 days of opening your account.

There is a $79 annual fee that is not waived for the first year.

A Primer on the Miles & More Program

I’m guessing most of you are probably thinking that you don’t know much about the Lufthansa Miles & More program.  That’s OK; it’s a program we don’t talk much about.  Hey, I still struggle to spell l-u-f-t-h-a-n-s-a!

Of course, in order to understand the value of Lufthansa, you’ll need to know a little bit about the program.

1.  You can travel domestically in the US (Star Alliance) for 25,000 miles in economy and 35,000 in business class.  The 25,000 mile threshold is definitely on par with most US programs, but 35,000 miles is lower than most.  In fact, with the exception of short haul flights using Avios, it might be the least number of miles required for domestic business class flights.

2.  Lufthansa charges fuel surcharges on airline partners except their US partners – United and US Airways.  They also do not charge fuel surcharges on flights operated by LOT.

3.  One-way travel is permitted for half the miles.

4.  Lufthansa Miles & More members have access to first class seats on Lufthansa and Swiss.  With US Airways you cannot book Lufthansa first class, and with United you can only do it days in advance.  However, if you use Lufthansa miles, you can book first class further in advance.  Expect to pay about $400 each way for flights to Europe.

For most of you, I don’t think this is going to be a card to go crazy over.  However, if you’re looking for an easy way to get a couple more domestic US flights, then this is an ideal card because it is from Barclaycards so you can get a decent offer without wasting a Chase or American Express opportunity.

To get more information or to apply now, click here.

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I knew when I booked that American Airlines charges $150 to cancel a reservation.  Unfortunately, after I was detained in Papua New Guinea for an extra week this February I decided that I didn’t actually want to go to Japan April 2013.  I’d been away from my family for more than my agreed about of time in the winter/spring season.

I could have done what most folks would do – call American, cancel the flight, and pay the $150.

Instead I decided to delay and hopefully avoid the inevitable.

Instead of canceling my tickets I change my flight to a future date (in my case it was a date in October 2013).  I made sure to make the changes more than 21 days in advance because American allow free date changes 21 days prior to your departure.

Why change your dates instead of canceling the reservation?

If an airline changes their flight schedules they’ll often give you the opportunity to cancel the flight without a fee.  They recognize that they have made a change and won’t put the financial burden on you since they initiated the change.

I decided that by extending my travel date which also allowed me to extend the possibility that there would be a schedule change.

This weekend I got an email saying that my flight from DFW – NRT would be departing 2 hours later than my existing reservation.  I was on the phone within minutes.

Here’s how the phone call to American Airlines went:

Me “Hi, I just had a schedule change on an existing reservation and I was wondering if there are any better flight connection options.”  Clearly if they can get you a better flight option then they should be given the right to do that.

AA “Sure.  Let me look into it. [typing noise, pause]  I can get you an earlier flight from DFW – NRT, but you’d need to leave Denver at 6:00 a.m. instead of 7:10 a.m.”

Me “Actually thats not very convenient because I live 2 hours from the Denver airport and that hour plus earlier flight is just too early.  Is it possible for me to just cancel this itinerary?”

AA “Sure.  We could do that and refund the miles to your account and refund the charge to your credit card.”

Me “Would there be a charge to cancel the reservation?”

AA “No.  Since the cancellation is the result of a schedule change we won’t charge you anything.”

And there you have it.  A strategy to avoid paying the cancellation fee on an award ticket.

Note: This typically only works when you have a schedule change that is great than an hour.  If you have a five minute change it might be hard to make it work!  Also, this only works on airlines that allow free date changes.  Obvioiulsy, if you have to pay $150 to change your date (e.g. US Airways) you’re better off simply canceling the reservation outright.

Have you ever had a similar experience?

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Clearly, the answer will vary based on a lot of your personal preferences.  However, in this post I’ll do a cost analysis to get an idea of which cards stand out as the best options for hotels in Maui, Hawaii.

For consistency, I’ll assume that a person is considering staying for a week from October 11th – 17th, 2013.

Starwood Personal or Business Card

With the Starwood credit cards, you’ll be able to get a sign up bonus of 10,000 Starpoints and an additional 15,000 after spending $5,000 in the first six months of card membership.

During the dates in question, there are now cash and points available.

Starwood gives you your fifth nigh free, so with credit cards the best you could hope to do is 48,000 points for five nights. (That would be the points from two credit card applications – either two personal cards [i.e. a husband and a wife] or a personal and a business credit card application.)

Five nights would cost $1645.00 so you’d be getting 3.427 points savings per dollar.  This excludes any sort or resort charge or extra person charges.  As such, the best Starwood value per credit card application would be $856.

Obviously, if you didn’t stay exactly five nights, you’d get a lot less value out of your points.

Hilton (Various Credit Card Offers)

I was disappointed to find that I couldn’t find any hotel availability at either Hilton brand hotel in Maui.  If a person were traveling with other dates, they’d want to factor Hilton into the equation, but not in this case.  I actually like to stay at Hiltons because it is easy to get Gold status which comes with free breakfast.

You can check this post to see the eligible Hilton earning credit cards.

Chase Hyatt Credit Card

The Chase Hyatt credit card offers two free nights as part of their sign up bonus (after spending $1,000 in the first three months).  There is also a way to maximize this offer by getting your two nights in a suite.

The Hyatt Maui is a Category 6 Hyatt hotel.  Hyatt probably has the most possibility in terms of luxury and as far as finding a way to make all seven nights possible in the same hotel.

You’ll see the category options below:

 With two credit card applications, you’ll be able to get 4 free nights.  However, Hyatt is a transfer partner of Ultimate Rewards.  This means with an additional 66,000 Ultimate Rewards points, you can get the other 3 nights for free.

Ultimate Rewards earning cards:

Chase Sapphire Preferred = 40,000 points after spending $3,000 in the first three months.

Ink Bold or Ink Plus = 50,000 points after spending $5,000 in the first three months.

Chase Freedom (as long as you have at least one of the other cards above) = only offers 10,000 points after spending $500, but has rotating categories where you can earn 5x miles.

Value from one Chase Hyatt application is worth $878  if redeemed in Maui.  Value from Ultimate Rewards is 1.995 cents per point.

Marriott

The Chase Marriott credit card offers 50,000 bonus points after spending $1,000 in the first three months.

The cheapest way to do your stay is at the Courtyard Maui Kahului Airport.  Essentially, it costs 20,000 per night with the 5th night free.  A credit card application could get you two free nights, but you can combine points with a spouse. (They need to transfer points for a specific booking.) As a result, my suggestion would be to get two cards (both partners) and end up with a combined total of 100,000 points.  You could turn that 100,000 points into 6 nights.

Using cash and points, you’d pay $199 plus 100,000 points to get 7 nights.

As far as a dollar value, you’d get a $500 value out of your application if you can combine points to get the 5th night free.  While this is not the most valuable use of points, it does allow you to get more nights than any of the other mentioned options.

Marriott is also an Ultimate Rewards transfer partner, but you wouldn’t be getting all that great of a value out of your points.

Ultimate Rewards

For me, the goal is to always get the most value out of my points.  Honestly, I think it’s a more fair comparison to compare prices to Hotwire or a similar discounted site than to the retail hotel prices.  Personally, I doubt I’d pay $300+ per night.

As you can see, you could get a condo with 3.5 stars and 90% recommended for $895.56 for 7 nights.

That’s actually a good value.

With Ultimate Rewards, you can even cash out your points (not that I really suggest it). You’d need 90,000 points to get $900.

However, even if you just wanted a cheaper hotel, you could use the Ultimate Rewards search tool, and you’ll see the cheapest hotel is the Aston Maui for 65,988 points.

What’s missing?

Club Carlson.  This is currently one of my favorite hotel credit cards because of their free night bonus.  Unfortunately, there aren’t any Club Carlson hotels in Maui.

Also, I didn’t see any Priority Club locations in Maui.

Research Conclusion: Best Hotel Credit Cards for Maui

After all this research, you’ll need to do some inward looking to decide which is ‘best’.

1. How do you define value?  Do you want as much luxury as possible?  Do you want the ability to get as many ‘free’ nights as possible?
2. Do you care more about maximizing your points or just getting to travel for free?
3. Will you have enough points to take advantage of benefits like free 5th night?
4. Do you have another trip planned where you could get more value out of the points?

Typically, there are destinations where one program stands out in terms of offering the best value.  Maui doesn’t seem to be such a destination.

What would I do if I were spending a week in Maui?

In this situation, I’d seriously consider going the Hotwire or Priceline route, just because that fits me.  I wouldn’t want to redeem 90,000 Ultimate Rewards to save spending $900.  I could use those 90,000 Ultimate Rewards points to save thousands on flights.  If I were going to do the luxury route, I’d probably save my Hyatt free nights for an even more expensive hotel like Paris or Tokyo.  I wouldn’t want to use my Starwood points because I’d prefer to save them for a time when I’d get more value.  The only program I’d personally consider is Marriott.

Still, you’ll need to analyze all the options and ask ‘what options makes me the most excited?’  In the end, that’s probably the best way to go for a stay in Maui, Hawaii.

Did I miss any good redemption options?  What would you do?

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Strategy For Ink, Plus, or Classic Card Holders

This only works for Ink, Plus, or Classic card holders because you’ll get 5x per dollar spent at office supply stores.  If you don’t have one of these cards you can apply here.

Step One: Purchase your gift card at an office supply store.

Pick up a Lowes Gift Card up to $500 at your local office supply store.

Your $500 purchase will earn 2,500 Ultimate Rewards.

The other option is to buy a Do It Yourself Home Improvement card from Office Depot.  Again you can load up to $500, but the nice feature of this card is that it can be used at all the retailers listed on this website.  This includes Home Depot, Harbor Freight, Lowes, Sears, Ace and many more.  This is probably a better option if you want the flexibility of spending your dollars at different retailers.

Step Two: Order your products online

Here’s how many points you can get at some of the retailers listed above:

• Ace = 3x
• Lowes = 5x
• Home Depot = 3x
• Sears = 4x

Let’s say that a person bough a Lowes gift card at an office store and then ordered their items online through the Ultimate Rewards website they would now be up to 10 points per dollar spent. 

Possible Step 3: Order Sears physical gift cards and pay with your Do It Yourself Home Improvement card.

I haven’t tested this lately, but last time I bought physical gift cards through Sears.com (not electronic ones) after accessing the site through UltimateRewards.com I got the bonus for buying the gift cards.  Once you get your gift cards you go, once again, through the Ultimate Rewards website and buy your actual products.

You’d end up with about 13 point per dollar spent if you were shopping for Sears items.

Warning: If your Ink card should have some spending on it other than just office supply stores.  Balance this approach.

Home Improvement Strategy for Freedom Card Holders

If you don’t have a Chase Freedom card you can apply for one here.  Otherwise, you can also call and downgrade your Chase Sapphire Preferred to a Freedom card (no annual fee).

Between April and June 2013 Chase Freedom card holders can get up to 5% cash back at Lowes, restaurants, and movie theaters.  This is limited up to $1,500 worth of spending so you max bonus is 7,500.

If you’re a Chase Freedom card holder you can go through the Ultimate Reward mall and get an extra 5x per dollar on top of your Freedom 5x for a total of 10x per dollar.

General Strategy: Purchase Discounted Gift Cards

Gift Card Granny lists Lowes cards up to 7% off.

You’ll need to decide if you’d rather get 7% off a $500 gift card or get 5x per dollar (assuming you have an Ink, Plus, or Classic card).

The 7% savings is $35 for a total cost of $465.  With the Ultimate Rewards points (2,500) could be more valuable depending on how you use them.

Other Viable Options to Maximize Home Improvement Earnings

Some Citi ThankYou card holders have received a limited time promotion offering 5x per dollar spent on groceries, gas, restaurants, drugstores, and commuter expenses.  This offer is limited to a $500 spent (2,500 points).  You should be able to access your favorite Hardware store via Ultimate Rewards to get bonus points from there and then use your eligible Citi card.  Obviously, this is a targeted offers so if you didn’t receive the offer you won’t be eligible.

Discover is offering a 5% cash back on all home improvement purchases from April – June 2013.

Conclusion:

You should be able to get at least 5x off your home improvement purchases.  You can increase that to at least 13 x per dollar.

Another tip: If you visit the post office and get a change of address package you’ll find a coupon for 10-20% off your next Lowes purchase.  Also, you can search online to find more coupons.  Here’s Lowes offering of 10% off up to a $5,000 purchase.

If you use a 10% off coupon and apply the other strategies that should represent at least a 17-20 % savings.

To leave a comment or easily share the article with your Facebook or Twitter friends click here -> How to Maximize Miles on Home Improvement Projects

This might be a good way to use the 50,000 Membership Rewards currently offered as a sign up bonus for the The Business Gold Rewards Card® from American Express OPEN.

By the way, the same steps apply to hotels, cars, and rail, but you’d just click on “hotels” or “cars & rail” under the “Use Points” tab highlighted in step #2.

What You Need to Know Before You Transfer Membership Rewards Points

1.  Confirm availability before transferring because transfers are irreversible.

Once you transfer points out of your Membership Rewards account, you cannot undo that transfer.  If you were looking to use the points for a specific redemption, confirm that there is availability on your dates before transferring points.

2.  Your results may vary, but people have had success transferring points to another person’s frequent miler program.  Obviously, if that person is a spouse with the same surname and address, the process is simplified.

3.  It’s always best to wait for a transfer bonus (like the current British Airways 35% transfer bonus) before transferring miles.

Membership Rewards Airline Transfer Guide

1.  Go to Membeshiprewards.com or sign into your eligible Membership Rewards card at the americanexpress.com website, and then click on Go to Membership Rewards.

2.  On the Membership Rewards page top navigation menu, click on the “Use Points” drop down arrow, and then click on Airlines.

3.  You’ll now see a list of eligible airlines where you can transfer points.  Click on transfer points under the airline of interest.  Notice specifically that British Airways is currently having a 35% transfer bonus.  As such, we’ll use British Airways in this example.

4.  Enter the number of Avios you’d like to get or click on “Reverse Calculation” to see how many Avios you can get for your set number of Membership Rewards.  Once you know how many points you want to transfer, click on “Transfer this Amount”.  You’ll need to accept the terms and conditions.  There won’t be any charge for transferring to Avios.

5.  You’ll be prompted (if it’s your first time) to enter your British Airways Avios number.  Once you’re done, the points should transfer instantaneously.

A note for other airlines: Not all airlines transfer instantly.  For example, Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer points don’t transfer instantly.

To leave a comment or easily share the article with your Facebook or Twitter friends click here -> How to Transfer American Express Membership Rewards to an Airline

Over the last few months, my wife and I have been racking up Membership Rewards because there have been some good sign up bonuses.  I hope you have been too since I’ve been posting about these offers.  :)

1. The Mrs. – The Platinum Card® from American Express 100,000 mile offer after spending $2,500 dollars in the first three months.  This expired offer was blogged about here.
2. Craig – American Express® Premier Rewards Gold Card 50,000 Membership Rewards points afters spending $1,000 in the first three months.  I think this offer is also expired.  Original details here.
3. Craig – The Business Gold Rewards Card® from American Express OPEN 50,000 Membership Rewards points after spending $5,000 in the first three months.  An ongoing limited time offer blogged about here.  I actually just signed up for and was approved for this card today.

As such, my interest is clearly focused on deciding how to maximize American Express Membership Rewards.

British Airways Avios 35% transfer bonus through June 7th, 2013

How good is the British Airways Avios 35% American Express Rewards transfer bonus?

The Points Guy put together a very helpful list of all the Membership Rewards transfer bonuses since 2010.

Here’s a quick look at the bonuses offered (from most recent to oldest):

• 30%
• 40%
• 50%
• 40%
• 30%

Is this transfer bonus a good deal for you?

To leave a comment or easily share the article with your Facebook or Twitter friends click here -> Maximize American Express Rewards With Transfer Bonuses [Current 35% BA Transfer]

I use Kayak.com as a rental standard.  It’s the easiest place to discover a reasonable expectation of what a car rental should cost.

Hotwire and Priceline are still good options for car rentals, but with shorter rentals their fees might make them a less appealing option.

As an example, I’ll use an upcoming rental at LAX.  I’ll be picking the car up at noon on 4/30 and returning it at noon on 5/4 for a total of four days.

Kayak.com

As you can see from Kayak.com, the best price is a total of $100, but it’s from a car rental place I’ve never heard of. I prefer to rent from national brands because I have status with some, and if I have issues, it’s easier to resolve with a national call center.

Capital One Rewards

From there, I checked the price with Capital One Rewards.  This is the rewards website you can access if you are a Capital One Rewards card member.

You’ll see here that a person could get a full size vehicle from Avis for $129.01.  Now, I don’t know about you, but I’d rather rent from Avis than some unknown car rental place in LAX.  As a point of comparison, the best rate I could get with Avis via Kayak.com was $312 for an Economy size vehicle.

When booking cars from Capital One Rewards, your credit card will be charged in full at the time of booking.  You are only permitted to make one free change to your reservation.  In the case of a rental I had at IAD, I used my free change to cancel the reservation and get my money back. If you want to change the date or time, I’d suggest you make a new reservation instead of using your one change to make a date or time change. Also, reservations cannot be changed on the date of pickup.

Ultimate Rewards Website

On the Ultimate Rewards website, the lowest full size price is $161.20.  Now, the good news is that if you wanted to use points you could get a full size for 12,896 points.  If you value a point at a penny each, that’s $128.96.  At least it’s good to know that you don’t need to pay a premium to use points, but you can actually use them at a discount.

I also tried other well known car rental websites like carrentals.com and autoslash.com, and their prices didn’t even come close.

Aside from when I was doing a $9.99 per weekend day Enterprise neighborhood location rental, all of the rentals I checked had the lowest price through the Capital One Rewards website.  If you don’t have a Capital One credit card, I’m not sure if it would be worth signing up just for this benefit.  Perhaps a friend would help make a booking on your behalf. However, if you do have access to the Capital One Rewards booking portal, I doubt you’ll find a better price online for your car rental.

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