The World’s First 110,000 Mile Credit Card Signup Bonus

[Offer currently unavailable.]

Details in this Milepoint thread.

Capital One offers a 10,000 ‘mile’ signup bonus for their Venture Card. But they’ve added a huge kicker — they will match up to 100,000 miles you currently have in another program. So if you have an account with one of several airlines that has 100,000 miles in it, when you spend $1000 on their Capital One Venture card within 3 months they’ll give you the usual 10,000 miles plus 100,000 miles.

Since it’s a ‘match’ they’ll give you whatever your current balance is, even if it’s less than 100,000 miles of course.

Now, Capital One “miles” are really just credits towards the purchase of airfare, a point is worth a penny’s worth of travel. I don’t really like this for my regular credit card spend. They advertise 2 points per dollar spent on the card, but that’s really a 2% rebate for travel. Me, I like my airline miles. And even if what I wanted was just to redeem for domestic coach flights, I would take a 2% cash back card instead of this card which restricts how you can spend that 2% (to travel).

That said, it’s a decent enough no fee card which comes with no foreign currency transaction fees.

And the 110,000 miles I’ll get when I sign up and meet the minimum spend will be $1100 in paid travel. Same deal for my wife. Between the two of us we should net $2200 in paid airfare just for each signing up for the credit card.

The offer is valid through May 13, 2011, or until they’ve given away a billion miles through the match program.

It’s the first time I’ve ever considered applying for a Capital One card, and I’ll certainly jump on this bonus, though I don’t know how much more than the minimum spend for the bonus I’ll want to put on it.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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  1. […] for both the business and personal Capital One Venture card which had a promotion where they would match your existing miles with other airlines with Capital One’s Venture Rewards miles.  So if you had, say, 100,000 miles in your Delta account, you would get 100,000 Venture Reward […]

Comments

  1. wait til you get that 1099 for the miles at the end of the year. Bet that will suprise you. Cap One is dogshit.

  2. T&C require the miles in the other plan be derived from credit card spend, not just the account balance. Also,
    Not all of us can spend $100,000 or have a business to run up credit card spending with. Perhaps a good deal for some but not everyone.

  3. Agree with Nin Ros and others in MP discussion – how exactly will we be proving $100K spend by submitting airline account balances? Now over a series of years I definitely met $100K with a US Airways card but I’m concerned about this. Not willing to risk a credit pull (at least not with Experian) and evil Capital One until more details are confirmed.

  4. I’m failing to see how this beats the AA 75k bonus, I can certainly get more than $1100 with those miles.

  5. Because you get $1100 worth of revenue-earning ticket(s). Redeem the CapOne points for a couple domestic segments, put it towards an F segment, etc. Hell, use it towards a status challenge on AA and earn 1.5 points per dollar for certain fares.

  6. Cap 1 is disfunctional. Spouse instant approval. I got turned down. Both FICO’s mid 700’s to 800. Mine FICO’s a little higher.

  7. I had a cap one card for years. Paid in full every month. Billing cycle on the 10th and I had a reminder in my calendar for the 15th to go online and pay.

    I didn’t notice when they switched to a 28 day cycle until I was late by a day. (Missed an entire “month”).

    They dinged me for a late fee, upped the interest rate to 29% and reported to credit bureaus as late pay.

    Their “customer service” was only willing to reverse the late fee.

    I filed an explanation with the credit services, but still had a lowered score for 2 years. I also had them send me cash for the points (miles) in the account and closed it.

    I’m done with them. Permanently.

  8. Because (just my opinion) the SlickDeals crowd typically doesn’t have 100,000 miles in their accounts. They want to redeem their huge balance quickly – i.e. as soon as AA 50/75/100K or BA 100K posted the miles got spent. Or with Delta – cashed out for Amex gift cards.

    And if we go with the credit card spend interpretation of this deal I’d also assume most SlickDeals people aren’t the type to have spent $100K on an airline card. Cash back card – sure. Many just don’t see the potential value in airline miles.

  9. So if I did the 100k offer from Citi AA by spending 10,000 dollars, does that count as matching 100,000 miles or just 10,000 since I only “earned” 10,000 and received an additional 100,000 as bonus miles…

  10. Not sure if you can do this with the credit they give you for the 110,000 miles, but if you’ve got US Airways miles you could purchase upwards of 80,000 US Airways miles with the $1,100 with the current 100% bonus offer. Certainly not 110,000 miles, but better than $1,100 in travel vouchers in my opinion.

  11. Like most folks, I’ve avoided Capital One, but if they’re giving away free money (or free air travel) …

    My wife and I both applied and were approved. I’m waiting for the emails telling us how to do the 100K challenge. Hopefully, it’s just submitting a ff statement showing a 100K balance.

    Is anyone familiar with their redemption program? I do have a PenFed card, and I once redeemed in the ThankYouNetwork, so I’m assuming it’s similar? Do you just use your CapOne credits at a penny a mile to buy published airfares? And are those tickets treated as paid tickets eligible for ff mileage? That would make this offer worth MORE than $1100. Pretty sweet.

  12. @KennyG

    Capital One CSR confirms there is no 1099 form given for the earnings on this card.

  13. Need to show a balance of 100k in any qualifying airline statement in the past 6 months – confirmed by an agent last night on Live Chat.

  14. FAQs say they’ll “match up to 100,000 of the miles you’ve earned with an eligible airline credit card program.”

    FAQs also say that “you’ll need to submit one airline rewards statement as proof of your existing miles.” They won’t accept more than one such statement.

    Worst case scenario: Only the miles attributable to credit card spend on a single airline rewards statement get matched.

    That wouldn’t be very much for most people. Who has 100k credit card spend in a single month?

  15. Open a live chat session with an agent & clarify the T&C’s; I was told (saved conversation) that one only needs to show an airline statement showing x miles balance – not miles accumulated through credit card spend.

  16. Gary,

    Thank you for this post! I guess it is really 112,000 miles being that you will get 2 “miles” for each $1 spent and need to spend $1000 on this card.

    Cheers,

    PedroNY

  17. Just posted on the Milepoint website, where people seem to mistakenly assume their miles are “reserved” when they are approved for the card. Wrong…

    Here’s my post from there:

    I’m surprised no one seems to have really read the FAQ’s section on the C O website. Those FAQs are very clear, and they are NOT what most people posting seem to be assuming !

    “Registration and documentation required. Upon approval, new Venture customers will receive registration instructions for Venture “Match My Miles”.

    “If you provide an email address with your application, Capital One will send these instructions to that address within 10 days”.

    “Miles are reserved for customers once registration and documentation are complete”

    This could not be more clear. First you need to be approved. Some people are getting that instantly, others are having to wait a week or more to find out. Then you have to wait up to 10 more days to just get your registration details by email. Or longer if using snailmail.

    Even when you can finally submit your registration and documentation, the miles are not yet reserved. They are only reserved when Capital One tells you that your “registration and documentation are complete”. How long might that take? Days, weeks, months…? Once again, they don’t say.

    So in your rush to spend that $1000 before the billion limit is reached, you will most probably have spent that $1000 way before your miles are “reserved”. Or find out you missed out on making the cut. I’m guessing that’s exactly what C O wants to happen.

    Then when a month later your reg and doc are finally “complete”, yet they say “sorry, you didn’t make the billion mile cut”, you’ll just have to take their word for it. There will be no way to know if you did or not.

    In either case, you will have given them their profit on your $1000 spend. Worse, you will have lost out on 1,000 miles you would have added to your airline miles account if you had spent that $1,000 on your airline CC instead.

    I’m skipping this shady deal. Besides, I just got an email from Nigeria, where someone needs help moving their funds to the US. All I have to do is send them my $1,000 “good faith” money, and in a few weeks I”ll get my $50,000 commission. ;>}

  18. So can we get the 110K miles buy $1100 fully refundable ticket, get the credit and then cash the ticket out and net $1100?

  19. A national deal for free stuff for only 9090 people. (1,000,000,000 / 110,000)
    Forget it. This is a total scam. Unless you are in on the first day, spend on the first day, you will not be getting your miles.

  20. looks like another good reason to at least temporarily pool those continental/united miles…

  21. Its a scam, dear fellows. WAKE UP!

    This one stinks. C1 do not give you $1100 when you spend $1000. They are not stupid. Think about it, please. Obviously they will weasel out of this: they will probably only give you the miles you earned on your credit card spend that month (not lifetime history or annual spend history) so maybe if you spend $1500 that month you’ll get 150dollars credit. Maybe. Or there will be another get out. Please.. can’t you all see where this is headed?

    They’ve turned our expectations of free airline mile card sign up bonuses into expectations of $1100 free cash, (that is the clever part: gaming the gamers!) which they will definitely wriggle out of in fine print. I love a good deal too, but this one is not what it seems. Be smart save, save yourself the pain and avoid it.

  22. Do we get to “keep the 100 K miles” on the statement
    we send in to get the bonus ? If not, a lot is at risk.

  23. I do not seem to understand the downside and the negative/suspicious comments from some people in here? This is just like at a regulated casino, you rush you might get something. YOU ALWAYS CAN CANCEL THE CARD IF YOU DO NOT GET WHAT THEY PROMISE – That easy! I applied on Thursday, was approved instantly and yesterday got a letter (well with over 6 pages) from Capital one about terms and conditions on the card and the offer (same as on the website, not a word more) and they showd my Fico score too, stating I would receive a decision on the application soon. Although surprised as I was expecting the new card instead, their departments seem either are kind of not operating in sync with eachother, or that’s a standard procedure for them. I had never had a C1 caed before so not sure. But I fully intend on cancelling the card if I do not get the miles (oh, and I will first cash those 10k bonus as I am not that stupid) and will never even look at C1 again. Best of luck to all of us who took the gamble! Some will lose and some will gain but that’s life….

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