Category Archives for Featured.
Chase has released its first tv commercial for the new Chase Freedom Unlimited Card. It’s a fantastic card, and a really good commercial, but they’re totally underselling it.
It’s a clever attention-getting card, and attention-getting ad, but they pitch it simply as ‘unlimited 1.5% cash back on everything you buy’.
Getting the most value out of the product — 90% more — takes an extra step.
For the past year Citi Prestige has been the ‘it’ card, and for very good reason. It’s chock full of benefits. Citi has built a premium card to surpass others at the price point. It’s built a transferrable points program, let you use the points at a strong value towards paid airfare, and bundled not just traditional benefits like lounge access but unique benefits like VIP treatment at restaurants and free golf.
Here are the 15 things I love about the product.
Singapore has long been one of my favorite transfer partners of American Express, and also for Starwood Preferred Guest Starpoints. Last year Chase added Singapore as a transfer partner. And then Citibank did as well. That means you can transfer points to Singapore Airlines from all the best major transferrable points currencies.
Singapore offers fantastic award availability in premium cabins for members using Krisflyer points. And there are some real sweet spots on their award chart that will make them an even better Star Alliance program than United for some US-based members.
There are real opportunities, that I’ll review — and two gotchas as well that I’ll warn you about.
Last week I noted that Citi moved the card over to using Aspire Lifestyle Concierge. They have a much smoother process now for bookings using the 4th hotel night free benefit.
But there’s another hidden benefit to this change: Aspire’s Preferred Restaurant Program.
“Alternate reality: people are only allowed 1 credit card at a time, there are no other loyalty restrictions.”
Which card would you pick? What would you compromise?
These are among the most valuable points because of their flexibility, and because of the value of the programs that Chase partners with. Here are my 8 favorite things to do with the points:
My single favorite card for earning valuable rewards points has just gotten better with an offer of 50,000 points as a signup bonus. These points transfer to a variety of airline miles and hotel points.
There was a brief targeted test of 50,000 points with a higher annual fee two years ago. But otherwise we haven’t seen an offer like this for the card since March 2012.
As someone who flies American Airlines regularly, I place a high value on lounge access. It’s the people who keep me going especially during irregular operations, going above and beyond to get me where I’m going. As a result I’m very interested in the best way to get American Airlines club access.
One of the most-asked questions about credit cards is how does it affect your credit score, and of course the implied followup, do you care? And it’s been awhile since I wrote a post on understanding your credit score. I’ve signed up for scores of cards over many years and I still have an excellent credit score, it was nearly 800 FICO on the three major credit bureaus when I went to get my mortgage. In part because of signing up for more cards, rather than in spite of it. I first discovered rewards credit cards in 1997. I signed up for a US Airways card, enticed by the bonus. I decided I didn’t want to pay an annual fee for a credit card back then. My income – and thus my spending – wasn’t…
A new Los Angeles – Dublin non-stop route opens up next month. And award availability is very, very good. In fact, it’s the best way to use United (or other Star Alliance) miles to get from the West Coast to Europe non-stop in business class right now!
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 »
