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Earn 5,000 Bonus Points With Your Hyatt Credit Card
The World of Hyatt loyalty program is a favorite among points and miles aficionados. Hyatt points are arguably the most valuable of all the hotel currencies. Hyatt has just announced a promotion for its credit card holders for next month. Use your World of Hyatt Credit Card from February 1 through February 28, 2021 and you could earn up to 5,000 Bonus Points. How it Works To qualify for this bonus offer, you must register at this link between January 28, 2021 and February 28, 2021 and use your World of Hyatt Credit Card to make a required number of purchases that are each $1.00 or more during the promotional period…
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Earning Southwest’s Companion Pass is Closer Than You Think
The Southwest Airlines Companion Pass is the benefit that allows you to choose one person to fly with you for free except for taxes and fees. This is a great benefit for frequent Southwest fliers. That’s what makes it so sought after. Qualification requirements are steep–you need to earn 125,000 Rapid Rewards points in a calendar year. This will give you the Companion Pass for the rest of the year you earn it, plus the entire following year. Right now, there are 2 reasons those qualification requirements aren’t as steep as they appear to be. One of those reasons won’t last long, so you’ll need to act soon. Reason 1:…
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Southwest Extends Companion Pass Expiration (again)
Southwest had extended their Companion Pass benefits due to expire on December 31, 2020 to June 30, 2021. This due to the lack of travel during the COVID-19 pandemic. They’ve now extended those benefits again, to December 31, 2021. This only applies to members who received the prior extension. It also doesn’t apply to members who earned a promotional Companion Pass. Head Start For All Members In addition to the extension, all Southwest Rapid Rewards Members with accounts opened by December 31, 2020 are receiving a head start towards qualifying for A-List, A-List Preferred, and Companion Pass in 2021. 15,000 tier qualifying points 25,000 Companion Pass qualifying points 10 qualifying…
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Cancel Chase Travel Online
For those who need to cancel travel booked via the Chase UR Travel portal, hold times at their call center has been very long. Multiple hours long. Chase has an online form that you can submit to cancel your travel reservation. It isn’t immediate, they prioritize by date of travel. If your travel is within the next 7 days, Chase is still advising you to stick with the Customer Support phone line. Log in to your Chase account and click the following link to submit your information: https://travel.chase.com/customersupport/travel-alert-refunds From the Chase website: This form is ONLY intended for customers with travel arrangements within 8 to 14 days from today. If your…
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Hyatt Award Category Changes
Hyatt has announced award category changes for a large number of its hotels. Although I would classify this as a devaluation, it’s by no means a massive one. These changes won’t take effect until March 18, 2019. You can book at the old award rates until then. The entire list of changes can be found at Hyatt’s website here. In total, 259 properties are changing categories. 129 hotels are moving to a lower category and 130 are getting more expensive. That looks fairly balanced at first glance. Lets dig deeper. World of Hyatt Categories The Hotel Award Categories determine how many World of Hyatt points are required to be redeemed…
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Amex Membership Rewards: 30% Transfer Bonus to Virgin Atlantic
On occasion, American Express Membership Rewards offers bonus miles when transferring to airline partners. From now until September 12, 2018, you can get 30% additional miles when you transfer MR points to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club. One of the sweet spots of the Flying Club program is to use miles on its partner airline, ANA to Japan. You can fly round trip in First Class from the east coast of the U.S. to Tokyo on ANA for only 120,000 Flying Club Miles. With this bonus, it will only cost 93,000 Amex Membership Rewards points. That’s an incredible bargain for a round trip First Class fare between North America and Asia.…
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Turning Rapid Rewards Into Amazon Gift Cards – Part 2
A couple months ago, I wrote about finding a Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards account that I didn’t know I had. That alone is not too surprising. I’m sure I have plenty of frequent flyer accounts that I don’t recall signing up for. What was surprising is the fact that I had 3,500 Rapid Rewards points in it. I have no recollection of how I earned 3500 points about 2 years ago, but there they were, ready to expire. So I earned another 1,000 points by filing a tax return with TurboTax via the Rapid Rewards Shopping portal. The 1,000 points activity extended the expiration of my Rapid Rewards points by…
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Turning My “Found” Southwest Rapid Rewards Into Amazon Gift Cards
Rapid Rewards is Southwest Airline’s frequent flyer loyalty program. I’ve never flown Southwest. I live in the northeast which, if my compass is correct, is in directly the opposite direction. Bad jokes aside, my local airports are not heavily served by the airline and for whatever reason, it’s just never worked out. Since I’ve never flown Southwest, it would stand to reason that I don’t have a Rapid Rewards account. A couple days ago, I realized that’s not true. Not only do I have an account, I have 3,500 Rapid Rewards points in it. How did I find out? Well, I received this email: I have no recollection of how I…
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Booking a Disney World Vacation With Points: My Experience
A family vacation to Disney World in Orlando FL can be very expensive. I can certainly vouch for that as I have a trip planned for this upcoming Spring. In this post, I’ll show you how I reduced my out-of-pocket cost by over 90% using points and benefits I’ve earned from having various credit cards. There’s a lot to cover in this post, so forgive the length. I have a family of 5 spread out over 2 home airports, we’re starting at one hotel then moving to another, and we’ll be visiting the Disney Parks as well as a side-trip to Universal Studios. That’s a lot of moving parts, so…
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New Exclude Basic Economy Feature in Chase Travel Portal
Booking flights via the Chase Ultimate Rewards Travel Portal just got more convenient. You can now exclude restrictive Basic Economy fares from your search. This is welcome feature to the site. A great feature of the Chase Sapphire Reserve card is the ability to pay for airfare using points worth 1.5 cents per point. A $300 flight would only cost 20,000 Ultimate Rewards points. The downside was occasionally having no choice other than Basic Economy. Why is that such a downside? Basic Economy Basic Economy is a fare class offered by Delta, American and United in what they claim is their effort to compete with low cost carriers like Spirit…
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