Good morning everyone, dang, I take one day off from blogging to finish my taxes (such a pain in the butt) and I miss out some big miles and points developments. I guess sometime between Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, there was an issue loading Redbird/Bluebird/Serve Cards and even logging into your account. I was able to load the last $1,500 onto my Redbird Card last night, so everything seems back to normal. I looked around my Redbird account and looked for new features, but didn’t see anything new. Frequent Miler has the latest info.
In other news, it looks like Evolve Money is evolving once again and recently added the ability to pay bills up to $2,999. We can split the bill payment onto 4 different cards. Since Evolve Money added a 3% fee for using gift cards, credit cards, and most debit cards, it does not make sense to pay bills with Evolve Money unless you are working toward minimum spend requirements or going for a large spending bonus. I scheduled a few payments last week to go through in early March, so I am curious to see if my credit card will be assessed the 3% transaction fee. I will know soon enough and share my results.
Anyway, back to the main purpose of this post. I recently signed up for a free CLEAR Membership (post) and needed to go to the airport to complete my registration. Since I was flying out of SFO, I stopped by the CLEAR kiosk Wednesday evening.
The CLEAR kiosk looks like a very high tech ATM, luckily for me there was no wait and the gentleman working there was able to assist me right away. I brought my US passport and CA drivers license to the kiosk and he scanned both items into the system. After verifying my mailing address and SSN, he scanned my finger prints (unlike the low tech ink prints that Global Entry uses) and then I did an iris scan. After all the prints and iris scans looked good, I took a photo of my face. CLEAR card selfie!
It was a very simple process, taking less than 5 minutes. I was told that the CLEAR cards are mailed from New York and should arrive in 5-7 days (hopefully the weather does not delay my CLEAR card’s arrival). I’m still not sure if I will ever use CLEAR card, since I have TSA PreCheck compliments to my Global Entry membership, but we will see.
If you have any questions, please leave a comment below. Have a great weekend everyone!
P.S. It is time for me to work on my presentation about Credit Card Retention Bonuses that I will present at OC TravelCon, see you there!
I signed up for CLEAR at SFO on February 18th and received my CLEAR card in the mail today February 27th.
Thank you Gregory, 9 days is not too bad. I hope my card comes soon so I can check it out next weekend.
Grant, would I be able to use the CLEAR benefits right away when I stop by at CLEAR kiosk to fly out of SFO? Or do I have to wait until the physical CLEAR card arrived in the mail?
Also, does Chase Ritz Carlton card’s yearly $300 incidental reimbursement cover Global Entry application fee for main cardholder as well as his/her family members?
You will have to wait for the CLEAR card to arrive before you can use it. I’m not sure about Ritz Carlton, you can call Chase and ask if they will reimburse the charge for you.
What is the upside of clear if you have precheck?
That is what I am going to learn :)
According to the CLEAR office in NY, where I went through the same kiosk business, the benefit is that you skip having to validate your ticket and ID, even in the PreCheck lane, which could be full. Potentially, the PreCheck lane and the regular security could feed to the same TSA ID checker before security and CLEAR allows you to skip that and go right to security (or PreCheck security).
Not sure this is a great business model, but it was free, so why not, right?
Interesting, I can see how CLEAR can save time. Doesn’t really make sense why they allow TSA PreCheck (Gov program) to work along CLEAR (private program).
V. true and this is a tough business model, especially since it’s not a nationwide rollout – paying $175 or whatever the fee is (thx for the family referral link!) for only certain airports is a tough ask. Like, the HQ is in NY, but the only NY airport is the Westchester one.
That doesn’t make much sense, does it? I’m not sure how they can expand to cover enough airports t make the yearly fee worth the price.
I dumped my Clear as I almost always get PreCheck. I felt like I was just wasting money, renewing it this year.
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