Good morning everyone, I hope your week is going well. Back on February 9, I booked a Delta Airlines award ticket for my friend to travel from Rome (FCO) to New York City (JFK) in business class for travel on October 1. The award ticket cost 80,000 Delta SkyMiles and 329.23 euros (~$388.06) in taxes/fees. Unfortunately, due to the Coronavirus Pandemic, the flight was cancelled. In this post, I will share the timeline of when the Delta SkyMiles and award taxes/fees were refunded.
Updated 8/11/20 at 8:35am: The $1.38 credit adjustment posted to my account and and I now have a $0 balance on my credit card.
Good afternoon everyone, I hope you had a great weekend and your week is off to a great start. As part of my Keep, Cancel or Convert? series, I like to evaluate and reevaluate credit cards to make sure they still deserve a spot in my wallet. In today’s post, I will review my American Express Platinum Delta SkyMiles Credit Card, which I wrote about last year in My July App-O-Rama Credit Card Results (Spoiler: 4 out of 5 Approved). I signed up for this credit card when there was a limited time sign up bonus of 70,000 Delta SkyMiles after spending $3,000 in 3 months. After completing the minimum spending requirement and receiving the sign up bonus, I didn’t put any more spend on this credit card. When the $250 annual fee posted to my account, I called American Express to see if they could waive the annual fee. Here are the results of my retention call.
Good morning everyone, I hope your weekend is off to a great start. I was checking my Chase account this morning and spotted 3 new Chase Offers. I looked at my Chase account yesterday (July 31), but they were not there, so I’m guessing these offers started for everyone today (August 1). Lucky for me, these 3 travel offers all showed up on my Chase Sapphire Reserve Credit Card, but this is also my most used Chase credit card. Your mileage may vary, but I had 3 great travel offers:
Good morning everyone. A few days ago, the $59 annual fee posted on my wife’s Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card. Laura has been a loyal Capital One cardmember since before she met me and uses this card as her go-to 2% back everywhere card. I told her she should call Capital One and ask them to waive the annual fee. She looked at me strangely wondering why she should ask to waive the annual fee. I told her that my Citi Double Cash Credit Card earns 2% cash back with no annual fee and we aren’t travelling, so we haven’t put any eligible travel purchases on the card that could be reimbursed. Plus, she has never transferred Capital One “Miles” into frequent flyer miles. She called the number on the back of her card and talked to a friendly Capital One rep.
Good morning everyone, I hope your weekend is going well. I recently had a change of heart and decided to redeem 1/3 of my Chase Ultimate Rewards Points with the Pay Yourself Back feature. Chase introduced the Pay Yourself Back feature on May 31 and I wrote How to Redeem Chase Ultimate Rewards Points via Pay Yourself Back (1.5 Cents Per Point for Restaurants, Grocery Stores & Home Improvement). Initially, I was not very excited about the new feature, since I convinced myself that I could use my Chase Ultimate Rewards Points in other ways and get more than 1.5 cents per point.
After realizing that I had no concrete travel plans remaining in 2020 (I recently cancelled trips to Boston & New York along with a big trip to Africa), I figured that my stash of Chase Ultimate Rewards Points would probably not be used much this year. Before redeeming 1/3 of my Chase Ultimate Rewards Points, I looked at Chase’s travel partners to see if there were any major reasons to keep my Chase Ultimate Rewards Points. Chase has 13 airline and hotel partners, but only has 4 exclusive partners (Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, IHG, and Hyatt), the remaining 9 travel partners are accessible with American Express Membership Rewards Points, Citi ThankYou Points, and Capital One Miles.
My wife and I have ~58,000 Southwest Airlines points and ~$150 in travel credit, so I would not need to transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards Points to Southwest Airlines. I am not a huge fan of United Airlines and can usually book Star Alliance flights with other travel programs, plus I have ~$178 travel credit from a cancelled United flight. IHG points are worth ~0.5 cents per point and I have ~222,000 IHG points in my account. Last but not least, Hyatt is the only travel partner that stands out from the list. I decided to save at least 60,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards Points just in case we stay at a Hyatt later this year).
I figured that normal spending on our Chase Ink Cash Credit Card, Chase Sapphire Reserve Credit Card, and Chase Freedom Credit Card this year would replenish our Chase Ultimate Rewards Points balance by the end of 2020.
