Some Answers About The Capital One Match Your Miles Promotion

By: Jason Steele

03/11/2011

I reached out to Capital One’s press relations people for some answers to some questions I had about the Match Your Miles promotion that I wrote about yesterday.

To their credit, they replied promptly. The biggest piece of information I take from this is that they don’t seem to need documentation that your miles were earned by a credit card, and that they are accepting PDF files of your online account as proof of your miles.

Here is the entire thing:

Me: I read thoroughly the FAQ and terms and conditions for the Venture Rewards Match Your Miles” program. Unfortunately, they are lacking in some detail. I was wondering if you could provide more information on some of these points:

1. The FAQ says that:

What do I need to submit as proof of my existing miles?
You’ll need to submit one airline rewards statement as proof of your existing miles. You must be listed as the primary account holder and your statement must be dated within six months of the time you submit it. Statements can be submitted online, by fax, or mail. All statement information will be kept confidential.

Does this mean that all customers need to do is submit a Airline Program statement from any qualifying airline? Does this statement need to show that the miles were specifically awarded from credit card spending, or will the mileage balance itself be sufficient? Will applications be rejected if the particular statement does not show mileage accrued from a qualifying credit card?

Capital One: Capital One will match up to 100,000 of the miles a customer has accrued with an eligible airline credit card program. Basically the customer needs to be a co-brand airline credit cardholder and needs to send us their airline card rewards statement. So it’s the total miles balance on the statement and we understand that in some cases it’s hard to separate the miles earned via a co brand airline credit card or the miles earned from flying. In this scenario, we will accept general airline rewards statements for those programs that accrue the card miles into the airline’s general rewards account.

Eligible programs include:
• Alaska Airlines® Visa® Card
• American Airlines® Card
• Continental Airlines® Card
• Delta® SkyMiles® Card from American Express®
• Frontier Airlines® Mastercard
• Hawaiian Airlines® Visa Card
• JetBlue® Card from American Express
• Spirit Airlines® Free SPIRITTM MasterCard
• United Mileage Plus® Visa Card
• US Airways® Dividend Miles MasterCard
• Virgin America® Visa Card
• AirTran Airways® A+ Visa® Card
• Southwest Airlines® Rapid Rewards® Visa Card

Me: 2. Most airlines only provide online statements. Will a screen capture of the this statement be sufficient to satisfy the terms of this program?

Capital One: Yes. If the customer captures a screen image and saves it as a .pdf, they can upload that statement as proof of miles

Me: 3. Many people are concerned that they will not be able to submit the information in time to qualify before the billion points are given out. When should they expect to get the email with instructions on how to apply. For example, I myself converted my existing Capital One Platinum card to the Venture Rewards card yesterday, and I have my email on file, yet I have not received the instructions on how to submit my airline statement for the “Match My Miles” promotion.

Capital One: If you provided an email address with your application, you should receive the email with the instructions within 10 days. If no email is provided, the information will be mailed to you.

Another Benefit Of The UA CO Mileage Merger

By: Jason Steele

03/10/2011

I recently wrote about how Continental And United Miles Can Now Be Transferred Back And Forth. There are all sorts of advantages to this, but I neglected to mention one of the biggest ones.

Starnet Blocking Can Be Considered Extinct….For The Moment

Your may remember that I have an intense dislike of United for all sorts of reasons. One of which is their policy of Starnet Blocking. Starnet is the system used by member airlines of the Star Alliance in order to make award space available to member airlines. The idea is that if say, Lufthansa has a business class award seat available, members of say Thai or US Airways frequent flier programs can book that seat. The problem was that United was arbitrarily blocking a good number of the seats being made available by other airlines. If you belong to any other Star Alliance carrier’s frequent flier program, you could book that seat, but if you unlucky and unwise enough to be a part of United’s MileagePlus program, you were screwed.

It was bad enough that they were doing this, and it was even worse that this policy was not disclosed anywhere. The only way we know it exists is by comparing award space availability on United with that of other programs. Eventually a great reporter, Nicholas Kralev, was able to get United to admit to the practice. One of the worst things about it was that United never informed it’s own people of the policy. Customers would call up and be told ridiculous untruths that their partners were not offering the seats, when in fact it was United that was blocking other carrier’s offerings from being redeemed.

Now, You Can Easily Get Around Starnet Blocking

By quickly transferring your United miles to Continental, you can book your awards there. Continental, for the moment, is not doing Starnet blocking. It is not known if they will, someday, adopt this odious and dishonest practice.

Capital One Venture 110,000 Bonus Points Deal Of The Year?

By: Jason Steele

I feel like I woke up this morning and someone left me a check for $1,100

I normally do not post about credit cards until afternoon, but this one is hot off of the wire and there is somewhat of a time critical nature to it. Capital One is offering up to 110,000 of their travel reward points for new credit card sign ups. All you have to do is prove that you have 100,000 miles in an airline account and they will give you that many points. They are also giving out 10,000 points to everyone as a sign up bonus.

What Is A Capital One Point Worth?

Each point is worth one cent as a statement credit towards any travel related expense such as airline tickets, hotels, or car rental. Therefore the value of this offer is $1,100 in statement credits, really the same as cash to anyone who travels. Unlike airline miles, flights purchased with these awards also earn miles, accrue status,and can be upgraded. As far as the airline, hotel, or rental car companies know, you just paid with your credit card.

What Do You Have To Do To Get The $1,100 Credit?

First, you have to apply for and receive a Capital One Venture Rewards card. This is not a bad card to hold even if they weren’t handing out $1,100 in free money. This card offers two points (2 cents) per dollar spent as a statement credit towards travel charges. 2 cents on the dollar rewards are the highest rewards that are offered on all categories of spending outside of a promotional period. Capital One also charges no foreign exchange fees, unlike most cards.

If you already hold a Capital One card, they will convert your account to a Venture Card without running credit checks or establishing a new line of credit, so existing customers have nothing to loose. Existing customers will have to pay the $59 annual fee, while new customers do not.

Next, you will have to submit a statement from an airline showing that you have 100,000 miles in your account. Their web sites list the airlines that they are accepting statements from, basically the major US carriers or discount airline, including Southwest, Frontier, Jetblue, Alaska, Spirit, Airtran, Hawaiian, and Virgin America. It is unclear how they are establishing, or if they care, if the miles were received from credit card spending. The representative I spoke to told me that they are only asking for your latest airline statement, and that the miles must exist in your account at that time. I am waiting for more information when I receive the card and the offer form.

Finally, you have to spend $1,000 on the card in the first 90 days.

Act Now

One of the catches with this program is that they are ending the offer once they have given out 1 billion miles or by May 13th, whichever comes first. It is difficult to tell how quickly they will reach a billion miles, but just to be safe, I won’t be waiting on this offer.

Once or twice a year there is a credit card offer that really hits it out of the park. $1,100 is a good chunk of money, although there have been 75,000 and 100,000 mile offers that could have potentially been worth much more. What makes this offer special, is that it is essentially cash that they are giving out in the form of statement credits. Even better, as an existing Capital One customer, I have nothing to loose by having my existing account transferred to a different card.

You can read our review of the Capital One Venture Rewards Card here.

In Which I Think About The Chase Ink Bold Card

By: Jason Steele

03/09/2011

Chase has been marketing their Ink Bold card all over the place. The big deal about it is that it is a charge card, not a credit card. If you don’t know, a charge card supposedly differs from a credit card in that you cannot carry a balance. Of course you can, but you will be in default, and incur penalty APRs and fees.

So What’s The Point?

If you never carry a balance, there is no difference between a credit card and a charge card. If you don’t want to carry a balance, usually don’t carry a balance, probably won’t carry a balance, or don’t intend to carry a balance, then there is a huge difference. If you fall into one of the latter categories, think of trading in your credit card for a charge card as swapping out the airbag in your steering wheel for something hard and pointy. You don’t intend to get in a car accident, you don’t want to, but now the consequences of doing so are much, much higher.

Other Things To Know About Ink

This is not a personal card, it is a “small business” card. By marketing it as such, Chase is able to take advantage of a major loophole in the CARD Act. All of the consumer protections under CARD are just that, consumer protections. The specifically exempt so called business and corporate cards.

Now remember, just because a card is marketed as a business card or a corporate card, that doesn’t mean that anyone can’t apply and receive such a card. It is a very common tactic among those who are seeking to maximize their sign up bonuses on a particular offer. If you actually do intend to the use your business card for any reason, you should really educate yourself on the CARD Act protections and their lack thereof.

Since you are not paying interest per-se, you won’t really have to worry about the interest rate protections from the CARD Act. You will have to contend with the possibility of due date gimmicks, the fair allocation of payments, and excessive fees.

What Are The Perks Of Ink

The Ink card comes in four flavors, Bold, Plus, Cash, and regular Ink. The rewards vary depending on the card you have, but only the Bold card is a charge card. The others are regular credit cards. With the Ink Bold card, you earn the equivalent of 1 cent per dollar spent in cash back. There are other bonuses that you reach when you hit spending plateaus of $25,000, $50,000, and $100,000 so this is not for really small businesses.

Going After Amex

Ultimately, this card represents Chase’s attempt to go after Amex’s market for business charge cards. In that respect they have a competitive product. I am just not sure that everyone who is able to get a business card should really be holding one.

What Does Complimentary Mean? The Lure Of Lounge Access

By: Jason Steele

There are a lot of credit cards out there that are offering up “Complimentary Lounge Access” as a perk. In general, this offer means on of two things. If the credit card is one affiliated with a specific airline, like the Delta Reserve Card or the Continental Airlines Presidential Plus card, and they are promising access to a specific club, then the deal is strait forward. Another legitimate deal is the American Express Platinum card, which offers free access to a variety of different airline’s lounges.

Other Cards Offering “Complimentary Access”

You and I might see the word “complimentary” and come to the conclusion that what they are offering is free. If so, you and I would not be thinking like a credit card marketing person. Take for example Chase Ink Plus card. It advertises “Complimentary Airport Lounge Access*”. If you are wondering what the asterisk denotes, don’t bother scrolling to the bottom of the page, because there is no explanation. If you look hard enough, you will find another page where the complimentary access is described as membership in the Priority Pass program which allows you to merely gain discounted access to various clubs for $27. Note that anyone has access to any club, so long as they pay the daily rate, which is typically $35-50. So complimentary here really means a discounted rate. In their defense, they do offer the first two visits for free. Still, they couldn’t just say “two free visits,” they have to imply that access is complimentary.

What’s Lounge Access Worth?

While you can lounge access for $35-50, and you can an annual pass for $300-400, I have never done either. First, I live in Denver, a fairly large airline hub. Therefore, I almost never have to change planes in order to travel domestically. When I do, I am able to time my connections such that I am only on the ground for about 1-2 hours. That just isn’t enough time to seek out a lounge, spend some time there, and then get to my gate 30 minutes ahead of time. What more, I don’t really find the lounges to be all that great. Most provide very little in terms of free food and drink, and they can be quite crowded. A free newspaper isn’t so bad, but it really isn’t worth the daily or annual rate. In fact, I have gotten quite lucky at spending my time at an unoccupied gate reading a book or working on my computer.

International connections are a whole other story. When I get off an overnight flight, I am desperately seeking a shower. Lately, I have been using all my tips and tricks for accumulating miles to ensure that I end up in business class for my annual international excursions. In that case, I do get access to the business lounge and their precious showers.

What Would Compel Me To Pay For Lounge Access?

If I lived in a non-hub city that required me to regularly make connections to complete my trip. Those people will often find themselves hanging out at the airline hubs, waiting out weather or mechanical delays. Some might seek out their favorite restaurant, while others will simply need a decent lounge. Another huge plus is that the lounges are staffed with ticketing agents who tend to be a cut above the rest in terms of training and willingness to assist. You would also avoid some of these mile long lines that pop up around the regular customer service counters at major airports whenever there is a major weather delay.

For many people, lounge access can be a major perk when forced to take connecting flights. Just make sure the “complimentary access” you are promised is more than just a few bucks off of the standard admission fees.

Cardholders Are Almost Never The Victim Of Credit Card Theft And Fraud

By: Jason Steele

03/08/2011

Lately, I have been reading a lot of scary sounding reports in both the local and national news. The theme is the same; a criminal has stolen credit cards from an honest and hardworking individual. Said criminal is now on a crime spree, charging expensive purchases in someone else’s name! If you have any information to help the police arrest this horrible person, contact them immediately.

Credit Card Theft Is Bad…For The Bank

The theft and fraudulent use of credit cards is both wrong and a crime. What many of these reports fail to mention is that the victim here is the bank, not the cardholder. Although Federal Law says that the cardholder may only be held responsible for up to $50, I have yet to hear of a cardholder left holding the bag for a single cent of fraudulent charges. In the vast scheme of crimes that make the news, I would have to rank credit card fraud as one of the least serious. It is non-violent, the losses are small, and the victims are giant corporations. From both an individual and a societal standpoint, I’ll take that any day over murders, rapes, kidnappings, drug use, child molestations and other crimes against individuals.

Credit Card Fraud Good?

No credit card fraud is not good, but it can help lead to the capture of criminals. Two years ago, my house was robbed, and several credit cards were stolen. I was actually relieved to hear that, as I thought it may lead to the arrest of the criminals. As I suspected, the burglars were stupid enough to be captured on camera use the cards all over town. Nevertheless, somehow the Denver Police failed to capture them. Without the credit card theft, they wouldn’t have even had that lead. There certainly would have been no chance to capture them spending cash, not that I had any laying around for them to steal.

How To Be The Victim Of Credit Card Fraud

It actually isn’t that easy. First, you have to give your card information to someone who is not securing it well. Another way is to hand it to a disreputable corporation who keeps it on file only to market you worthless services later. Next, you have to ignore the fraudulent charges on your statements. The best way to do that is to never read your statement. Finally, you have to wait. Since you are not liable for any fraudulent activity reported within 60 days of receiving the statement. That could be weeks after the charge itself. In fact, many banks will reverse the charges of fraudulent transactions even after the Federal limit of 60 days.

Credit card fraud and theft is not scary, but the media always needs a bogeyman. Sure, the cumulative cost of the crime is high, but it is a cost of doing business for the banks, and there is theft and fraud inherent in every form of payment. The only thing you ever need to do is to scrutinize your statements for fraudulent charges. If you know that there is nothing there that shouldn’t be there, you will never have a problem.

Continental And United Miles Can Now Be Transferred Back And Forth

By: Jason Steele

The United/Continental merger has been crawling forward at a snail’s pace. Sure, they have gotten around to repainting some airplanes in the weird, Continental motif with the United name in the Continental font, but up until this week, there has been scant progress otherwise. Now, they have announced that you could move miles back and forth between United and Continental accounts. This is a big deal for people who have some miles in each account. Now, they can merge their miles to achieve an award.

As is typical with these mergers, savvy travelers who have been collecting miles on either program are now able cash in on their strategy. Other perks include merging status miles so that people can get to the next tier. Customers can also match status between the two airlines.

What This Is Not

The airlines have not yet merged their frequent flier programs. That should happen some time next year. You will know it has happened when Continental.com merely directs you to the United site, and all your Continental miles are there, merged with your United account.

Other Changes

Continental is adding Economy Plus seating to their aircraft to match United’s offering. I haven’t seen any definitive statement regarding Continental adding an International first class product as well. In my view, it would be a little superfluous. Continental’s new Business First product is an angled, lie flat bed that is not too far off from United’s first class product. United’s newer business class is a lie flat product as well. If United ditched First Class, or just kept it on a few prestige routes, that wouldn’t surprise me.

Delta and Northwest merged at a very rapid pace. All indications are that United and Continental are moving much more slowly. At least it seems like they are finally making some progress beyond paint.

Related Post – You might want to learn how to take advantage of the United Continental Merger And Rack Up Lots of Miles.

The End Of The Middle Seat?

By: Jason Steele

03/07/2011

Some people prefer the aisle so they can get up without disturbing others. I prefer the window so that nobody disturbs me while I look outside. Nobody prefers the middle seat.

Boeing May End Middle Seats On Shorter Flights

Since the dawn of the jet age, Boeing has used the same 3-3 seating on its 707, 727, 737, and 757 jets. Today, only the 737 remains in production. After over 40 years and two major redesigns, Boeing has decided to design it’s replacement from scratch. The move comes even as rival Airbus recently announced it will only be adding new engines to its 318-319-320-321 series aircraft. Right now, the word in the industry is that Boeing is seriously considering a twin aisle design for it’s relatively short range aircraft replacement. Such a design would either be configured 2-2-2 or 2-3-2. Aviation geeks know that the 767 is configured 2-3-2 for most airlines. If Boeing was to narrow the fuselage much beyond the 767, that would force airlines to configure their aircraft 2-2-2.

This seating arrangement would have many advantages. First, it would be the most passenger friendly aircraft flying, as no one would ever have a middle seat. Yet we are kidding ourselves if we were to imagine that Boeing’s customers, the airlines, give a split second of thought to passenger comfort. The airlines only care about making money by stuffing as many passengers in the plane as possible. Fortunately for us passengers, it actually takes a long time to stuff a couple hundred people and their luggage down a single aisle. With twice the number of aisles and overhead luggage compartments per person, a 2-2-2 design would be much faster to board and disembark than the 3-3 design. Such an airline might be slightly larger than the current, 3-3 design, but the theory is that the airlines would have faster turn around times and more flights per day. Currently, it can take nearly an hour to get 200 people off of a 757, do a quick clean up, and reboard. If that time could be cut by 40-50%, it is easy to imagine an airline getting an additional revenue flight per day our of it’s aircraft and another flight or two from it’s precious gate. From the perspective of the airline, the time the passenger saves getting off the plane and the increased comfort onboard are merely unintended consequences of the more efficient design. If an airline is smart enough to gain a huge order ahead of it’s competitors, perhaps marketing might be able to make some hay from the new aircraft, but that’s peanuts compared to the operating efficiencies. Another plus would be a first class section with a 1-2-1 configuration, giving each passenger unimpeded access to the aisle.

Could This Be A Repeat Of The 787?

Nearly a decade ago, Boeing launched what would become the 787. At first, they specified 8 across seating in a 2-4-2 configuration, much like the Airbus A330 and A340. Later, they widened the fuselage slightly, with the though that some airlines might go to 9 across. Wouldn’t you know it that virtually all airlines will be outfitting their 787s 9 across, just like the existing 777. Boeing could either keep the fuselage narrow enough so that airlines can only do 2-2-2, or they could widen it slightly to permit 2-3-2. If 2-3-2 is an option, I have no doubt that like the 787, all of its airline customers will cram in the 2-3-2 option. The end result will be a higher capacity aircraft than is necessary to replace the 737, leaving that market to the Airbus product as well as Boeing’s newer competitors like Bombardier, Embraer, and others.

When Will We Know?

Boeing is expected to announce the new aircraft, likely named the 797, later this year at the Paris air show. Such an aircraft will enter service later this decade, if all goes well. Based on their experience with the 787, that is a big if. For the sake of Boeing and the billions of passengers who will fly this plane, I sincerely hope they try the 2-2-2 configuration, bringing and end to the middle seat.

I Am Considering Turning Off My RSS Feeds

By: Mr Credit Card

03/06/2011

Due to the amount of sites scraping content off my RSS feeds even though they are not “full feeds” (and the fact that some of their results are appear in the search engines at my expense), I am seriously considering turning off my RSS feed for the blog.

Having said that, I do understand that there are some of you who have me on your Yahoo or Google reader and come to my site from there. Hence, I would like to get feedback from those who use RSS readers about your thoughts on this matter.

Should I pull off the feeds? Will you still read this blog if it were not on your RSS reader?

Please share your thoughts in the comment section below. If there are very few comments, I would take it that very few of you care and I’ll shut it off.

Thanks once again.

Students Need To Stop Blaming Credit Cards

By: Mr Credit Card

03/05/2011

This is a guest post from MD of Studenomics, a blog where he simplifies complex financial topics. Lately he has been writing about earning more money and becoming your own boss at Passive Income Now.

Blaming your credit card company for being in debt is like blaming McDonald’s for being out of shape. I think that it’s embarrassing to be honest. It needs to stop. We all need to become more accountable for our finances instead of blaming the economy or “evil” credit card companies. Today I wanted to share why college students need to stop blaming credit cards and how they can become more proactive with their money management.

I wanted to point out a few things college students can do with their finances instead of blaming credit cards for being broke:

Stop spending foolishly.

I realize that this is easier said than done, but it’s the main cause for most young people being in debt. Just this past week I had to stop myself twice from making ridiculous purchases. I was about to get some flashy white belt and new iPhone speakers. Then I realized that these purchases were useless. Showing off your belt is lame and how loud do you need your music to be? Spending money foolishly is your problem and whether you have a credit card to facilitate the process or not doesn’t matter because poor habits stick with you for a long time. Once you learn to spend your money wisely you’ll realize how quickly your savings will start to grow.

Understand that a credit card is still money.

Just because you never see the money it doesn’t mean that it’s not real. I’ve heard various arguments from college students about how this isn’t far and how credit card companies are supposedly loaning us money that doesn’t exist. This is irrelevant. The point is that you’re borrowing money from someone in exchange to purchase something. The money just happens to be electronic and never seen. A credit card is money and if you max out your credit card, you’re going to have to come up with the money and you’ll be hit with interest fees every time you miss payments and the
longer you keep a balance. This can have a severely negative impact on your savings and your credit score.

Try using cash.

Using credit is far too easy. It has become so easy that Amazon is kind enough to store my credit card information so I don’t even have to type in my credit card number in again if I want to purchase a book in a split second. If you find that a credit card is hurting your finances instead of being used as a tool, then you should try to use cash only for a little while. After a few weeks you can determine if the credit card is the problem or if it’s your lack of money management skills that’s hurting you.

Find the right credit card.

There’s many different types of college student credit cards out there. The goal is to find the right credit card for your situation. It’s usually recommended that you start off with one that offers the introductory limit of $500 so that you can grasp if you’re even mature enough for a credit card at the moment. If you’re stuck on this, don’t worry because this site offers tips for finding the right credit card. Once you find the ideal credit card and improve your spending habits, you’ll learn how beneficial credit cards can be in your financial toolbox.

These are the main ideas I would recommend to all of the college students out there that have blamed credit card companies for their financial issues in the past. What did I miss?