SXMScubaman said:RICKnGRACE_LI_NY said:
I didn't read through the entire thread, so, if this is a repeat I am sorry.
The best card I have found is a Capital One Venture Card. Double miles that don't expire. You can find your flights and book through them. Or you can book your flights, use their card and apply for the refund. You get points per dollar spent. It converts like this example. $500 spent earns 1000 points. 1000 points = $10 So if you have 50000 points and spend $500 on a ticket you are covered.
I know it sounds like a lot, but if you use it like cash, which we do, it builds up quickly. We just remember to treat it like a cash card and pay it in full at the end of every month. Any way, it works for us.
50,000 AA FF miles got me a first class ticket from SEA to SXM on the dates and flights I wanted. That was a $900.00+ ticket. I'll stick with my Citi Bank AA card.
We used to use our Citi AA card for both our personal and business expenses and accrued over a million miles throughout the years. We eventually used up all of the miles, but it was challenging at times (especially in more recent years) to find award flights that worked for us. We often found ourselves using Aanytime points or having to take red eye flights or incur long layovers. And even when we did find flights, we usually could only get a limited number of award tickets on the flight and would have to purchase a couple as well so that our family of five could travel together. There were even times when we had plenty of miles, but ended up purchasing tickets on a different airline because we couldn't get award travel on American or any of it's partners.
Then about four years ago we switched to Capital One where we get two points for every dollar spent. Now, charging $50,000 on our Capital One card (the same amount that we had to charge on our Citicard to get 50,000 AA miles) gets us 100,000 Capital one points. Those 100,000 equates to a $1,000 travel credit which can be used for ANY flight on ANY airline at ANY time - and we can purchase it from whatever source we would like. If we don't have enough points for the entire ticket it doesn't matter - we get a credit for as many points as we have or choose to utilize. In addition, since we are simply purchasing the tickets with our credit card we still get the FF points on the flights (unlike when using FF miles for a ticket). The points on the Capital One card can also be used for hotels or any other travel expenses we incur. Another nice benefit is that our Capital One card doesn't charge foreign transaction fees. And they have been great to deal with whenever there have been any issues such as fraud alerts. I really have found no downside to the Capital One card and I have been able to get tickets (usually first class) for my family through Capital One points for each of our annual trips to the Caribbean. I probably sound like a commercial for Capital One, but I'm really just a happy customer. Everyone has to use the card that's best for them, but I would recommend that anyone looking for a new travel card to take a look at Capital One and run the numbers.
Matt
