CITY NATIONAL BANK (CNB) has a REWARDS PLUS PROGRAM which provides bonus points for online and in-store purchases. To see the details of the REWARDS PLUS program you need to login into their rewards website here. CNB rewards points can be redeemed at best value of 0.9 cents/points for merchant gift cards or at 1.14 cents/points for Flight redemption.  

While most of the offers are lukewarm there are few limited time offers which could be useful for bonus points earning. For e.g. take a peek at below merchants with limited time offers.

As you can see there is Office Depot and Bloomingdales among the merchants. So with the above offer you can earn 3x points in total at Office Depot store. The bad news is that each of these offers has maximum earning limits. For e.g. the fine print for Office Depot offers requires a minimum purchase of $25 and has maximum bonus points earning capped at 1500 points whereas Bloomingdales offer requires minimum purchase of $50 and has similar maximum bonus points earning capped at 1500 points. Also I see an offer for CVS (in-store as well as online) where I can earn 10 points per $ for maximum spend of $30 which expires on 08/27/2017. 

So if you hold this card for the obvious reasons of earning airline reimbursement credit you might want to check to see if you have similar offers and thus maximize earnings in categories or at merchants where other credit cards do not earn any bonus points.

​Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.

Alaska airlines gift certificates can only be redeemed at alaskair.com for flights operated by Alaska Airlines, Horizon Air, Penair between Anchorage and Dutch Harbor, and SkyWest Flight Series 3440-3499 as per the Gift certificate FAQ here. However Virgin America is now owned by Alaska Airlines and recently Alaska Airlines made a change to their website where you can use the Bank of America Alaska Credit Card companion certificate for redemption on flight tickets which includes Virgin America flights.

With this change technically you should be able to redeem the Alaska Airlines gift certificate on Virgin America flights as well. Let's walk through a booking which includes Alaska Airlines and Virgin America flights as shown below

Once you select the above flights and checkout  you should see below two options on the payment page.

You can use up to 4 Alaska Airlines gift certificate per reservation. Also the website does not allow you to redeem the gift certificates for Virgin America flights if you try to redeem them. The trick here is to add the gift certificate to your "My Wallet" which allows you to add unlimited number of gift certificates to your "My Wallet" and then redeem it from there. This way you can use more than 4 Alaska Airlines gift certificate. Also you can now redeem the wallet balance for both Alaska Airlines as well as Virgin America flights. Here is the link to My Wallet page. You can use the option to "Deposit a Gift Card or Certificate" to add the Gift certificate balance to your "My Wallet".

So hopefully the next time you are looking to use the Alaska Airlines gift certificate on Virgin America flights (Before the full integration happens) you will have a way to do it without any issues.

Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.

IHG Rewards club points use to never expire. But that has changed and now the points expire with 12 months of no activity. There are many usual ways to avoid the points expiration and few of them are listed below:

• Staying at any of the IHG brand hotels with direct booking done through IHG.
• Registering and dining with IHG Dining network.
• Renting car and crediting the partner points to IHG for the rental.
• Earning points through surveys from e-Rewards.
• Purchase IHG points.

The other two interesting ways to extend the life of your IHG points is to:

• Register for quarterly promotions for IHG such as the Q2-2017 accelerate promo and hope one of the task is to download IHG app and login to earn 500 bonus IHG points. This should show up as something like below.

• If you have atleast 5000 IHG points you can book one of the IHG PointBreaks participating hotel and cancel it after couple of days. This should reset your IHG Points expiration clock and thus extend your IHG points for 12 more months.

So if you are close to points expiration and do not have any upcoming stays but have at-least 5000 points in your account you can easily extend the life of your IHG points.

Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.

American Express (AMEX) has a nice perk of Amex Offers which at time can be lucrative in earning miles/points or cashback. If you have cards which earns membership reward (MR) points then AMEX at times is targeting with Amex Offers that earns Membership reward points instead of Cash back rebate.
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For e.g. below is the offer where you earn 2000 MR points for $100 spent at Best Western Hotels.

As you can see from the above offer you would earn 2000 MR points instead of the usual offer which would be to earn $20 in rebate for the stay. Since Membership Rewards points can be transferred to myriad of travel partner airlines or use for redemption for airline revenue tickets (if you have  American Express Platinum Business card), the offer to earn Membership reward points would get you a better redemption value than earning the cash back outright. 

The only downside is that you need to be targeted for MR points offer as the usual Twitter hashtags for adding offers are always cashback offers. On the other hand if your Membership rewards earning credit card is targeted for an amex offer which earns MR points then all the other cards which do not earn MR points will not have the same offer at all. For e.g. none of your non-MR earning card will have the Best Western offer above.

So, look out for those targeted MR earning offer and hope you can maximize them depending on which offers you get.

Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.

You can get free $10 in amazon credit if you have any Eligible Citi credit card by making it default payment for Amazon one click settings. Here is the link to the offer. This promo has been around for a while but if you have not taken advantage of it then you can register your Citi Credit Card on amazon.com for this promotion. The promotion is valid till Aug 15, 2017. If for some reason the offer page says that you are not eligible for the promotion you can remove all the Citi Credit card from your Amazon.com profile and try registering through the link after 24-48 hours of removing the Citi Credit card.

Below are terms from the offer page for your convenience:
TERMS AND CONDITIONS

• This promotional offer applies to the purchase of eligible items made with an eligible Citi credit card. The $10 credit may be redeemed on the purchase of physical products sold and shipped by Amazon.com and excludes gift cards, Kindle eBooks, instant videos, MP3s, and all other digital content and downloads.
  
  
• Offer available only to customers who were served an advertisement promoting the offer. To claim the offer, customer must first click through the ad and then complete the additional actions described. Eligible cards are only consumer branded Citi credit cards, except Costco Citi credit cards.
  
  
• An Amazon.com account with a valid Citi credit card is required to claim and redeem this credit. If, for any reason, your Citi credit card is inactive, denied, or ineligible, you will not be eligible to claim or redeem this credit. You are responsible for the final purchase price after the credit is applied, plus applicable taxes and shipping charges.
  
  
• This promotional offer is valid for a limited time only. Offer limited to one per customer and account. Amazon reserves the right to modify or cancel the offer at any time. If you violate any of these terms, the offer will be invalid, and the credit will not apply. This offer may not be resold, is nontransferable, not redeemable for cash, and is void where prohibited by law and in case of fraud. This offer may not be combined with other offers.
  
  
• Credit must be redeemed by 11:59 p.m. PT on August 15, 2017. Unredeemed credit will expire after that time. If any of the products purchased with the credit are returned, your refund will equal the amount you paid for the product, subject to applicable refund policies. Credit redeemed on a Kindle or Fire device will be applied to the Amazon.com account registered to the device.
  
  
• American Airlines, AAdvantage and the Flight Symbol logo are marks of American Airlines, Inc.

Hat-tip: [Doctor Of Credit]

Etihad miles have great value proposition for redeeming them on inspirational awards such as A380 First Apartments. Also there are great business class redemptions you can get on Czech Airlines and Brussels Airlines along with some Indian subcontinent domestic redemptions on Jet Airways. We talked about general details of the program a while ago which can be found here. Despite these great redemptions being there Etihad miles for lowest tier level member expires 2 years from the date they are earned regardless of any activity on the account. But the good part is you can still get reasonable value out of expiring miles if there are no travel trips where you can use those miles.

Most of the airlines have reward shop where you can redeem your miles for variety of merchandise. Etihad Airways also have similar reward shop which can be accessed here. But rather then spending miles on any over priced merchandise you can redeem your miles for two items at a redemption rate from 0.6 cent/miles to 0.66 cent/mile. Below are the two options: 

Amazon gift cards:
There are several denominations of gift card available starting from $5. Below are the links to few of those options:

• Amazon $5 gift card: You can redeem this gift card for just 900 Etihad miles.
• Amazon $50 gift card: You can redeem this gift card for 8200 Etihad miles.
• Amazon $100 gift card: You can redeem this gift card for 16500 Etihad miles.

Etihad Reward Card:
Etihad reward card comes in two flavors. Physical visa card and Electronic or virtual visa card. The Physical card has a one time cost of 2955 miles (so not worth it in my opinion) whereas the Electronic or virtual visa card has no upfront cost. There is 0.99 cent load fee which is included in the mileage redemption cost. These reward card's have validity of 72 hours and any unused funds are converted back to Etihad miles. These cards are like any other visa e-gift card and can be used at any online merchants (I have personally used it at Amazon.com and to pay Energy bills).

You can load these cards online at a redemption rate of ~0.66 cents/miles depending on how many miles you convert. The good news is you can load the reward card with $5 for just 880 Etihad miles. You need to provide the physical address and phone number the very first time you subscribe for the reward card and the verification can take 3 to 5 business days for processing. But once this processing is done the loading going forward is instantaneous. You can see below a snapshot of the interface where you can choose the amount to load.

As you can see this is not one of the best of redemption rates, but if you have those expiring miles; getting them to use at any online merchant of choice at ~0.66 cent/mile value is a great redemption option. Here is the direct link to the reward card page.

Hopefully this will help avoid those left over or expiring miles from going to waste!

Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website

There is the new app in the town called Drop which is currently in beta and where you would earn extra points for doing what you do regularly which is shopping at your favorite store. For most of us these are places that allows us to earn lot of miles and points.
To begin with you can select up to five brands/stores where you would like to earn extra points and link the credit/debit card which you want to track for earning points on to Drop app.  Apart from these there are on-going one time targeted offers from Drop where you can earn extra at either your selected earning store or any other store with certain amount fixed or variable points based on spend and have an expiration date. 

You can earn any where from 1% to 3% of your spend based on the store you are going to make your purchase from. The way Drop works is it earns you anywhere from 10 points/$ to 30 points/$ based on the store selected and every 1,000 Drop points are valued at $1 which can be redeemed for variety of gift cards. The gift card redemption starts from 5,000 points onward. 

Below are the few of the many available merchants where you can earn rebate at the time of this writing. The earning rate may change any time though:

• Amazon - Earn 20 points/$ (2%)
• Safeway - Earn 11 points/$ (1%)
• Walmart - Earn 10 points/$ (1%)
• Target - Earn 10 points/$ (1%)
• Uber - Earn 15 points/$ (1.5%)
• Whole Foods - Earn 10 points/$ (1%)
• Best Buy - Earn 10 points/$ (1%)
• 7-Eleven - Earn 10 points/$ (1%)

Apart from above the targeted offers could be for fixed amount of points. For e.g. below are couple of the recent targeted offers going around:

There is a nice promotion where you can earn maximum of 25,000 Delta Skymiles by earning 1,000 Skymiles for each unique partner activity. If you have not taken advantage of it yet you still have till 06/30/2017 to earn at-least few thousand delta skymiles if not the max of 25,000 miles. ​​Here is the promotion link to register for this offer before you go ahead and spend at the partners. The terms state that it is open to all Delta Skymiles members except the one residing in APAC Region. Also only the partner member with whom you have not earned any miles from March 24, 2016 to March 23, 2017 are eligible for this promotion. The detailed terms can be found here.

Below are few examples (provided you have not done any transactions with them through Delta Skymiles) to earn easy miles.

• Skymiles Dining - By dining at any of the dining network partner restaurants and with spend as low as $1 you can earn 1,000 bonus mile in this category. If you are not a member of Skymiles Dining program then you can enroll for current sign-up promotion of earning up to 3,000 Skymiles.
• Skymiles Shopping - By shopping at any of the partner merchants such as walmart.com and homedepot.com through the Delta Skymiles shopping website and ordering any item of more than $1 you would easily earn 1,000 miles in this category.
• Car Rental or a Lyft Ride - Delta recently partnered with Lyft where you could earn 1 mile / $ spent on Lyft Ride. Since even Lyft's line service qualify for this earning you can easily earn 1,000 miles with Lyft ride.  If you have any car rental's coming up in the next few days you could even credit one of those rental to Delta Skymiles and easily earn bonus 1,000 miles.
• Hotels & AirBnB - You could have one of the up coming stays with any of the hotel partners or AirBnB and that could give 1,000 Skymiles. 
• Credit Card partner - You could sign up for one of the American Express Delta co-branded card and earn a 1,000 Delta miles apart from the miles for sign-up for the credit card. This may not be on every one's list though.
  

There are bunch of partners in each of the category and except airline partners most of other unique partner activities qualify. You can find the complete list of partners here. 

As you can see you can easily earn 2,000 to 3,000 Delta Skymiles without much effort at all. If you have stays or travel coming up and you can credit to Delta Skymiles then you earning potential can easily go much higher with this promotion. So, go ahead and get the easy one's at-least while the promotion lasts.

Unfortunately as I mentioned this seems to be a targeted offer so check your email to see if you have received this offer. But If you are not a member of any of these dining programs there is still a nice sign up offer for both of them.

Earn up to 4000 United Airlines MileagePlus miles:
MileagePlus Dining has offer where you can earn up to 4000 miles for dining by joining on or before June 30th 2017 and dining within the first 30 days. The earning bonus are as below:

• 500 miles for signing up and registering your debit/credit card for dining program.
• 1000 miles for spending $25 or more on your first participating restaurant visit.
• 500 miles for spending $25 or more on your next participating restaurant visit -- up to 5 times. So in total you can earn 2500 miles here.

For additional terms kindly check the details here.
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Earn up to 2000 American Airlines AAdvantage miles:
American Airlines dining has offer where you can earn up to 2000 miles for dining by joining before July 31st 2017 and dining within the first 30 days. The earning bonus are as below:

• 1000 miles for spending $25 or more on your first participating restaurant visit.
•  500 miles for spending $25 or more on your second participating restaurant visit.
• 500 miles for spending $25 or more on your third participating restaurant visit.

For additional terms kindly check the details here.

​So, check your email and get going for easy American Airlines AAdvantage or United MileagePlus miles.

There has been an American Airlines AAdvantage offer where you could earn 10k miles for making purchase at 4 partners which expires on 06/15/2017. There is no need to register and the details can be found here. 

Below are the list of partners for this promotion:

• AAdvantage DiningSM
• AAdvantage eShoppingSM
• 1-800-Flowers.com
• Vinesse

The earning of miles is tiered as shown below:

• Qualifying Transaction with 2 Participating Partners, earn 2,000 bonus miles
• Qualifying Transaction with 3 Participating Partners, earn 5,000 bonus miles
• Qualifying Transaction with all 4 Participating Partners, earn 10,000 bonus miles

So effectively to earn any miles under this promotion you at-least need to make two partner purchases. Also there are minimum purchase requirement for each of the other partners which are mentioned in terms and conditions here. 

The interesting part is you could easily earn 2000 to 5000 miles with minimal spend by doing below:
Dine at AAdvantage dining participating restaurants for $25.00 in single transaction:
Use your debit/credit card registered in AAdvantage Dining program for $25 dinning. There are many participating restaurants but assuming you do not have any plan of dining you can simply purchase a $25 gift card at one of your favorite participating restaurant or you can purchase $25 gift card for "Buca di Beppo" in-store which should trigger this activity. This gift card could be used for future dining or sold to gift card re-sellers for 70% of the face value.

Spend $50 in single transaction at any AAdvantage e-shopping partners: 
Go through online AAdvantage shopping portal and make a purchase of $50 in single transaction. Ensure that the purchase you make at given merchant does qualify to earn miles. If you do not have any purchase planned you could simply purchase gift card at merchants where purchasing gift card earns AAdvantage miles or one of the easier option is to purchase $50+ gift card of various merchants at Raise.com through AAdvantage shopping portal.

Purchase at 1800flowers.com for minimum amount possible using Code A49 and your AAdvantage membership number:
This is little involved, but if you do this purchase it would be your 3rd partner purchase and you would earn 3k more AAdvantage miles under the AAdvantage partner promotion itself. You can search for minimum purchase amount item such as this for $14.99 and earn 20 miles/$ for this amount plus 3k bonus miles for AAdvantage promotion.

As you can see there are easy ways of doing above 3 offers and earn 2k to 5k AAvantage miles even without doing the "Vinesse" offer. So, take advantage of these easy miles offer before it expires.