 U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve Card is a premium version of credit card offered by U.S. Bank. One of the main feature of this card is capability of earning 3x points on all mobile payments spend (Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Pay etc) as well as certain travel spend. There are other compelling features such as Priority Pass Select, TSA Pre or Global Entry Credit of $100, $325 Annual travel credit for eligible travel reimbursement but the card comes with hefty annual fees of $400.
As per recent reports folks when ask for retention offer are offered 5,000 to 10,000 points retention offer after one year when 2nd year fees are billed or due on account. But what if you are not given that offer and you want to cancel or downgrade your card but have points available in your account? Below are you options.. 1. Transfer points to Spouse or a Friend: You can transfer points in any amount to your spouse or a friend who has either the U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve Credit Card or the U.S. Bank Flexperks Credit Card. All you need is there credit card number (account number) and you can do the transfer olline.. 2. Real Time Mobile Redemption Rewards: The great thing is U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve Card has something called as Real Time Mobile Redemption Rewards where you can redeem each of your Altitude Reserve Points at 1.5 cent value as statement credit when you make a travel purchase directly with Airlines, Hotels, car rental companies, taxis, limousines, passenger trains, and cruise lines. This also includes rides with Uber and Lyft in United States. Although there are limits on minimum amount you need to spend of $250 for car rentals and $500 for lodging; for other categories you can redeem for as low as $10 of charges. So you can purchase airlines gift card (American Airlines, Delta Airlines, Southwest Airlines and Alaska Airlines sells gift card which can be purchased online) and redeem the real time mobile redemption at value of 1.5 cent/point. (The only requirement is that the charge has to be less than the available points value available for redemption for using Real Time Redemption Reward). You could also redeem them for airline ticket and subsequently cancel those ticket before 24 hours cancellation period and retain the statement credit for the same. This is the easiest way of always getting a value of 1.5 cent/point and redeeming all your points before you go ahead with your cancellation or downgrade of the credit card. So, go ahead and redeem those points for cash before you cancel your card. 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.
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 Aeroplan has current transfer bonus of 35% more miles when you convert your Marriott Bonvoy points to Aeroplan miles. Usually Marriott points transfer at ratio of 3:1. Transferring 30k Marriott points would yield 10k Aeroplan miles. The current transfer bonus offer of Aeroplan is set to expire on 06/26/2019. Below is one example of how the offer would work.   35% bonus Aeroplan miles when transferring from Marriott Bonvoy If you are planning to take advantage of this promotion, do remember to check the award space including the phantom space on Aeroplan website before you transfer any points as otherwise you might be out of luck. Below is an example search which shows availability for Singapore Airlines in Business Class.  Award Availability for Singapore Airlines Business Class Given above it might be easy to believe that award is available to book with Aeroplan miles. The important thing to remember is to click the "Book" button to see if it allows to go forward. Usually if it is phantom space as is the case above it will error out saying the space is not available. Alternatively you can call Aeroplan and confirm the availability with them before you transfer your points.
The above will ensure that your transferred miles are put to use as intended. Aeroplan miles expire after 1 year of no activity on the account so only transfer if you have immediate use and the award space is available. 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.  As Lyft expands its service in the United States it is also expanding the partnership where you can earn miles and points as well as cashback for the rides taken with them. You do need to link up your mileage or points earning account to earn miles and points. Below are the current partnership where lyft provides potential to earn miles/points.
JetBlue Lyft Partnership: JetBlue offers existing Lyft users opportunity to earn JetBlue points for rides to/from airport. You need to link your JetBlue account with lyft. For every ride taken you earn 30 JetBlue points. Although those are small amount of points they are free. More details can be found here. Delta Lyft Partnership: Delta Airlines has also partnered with Lyft where you earn 1 mile/$ for non-airport rides and 2 miles/$ for airport rides for exiting Lyft users. This has potential of earning variable amount of Delta Airlines miles depending on the cost of the ride you take. You need to link your Delta Airlines account with Lyft to start earning. More details can be found here. Hilton Lyft Parnership: Hilton Hotels has partnered with Lyft where you earn 2 points/$ on shared ride and 3 points/$ on all other Lyft rides. You can earn variable amount of Hilton Honor points based on the spend. You need to link your Hilton Honors account with Lyft to start earning. More details on this partnership can be found here. Earn Cashback with Ebates App: Although not a significant amount you can earn cashback for every ride you take with Lyft while launching the Lyft App from Ebates App and booking your ride. As of this writing Ebates is offering $0.25 per ride but in the past it has been as high as $1. So, if you have cashback account with Ebates it would be nice to earn cashback for the ride you are going to take anyway. More details can be found on this blog post. When linking the accounts make sure you enter the names correctly. For e.g. Delta Airlines webpage will throw error if you do not enter correct name as per your Delta Airlines Mileage account. So, get going and link your accounts today so you earn the miles/points on JetBlue, Delta and Hilton. Also do remember the cash back through Ebates App. 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.  Priority Club, International Hotels Group (IHG) have their popular PointsBreaks rewards now bookable for stay till Aug 31st 2019. IHG now has 3 tier of rewards bookable at 5k, 10k, and 15k IHG points. IHG also keeps selling the points with bonus points where the most recent offer which ended on June 8th, 2019 was with 100% bonus bringing the cost down to 0.5 cent/point. So, if you are interested in any of the PointsBreaks hotel but do not have enough points it might be worth to look into the purchase option for the points.  IHG most recent purchase points promotion with 100% bonus, getting the cost down to 0.5 cent/point. Below is the list of hotels available at the time of writing. You can find the current list here. Hotels Available for 5k points per night: United States: MONTANA Holiday Inn Express & Suites Sidney TEXAS Holiday Inn Express & Suites Corsicana I-45 Candlewood Suites Georgetown Candlewood Suites Dallas Plano East Richardson Candlewood Suites Wichita Falls @ Maurine St. Worldwide: ALBERTA, CANADA Holiday Inn Express & Suites Bonnyville Holiday Inn Express & Suites Drayton Valley URUGUAY Holiday Inn Montevideo GERMANY Holiday Inn Leipzig - Günthersdorf KAZAKHSTAN Holiday Inn Almaty TURKEY Holiday Inn Gebze - Istanbul Asia QATAR Holiday Inn Doha - The Business Park SOUTH AFRICA Holiday Inn Express Durban - Umhlanga Hotels Available for 10k points per night: United States: ARIZONA Holiday Inn Express & Suites Phoenix East - Gilbert Staybridge Suites Phoenix East - Gilbert Holiday Inn Express Sierra Vista ARKANSAS Staybridge Suites Hot Springs Crowne Plaza Little Rock Holiday Inn Express & Suites White Hall CALIFORNIA Holiday Inn Palmdale-Lancaster Holiday Inn Express & Suites Porterville Holiday Inn Express & Suites Twentynine Palms- Joshua Tree COLORADO Holiday Inn Express & Suites Grand Junction FLORIDA Staybridge Suites Gainesville I-75 Holiday Inn Tallahassee E Capitol - Univ GEORGIA Holiday Inn Express Atlanta W (I-20) Douglasville Holiday Inn Express & Suites Atlanta Airport NE - Hapeville Holiday Inn Express Atlanta SW - Newnan ILLINOIS Holiday Inn Express & Suites Bloomington - Normal INDIANA Staybridge Suites South Bend-University Area KENTUCKY Holiday Inn Express & Suites Ashland Staybridge Suites Lexington LOUISIANA Holiday Inn Express & Suites Lake Charles MARYLAND Holiday Inn Express & Suites Cumberland - La Vale Holiday Inn Express Waldorf MICHIGAN Crowne Plaza Auburn Hills Holiday Inn & Suites Farmington Hills - Detroit NW Holiday Inn Detroit Northwest - Livonia Holiday Inn & Suites Mount Pleasant Staybridge Suites Lansing-Okemos MISSOURI Holiday Inn Columbia-East NEW HAMPSHIRE Holiday Inn Express Keene NEW YORK Holiday Inn Express & Suites Batavia - Darien Lake Holiday Inn Express & Suites Malone OHIO Holiday Inn Express & Suites Ashland Crowne Plaza Dayton Holiday Inn Express & Suites Cleveland-Richfield OKLAHOMA Holiday Inn Express & Suites Blackwell Holiday Inn Express & Suites Jenks Staybridge Suites Oklahoma City - Downtown OREGON Holiday Inn Express & Suites Portland Airport PENNSYLVANIA Holiday Inn Express & Suites West Chester TENNESSEE Candlewood Suites Murfreesboro TEXAS Candlewood Suites Buda - Austin SW Candlewood Suites Galveston Holiday Inn Express & Suites McAllen - Medical Center Area Holiday Inn Express & Suites Fort Worth North - Northlake Holiday Inn Express & Suites San Antonio - Brooks City Base UTAH Holiday Inn Express Heber City WISCONSIN Holiday Inn Express Milwaukee-West Medical Center WYOMING Candlewood Suites Casper Worldwide: ALBERTA, CANADA Holiday Inn Express & Suites Edmonton South Holiday Inn Express & Suites Medicine Hat Transcanada Hwy 1 MÉXICO, MEXICO Crowne Plaza Mexico Norte Tlalnepantla NUEVO LEÓN, MEXICO Holiday Inn Express & Suites Monterrey Valle PUEBLA, MEXICO Crowne Plaza Puebla EL SALVADOR Crowne Plaza San Salvador-Conference Center PANAMA Holiday Inn Express Panama Distrito Financiero ARMENIA Holiday Inn Express Yerevan GERMANY Holiday Inn Express Essen - City Centre ITALY Holiday Inn Rome - Aurelia RUSSIA Holiday Inn Kaliningrad UNITED KINGDOM Holiday Inn Aberdeen - West Holiday Inn Ashford - Central Holiday Inn Basingstoke Holiday Inn Express London - Dartford Holiday Inn Express Dunstable Holiday Inn Express Manchester - East OMAN Crowne Plaza Sohar QATAR Crowne Plaza Doha - The Business Park SAUDI ARABIA Holiday Inn Al Khobar Holiday Inn Riyadh - Al Qasr INDIA Crowne Plaza Chennai Adyar Park Crowne Plaza Jaipur Tonk Road Crowne Plaza Kochi INDONESIA Holiday Inn & Suites Jakarta Gajah Mada LANZHOU, MAINLAND CHINA Holiday Inn & Suites Lanzhou Center TIANJIN, MAINLAND CHINA Holiday Inn Tianjin Xiqing Hotels Available for 15k points per night: United States: FLORIDA EVEN Hotel Miami - Airport GEORGIA Holiday Inn Express & Suites Augusta West - Ft Gordon Area INDIANA Holiday Inn Express Indianapolis - Southeast MARYLAND Crowne Plaza Greenbelt - Washington DC MICHIGAN Holiday Inn & Suites Ann Arbor Univ. Michigan Area Holiday Inn Ann Arbor-Near The Univ. Of Mi MINNESOTA Holiday Inn Express & Suites Minneapolis-Dwtn (Conv Ctr) NEBRASKA EVEN Hotel Omaha Downtown NEVADA Holiday Inn Express & Suites Carson City NORTH CAROLINA Holiday Inn Express & Suites Charlotte-Concord-I-85 PENNSYLVANIA Hotel Indigo Pittsburgh - Technology Center SOUTH CAROLINA Crowne Plaza North Augusta Holiday Inn Express & Suites Charleston Arpt-Conv Ctr Area TENNESSEE Holiday Inn Express & Suites Mt. Juliet-Nashville Area TEXAS Crowne Plaza Suites Arlington - Ballpark - Stadium Holiday Inn Express & Suites Seguin UTAH Holiday Inn Express & Suites Cedar City Holiday Inn Express & Suites Kanab WISCONSIN Holiday Inn & Suites Madison West Worldwide: FRANCE Crowne Plaza Lille - Euralille GERMANY Crowne Plaza Frankfurt Congress Hotel UNITED KINGDOM Crowne Plaza Birmingham City Centre The Met Hotel Leeds KENYA Crowne Plaza Nairobi Airport SAUDI ARABIA Crowne Plaza Riyadh Palace UNITED ARAB EMIRATES Crowne Plaza Abu Dhabi JIANGXI, MAINLAND CHINA Crowne Plaza Nanchang Wanli ZHEJIANG, MAINLAND CHINA Crowne Plaza Taizhou This list will shrink with time as hotels provide only limited capacity for PointBreaks promotion. So book your reward now if you are interested any any of the participating hotel rewards. 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 has their new promotion available starting May 1st 2019 for stays from May 1st 2019 to Aug 31st 2019. They are again naming this as Accelerate promotion and It is similar to their past promotion where they have targeted stay offers to various individual based on their past stay with IHG Rewards Club program. The terms of this promotion can be found here. Do note that some of the folks (including myself) are getting error message when trying to register for this promotion. It could either be some glitch in the roll out of the promotion or IHG has come up with new way of targeting this promotion :(. I was able to register one other family member account which I manage and below are the bonus offers on that account.  IHG Accelerate 2019 Promotion Offers Since the offers are targeted they would be different for different folks (Some might have less stay requirement which others might have more and would get different total amount of points). Based on the past promotions if your stay satisfies more than one task requirements you would earn points for both of them based on the total requirement.
For e.g. from above staying 4 separate nights where 3 nights are with different brands and 2 of those nights being booked with "bonus points package" would satisfy all the requirements of the offers for the targeted bonus promotion and can earn 30,800 IHG Rewards Points!! Also these points are in addition to the base points and any other promotions points which you would have registered for. The points can be used for one of the well known PointBreaks promotion where you can stay at participating hotels for either 5k, 10k or 15k IHG Rewards Points. You can read more of the regular PointBreaks promotion here. So if you have upcoming plans to stay with IHG Hotels do make sure you register for this promotion. 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.  AwardWallet is a great tool if you have rewards account with multiple airlines and hotel loyalty program. It allows you to track the mileage for different programs from single page and thus enable any changes to your account. It lists the account balances along with expiration dates for this rewards account. It also emails at set interval to notify of the account mileage expiration. AwardWallet has a free version as well as a paid version called "AwardWallet Plus" which has annual fees of $30. Below are the features which are available for both free and paid version of AwardWallet.  Common features available on both AwardWallet and AwardWallet Plus The best part of AwardWallet is that the most important features are available on the free version as well. One of the important feature is "Track rewards for your family members". This feature allows to track mileage of multiple people from single login and thereby avoiding the hassle of maintaining separate logins for different members. This is very useful if only one member manages all the accounts and thereby can look up balances for the members added to the account. You can either access their AwardWallet account by either "connect with another person" or directly add their airline/hotel accounts to your AwardWallet by using "Add a new person" to your account. Since it's useful to only have one AwardWallet account it is better to "Add a new person" to AwardWallet. Below are the steps in pictures on how to add someone to your account without they having their separate AwardWallet account.  Click on "+" besides PERSONS to add new person  Select "Add a new person"  Add their details. Email is optional. You do not need to check the box to invite the person Once you add the person to your profile you can add the select program from "Account" tab, select the reward program and add the owner with their reward program login details. AwardWallet provides with an option to store the passwords either with AwardWallet or locally on your computer. You can thus repeat the process to all multiple people to your account and then easily update the balances along with any expiration from single page.
So, if you are looking to simplify your Airlines/Hotels rewards program tracking then AwardWallet is your answer. 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.  TURO is a platform to provide peer to peer car rental service. It is a car rental platform similar to Airbnb for house rentals. The cars are listed by local folks through the platform and can be either brought to the local airport (sometimes for a fee) or picked up at a local address in the city. Below is the gist of the process. You can look up here for more details:
 TURO Car Rental Search for PDX Since TURO is peer to peer car rental, it is recommended to purchase the insurance directly from TURO (Liberty Mutual is the underwriter) as damages will not be covered by the credit cards which usually provides CDW (Collision Damage Waiver) coverage. Alternatively if you rent from commercial hosts they would provide their own insurance and the additional payment for that would be directly assessed by the hosts. You can decline the insurance coverage but if you chose to take it there are 3 different kind of insurance coverage provided by TURO as shown below. The protection price calculation is shown in the article here.  Different protection plan provided by TURO The total rental cost presented by TURO consists of car rental charge along with various fees. The breakdown of the major total cost consists of below:
TURO is available in the United States, Canada, Germany and U.K. at this time. The car's available through TURO vary but you can get a pretty good deal at a lower price than what the Car Rental companies would charge otherwise. So, next time you are looking for Car Rental do remember to check out TURO. Referral - At this time TURO does offer a referral program where you get $25 in credit for referring someone to TURO. Here is our referral link (Thanks if you decide to use it). 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 has lot of cards with no annual fee. Couple of popular no annual fee cards are Amex Everyday card and Amex Blue Cash Card which earns Membership rewards points and cashback respectively. American Express also has annual fee option available for these same cards and they usually differ in the earning's in categories. For e.g. the Blue Cash Card earns 3% cashback at U.S. Supermarkets whereas the Blue Cash Preferred would earn 6% cash back (On up to $6,000 in purchases per year). So, although the annual fee for the preferred version is $95 you do get 3% additional earning and so if you reach the max spend cap for the year, you would earn additional $180 which would easily cover the $95 fees. Interestingly American Express is known to provide upgrade offers usually in 2nd year of card membership. Depending on the type of card (Cash back or Membership rewards) you would either earn certain amount of points (for e.g. 10,000) or cashback (for e.g. $100) when you upgrade and spend certain amount on the upgraded card with 3 months or so. The good part is that these offers would show up on your American Express account and these is no hard credit pull or inquiry. Also since this is an upgrade offer they usually do not come with "once a lifetime bonus restriction". For e.g. one of our account has an offer of earning $150 by upgrading to Blue Cash Preferred and spending $1,000 with new card within first 3 months after the upgrade.  Upgrade offer for Blue Cash Preferred Card Similarly if you have other partner cards such as no fee Hilton Honors card or Marriott card it might be worth checking if there are any targeted upgrade offer available. So, login to your American Express accounts and check for your targeted offer. Do note that if you never had the "premium" version of the card before you might be excluded to get the bonus again in future if you decide to apply for that premium card directly.
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.  Lot of Airlines where you accrue miles have different mileage expiration policies. American Airlines miles expire after 18 months if there is no accrual or redemption activity on the mileage account. There are many ways on extending the expiration of American Airlines miles and you can see most of the partners here. But most of activity requires you to make some purchase either through AA Shopping mall or perform donation to participating partner non-profit.
You only need to earn 1 mile to extend the validity of your American Airlines miles by another 18 months and there is an easier way to do just that. You can register for AwardWallet service for tracking your miles (If you are not register, It is free to join with option of upgrade for a free. You can use my referral here) . After registering you can add your American Airlines account to your AwardWallet account (You can also add other users whose account you manage and whose American Airlines miles you wish to extend to this AwardWallet account). Once registered if you visit any of the blog posts they publish and comment you will earn 5 American Airline miles for 1 or more comment on unique blog posts published by them (Once the comment is approved and once per day). You need to be logged in your AwardWallet account and just before you submit the comment you can select the American Airlines (AA) account you wish to credit 5 miles. The miles usually gets deposited within 5 business days once the comment is approved. You can read more about this feature here. So, next time if you have American Airlines (AA) miles expiring and you want to extend them quickly you have AwardWallet to your rescue! 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.  Hilton Honors points expire after 12 months of inactivity (either earning or redeeming). To avoid the expiration you need to have activity on your account. There are many available ways to extend that expiration for another 12 months, but here we want to list the quick and easy ways to keep those points alive.
Shop with points with Amazon: Hilton provides an ability to redeem your points at Amazon. You can redeem 500 points for $1 spent on Amazon (which is a poor value if your sole purpose to use it for spending on Amazon). The good news is you can use this way to extend the expiration of your points. The best way is to purchase a $1 Amazon e-gift card sent to yourself or anyone you want to. Although Hilton advertises that you need to use minimum of 500 points, at the time of this writing you can pay partially as well by redeeming just 5 points for $0.01 on that purchase. The remaining $0.99 can be paid with any of your credit card. Hilton provides more details on this partnership here. Transfer points to your friends or family: Hilton allows points transfer free of cost. You can transfer up-to 500,000 points in a year to a single person in a year. That's a good amount of transfer without any cost. You can transfer the points to a person who has any recent Hilton Honors account activity (In last 12 months) or has various Amex Hilton Cards. More details can be found here. Transfer American Express Membership Reward Points: If you have any Amex Membership Reward Points earning card then you can use that to transfer 1,000 Membership Reward Points to 2,000 Hilton Honors points. This will extend your Hilton Honors points for another 12 months. Also, American Express occasionally has transfer bonuses as well such as current targeted bonus of 10% to 50% for points transfer to Hilton, but in any case you will need to transfer minimum of 1,000 Membership Reward points. You can begin your transfer here. So, above 3 are the quick ways to get your Hilton Honors points secured for another 12 months. 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. |
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