re: Credit Card Rewards and Points Discussion

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My flight availability will almost definitely be gone by then. Any ideas?

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That's ridiculous. AMEX CSR are usually excellent so if they're throwing their hands up then that's weird. Did they charge you a fee?

Do credit cards consider calendar year spending to end at your last statement of the year or on December 31st? My last statement is December 17th.. but I made a purchase on December 31st to get over my spend threshold. But that statement doesn't close until January 17th. Should the December 31st purchase count toward 2018?

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Should the December 31st purchase count toward 2018?

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It depends on what you're talking about. A credit or just a date to spend something by? Example, for SW CP people will get the card in Dec so they can get the CP early in Jan but you don't put spend on it until the Dec statement is already done. So using your dates, someone getting the SW card would want to start spending Dec 18th and on and that would count towards January statement in 2019.

What's the best way to redeem Chase UR points for Delta flights? I need to book a flight from LEX/CVG/SDF to Fort Lauderdale, and Delta wants $650/ticket.

If I log into chase, go to the rewards portal, looks like that flight would cost me about 40K UR points.

Is that the best way to redeem?


Edit: Skymiles would be about 120K for 2 tickets, and that seems like highway robbery. I could pay with skymiles or UR points, but I feel like I could use those for a better flight/trip later.

I'm not sure if it's available on your specific route, but Flying Blue, Korean Air, and Virgin Atlantic are Chase transfer partners and have the ability to book Delta flights, although I'm only familiar with int'l options for them. Not sure how much cheaper they'd be than 40K RT though. Delta is an Amex travel partner if they're your airline of choice FYI.

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Korean Air,


Thought they went away with URs?

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Correct. Was such a sweet deal. I transferred 100k UR to just sit in my KA account until use them.

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Flying Blue, Korean Air, and Virgin Atlantic are Chase transfer partners and have the ability to book Delta flights

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Yeah, I think checking Virgin could be a good bet. They have some great deals to Japan and Europe this way on Detal metal. Worst case I guess just do it through the portal but 40k is a lot of points for that trip. You can fly to Hawaii with that amount.

On another note, do you guys consider it a waste to use these points on domestic flights? Seems almost everyone is using them for international flights, but honestly, world travel isn't interesting to my wife, so I think my best usage is domestic flights. Would like to go to Hawaii sometime in the next year, but other than that, no where special.
We go to FLL regularly because we take cruises out of there.
I don't want to "waste" my points, or under use their value, but am not looking to go to China/Singapore/etc. I would like to see Australia, but don't know that I want to travel that far. I have about 400K in UR points currently.

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Transferring was a better deal than the 50% bonus on points through UR Booking?

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I get 25,000 miles RT tix from HNL to MSY as an example with Korean on Delta. Won’t get that anywhere with points or miles. If I want to go biz it’s only 45,000 RT. Can do 80,000 biz RT to Europe.

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I don't want to "waste" my points, or under use their value, but am not looking to go to China/Singapore/etc. I would like to see Australia, but don't know that I want to travel that far. I have about 400K in UR points currently.

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Generally speaking, you get the best value when you use points towards very expensive international flight award trips. With that said, they are your points and you should do whatever you want with them. A lot of people hoard points bc they keep telling themselves one day they will use it on some lavish vacation. Well it is getting more and more difficult to use points towards these lavish trips.