My Oldest Credit Card Just Got The Axe

It's a sad day for me - I woke up to an ominous email from Citibank with the subject line "Account Closure - Important Information".

It's the credit card equivalent of getting a text from your significant other with the message "Need to talk to you right now, really important call right away!!!". While that conversation usually turns out to be a false alarm, along the lines of them being at the store and not remembering if you were out of milk, Citi wasn't messing around.

I logged into my account, anxious to find out which of my 4 Citi credit cards had gotten the axe. Of all the ones I didn't want it to happen to, of course that was the victim.

Why was my card closed

My Citi ThankYou Preferred card, the oldest of my entire collection of credit cards which I've had for nearly 15 years, died today, on November 17th, 2014.

A short and sweet message from Citi indicates that it was due to lack of activity, which is fair since I haven't used that card in several years.

So if I wasn't using the card at all, why am I so sad about the account closure?

FICO credit scores take into account your average length of credit history, and with all the churning that many of us do, it means that the majority of our credit cards don't even stay open for a year. While those closed accounts stay on your credit report for up to 10 years, it's a good idea to preserve a good average length of credit history by keeping a few no-annual fee credit cards in your sock drawer.

As an added bonus, American Express back-dates all new cards to your oldest credit card's date, which for me is about 10 years ago. So even if I opened a new Amex card tomorrow, it would count as 10 years old.

I have multiple credit cards that are just sitting around unused, and never had a problem until now. But this closure coincides with recent news that many of the old American Express Blue Cash cards were getting closed, and could be an indication that the card issuers are cracking down on inactivity.

My favorite memory of the card

As part of the eulogy for my oldest card, let's flash back to 2008. My friends and I decided to take a trip to Thailand, and I unwittingly lucked into being the one who booked all 4 tickets for the group on my Citi Preferred card.

Why did that matter? Back then, this card actually provided 1 point per flight mile on all airline tickets purchased with the card. Which meant that in addition to the 1x I'd earn on the cost of the tickets, I also earned 1x flight miles for each of the 4 airline tickets, which brought in nearly 70,000 points for the trip!

As ashamed as I am to admit it now, back then I was as unsavvy and clueless about points and miles as one can be. But that didn't change the fact that I was ecstatic about the points windfall, and did what a typical 25 year old would have done - I cashed them in for a $700 statement credit! Can you blame me? That's a LOT of pizza and beer!

The British Airways Companion Ticket Is Worthless From The West Coast

On the surface, the British Airways 2-for-1 Travel Together certificate that comes after spending $30,000 or more in a calendar year on the Chase British Airways credit card sounds like a fantastic deal.

While many people find Avios most useful for short-haul domestic tickets which only cost 4,500 miles each way, in general I prefer to use my miles for long-haul premium cabin flights. So in theory, this certificate is exactly the type of thing that would appeal to me, since I'd be able to save 150,000 miles for example on First Class flights from San Francisco to London.

While the certificate is good for 24 months, I'm quickly approaching the expiration date for mine. I've been trying desperately to find a good use for it over the past year, but am at the point where I'm going to give up and let it expire. Here's why.

The rules and restrictions

The British Airways certificate comes with some very restrictive rules that make it both hard to use and cost-prohibitive. Here are some details from the terms and condition:

"The Travel Together Ticket (voucher) allows the main BA/Chase account holder, when making a return flight booking using Avios, to book another seat on the exact same journey for a companion without having to pay the Avios flight price for that Companion. Taxes, airline, government, or other separately charged fees and charges must be paid by Member redeeming the voucher and is payable at time of booking"

A lot of words here, but the main takeaway is that you have to pay fuel surcharges on both tickets, which can be substantial. Let's look at what the surcharges would amount to on a SFO-LHR First Class ticket for example:

Each leg in First Class comes out to $479.60 per person, or an astonishing $1,918 round-trip for two people! To put that in perspective, over the past couple months you could easily find paid Business Class tickets for a similar route for as low as ~$1,500. Additionally, those tickets would earn both elite and redeemable miles, and were widely available on almost any date.

So in essence, you'd be purchasing 150,000 miles by using the companion pass for $1,918 which is a rate of roughly 1.3 cents-per-mile (CPM). It's worth nothing that at times that have been up to 50% transfer bonuses to Avios from American Express Membership Rewards, and in that case would effectively bring the cost of "purchasing" Avios down to just 1.0 CPM.

In itself, that's not a bad deal at all, if you're able to find availability.

Where's the availability?

"All travel must originate in and return to the US. The voucher cannot be redeemed for travel with BA’s franchisees, code share partners or oneworld Alliance members."

This is perhaps the nail in the coffin in terms of finding a practical use for the certificate. In short, you can only use the pass for travel to/from the US, and it must be on British Airways flights - no codeshares with other partners, including American Airlines, are allowed.

"The voucher will be issued in the name of the main BA/Chase Credit card account holder, who must travel on any voucher."

On top of that, you must be one of the two people traveling, which means that unfortunately you cannot use it for others.

So how does availability from the West Coast look like? Let's look at a few examples - there's no availability for close-in flights from SFO to LHR:

And nothing from either SFO or LAX to LHR several months out in March/April:

Even if you're able to plan 10-11 months in advance, there's still nothing!

Adding it all up

So if you live in the West Coast and are determined to use the certificate, you'll essentially to make your way Eastbound to other US gateways. For example, from ORD and JFK there is some decent award availability for both close-in bookings and further out in March/April 2015 for example. But even then, finding availability for both the outbound and return flights within a specific window of time isn't easy. You'll have to be extremely flexible.

Since the companion certificate does not cover non-British Airways flights, you are left on your own to pay for the cost of getting to gateways such as ORD or JFK. Even if you're able to plan in advance, round-trip airfare for two can easily cost $500-$600.

And on top of that, for a crazy risk-averse traveler like myself, flying on two separate tickets and facing IRROPS isn't something I'm willing to deal with, so depending on the flight schedule I'd likely find myself arriving the night before and booking a hotel.

When you add up all those costs and also take into account the availability of cheap Business Class fares, it simply does not make sense for West Coast flyers to utilize the British Airways Travel Together Certificate.

I'd love to hear from others who have successfully used the companion ticket, is there anything I'm missing?

How Long Does It Take To Transfer Points To Singapore Airlines?

The Lufthansa First Class award availability bonanza between Denver and Frankfurt was the perfect catalyst to begin planning a trip in early 2015. Ideally, I was hoping to find a way to also work in a flight aboard the Singapore Airlines A380 in Suites Class.

I sat down in front of the computer, and 3 hours later had found the perfect routing on the exact dates that I was looking for. It doesn't get much better than that!

That is, until it was time to book.

With everything happening so quickly, all the Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles I needed to complete the booking weren't in my account. In fact, they were still sitting in my American Express Membership Rewards and Chase Ultimate Rewards accounts, ready to transfer over.

The problem was that while all of the US airlines and many of the international ones, such as Birtish Airways, offer instant transfers, Singapore Airlines does not.

How long does it take to transfer points to Singapore Airlines

This is a pretty typical scenario that many people find themselves in. A huge benefit of the Amex and Chase programs are that points can be transferred across a wide array of partners. Therefore, it doesn't really make sense to speculatively transfer points until you find the award space that you need. That isn't a problem for programs that have instant transfers, but does present some risk for programs such as Singapore Airlines where there's no no guarantee that your award flights will still be available by the time the miles hit your account.

I submitted a total of 5 transfers across multiple Chase and Amex accounts, and prayed that the award space would will be there when the miles posted. The requests were submitted at Thursday night at 8PM PST, and the miles arrived in my account at 10PM PST on Sunday night.

During those 38 hours, besides constantly refreshing my AwardWallet account every 5 minutes, I also did some research in the attached thread from Flyertalk which provides many more data points.

Here are some high-level takeaways:

• How quickly you receive your miles is highly dependent on the day of the week and time of day that you submit the request
• Transfers are handled in batches, with most reports indicating that processing occurs on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursday
• Since the process involves a human component, as you can guess processing occurs during normal business hours in Singapore, which is 12 hours ahead of EST and 15 hours ahead of PST
• Related to the 3rd bullet, nobody has reported receiving miles posted over the weekend in Singapore time
• Miles transferred from Starwood SPG reportedly post only once a week on Tuesdays (Singapore time)

Since everything is processed in Singapore local time, that's why I mentioned that both the day of the week and time of day come into play. For example, if you submit a request on Sunday 2PM PST, which is Monday 5AM Singapore time, there's a strong possibility that you could receive your miles in a matter of hours.  

Make sure to plan ahead

So what does this all mean for you? If you think you'll need to use miles from your Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer account, then it's important to plan ahead.

In general, you can expect to receive your miles in 2-3 days when transferring from Amex or Chase, but may take up to a week when transferring from SPG if you miss the last cutoff until the next week's batch is processed.

Overall, Singapore's frequent flyer program is quite generous when it comes to miles and flight awards, and here are a couple reasons why I would have no hesitation pre-emptively transferring miles into my account:

• Singapore Airlines has a generous award expiration policy of 36 months, with the ability to extend for 6 months. It's worth noting that miles expire on a rolling basis based on when they posted, and new mileage activity does not extend the expiration of all previously earned miles
• Singapore has a fairly generous change fees structure with no fees to change dates, and $12-$20 fees for flight/route changes, and only $30 fees to re-deposit  miles.

These Lesser-Known Credit Card Benefits Help When Things Go Wrong

It's the day of your flight, and you've made it to the airport without an email notification or call from an (800) number, notifying you that your flight has been delayed. You make it through security, pass by the departure monitors, and everything's still looking good.

As you queue up for boarding, the gate agent comes on the PA system and announces that the flight has been delayed by just 30 minutes. Not a big deal, until that 30 minutes turns into an hour, and then a few hours, and next thing you know you're looking at a 12 hour delay or even a cancellation.

There's probably a long list of 4-letter words that will be going through your head at that point, but one more that should be top of mind is "card" and more specifically, credit card.

I received a note related to my AAdvangate Platinum Select credit card a few days ago highlighting some enhancements that will be rolling out next month. Nothing big related to earning or bonus categories, but instead things that I'd consider to be behind the scenes and often overlooked. In fact, I'll fully admit that I couldn't begin to tell you the different benefits from the above categories across all of the credit cards in my wallet.

It's a nice reminder of the coverage that can protect you then things inevitably go wrong. In particular, a few of the enhancements that jumped out to me include:

• Trip delay protection: Covered expenses include meals, ground transportation, and hotel expenditures up to $500 for delays lasting over 12 hours
• Baggage delay protection: Covered expenses include necessary items up to $100 for delays lasting over 6 hours
• Trip cancellation insurance: Up to $5,000 coverage with fewer restrictions and exclusions 

While we tend to focus on the big-ticket components of credit cards such as bonus categories, these often overlooked travel benefits are available with most credit cards. The restrictions, exclusions and dollar value of the benefits do vary by card issuer and card type, and can be found in the booklet you presumably threw out after receiving your card.

The reality of travel is that things will go wrong, and it's important to know what benefits you have available to you through your credit card. For example, nowadays airlines are much stingier with providing hotel accommodations, often reserving these only for top-tier elites in cases of mechanical delays, and rarely to anyone in cases of weather-related delays. Knowing that your credit card will provide up to a $500 benefit in those cases can provide peace of mind that you won't be left out in the cold.

Keep in mind that these credit card benefits should augment any compensation or benefits offered by the airlines as a result of delays, cancellations, and lost baggage, and should be the first place to start.

Why I'm Smarter Than President Obama

As Gary wrote about earlier this afternoon, President Obama's credit card was declined when he tried to use it at Estela, an upscale a restaurant in downtown Manhattan in New York City. Luckily, the First Lady came to the rescue and picked up the check.

It remains unclear if the decline was related to the Chase data breach, but Chase claims to have sent him an email and text to verify the charges. I guess he wasn't able to get back to them, since he was busy dealing with other small issues, like ISIS and Ebola.

So why am I smarter than the President, at least on the topic of points and miles? He clearly has no interest in points, since he was using the wrong card to begin with. What a rookie mistake!

While the Palladium card offers 2x points on travel, it only offers 1x points on dining and thus, has no place being used in a restaurant. Instead, he could have used the Chase Sapphire card for 2x points on his meal, or perhaps even 3x if it was the first Friday of the month. Even the Chase Hyatt credit card would have been a better option, as it also provides 2x points on dining.

Also, it's pretty risky to only have one credit card on-hand. Luckily, if I run into the same situation as him I have a backup plan in the event my Palladium card is declined. On a typical day, and even when traveling internationally, I always make sure to have at least 3-5 cards on-hand across all the credit card issuers just in case I run into a situation like this.

I'll have to cut the President some slack, since due to security concerns he probably doesn't have the option of carrying multiple cards. Since Michelle's wasn't denied, she presumably used a different card than the Palladium card - maybe she's the smarter one in the family and broke out the Chase Sapphire!

Alaska Airlines Credit Card Bonus Offer: $50 Flight Discount

I've written previously about my experiences with the Bank of America Alaska Airlines credit card. While it doesn't come with the biggest sign-up bonus nor have the best bonuses on spend, you still get a ton of bang for your buck. For the $75 annual fee, you'll receive 25,000 Alaska Airlines miles along with a Coach Companion Fare which let's you add a companion to any trip for just $118 round-trip. Oh, and the card is extremely churnable, with reports that it's possible to get a new one every 90 days.

I received an unexpected surprise in my email this morning with a bonus offer for a $50 flight discount after spending $500 on the card. But wait, but there's some fine print - the spend must be at qualifying book, toy, electronics, sporting goods and department stores from the day you activate through December 31, 2014. The categories seemed a bit odd to me, so here's the exact definition on what is included:

"*To be eligible for this offer, your account must be open with charging privileges and you must activate this offer by December 31, 2014. You will receive a $50 flight discount code on future travel if from the date you activate this offer through December 31, 2014, you make purchases of $500 or more at merchants which are assigned one of the following specified merchant category codes ("MCC"): Department Stores (5311), Electronics Stores (5732), Computer Software Stores (5734), Hobby, Toy and Game Shops (5945), Book Stores (5942), Sporting Goods Stores (5941) and Sports Apparel, Riding Apparel Stores (5655), each an "eligible purchase" for this offer. Please note that this list does not include MCC(s) commonly assigned to large discount retailers that are often referred to as "big box" stores or "superstores". Although we do not determine which MCC a merchant chooses to classify itself, merchants are generally classified based upon their primary line of business. Purchases made at merchants that do not process transactions under these codes, credits, returns, adjustments, purchases of cash equivalents, fees, interest charges and fraudulent transactions will not qualify. We reserve the right to verify eligibility of all transactions. If your account is converted to a different rewards program or to a card without a rewards program during the offer timeframe, the offer is no longer valid. Allow up to 12 weeks from the end of the promotion for the $50 flight discount code to appear in your Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan^TM online account. You must use 'My Account' to access the $50 flight discount code at www.alaskaair.com/myaccount. The discount code can only be used on Alaska Airlines flights and is not valid on partner airlines. The $50 flight discount code expires on 12/31/15."

It certainly doesn't hurt to register, but if you plan to meet the $500 spend requirement, make sure to take into account the MCC code when planning your purchases. For me, the easiest category of the group looks like department stores.

There was one more piece of information in the email that jumped out to me:

"The value of this reward may constitute taxable income to you. You may be issued an Internal Revenue Service Form 1099 (or other appropriate form) that reflects the value of such reward. Please consult your tax advisor, as neither Bank of America, its affiliates, nor their employees provide tax advice."

The wording is extremely vague and doesn't provide any details, but tt's the first time I've seen this type of language in a bonus offer. Hopefully it's not a sign of things to come, especially as the discussion around the taxability of miles starts to gain steam.

Churn The Alaska Airlines BofA Credit Card And Save Big With Multiple Companion Passes

As I wrote about previously, this year I've switched my primary airline from United to Alaska Airlines. My experiences so far this year with Alaska have been overwhelmingly positive, and I haven't looked back. I have been trying to quickly build my Alaska mileage balance, and in addition to flying and purchasing miles, signing up for the Alaska Airlines credit card from Bank of America has been a huge help.

The offer on the Bank of America website is for 25,000 miles after 1st purchase with a $75 annual fee that is not waived. The card also comes with the following benefits:

• Earn 25,000 Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan™ Bonus Miles upon approval.
• Coach Companion Fare every year from $118(USD) ($99, plus taxes and fees, from $19).
• Earn 1 mile per $1 on all purchases
• Earn 3 miles per $1 on Alaska Airlines tickets, Vacation packages, and Cargo purchases
• Earn up to 5 miles per $1 at partner hotels and restaurants
• Enjoy no mileage cap. There's no limit to the number of miles you can earn with the Alaska Airlines Visa Signature card.
• Go far and wide with miles redeemable on over a dozen airlines. Visit the Alaska Airlines website for the airline partner list.

This thread over on Flyertalk has a lot of good information, including more lucrative sign-up offers:

• 25,000 miles after 1st purchase, $75 annual fee but $100 statement credit after $1,000 spend in 3 months 
• 30,000 miles after 1st purchase, $75 annual fee
• 40,000 mile offer after $10K spend in 6 months, $75 annual fee

While the bonus miles are great, the one benefit that has saved me a ton of money is the annual Coach Companion Fare, which allows you to add a companion on any Economy Class booking for just $118. Unlike most companion tickets, this one even allows you to earn EQM and RDM's on the companion ticket.

Best of all, the Bank of America cards are churnable, meaning that you can apply for multiple personal and business versions. While there isn't a specific or published time to wait between applications, reports on Flyertalk indicate that you can do so as often as every 3-4 months. Depending on your ability to manufacture spend, the various offers will appeal differently to each person, and personally I've found the 25,000 offer after 1st purchase and $100 statement credit to work best for my spending patterns.

According to the T&C's, you can even use multiple companion passes when planning travel for a large group, since it states that the owner of the Companion Fare code but be either one of the travelers on the reservation, or can be the one that purchases the reservation for two other people.

Who can use my Companion Fare Discount Code?
The Mileage Plan™ member who owns the Companion Fare Discount Code must either be one of the travelers or the purchaser of the reservation. If the member is allowing two travelers to use his or her Companion Fare Discount Code, then the member's name must match the name on the credit card used to purchase the reservation.

This is how I was able to use multiple companion passes on a booking for a family trip later this year, where instead of having to purchase 6 tickets, I purchased 3 tickets + 3 companion passes. Each of those companion passes saved over $500, which brought my total savings to over $1,500. Since the cost of the companion ticket is fixed, it makes sense to use them during times when fares will be highest such as holidays, peak seasons, and for last-minute travel.

Have you had success churning the BofA Alaska Airlines Card? What have you used your Companion Pass tickets for and how much money did you save as a result?