I am looking for some input / insight on approaches to get value for AmEx points. The cash statement value isn’t very good. The offers promoted through AmEx generally don’t seem great either.
From what I have read, the best value is usually to transfer to a travel-related partner at a decent exchange rate. Much of what I have read seems to be geared toward obscure airlines or international flights.
Given that I leave near a non-major international airport (Pittsburgh), to the extent that airline use is best, does anyone have thoughts on how to go about it from a non-major airport for domestic travel?
Also interested in hearing about transfer for hotel use if that is a good approach.
The best use of the points is for travel. I have used it on Qatar, Etihad, Delta, American, Air Canada, etc.
Since you live near a small-ish airport, you can always try to find a cheap flight up to the bigger hubs or drive and park at bigger hubs.
point.me is currently free with Amex, so give that site a whirl and see if you can’t find some flights out in the next few months that have a good transfer rate and work with where you want to go. The website will tell you exactly what all you need to do to transfer and book the flight.
Economy has become a miserable experience for almost all airlines. Then there is Spirit and Frontier.
Delta and Breeze (for now) are probably the top of the bad heap of economy class, and while the experience for the seat size/configuration remains the same, the crew, seat location, flight time and how crowded the flight is can make a huge difference for Economy classes.
You are best served by getting the upgrade from status or points from Basic Economy (or whatever each airline calls it) to the next tier up to Economy Plus (or whatever they call it) as it can make a huge difference.
One other thing: always use Seatguru.com to check how bad your bad seat will be.
Use them for Restaurant gift cards, or if purchasing an Apple device-I usually get whatever 1:1 exchange is available or as close to it to make it be worthwhile
If you want to keep it simple and have a Platinum card, switch it to the Schwab Platinum and open an Schwab account. Points cashed out to Schwab are $1=$1.10.
If you travel, you can do much better on value with a transfer to an airline than to a Schwab account.
200k MR points = $2,200 in your Schwab account, but 200k MR points to many airlines (even with or without a point bonus on transfer) for the right flight(s) at the right time can be far in excess of $2,200 in value.
Example: We purchased two Emirates business class tickets from EWR to ATH nonstop (9 hour flight direct) at around 100k MR points/ES miles per ticket. Those flights can be $3.5k-$7.5k per person, round trip. If you can find the unicorn First Class ticket (pod or no pod) the points can go even further.
MR points for travel, dollar for dollar, as against all other redemptions can be the real value if flights and hotels are part of your agenda.
I recently came across a great website called pointsyeah.com which is a very good search engine for finding award space on almost any airline.
Also keep in mind that Amex has now multiple transfer bonuses to airlines like British 30% bonus Hawaiian 20% bonus. So if you transfer 1,000 Amex points you’d receive 1,200 HawaiianMiles.
If point bookings is not you’re thing then I would suggest you try to get The Business Platinum card (try to get a 250,000 sign up bonus) then you could redeem for travel on amextravel.com and receive 35% of your points back on your selected preferred airline or any business class seat. Thus giving you’re points a value of 1.58 cents plus you will still earn airline miles and status from flying
The travel points are worth more but like you said, right time, right flight and finding that can be a challenge especially when it’s more than 2 people. We used to be super into the points game before the kids, now we keep the Amex cards for their benefits and just simply do the Schwab thing.
