Scammed--Do all credit card with points make you book through their agency?

First - You are never limited to one airline's program when you have a specific airline CC. In most cases you can use your earned points on all their partner airlines. There are 4 big alliances and each has at least 10 or more partners.

In your case I would suggest getting a cash back card instead. Any cash you get back save it in a special travel savings account. When you have enough you can book any airline, hotel or whatever that you find the best deal with.

IMHO getting points through a CC cards like what you describe, unless it's specific to an airline and you're a frequent flyer, so it's just an addition to the many miles you get from actually flying with that airline or one of their partners, is a waste of time.

I have 2 USAA cards. I try to leverage the points just like I do on my Discovercard, opting for the awards that give you more return (such as a gift card for $25 rather than a cash back award of $20).

It is hit and miss on the USAA airline awards. Last spring I purchased a ticket through them for the same price as any other outlet using CO to Europe, but because I was using a lot of points, the value of the award was more than if I had taken the cash back, so it was a good deal.

Recently I was purchasing another high cost ticket to NZ and checked if I could book using my points. I could book some of the fares I saw online at other sites through USAA's partner travel agency, but not a sale fare that was $400 below everyone else's--I had to book through the airline's website.

I recently received a notice that the award terms are being changed soon and the higher value travel awards like I used will no longer be available.

You can still use the card and receive cash back instead of points.

I have one card that works on points not tied to any specific airline and you have to book through their agency. They have a set amount of points and a maximum price. From the US to Europe a ticket is 65,000 points (no black outs) and a maximum of $850. I find the ticket I want and call them to book. It somehow goes on my credit card and then is reimbursed by the agency later with points. While the amount of points required for a free flight is slightly more than an FF account with an airline charges (Europe is 60,000 for my Delta FF account), I find this card useful because I can earn FF miles on my free flight. Sort of like double dipping.

I get points on my AM EX card. I can then deposit those points on a one for one basis into any airline account and then use the points according to that airline's rules. I have found this to be a much better program than those that require booking and paying for tickets with your card points. Am Ex also offers a "pay with points" option and it is massively expensive. The cost of a ticket with pay with points is far, far more expensive than if I put the points into the airlines own system. This spring I was able to transfer points from Am Ex to Delta at a 30% bump. That really helped.

I have AmEx too, but I think my MC is probably the better value.

AmEx flight by transferring points to airline - 60,000 pts + cost of taxes on FF ticket.

MC flight - 65,000 pts plus I earn about 10,000 FF miles for r/t Europe.

AmEx and Delta currently have a 25% bonus transfer.
https://www.delta.com/marketing/mileagebonus1009/index.jsp

Capitalone doesn't!

Thanks for all the advice; we'll be looking into something different after we figure out how to get the best rewards on this card for the points we've alread accumulated. After I thought about this for a while I wondered if I'd inadvertently looked at the fares for 2 people rather than the fare for one person. But, the travel awards site was down when I had the time to get back on it, so I couldn't check. Last night I was finally able to try again and while I didn't find fares that were nearly double (on the couple samples I tried) as I had before, they still didn't list the low fares I could find on Kayak so there was about a $150 difference from the $525 I could find elsewhere and this site's $675.

I guess we should have really investigated this more thoroughly prior to using the card. I think the issue is that they don't always pick up the lowest fares and don't include all airlines in their search engines.

Thanks again.