Capital One Credit Card--anyt thoughts?
 

I got one of those preapproved credit card things in the mail yesterday that I usually throw away, but for whatever reason I looked at this one. I have a USAirways Visa now and pay a yearly fee. The Capital One Mastercard flyer says that miles can be used for any airline, and there is no yearly fee. Anyone know anything about this, have one, used one, etc.? It sounds good. I wonder if one can combine the miles there with, say, USAirways miles. Probably not.
Thank you for any info!

Grandmere,

We've had a Capital One card for several years now. We've used it enough to earn quite a few plane trips, although we've only used them for an international trip once. In general, their rules are very simple and redeeming your miles is easy. We've shopped around for other cards and for us, can't find a better deal out there. Here are the caveats we've run across:

Over the past several years, they've twice upped the number of credits you need to redeem your miles. From what I understand, that's universal, though.

Your ticket has to be round trip, no open-jaw.

You need to use their travel agency, which did not provide good follow-up service when our flight times changed. The rep I talked to said to call the airline, the airline said to call them--back and forth.

I'm pretty sure you can't combine it with other miles.

The good part:

There really are no blackout dates, and no booking a year ahead. A couple of months before our trip, I checked Expedia et al to pick which flights I wanted, I called Capital One and told them my itinerary, and they booked it. You have tremendous flexibility.

They cover a US-Europe ticket up to $1000, I believe, which is great for us because we fly out of a smaller airport, which is usually expensive.

You still earn miles on whichever airline you fly, so we also have FF accounts with AA and Southwest. Whichever earns us a free ticket first (miles on AA, Southwest, or routine spending on Capital One) is the one we use. Works well for us.

We have a Capital One Visa - have had for 6 years or so. The last two times we have redeemed miles for cash as I was able to get really good fares.

The first time we redeemed miles (2001), we got 1 ticket (Paris) for miles ($751) and bought a second ticket for the same amount - peak season, little notice - on Air France. The travel office was very easy to deal with and there were no blackouts.

The last two times, I have been able to get outstanding fares and cashed in miles. We just took advantage of the Air France promotion and got 2 tickets from MIA to CDG for a total of $788. I called Capital One and cashed in 80,000 miles for $800. The check arrived in less than a week - they said it would take 4 to 6 weeks.

This works really well if you never carry a balance.

Our number was fraudulently used and CO was very easy to work with.

I just used 135,000 "points" with Capital One for 2 round trip tickets to Rome...American Airlines was their choice...We had no say in what airline.....Worked very well...It will take a while tho to build up points for another international trip!

I have one and like it a lot for several reasons -- the interest rate is low (not that I carry a balance, but just in case), and they don't have a surcharge for foreign currency usage like most cards. I actually use it as a cash-back card rather than trying to get tickets, it's just easier for me (you have a choice of tickets or getting a one percent cash refund on your purchases).

If this is the Miles One card, there is a fee, though-- $19 a year, I believe, which is very low compared to most mileage cards.

There are some drawbacks (for some): NO open jaws itineraries and as I recall you must use a US flag carrier. Tickets must be purchased 21 days in advance.
Check out the mileage reward levels as they may be more stringent than your USAirways award arrangement.

On the plus side there are no blackout dates but don't be fooled, there ARE capacity controls by the various airlines and seats are limited (Cap 1's TA told me this when I was trying to book once) AND there is a dollar limit on the amount of money the ticket can cost, too.Compare first before you take the plunge.

Have had a capital one card for approx. 5 years and charge everything possible to accumalate miles but pay the balance each month. As mentioned by others VERY easy to cash in miles. Didn't have enough for two tickets one time and so their agent book my friend on the same flight charging only the airline fee. No ta fee involved.(Believe they use Carlson travel)
No, you can not combine miles with an airline ff miles.
If you pay the balance off monthly, go for it!

I thought about switching from my AA citibank card to a capital one. Then I found out with Capital one, you get no miles for flying. Not what I want, so I will keep my AA citibank card, and pay the fee. So you do have to think about that and decide if its worth it to you. I got like 12,000 miles for flying to australia, which made a big difference to me in my ff account.

I've had one for several years and just used it to pay for my trip to Italy in July. The key is to use it for expensive tickets. The Italy fare was $1008 when I booked it (has since gone up even more) so I only had to pay $8 for the ticket. I'd had enough "points" that I could have used it on either of my last two trips but those tickets were fairly inexpensive (e.g. to Paris in March the ticket was only $330) so I didn't "waste" my "free" ticket on that. You use the same number of "points" for a US-Europe ticket regardless of whether that ticket costs $300 or $1000. The cashing it in process was very easy. And I do believe there is a $19 annual fee. As others have said, use it to pay for everything you can, but pay it off each month and before you know it - a "free" trip to Europe!

Please see my old message that I just reposted, "Miles One ff program changes." I believe these changes now apply to all the Capital One credit cards that earn air miles.

I think it's great that people seem to be satisfied with their experiences and that says a lot. I prefer to maintain a card that is directly tied to my primary FF account with a major carrier. This allows miles earned from all sources to to be consolidated and provides easy online redemption directly from the airline for flights. The annual fee is offset several times over by promotional offers that include discount certificates and special offers that allow award tickets to be claimed for a lower number of miles.

Regardless of the card someone chooses, it is another way to consistently and painlessly put something into the cookie jar for future travel adventures "and that's a good thing." ;)

We've had the Capital One card for several years. They DO NOT charge an annual fee.

I can't imagine why some would have to pay a fee an others not. Either they charge a fee if you carry a balance which we do not, or you should be able to call them and negotiate. They should remove it.
((@))

Sal,

For some of us, it may make sense to pay an annual fee.

I use a UAL Mileage Plus card for "everything". I like using my miles for first class upgrades or to fly first. I get more "bang for my buck" this way.

With my UAL card, I don't have restrictions on the cost of the ticket. I have used miles for soem fairly expensive tickets.

Bottom line....there is no one right answer. You should get a card that matches up with your own spending and flying habits.

Regarding the fees, it has nothing to do with carrying a balance because I never have. It's an annual fee. This is for the Miles One card. They don't have any fees on their regular credit cards. They have some other mileage cards with even higher fees ($39) that have some other name I don't recall (I think they are VISAs).

Maybe they are having a promotion or something with no fee for those who sign up. I would be interested in what the official name is of the card that grandmere got the information on that is a Mastercard with miles rewards and has no fee, as I can't find any information on such a card on their web site. If they are giving away such cards with no annual fee just like mine, I will call them about the fee.

I also have a Miles One Master Card. Am
very interested in the comments of those
of you who have one and don't pay an annual fee. I do...even though it's only
$20 and I've already gained that in my free ticket. I am very happy with this card and had no trouble booking a flight...was able to fly out of a smaller
airport much closer to home because of the "value" of my ticket. I also charge
everything to the card and make sure it's paid off each month. I'm even happy to pay my son's college tuition...they take credit cards! It's giving me 2 free tickets to Europe next year!
It is harder to get miles on this card
as opposed to a particular airlines card but I like the flexibility of being able to choose what flight and airline I want...don't understand the one comment which said the person had no control over the flight. I told them exactly what flight I wanted. Good luck.

Mark's message that the FF mile requirements had changed is not entirely true. I called Capitol One and asked about the changes. My account did not change and I still go by the old requirements.

I think it's a great card. We usually use it for cash back, but I just spent 25,000 miles for a $465.00 ticket for my wife. Can't beat that. I picked the airline and the flights. Then I called AA and picked the seats.

Regarding the 21 day advanced purchase, that is no big deal. How much more do you think the airline ticket costs for less than a 21 day advance purchase?

One other plus. Any foreign purchases only incur the 1% conversion fee charged by Visa or Master Card. Many of the other cards, like Citibank, add an extra 2% for doing absoutely nothing.

Anytime you fly on your favorite airline and pay for the ticket with your card, you earn FF miles with your airline program and miles with your Capitol One card.

It's a great card, and I've tried some of the others including Citibank.

Curious

Hi all,

How many points do you accumulate per dollar charged?

One thing you should be aware of, however, is that you cannot use Capital One points to upgrade a purchased ticket to a higher class of service like you can with frequent flier miles. I like to buy an upgradable coach class ticket for the longer runs with my airline-associated credit card and then use miles to upgrade them, thus getting more miles both for the purchase and for the flight. I also use the credit cards for all other expenses that I can, and keep a zero balance on them all. I take advantage of any double mile promotions that come along as much as I can. We have Delta, United, and Continental cards. Someone is almost always running a promotion. We have managed one flight in Business Class each year this way. I try to keep enough miles on each card for two upgrades, and if I use one card's miles one year I will concentrate on using that card to put the miles back on it.

Granted, the airline cards do carry an annual fee, and the tickets are more difficult to book. We generally book far in advance, and so far have been able to get seats on one of the three airlines to our destination.

Upstream Pat wrote, "I thought about switching from my AA citibank card to a capital one. Then I found out with Capital one, you get no miles for flying."

I have a Capital One card and a Northwest Airlines frequent flyer account (but not NWA's credit card). Whenever I use my Capital One miles to get a ticket on a NWA flight, I get credit for miles flown on my NWA WorldPerks account.

Thanks, everyone! It seems to make perfect sense for me except for the fact I wouldn't get credit for miles flown, as I do on the USAirways cc, where I accrue miles by spending and flying. If anyone can refute my thinking on that, I'm open to it!

One major consideration might be that since USAirways is probably taking hub status away from Pgh., I might be using others airlines more now.

grandmere: The only refutation I would offer is to rephrase what I said in my last note which is posted just above yours. When I use my Capital One miles to buy a Northwest Airlines ticket, I give the Capital One agent my NWA WorldPerks (frequent flyer) number. I earn WorldPerks miles the same as if I had bought the ticket directly from NWA. In her note upstream, Jocelyn_P says she does the same with AA and Southwest. I imagine you can do it with USAirways.

"Curious," that's very interesting. Capital One has several different credit cards and card programs. Obviously they haven't changed the rules for all of them. Thanks for correction!
-Mark

Thanks, Tim, for spelling it out for me again! It seems like a "no lose" situation. And thank you, Jocelyn, for listing the pros and cons.

And again, thanks all!

Dick, I wasn't suggesting anyone change cards because of the fee. I was suggesting that if you had the SAME card and you were paying a fee while others were not, you should call and see if you could get the fee removed.

Most credit card companies are open to negotiation if you call and discuss it politely.

Evidently I didn't make myself clear. ((@))

Ira,

With my Miles One program, $1 = one point. So, when I charge $65,000 to my card (which can add up quickly considering all the things you can pay with cc nowadays), I have a free ticket to Europe worth up to $1000.

Thanx, Jocelyn.

"you should call and see if you could get the fee removed."

Frequent Flyer credit cards are called reward cards and I have yet to see one without any annual fee. Credit card companies recognize that customers who opt for these cards are travellers and pay-off their balances in full every month - hence, revenue is harder to come by from the all-important finance charges. Therefore, they have to charge an annual fee, in exchange for the miles and other travel service s that comes with these cards.

ezlivin, I don't know if the Capital One is considered a "rewards" card, but we get one airline mile per dollar spent and can get tickets anyplace on any US owned airline. We do not pay an annual fee. I even checked with my husband to make sure.

If airline tickets aren't a reward, I don't know what would be. Most credit card companies know that most people are not going to pay off their cards monthly. The rest of us, they hope, but they carry. The people you buy from pay a fee too so the credit card companies are not losing money. ((@))

Me again; I've done nothing since my last post about this. However, within the last couple days I read here that Capital One does not tack on the extra 2-3% for purchases made in foreign currency. Additionally, just yesterday received another offer from Capital One for a Go Miles Ultra card with no annual fee. And my point is?--- this is still the good deal everyone posted about last year?

I'm probably about to get yelled at for asking for all that info before and not acting upon it :-)

It looks like it to me. That isn't actually the one I have, but virtually the same except mine is a Mastercard and that one is a VISA. It looks like they are pushing VISAs now instead of MC if they are giving them away without the fee. I'm pretty sure I still pay a $19 annual fee with the Capitol One Mastercard with the same terms. It's hard to keep track of these card issuers, the major companies MC and VISA change incentives which makes the banks push one over the other. I know one bank took away my VISA and replaced it with a MC without asking me, and admitted it was because they got better deals with MC. I like to have one of each and really wanted a MC with Capitol One as I have another VISA I like, so don't think I'll switch to that one anyway.

Yes, it's a good deal and they do not charge any extra conversion fee over the VISA/MC one pct.

Just to clarify something....

For years in the US, many banks offered both MC and Visa. As a matter of fact, in some cases, you got both a MC and a Visa for the same account...

There were all sorts of price fixing suits and collusions suits brought against the 2 card companies because of this and so each began to try to establish they were 2 separate entities.

B;anks, therefore, began to choose one or the other but not both. Citibank decided it had a better deal with MC so they converted their Citibank Visa cards to MC,, Chase the same. Bank of America which was the originator of Visa back when it was called BankAmericard nationally (they used the name for a few years for their cards) chose to go with Visa so they converted their MC accounts to visa etc.

MBNA still has both and so do a few other banks but for the most part it is now one or the other although most banks in the US will still take either for cash advances....

Thank you, Christina, and also xyz, for the historical bit.

One comment on what xyz said above. A year or so ago, Citibank sent my partner who has had an AAdvantage Citibank Visa for years a new card -- it was a Master Card. That's what I have. We called Citibank, and they resent him a new card -- this time in Visa. Citibank does both, but they may have been trying to "push" the MC cards.

A lot of the confusion here is because Capital One has two different miles cards. I got this clarified when I booked my flight to Italy last November.

The Go Miles card lets you use a certain number of miles to pay for each hundred dollars of the ticket price, so you would use fewer miles for a cheaper ticket.

The other card is the Miles One Rewards card, which is the one I have. It has the $19 annual fee. For a European ticket, it costs you 50,000 miles and that covers any ticket with a price up to $1,000. No open jaws. However, an apparently little-known fact is that for $25, you can get an open-jaw flight, but the 50,000 miles now only covers $867 instead of $1,000. The flight I wanted was $877, so I paid the extra $10 plus the $25 to get the open-jaw flight.

The big advantage is that you can choose whatever flight you want (as long as it's on a US-based airline) and they book it for you. Also, there is no limit of a certain number of seats per flight for tickets bought with miles like there is for the airline's own frequent flyer miles.

SusanP, one question. Is it still true that you can't combine those miles with other sources? In other words if you already have 30,000 miles with AA, can you claim a 50,000 mile award with just 20,000 on your Capital One card?

And at one time, someone posted that SOME types of Capital One cards DO charge an extra 2% conversion fee for foreign transactions. Is that true or not?

It's beginning to get murky!

Another card to look at is the Bank One Value Miles Visa.
No annual fee
No blackout dates
$1.00=1mile
25,000 miles = one 48 state ticket up to $400.00
35,000 miles = Hawaii,Alaska, Mexico, Canada or the Caribbean up to $600.00
50,000 miles = Europe from the lower 48 up to $800.00
60,000 = Asia,South America up to $1,000
75,000 = Anywhere else in the world up to $1,200.00
Three caveats:
Your miles start to expire three years after you have earned them.
You cannot earn more than 4,000 miles in a month.
They use a two cycle finance charge method so you get hosed if you don't pay of the bill every month.

Patrick, I'm not positive about combining the miles with another frequent flyer program, as I wasn't trying to do that, but I don't think you can do that.

My Capitol One Miles One Reward Card does not charge an extra 2% for foreign transactions. I can't say whether that's true of the Go Miles version.

Now grandmère, why have you started sometimes posting as grandmère1? I thought someone else was trying to steal your screen name until I came across this thread where you are using both. Shame on you for throwing me off track like that! LOL!

Crepes, we got a new provider got pc at home, and when I went to post, Fodors asked me to register. I assumed I had to use a different name, so I just added the "1", since I am grand-mere to one little girl!
So grandmere by day at work, grandmere1 in the evening!

Did I read that you are going to France again this spring?