Has anyone cashed in their Capital One Reward Miles? If so, did you use their travel agents for purchasing your tickets or did you purchase them yourself and get credited by Capital One for your purchase? I'm trying to figure out which way is best. The object of course, is to get the best price for each ticket because the cost translates into miles used. Are their agents able to purchase for less than I can find on my own? Any one have experience with this?

Miles one is very "no hassle". First of all, I selected my preferred airline and flights, seats, etc. from the airline's web site. I then called Capital One (Miles One), told them what I wanted and bingo......done. Very easy to deal with.

Curious

Does this really answer the question of the OP? I don't have a capital one card - - but as I understand the original question... if they find you a $600 ticket, there will be more "miles" deducted from your account... then if you find your own $300 ticket, and then... (well, what then? do you have them purchase it? I don't understand this "get credited" thing).

Do they offer seats on <u>all</u> airlines? What does it take to get a coast-to-coast seat on Southwest, for example.

The combination of American Express Memebership Rewards, with transfers to Southwest's Rapid Rewards remains about the best FF deal I know of, for now.

1500 (yes, 1500, not 15000) Membership rewards &quot;miles&quot; gets you a Rapid Rewards credit. I never seem to rack up enough Rapid rewards credits (and they're only good for 12 months) for an actual free ticket - - but I always have a few - - so I can &quot;top up&quot; from AmEx Membership Rewards, and get a domestic ticket for &quot;scrap&quot; miles from my AmEx account lots of times.

And the best thing about Southwest is no blackout dates, and no capacity controls - - as long as you can find a seat (doesn't matter what class/price seat it is, as a paid ticket), and you have the 16 credits (translation: 24000 AmEx Membership Rewards miles, even if you had NO actual Rapid Rewards credits banked) - - then you get the seat.

Way better deal than the &quot;legacy&quot; airlines which always seem to have a requirement like Saturday night stay, or &quot;double miles required&quot; - - or no seats at all - - when you need them!

The combo of Am Ex Membership Rewards and Rapid Rewards is easily the best deal on FF award travel I have had in the recent past.

For what it's worth, these are also honorable mention:

1. UA inter-island Hawaii travel for only 5000 FF miles

2. AAdvantage award travel to the Caribbean for only 30000 miles (in May - - amazingly wide open dates and seats)

3. Sky Miles BizElite travel on Delta's new ATL-Maui nonstop for the standard award level of 50000 miles (possible on relatively short notice because the route was newly announced last fall - - probably not so easy to get now).

I have become so distrustful of all the FF miles programs that I have tapped them all down to fairly paltry balances in the past few years (upcoming trip to USVI for the seven of us in our family is my last big &quot;pop the balloon&quot; for the foreseeable future). It's a little bit depressing to see all my accounts with miles &quot;balances&quot; of less than six figures, but I am working on building them back up again, little by little.

Until I figure out something more worthwhile!

Best wishes,

Rex

Rex, the regular Caribbean free flight from AA directly is 30,000 miles. And some plan ahead flights are 25,000 miles. What am I missing here that makes the Amex special better?

Yes, I do cash mine once or twice a year. I like to buy the tickets myself, and then call them. I do not think they care who buys, as long as you use the card. As soon as you see online that the charge has been made, (sometimes they make you wait a few days) you call them and ask to have your ticket credited against your miles and in a few days you see a credit. Remember is the price X 80, the # of miles you need. I never had a problem with them, but I never made them buy for me...why would a c card company get better prices?

I was not equating the AXMR/RR &quot;deal&quot; with the AAdvant/Carib (standard) rate of 30k. Two different... and generally unrelated... points...

Point 1 - - I think that the ability to get a domestic RT on SWA, by cashing in (typically less than) 24,000 miles from my AXMR program (because often I have a few RR credits to start with)... is a better deal than the &quot;standard&quot; 25k domestic RT on many of the legacy carriers (DL, AA, UA, CO, NW, US) because a) it takes fewer miles, and there is (little or) no guess work as to whether you can find an available SWA flight with seats and b) the legacy airlines never seem to have ANY seats available, on the days I want at the standard award levels, or the dates are all blacked out.

Point 2 - - on a completely unrelated note, I think that the everyday (standard) 30k award to the Caribbean is an uncommonly good deal when you consider how much some of the fares would cost as a paid ticket. I am not very experienced with trying to obtain such award seats - - and i realize that May is &quot;off-season&quot; - - but it seems like this is/was &quot;peak&quot; desirability to _us_ (in our own situation), and I was very, very pleased that it was not all that hard to find seven seats, coming from different cities, pretty much no matter what dates we wanted them, all over the Memorial Day weekend. That's simply a rather marked contrast with other places (domestic destinations) that I might wish to fly, using award seats, where availability seems so slim (and the seats I would be trying to get are not that expensive to buy them with cash anyway).

Am i making any sense?

But back to the Capital One question - - has mkdiebold's original question really been answered? Do others have the experience that you can get a better deal by diligently looking for yourself (and thereby cashing in fewer miles from your Capital one &quot;miles&quot; accout) - - versus having them find a flight for you?

I never have C-One do the airfare search..I always do it myself and find the absolutely lowest fare and then when the charge appears I have them remove the appropriate number of miles from my account.

The one time I DID have them look for a fare they found one that was more expensive and it cost me a larger number of points..never again.

I rarely use their agents. I prefer to find and book our tickets and once they are on the statement call and have the price credited. They don't care who buys or where as long as you are flying on a domestic US airline. It's always worked great for us. I think you have 60 days or so to call.

Thank you Intrepid1 and urufenta, for answering my question regarding Capital One. Your advice is that I should look for the lowest priced ticket, purchase it with my credit card, and as soon as that purchase appears on my statement, call them and exchange &quot;cost&quot; for my &quot;reward credits.&quot; That way I don't end up having to spend any real dollars.

To Rex, a couple of answers: C-One has no real limitations on the spending of your miles...no restriction on airlines; no blackout dates; no seat restrictions. It's strictly &quot;you earn miles, you spend them based on the cost of the ticket.&quot; The less you spend on a ticket, the fewer miles you give back. What I didn't know was whether the travel agents they use have some kind of purchasing power that I wouldn't have. Sounds like they don't. Guess they really wouldn't have an incentive to save me money/miles.

I use my credit card for all purchases (not all retailers take AmExpress)...even my son's college tuition. They reward up to $10k per month, provided you pay off the balance. I spend at least $60k per year on keeping my household going, not counting tuition. That's a lot of miles earned.
Also, C-One doesn't charge an ATM fee when in Europe.
Makes the spending of hard earned money less painful!

You can even apply the miles credit online -- no need to wait on hold on the phone. If I recall correctly, you need to log on to a different site from the the one where you access your regular account -- you get a separate password for the Rewards site.

The last time I cashed in miles, the agent on the phone had told me that I could not apply a partial credit (e.g, if I had enough credits for $500, I could not apply that to a $600 ticket). But when I went online, the web site actually did let me do that -- get a partial credit on a ticket.

Even better news,nonnafelice! Thanks!

The answer is always &quot;NO&quot;!

So... not to belabor the point - - the concensus is NOt to use the approach described by Curious - - to let them find you the flight. I realize that you were asking, mikd... about te possibility that they can find a lower price. I always interpreted your question as &quot;what is the risk that they will not be motivated to find you the cheapest flight?&quot;

Seems like the answer is as self-evident as one might expect.

Like sending someone else into the grocery with my wallet to buy some items. Not something I would ever choose to do!

Sounds like it is just &quot;miles&quot; term that is misleading. It is &quot;dollars&quot; that can only be applied to domestic air travel.

Keith

Actually, you can get plain dollars (or dollar credits) back if you prefer, but the rate when applied to travel is better: 1.2% as opposed to 1%.

From what I understand, Capital One recently changed their redemption schedule so that it's no longer based on the exact cost of the ticket times a multiplier. It's now a fixed number of miles for all tickets within a certain price range.

I found a sample redemption chart on the Capital One site - http://apply2.capitalone.com/9334/5/...ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

If that's correct, i.e. any ticket costing between $350.01-$600.00 requires 60,000 miles, then it no longer makes sense to shop for the lowest fare (within that fare range).

I don't have the Capital One card, so can anyone confirm if this is how redemption works now?

OK I see that redemption for any ticket over $600 is still based on a multiplier of 100. It's only $600 and under that's tiered. Still it seems like an extremely poor value if you're buying a ticket at the low end of the range.

Patty, you are basically correct, however, there are many different formulas for Cap One cards out there. Multipliers can range from 75 to over 100, based upon the terms of your specific account. We have two cards (an older one and a newer one) and they have very different reward terms. Neither has the formula currently advertised on the web, and the newer card is more advantageous than the older one (that we're using up). So, it is sort of hard to generalize.

So does anyone know what's the best Capital One card with reward miles? Since I need one anyway for purchases abroad, I might as well get one although I assume there's an annual fee for cards that earn miles...