Flyboy

It's a nice feature, but the reason the difference in conversion charges doesn't matter much is because foreign purchases represent a very small percentage of the card's total annual use; possibly none at all.

LVSue

Like Patrick, I prefer to use my miles for upgrades (more bang for the mile, so to speak) which is why it broke my heart that AA started charging $250 + miles for a one-way Europe upgrade. (I think domestic upgrades are still just miles.) Do other airlines do that now?

Flyboy

I'm not sure what other airlines do, but the very same thing can be accomplished by only allowing mileage upgrades from certain classes of coach seats. For example, on Northwest, the only transatlantic coach tickets that are upgradeable with miles are Y and B class fares. A Q or V class ticket can put you in the very same SEAT at a lower fare at a lower cost, but it can't be upgraded with miles.

Patty

Same with Delta, while there's no co-pay for upgrades, mileage upgrades are allowed on Y/B/M fares only for international travel. Often Y/B/M is only slightly less than discounted business.

Christina

I have a Capital One card (Mastercard) and I'm not sure exactly what my mileage terms are on the one I got. I think it was the old system where you got a little more than one pct value.

IN any case, this card is also a cash rebate card, you don't have to choose. If you don't use it as miles for a ticket, you can opt to just get periodic rebate checks for that one pct rebate. That's what I do anyway, seems simpler to me. If the new card is only one pct, then just forget the whole miles thing.

I like them a lot and just called them to verify the foreign exchange thing as some folks on here said it was going up, and the Wash Post travel section published an article Sunday claiming the base MC rate was 2 pct vs. Visa's 1 pct. The customer account supervisor I spoke to said that wasn't true, both MC and Visa are one pct base. She said she had never heard of the thing about increasing from the zero pct addon and had no information saying that was going to happen soon.

Jocelyn_P

flyboy and Patrick,

I see your point, but if I were to exclusively use an AAdvantage card (for example), I wouldn't have the flexibility in choosing my flights that I have with Capital One. We have kids in school, so our trips need to happen during peak periods and we can't always plan a year ahead. We are still loyal to AA and have frequent flyer accounts with them. So, we're not wasting miles or credit card dollars, but they are split between two accounts, both of which earn us free trips. It's an individual thing; if you can plan way ahead and travel in the off-season, I see how an airline-specific program would work well, but it just doesn't in our case.

pat

The only question is, do you get miles for actually flying? If not, then I`m not interested. I won`t use my AA citibank charge card overseas anymore, but my credit union doesn`t charge a fee so that is the route I am going to follow.

nonnafelice

Just wanted to add to this thread about Capital One, since I just cashed in miles on the Go Miles card for the first time to get a free ticket to Paris.

I previously had their Miles One card for quite some time (now phased out and replaced by Go Miles). With the Miles One plan you could get a ticket up to a certain dollar amount using their travel agency. I think it used to be once you accumulated 25,000 points (i.e., dollars) you could get a domestic flight up to $500. I think it was more points for overseas trips, but I don't recall the details, as I never used it for that. I think there may have been other restrictions as well (such as Sat night stay, but that's now kind of gone by the board in general.)

Now with the Go Miles card you get a point for every 80 cents you spend if you are using the points for travel. This is better than the straight cash rebate (also available from the card), which is 1%. You book a flight yourself on any airline you want and then use your points for a credit. I just did this for the first time, and it was extremely easy.

I had booked a flight to Paris on American for $436, which I put on the card. I went to the Cap One miles redemption web site, and told them I wanted to redeem some miles. (You can do it by phone, too, but the web site was very easy and more convenient for me.) It just tells you to enter the date of your airline purchase, then comes back showing you the record of the charge. It then shows how many points you will have to use to get a rebate for that ticket and asks you if you want to go ahead.

Once you say OK, it then credits your account for the amount of the ticket and deducts the corresponding amount from your points balance. Very easy, and what's nice about it is that you aren't restricted by any blackout dates, limited # of frequent flyer seats, tied to a specific airline, etc. Also, you still get FF miles on the airline for your trip, so you can continue to accumulate more miles that way.

I don't recall anything on the web site saying that you had to use the points for only US airlines, but I can't swear to that, since my ticket was on AA. The interesting thing is that when I put in the date, it came back with 2 possibilities -- one was the AA ticket and the other was a car rental booked through Auto Europe. So it looks as though they would actually have let me use the points for the car rental if I'd wanted to do that instead.

I'm not sure if you could also get a partial credit if you didn't have enough points to cover the whole ticket. That wasn't clear in the the information I saw.

jpie

Hi nonnafelice:

So to finish off your example, how many points were required to purchase your $436 ticket? That is the part that we have been having trouble understanding from their literature.

Patrick

I'd like to ask the same question jpie just asked. I normally spend 90,000 of my miles on my AA ff account to get a $7000 to $9000 Business Class ticket with two extra stopovers -- like having three destinations on one ticket. I get those miles from a whole bunch of sources -- only a fraction of them from dollars spent on my Citibank AAdvantage card. How much would I have to charge on the card you're talking about to get that kind of ticket?

nonnafelice

Sorry I didn't make it clear about the number of points. It's a multiplier of 80. So the $436 ticket was worth 34,880 points. Obviously this type of plan wouldn't be a good deal for someone like Patrick, since it would take you practically a lifetime to pile up enough points to charge a $9000 ticket. But I don't travel enough (or spend enough on the other things Patrick mentioned like flowers, dining, and long distance) to accumulate large numbers of airline miles. So the flexibility of the Capital One card is a good option for me.

John

Good option for me also. Just returned from Central Europe on an open jaw flight using my miles from capital one. Flew Czech air round trip and they being a "partner" with Delta received my free ticket AND got the mileage credited to my Delta account.
SO, free ticket and approx. 9000 ff miles credited to my Delta account.

Intrepid1

We actually have one of these as a back-up card. The only way you get points is by <b> spending money </b> be it on flowers, air tickets, etc. The multiple of 80 was bad enough; the multiple of 100 is even worse so for a cheapo $200 ticket you would have to use up 20,000 points (which means you had to spend $20,000 to get that $200 ticket. Then again, how much money do you have to spend to fly how many miles to get enough miles (in a more ordianry airline FF program) for an award ticket?
I love it when people tell me they &quot;flew for free&quot; because they cashed in their miles. My question is always, &quot;How much did you spend to get those miles?&quot;

Overall, I think specific airline CCs are a better deal in the long run.

Iwan2go

It's late and I'm mixed up reading all of these details, but I wanted to add my experience. I have the old Capital One (called the Miles One) card, which as mentioned has been changed. It requires 25,000 miles for a domestic ticket (value to $500) and 50,000 for an international ticket (value to $1000). I think you need more miles now for a ticket; that's the multiplier you're referring to. Here is how ours works.

We have redeemed our miles twice, once to France (ticket was $750 so was free) and last year to Italy (ticket was $1075, and we had to pay only the $75 overage). Both flights were on Air France - you CAN use an international carrier if it's somehow based (? has offices?) in the US - I cannot remember the way this qualification was met, but Air France was included.

I got the tickets slightly differently than the previous posters: I got on the Air France website, chose my date and flights (and seats) and called Capital One. The Cap One agent booked the tickets directly, while I was watching the website - pretty cool to watch *my* seat disapear!

In addition to this, because the tickets were &quot;purchased&quot;, we got the milage on our Air France frequent flier accounts, and are within 4000 miles of a free international ticket on Air France for me and my husband.

So we're taking our adult children, some of whom have never been to Europe, to Paris for a week next year with the credit card miles, and will go ourselves on Air France miles.

For us it's been a great deal.

isabel

I also have the Capital one card. With the &quot;old&quot; version you did have to call their &quot;agent&quot; and have them book the ticket, but you still got to choose (and most major international airlines are included, like Alitalia, BA, etc). Now you buy your ticket directly (and you can use sites like Orbitz too, not just direct with the airlines) and then call Capital One (or use their website) and they cash in your points. Very easy, no blackout dates, etc.

As far as the fact that you have to &quot;spend&quot; money to get points - well don't you spend money anyway? I use my Capial One for groceries, gas, clothes, to pay all my bills that accept credit cards (cell phone, cable, etc). I only fly about twice a year, and use whatever airline is most convenient/least expensive so that means many different airlines. Hard to accumulate miles that way. So the credit card works bestfor me. And as others have said, since you actually buy your tickets, you can still accumulate miles on the airline programs at the same time (if you do fly one airline enough to earn free tickets that way).

SusanP

I also have the old Miles One version of the card. It's actually better than the newer Go Miles if you want an expensive ticket. I used it last Nov to book my flight to Italy for this Sept. I just looked up the flight I wanted, called them, and they booked it. No blackout dates, no having to worry about FF seats gone.

It costs 50,000 points for a European ticket valued up to $1,000, with no open-jaws allowed. However, what seems to be a little-known fact is that for a fee of only $25, you can get an open-jaw flight, but it reduces the amount covered by 50,000 points to $867.

So for my $880 flight, I used 50,000 points and had to pay $13 plus $25. If I had the Go Miles version with the 80 multiple, I would have had to use 70,400 points. I definitely got the better deal. I also don't fly enough on one airline to build up enough miles for a ticket very often. I was able to build up enough on Capital One because my son's college accepted credit cards!

Iwan2go

I try to accumulate miles any way I can, including paying my son's college tuition on the card, water and power, phone, etc. In addition, if my children have larger expenses (i.e. my daughter's plane tickets to Spain), I charge it and they reimburse me (well, hey it's their ticket next year!) I did the same when we remodeled the house last year with plumbing fixtures, flooring, etc.

Another way to accumulate points is with business expenses, if you can do so. My clients pay me in cash, and I purchase fabrics, tile, and furnishings with my card. (Many of my suppliers do not accept my clients' credit cards, only mine). So the points have added up much more quickly than if I were the only one making purchases.

Marilyn

After yet another frustrating attempt to book award tickets with American, I reread all this info carefully to try to decide if it was worth it for us to switch from our Citibank AA card. Then I spent 15 minutes on the phone with Capital One, and got some very interesting information that I thought I should share.

Not all cards are the same. Depending on your initial offer, you may be redeeming miles at 80, 90, or 100 miles per dollar. I was not surprised that various incentives (like bonus points) were different, but I was surprised that the actual plan was different.

Not only that, but if you choose the cash rebate option, the rate can vary from 1% up to as high as 5%.

Patty

Marilyn,
Do you have any more details on the cash rebate option? How would you qualify for up to a 5% rebate? I couldn't find any information on the Capital One website which indicated that they offer any more than a 1% cash rebate.

Marilyn

Sorry, Patty, I don't have any more info. I asked about the cash rebate option and was told that for my offer it was 1%. Having already learned that the mileage multiplier varied from 80 to 125, I asked if the cash rebate percentage varied as well, and she said it could go as high as 5%. I would imagine that card would carry an annual fee, and have other restrictions on it that were less favorable. In the end, you're only going to get so much and no more. The credit card company is in business to make a profit.