I've had a different experience with Capital One. They changed my program last fall from 25,000 points for a free domestic ticket in the eastern zone of the USA to the new 35,000 points for a ticket <$350. I get 1.25 points per dollar spent, but that is a far cry from the advertised no hassles. Then they stick you with interest charges on your bill if you don't pay the monthly charges in full and assume that the credit for the ticket costs will make up the difference. I cashed in two tickets last month but I figure that I spent almost 3 tickets worth of points as of the rate they gave me last fall. I'm looking to leave Capital One, any suggestions?

lavgreen, doesn't every credit card charge you interest if you don't pay in full each month? I don't quite get your contention that they "stick you with interest charges". Can you explain how this is different from other mastercard's out there?

I think lavgreen was expecting the mileage redemption credit from Capital One to appear on the same statement cycle as the actual ticket purchase and it sounds like that did not happen which resulted in finance charges.

What I found, in my situation, about interest charges on Capitol One, is that you have to make the full payment 2 months in a row, & then they don't charge interest, after that. I got sucked in by their 6 months 0% interest on any balance. So I let the balance ride until just before the date their rep told me that the interest rate would be instituted. I paid off the full balance on the last statement they sent me before the date to start interest charges. The next monthly statement then showed an interest charge. I called Capitol One to find out why. The rep said sure you paid it off, but read the fine print, you have to pay the full balance for 2 months in a row, & then keep paying off the full balance each month before there are no interest charges. I had only paid the full balance for 1 month, & until I made that 2nd full payment, interest charges accrued. The rep did wave the interest charge, but she did get abit snotty about it.

I have stopped using Delta Skymiles card, because it is such a bother getting FF trips. We used our Capitol One for a London trip and I was very happy.....no hassle!!!!!

Capital One Miles Card: Advantage--easy to actually get tickets when cashing in on FF miles. Big disadvantage--each mile is worth only 1.2 cents. So this is like a Christmas Club savings account in a bank--so convenient, but really not to your advantage financially. What do I do--I use dividend cards (AMEX and Dividend CitiCards) and pay "retail,consolidator, or APEX" prices -- Why? because the dividend cards pay me more than 1.2 cents per mile and on Citicard, they send me a check immediately when my refund is at least $50--the credit card companies do not make money on my "float." People who think that "loyalty" or amount of purchase gives you special privileges in using FF miles are deluded. The magic words are capacity control which means you will have a huge amount of difficulty in cashing in your miles, especially during desirable times. The use of FF miles to get a "premium coach seat" or to upgrade to a business or first class seat cheapens the value of your miles even more. The rationalization that the use of miles to upgrade when you have excess miles to burn is silly if you have the option to get a cash dividend which is worth more than than the FF cents per mile. Only if you get the FF miles to your account when someone else is paying your ticket, such as on a company related business trip, might this strategy sound logical. The bottom line is that FF programs are like retail stores saying that a product sells for 90% off; the problem is that the product is not available and if if became available, then it would not be 90% off. Why go through this unethical, marketing hype? For me, cash is king. I do not have any FF cards, including Capital One cards and have no hassle getting an airline ticket on the day I wish to fly.

The use of FF miles to get a "premium coach seat" or to upgrade to a business or first class seat cheapens the value of your miles even more. The rationalization that the use of miles to upgrade when you have excess miles to burn is silly if you have the option to get a cash dividend which is worth more than than the FF cents per mile.

For the past 3 years, I've used my miles for business class tickets from the US to Africa which are 120,000 miles each. The cost for such a ticket would be in the neighborhood of $6000+ each. For the sake of argument, let's say that I'm also willing to fly coach (which I'm not). A coach ticket from US to Africa would cost me 80,000 miles. Most of the cash rebate cards I've seen earn 1% on the majority of purchases and a higher percentage only on certain categories or during a promotional period, so let's say I'm able to average 1.5% (which I'm not even sure is possible). That means charging $80,000 would equal a $1,200 cash rebate which is several hundred to a thousand dollars shy of the actual cost of an economy ticket from the US west coast to Africa depending on the time of year. At $120,000 = $1,800, it doesn't even come close to the cost of a business class ticket. While it does require some work and flexibility on my part, I've never not been able to get the flights I need.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. If you can point out a cash rebate card that would consistently net 3-5%, I might be interested.

We have used our Capitol One miles several times without any problems. With the card you buy your ticket anywhere and then get the price refunded from Capitol One if you have enough miles in your account.
A few years ago we had enough miles to cover the cost of 2 tickets to S. American. I needed 3 tickets which we purchased from Expedia at a discount, then had Cap 1 use the miles in our account to refund the cost of two of them. We purchased the tickets with our Cap 1 card so we got added miles for the cost of all 3 tickets.
Just recently my wife traveled to the UK at the last miniute and spent $900 on a ticket thru Priceline. Our almost 200,000 miles on the Capitol One account was more than enough to cover it. I claimed the ticket cost online, they had a record of the ticket purchase and immediately credited my account for the $900.
You can book flights thru Cap 1 but I haven't tried them yet. If you don't want to use the miles to get ticket costs refunded, you can use them to purchase other things at the Cap 1 website.
We've had the Cap 1 card since 1995 and have never had a problem with their service.

We've booked lots of trips with this card and it has always been easy---we love it!

I chose not to do it. Nearly every year we do free round trip business class tickets with AA ff miles for 90,000 each for the two of us -- and get two stopovers. Those tickets would sell at $6000 each or more. How much would I have to spend on my Capital One card to buy two tickets at a total cost of $12,000? I like getting more for my "money" or should I say more for my "miles" than Capital One offers. Plus you can't combine them with other miles earned other ways.

Sure I have to play the game a bit and plan ahead to get my seats on AA, but so what? I plan a trip a year ahead anyway. So far never had a problem getting the flights and seats I want -- except one day I had to stay an extra day in Europe from my original plan.