Miles Earned with Credit Cards

micronesia

United States24680 Posts

October 06 2009 14:50 GMT

Many Credit Cards have systems where you earn points for each dollar spent. If you accumulate enough points, you can cash them in for prizes such as airline tickets. For example, you may need 30,000 points in order to receive an airline ticket to anywhere within the USA up to a maximum value of 400 dollars (or something like that). I have no problem with this system.

However, I RAGE (possibly due to hunger) when Credit Card Companies refer to these points as miles. They are called miles yet are completely unrelated to how many miles you can actually fly. I haven't done the math but you might need 10 or even 100 miles for each mile that you want to fly. It drives me crazy when companies do annoyingly deceiving things like this. GAR.

Seraphim

United States4467 Posts

October 06 2009 15:02 GMT

Yeah, you're hungry. Go eat something and find something better to rage about.

nttea

Sweden4353 Posts

October 06 2009 15:19 GMT

I approve of this rage! and so does the people of Zimbabwe.

zatic

Zurich15328 Posts

October 06 2009 15:38 GMT

I have not done the math, but doesn't Miles and More give you the number of miles you fly in points? For example Korea return trip would get me 5300ish miles.

StorrZerg

United States13919 Posts

October 06 2009 15:42 GMT

My card had a points option or % cash back per month. Turns out if i wanted to get a basic mp3 player i'd have to spend like 5k. So i thought that was pretty bad so just took cash back.

RaGe

Belgium9947 Posts

October 06 2009 15:42 GMT

I think zatic's right.

Matoo-

Canada1397 Posts

October 06 2009 16:32 GMT

He is. However modifiers apply afterwards depending on your ticket rate. Obviously if you're in business you'll make more miles than someone in economy class, but even in the same class modifiers can fluctuate - recently I got 6585 miles for an Amsterdam-Lima but only 4938 miles for the return trip because of a 75% modifier (cheapest ticket), with both being in economy class. I raged too.

micronesia

United States24680 Posts

October 06 2009 19:37 GMT

On October 07 2009 00:38 zatic wrote:
I have not done the math, but doesn't Miles and More give you the number of miles you fly in points? For example Korea return trip would get me 5300ish miles.

I think what you earn as a result of flying is much different than what I'm talking about although you are probably right about how it works.

micronesia

United States24680 Posts

October 06 2009 19:38 GMT

On October 07 2009 04:37 micronesia wrote:

Show nested quote +

I think what you earn as a result of flying is much different than what I'm talking about although you are probably right about how it works.

On October 07 2009 00:42 StorrZerg wrote:
My card had a points option or % cash back per month. Turns out if i wanted to get a basic mp3 player i'd have to spend like 5k. So i thought that was pretty bad so just took cash back.

Depending on how you earn points, it's a fairly easy calculation to determine what % back you are getting depending on what you spend your points on. Some deals are better than others.

edit: oops quoted instead of edited lol