Sorry just antsy to get this shit going again. Appreciate all the help. The knowledge about this stuff in this thread always amazes me.
Buying a car from out of town this weekend and put down a deposit because it's been impossible to pin one down. They've got a financing promo of 0% APR for 36 months when you finance with GM. I said ok yesterday and since then have had 3 hard inquiries on my credit (dealership, GM Financial and Capital One). Is this normal?
The dealer probably submitted to a couple of lenders by default. The same type inquiry made multiple times within a certain time frame (2 or 3 weeks maybe?) should count only once.
Dealer probably ran your credit against multiple vendors. Ideally, they should be clubbed together on your credit report as 1 inquiry.
Does anyone have a resource on how to book a flight through airline partners? I was hoping to kill off some AMEX MR Points but the flight I need is only on United. I think awhile back someone posted a website that figured this shit out for you. I tried to find the flight through ANA and Aer Lingus but no dice.
I like to search Dan's Deals for these types of redemptions. Here are the *A affiliates that are listed as AMEX MR transfer partners. AMEX transfer partners include: Air Canada Aeroplan (Star Alliance) 1:1 instant transfer. ANA (Star Alliance) 1:1 transfer. Avianca Lifemiles (Star Alliance) 1:1 instant transfer. Singapore (Star Alliance) 1:1 instant transfer. You might try Avianca, I've had success with booking cheap United awards flights by transferring MR pts to Aviance. Just know that there's a $25 charge, on top of the usual $5.60 for booking an award flight with them. If you have any CITI points, you can transfer those to Turkish Airlines for the cheapest award flights possible. Just know that the transfer and booking process is a huge pain in the ass, and you have to find "saver" award flights on United, the regular award flights won't show up in Turkish's system
Unfortunately it's no longer this straightforward, as the concept of the "saver award" has gone away and UA has implemented dynamic award pricing. (There's a long flyer talk thread about this in the UA forum. ) I've also had good luck in the past using Lifemiles (Avianca) to redeem with UA and other *A members, but you do need some patience because there can be language issues with the customer service (and many ppl report larger customer service challenges - though I've been pretty fortunate in dealing with them for two different trips with many contacts each.) Definitely recommend not transferring to AV unless you're absolutely certain what you're using those points for in an immediate sense. Also usually that $25 charge (which shouldn't deter anyone anyway tbh) I thought was only for assisted bookings using their agents...
Not sure what this is about, but I just searched for an upcoming award flight and "saver award" is definitely still a thing
I booked two award flights with Avianca online a few months back and it cost ~$62 after taxes and fees. Still a bargain imo
Sorry I see I'm confusing issues. They've changed how they display award search results and it's no longer as easy as it once was to determine if a business award is the type that is made available to partners or not. That saver label used to be a good (though certainly not flawless) indicator, but it's pretty much disappeared at this point.
Gotchya. And I think I see what you're saying, because the "saver" award travel that UA shows used to be available for booking on Turkish, but for this particular flight, the availability doesn't show up on Turkish. Wonder if it takes a while to show up in their system, because this is new UA award availability that wasn't there a month ago. Could also be because it's noted "this flight is exclusive to Mileageplus card holders"
That's key and unfortunately means it's highly unlikely that the inventory is being made available to the partners.
I am now the proud owner of a Venture X and the suite of benefits that entails. Kneel before me! And also use my referral if you’d like! Here’s my Venture X referral link: https://capital.one/3wu90nt
I saw an unsubstantiated screen shot floating around. It’s not been confirmed. I’m downgrading my CSR and locking in the 80k.
Wonder why chase would run a similar promotion, on worse terms for themselves, immediately after the 80k, which already is a great sign up bonus. I can't imagine a ton of people are sitting around waiting for more than 80k. Something big with the CSR would make more sense to me
I'll probably try to see what type of biz cards offers are around once I drop under 5 so I can hold out for the next good Chase personal offer.
Ooof This close in I think you're gonna be hard pressed to find the partner award. Sometimes that shit opens up very last minute, but I couldn't do it that way if it were me.
Check your offers It's a $300 credit when you spend $1k on travel using the International Airlines Program (Intl travel booked via the amex travel site and not directly with one of the airlines)
I wish there was a price calendar feature for the amex travel shit. My dream is to find a $1,500ish biz fare US to Europe on a oneworld carrier - spend (effectively) $1,200, bank the 5x MR, and earn a bunch of miles for eventual AS/AA or maybe Condor use.
Fuck. Just booked a flight to Norway through Chase because it was a little cheaper than through the Amex portal.
Bergen. My wife and SIL are going over for a couple of weeks and then I am flying over when the SIL leaves and we are spending a week cruising up to northern Norway then flying over to do a few days each in Amsterdam and Copenhagen before coming home.
If you had 3-4 days in Bergen what would you suggest as activities? I saw yesterday that United started a direct service from Newark to there on 5/20.
We went up Floyen and hiked around, took a fjord cruise up to around Flam and back, wandered around Bryggen and went to the sea food market, and then just generally walked the city center. There’s a nice park right in the center of the city that had a lot of stuff going on. We Airbnb’d an apartment right by university of Bergen and walked. I’d say stay outdoors as much as physically possible. Fjord cruising was my favorite. Bryggen was very tourist-trappy. Neat to see, but I was over it quickly. We also took an overnight train to Oslo. I’d do that during the day. Also wishing we would have gotten off and found things to do in the towns and villages that the fjord cruise stopped at. Also, more boats. We spent 1/4 days (our first day, exhausted) with my wife’s Bergen relatives who took us on a family history tour where we just went to peoples’ houses. They didn’t know them, just said hi these are our American cousins, this was our great grandfather’s brother’s wife’s uncle’s house 75 years ago, and they were all like come in! That was fun, but not exactly something you can sign up for.
need to open a new card for a large purchase in the next couple of weeks. have csr (and haven't had it for long enough to double dip), amex platinum, wife has the csp, and we each have hilton cards. is the venture X still one of the better travel cards to get?
Yes - I’m a big fan. I like their app and travel portal a lot better than Chase and Amex too. The capitol one lounges aren’t really a thing yet but they say they’re building them out. If you choose to apply, here’s my Venture X referral link: https://capital.one/3KYEPdr
Damn wasn't approved for the CSP just now. It's been a week since I downgraded the other card. Credit score isn't an issue. So now what. Venture X? Looking to basically build miles/points for a nice trip in the fall hopefully.