Hoyt Ag said:
Say you have 100k in points, that is good for $1500 to use when booking travel on their site. You won't always find the best deals with they are really really close. I just booked 10 nights and tile in at $2 more at night from the best deal I could find online. But the fact that I could use my points and not cost me a single dollar out of pocket was worth it to me.
I think I understand...the travel on the portal is not sold by point values. It is still sold by cost, but if the cost is $1500, that will only require you to use 100k points to book it, correct? I was thinking it's like airlines, where every flight has a different point value associated with it.
That is a better return than Venture, as I currently "trade" 1k points for a $1000 credit.
I do like the ease of the Cap One travel eraser, though, as I'm not worried about the value of my points when shopping around for trip components. I just book what I want (sometimes I shop for the best deal, other times, I know exactly what I want and there are no "deals" to be had). Then the credits sort themselves out after the charges hit my bill.
I already spend SO much time planning trips, I'm concerned the travel portal will just make that worse (as I will want to get the absolute most bang for my buck if I'm paying $450 a year for a card vs $95). I already tried using a Hawaiian Air MC to collect points for flights to Hawaii - I actually was able to get two ~almost~ free tickets out of it, but it was such a PITA that I cancelled the card after redeeming my points. I just used some Southwest points of mine and my son's to book two flights to Orlando, but because neither of us had enough points for a full round trip ticket, and SW charges for points transfers, I wound up with four one-way tickets instead of two round-trip. I enjoy saving money, but it was twice the effort. At some point, diminishing returns kicks in.
I'm kind of kicking myself that I didn't go for the CSR when they had the 100k point bonus, though. I didn't realize at the time just how much that was worth.