The points and miles world is full of intricacies; so many that there’s simply no way that anyone is going to learn—nor remember—all of them.
Sometimes these quirks are positive. Sometimes they’re things to be cautious of. Other times they’re neither good nor bad; just something to be aware of.
While this is far from being an exhaustive list, here’s a list of more than 20 points and miles quirks that it can help to be aware of.
1) 50 night Hyatt Milestone Reward doesn’t include a Guest of Honor award
This is top of mind as it’s an error that both Nick and I made recently. Both of us are currently at ~45 Hyatt elite night credits for the year and wanted to get to 50 elite nights because then we’d earn a Guest of Honor award, plus we’d get to pick two Suite Upgrade Awards as our optional Milestone Reward.
Except that’s not how it works.
Hyatt does give you a 50 night Milestone Reward of your choosing which includes two Suite Upgrade Awards, but no Guest of Honor award is given at this level.
You get one at the 40 night level, two at the 60 night level, and then another at most subsequent Milestone Rewards levels, but zero at the 50 night level. That’s worth being aware of in case you were considering a mattress run specifically to get another Guest of Honor award upon earning 50 elite night credits.
2) Personal & business Hyatt cards earn elite nights through spend differently
Speaking of earning elite night credits in the World of Hyatt program, there’s another important quirk to be aware of when earning them through spend on Hyatt credit cards.
If you have the Chase World of Hyatt Credit Card (i.e. the consumer card), you earn 2 elite night credits for every $5,000 you spend. It doesn’t matter when that spend occurs as it’s cumulative over time, starting from day one of being approved for the card. That means that if you spend $4,999 in December and $1 in January, you’ll earn two elite night credits even though that spending takes place across two different calendar years.
It works differently for the Chase World of Hyatt Business Credit Card. For starters, you earn 5 elite night credits for every $10,000 you spend, so twice the amount of spend is required, but you earn more than twice the number of elite night credits.
The quirk that’s perhaps less well known though is that spend on the business card is calculated on a calendar year basis. That means that if you spend $9,999 in one year and $1 in January the following year, you’ll earn zero elite night credits.
3) Atmos
Rewards Summit 100K global companion award fare earned on a cardmember year basis after $60K spend
The majority of credit cards that offer some kind of big spend bonus calculate eligible spending on a calendar year basis. A notable exception is the Atmos Rewards Summit Visa Infinite® credit card.
When spending $60,000 you earn a global companion award fare that’s good for up to 100,000 Atmos Rewards points. That $60,000 of spending is calculated on a cardmember year basis rather than calendar year, so don’t get caught out by that if it’s a perk that you’re spending towards.
4) Hilton doesn’t always display the lowest room rate
Hilton’s website can be annoying sometimes as the search results page doesn’t always display the lowest price. I’ve occasionally seen this when there’s been some kind of limited-time rate sale; when clicking through to select a room and scrolling down all the rates, there’s an even cheaper rate available than has previously been displayed in the results.
Even more commonly, this is an issue when selecting special rates like the AAA rate. Hilton displays the AAA rate on the main search results screen, even if that rate is significantly higher than other rates. For example, here are a couple of Hilton properties in Las Vegas on a random date where I selected the AAA rate box:
When clicking through to Crockfords, you can see that the $501 rate is more than 50% more expensive than other available rates that start at $327:
Similarly, the $194 room rate for the Las Vegas Hilton at Resorts World is almost twice the price of other available rates:
To be (somewhat) fair to Hilton, I don’t think theirs is the only website that has this issue. I believe I’ve seen it on Choice’s website in the past and possibly other hotel sites too. Still, it pays to know that rates that are supposed to save you money might cost you more and that lower rates might be available to you that aren’t being displayed.
5) Track upgraded, downgraded, and cancelled cards
If you maintain your own spreadsheet where you track the credit cards that you’ve applied for both for you and any other household members, don’t forget to update it when you make changes to those cards.
For example, when going through my own spreadsheet the other night I noticed a couple of instances where I’d product changed cards, but hadn’t updated my list with those details. It wasn’t a big issue, but making those updates as soon as you make the change(s) can help prevent confusion later on.
6) Logging in can display discounts
When running searches for flights and hotel stays, it can sometimes be beneficial to be logged in to your account due to the lower pricing that’ll be displayed if you do.
One primary example of this is United. Cardholders get access to better pricing and expanded award availability, so it pays to be logged in. United automatically prompts you to do this when running searches though, so it’s not like it’s something you need to remember to do.
Another example is IHG. IHG One Rewards sometimes offers a 15% discount on award stays for cardholders and those with high enough elite status. That lower pricing isn’t displayed unless you’re logged in.
Somewhat similarly, some hotel chains offer lower cash pricing if you’re a cardholder. That includes Marriott and Wyndham; with both those chains you have to be logged in to your loyalty account in order to see that lower pricing.
7) Not logging in can sometimes be better
While logging in to an account sometimes has its benefits, other times it’s more beneficial to not be logged in. For example, if I try to place a Giftcards.com order while logged in on my main account, they seem to auto-cancel my orders. However, when placing an order using Guest Checkout, I’ve been able to get orders through at times when also using a different email address.
8) British Airways lets you redeem fewer Avios for higher taxes & fees
An interesting feature of the British Airways Club program is that you can redeem fewer Avios if you’re willing to pay more in taxes, fees, and carrier surcharges. The value of doing this can vary depending on the route and the various pricing levels.
For example, here’s a look at the off-peak award pricing from London to Copenhagen in economy:
As you can see, the standard award pricing is 10,000 Avios + $5, but there are five other options where you can redeem fewer Avios. The first couple of levels aren’t really worth it as you’d pay $10 or $20 more in order to save 600 or 2,000 Avios.
The third tier is much more appealing though. You could pay an extra $35 in fees which would save you 4,750 Avios—a little bit like buying Avios for 0.74 cents per point. Some would still prefer to have the lower cash outlay of $5, but redeeming 5,250 Avios + $40 is arguably the better value option.
That value doesn’t necessarily hold beyond that tier though. The next level up would be 4,150 Avios + $70 which is $30 more in fees, but only 1,100 fewer Avios which would be a very poor exchange.
This feature of BA’s can also be a great way to utilize the up to $50 airfare credit per quarter on the Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card. Unlike the airline fee credits on the American Express Platinum Card® and Business Platinum Card® that can only be used for certain types of incidentals and for only one eligible US-based airline of your choosing, the credit on the Aspire card can be used for both airfare and award taxes and fees for any airline worldwide.
In the above example, choosing the $40 in taxes and fees would leave you with $10 left over. Other times, BA redemptions can be for precisely $50, such as on this flight from London to Malta:
None of the options in the screenshot above provide amazing value ordinarily, but if you have an Aspire credit you need to use up then doing that to save 4,750 Avios (in this particular instance) could be worth it.
9) Use Hilton Points & Money feature to redeem $50 quarterly credits
Speaking of finding uses for your up to $50 quarterly credits, here’s one for the Hilton credits of up to $50 you get each quarter on the Hilton Honors American Express Surpass® Card and Business Platinum Card®.
These $50 credits have wide utility seeing as they can be used for room rate, room charges, meals, etc. There is an additional potential use case though: Points & Money rates.
Let’s say you want to book an award stay using points and you don’t anticipate spending any money on things like meals or parking at the property you’ll be staying at. Rather than letting that quarter’s credit go to waste, you can choose to pay a mix of points and cash. After selecting the points rate for your room, the checkout screen will have a Points & Money slider at the top. Drag that slider to the point where you’ll be paying $50 or thereabouts.
In the above example, you’re paying $51.82 to save 12,000 points, although $8.50 of that amount is payable for taxes and government charges. That’s not necessarily superb value, but I’d much rather save 12,000 Hilton Honors points than let the $50 credit go to waste.
Something important to be aware of with Hilton’s Points & Money rates is that the cash portion isn’t charged immediately—it’s charged at the hotel when checking out. That means that if, say, you’re making a reservation in August for a stay in November, using this Points & Money feature will use your Q4 credit of up to $50, not your Q3 one despite you making the booking during Q3.
10) Some US Bank cards only count primary cardholder spend towards the minimum spend requirement
This is potentially one of the most consequential quirks listed in this post because not knowing about it could mean you miss out on a large welcome bonus.
With the vast majority of credit cards, spending by both the primary cardholders and authorized users (or employees on business cards) count towards the minimum spend requirement to earn the bonus from a welcome offer.
That’s not always the case with US Bank though. On some—but not all—US Bank cards, only spending by the main account owner counts towards the minimum spend requirement. That’s something important to be aware of if you’d otherwise plan on having an authorized user/employee conduct any significant amount of spending for hitting the spend threshold. This wording is often hidden away at the very bottom of the application page, so it’s incredibly easy to overlook.
11) Chase Offers can work overseas if the retailer has a presence in other countries
One of the nice things about Chase Offers is that the statement credits can sometimes be triggered more easily than similar types of Amex Offers.
A key reason is that the majority of Amex Offers have an exclusion stating that transactions have to be charged in US dollars in order to be eligible, whereas Chase Offers don’t. As a result, you might find that you’re able benefit from Chase Offers while overseas if the retailer or restaurant has a presence in that country too.
For example, there was an Ikea Chase Offer last year that gave 10% back on up to $270 spend. We had a bunch of stuff we wanted to buy for our new apartment in the UK, so we were able to take advantage of that offer on several different Chase cards.
I also ended up inadvertently using a Chase Offer while in the UK. Thanks to CardPointers, all Chase Offers that I’m targeted for automatically get loaded all eligible cards. I needed to get a couple of groceries and we were right next to an Aldi, so I popped in there to buy those bits. A couple of days later I received an email stating that I’d redeemed my Chase Offer.
It turned out that there was a 7% Chase Offer for Aldi that I hadn’t thought about, but which just happened to have been auto-loaded to the card I’d paid with. The statement credit was only $0.65 so it was hardly a massive win, but it was a good reminder that it’s worth checking for Chase Offers when shopping at a multinational retailer or restaurant chain.
12) Earn bonus points when buying Choice points with a Choice credit card
Nearly all airline and hotel loyalty programs that sell points or miles have those transactions processed by Points.com. That means those purchases don’t code as an airline or hotel transaction; instead, it’s some miscellaneous spending category that doesn’t otherwise get bonused on credit cards.
That is, except for Choice.
When buying Choice points, if you pay with a Choice credit card you’ll earn bonus points as though you’re actually staying at a Choice property, so 10X on the Wells Fargo Choice Privileges Mastercard Select and 5X on the Wells Fargo Choice Privileges Mastercard.
What I’m not sure about is how sophisticated Wells Fargo and Choice are when determining eligible purchases. Buying Choice points counts as bonused spend, but perhaps points/miles purchases for other hotel chains or airlines would count as bonused spend too when paying with a Choice card if all Wells Fargo/Choice are doing is looking for Points.com transactions. I suspect not, but perhaps that’d be an additional quirk relating to the Choice credit cards.
13) Don’t search for dates with Air France/KLM Flying Blue awards
This is something we frequently highlight—particularly when posting about Flying Blue Promo Rewards each month—but I figured it was worth a mention here too.
When doing award searches with Air France or KLM, the initial search screen has a date box. While most programs require that you select a flight date, with those two Flying Blue airlines you can leave the box blank.
Doing that means that the search results get displayed on a calendar view basis, thereby making it for easier to view award pricing at a glance. That’s particularly helpful if you have some element of flexibility with regards to your travel dates.
14) Round trip Delta awards can be much cheaper than two one-ways
If you’ve ever looked at cash flights to Europe, you’ll likely have noticed that round trip flights tend to be priced significantly more cheaply than booking the exact same flights as two one-ways. That situation can occur with Delta round trip awards too.
For example, here’s a look at round trip award pricing from New York to London in December. If traveling from December 8-15, you could book a round trip in economy for 50,000 SkyMiles + taxes and fees.
Now, let’s look at pricing for two one-way flights. Pricing for New York to London on December 8 is bookable from 25,000 SkyMiles.
That’s half the price of the round trip pricing which, understandably, might lead you to believe that the one-way cost for London to New York would also be 25,000 SkyMiles.
As I’ve insinuated though, that’s not the case. For the return leg on December 15, the cheapest award is 46,000 SkyMiles one-way—almost as much as the entire round trip pricing.
This pricing anomaly doesn’t always occur on Delta round trip flights, especially not for domestic flights, but it’s worth being aware of for overseas award redemptions.
15) Longer stays can save you money
While the more common phrase is ‘less is more’, when it comes to accommodation pricing you’ll sometimes find that ‘more is less’. Here are two examples.
Hotel chains sometimes offer ‘long stay’ discounts which can sometimes be obtained when staying as few as five nights. Depending on the size of the discount, that could mean that adding a night to your stay could lower your total pricing. A similar factor can be at play with Airbnb stays. Some hosts offer substantial discounts for stays of one week or one month compared to the standard nightly pricing. A week-long stay that’s discounted by 30% will be cheaper than a five night stay that doesn’t benefit from a discount.
A second example is for even longer stays. If you stay 30 consecutive nights or more in a hotel or Airbnb, some states will waive the lodging taxes that get applied to stays lasting less than a month. Those taxes can come to many hundreds of dollars, so if you were planning on staying somewhere for, say, 28 nights (perhaps while work is being done on your house, or when moving to a different location), added a few nights to your stay might save you money overall. See this post for more details about how that works.
16) Hyatt certificates might expire earlier than you think
I wrote a separate post about this recently, but I felt like it merited an inclusion on this list.
The expiration date on Hyatt free night certificates isn’t a day that you can check in—it’s the very last day that you can check out on a certificate. For example, if your certificate expires on June 15, you have to have checked in by June 14 at the very latest to redeem it, even though it’ll still show on your account as being valid on June 15.
Based on a comment on that post, Hilton certificates also apparently work this way; I’m not sure about IHG and Marriott certificates.
17) Workarounds for login problems when buying IHG points
IHG points sales can be popular as these frequent sales often mean you can buy IHG points for 0.5 cents per point. Payment is processed by Points.com and, when clicking through to the sale page, you have to provide your name, account number, IHG password, and email address used with IHG.
Unfortunately, there are many of us who are unable to log in on that screen despite using correct details when attempting to. That can be frustrating, but there are a few workarounds.
One is to click through from the email that IHG sends you about the sale as that link will automatically bypass the login screen as it’ll have your account details already. A second method is to log in on IHG’s website, then to click through to the sale from there. A third option is to click through to the sale from the IHG app as you’ll be logged in there too.
18) Websites and apps sometimes do different things
While you might expect a company’s website and app to function the same way, that’s not always the case.
From a points and miles perspective, you might find that an airline or hotel website shows no award availability, but if you check their app it does (or vice versa). That’s not necessarily a common occurrence, but it’s certainly not unheard of either.
It’s something to bear in mind with things tangentially related to points and miles too. For example, 2-3 times per year Adidas gives a 20% discount on its gift cards which is a popular deal for gift card resellers. The problem is that Adidas doesn’t like taking our money and often won’t even let you submit an order due to some kind of nebulous payment issue, blaming your credit cards even though they’re not the issue.
That’s particularly a problem when placing an order on the Adidas website, but for many of us it’s much easier to get several orders through in the Adidas app. You might think the purchases would be treated the same way, but evidently not.
19) Opening loyalty accounts now can save trouble further down the line
Travel loyalty programs—especially airline loyalty programs—sometimes take a dim view of redemption activity on recently-opened accounts. Nick gave an example just the other day of how his wife’s newly-opened Emirates account got frozen when they transferred in just over 200,000 Amex Membership Rewards to it. While they did eventually manage to get it unlocked, the award tickets he wanted to book were gone by that point.
Japan Airlines (JAL) normally only lets you redeem miles after your account has been opened 30 days, although that wait period is reduced to 7 days when transferring in miles from some of its transfer partners. Even a wait of 7 days could mean you’re unable to book the award you want, so it’s better to open an account now even if you don’t have any plans to book JAL awards in the near future.
Similarly, while it’s possible to transfer Avios between your various Avios accounts for free, for some—or possibly all—participating programs your accounts have to have been open for at least 30 days.
We encountered this problem just the other month. My wife had a job interview up in the Orkney Islands (she sadly didn’t get the job) and we wanted to book a Loganair award flight to get her there as it was significantly cheaper than the cash rate. To do that, we were going to transfer Avios from her British Airways account to her Loganair account. Unfortunately, her Loganair account had been created something like 26 days beforehand, so we weren’t able to book her flight for several days.
My Loganair account was opened years ago, but I couldn’t book an award for her on my account unless I was traveling with her. By the time the 30 days had passed and I was able to link her British Airways and Loganair accounts, the award availability had disappeared.
All that to say: it can be prudent to bulk-create accounts with each airline loyalty program, just on the off-chance that you want or need to transfer in points in the future.
20) Limits aren’t always limits
Sometimes when you see a deal, it’ll say that there’s a limit of one. That might be the retailer’s intention, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the retailer will enforce it in that way. In some cases, there won’t actually be a limit at all. Other times, it might be a limit of one per transaction, but there are no limits—or very high limits—on how many transactions you can do.
Limits aren’t always limits when it comes to credit card welcome offers either. American Express has wording when applying for cards stating that you may not be eligible for a welcome offer bonus if you’ve had that card before (and sometimes not if you’ve had another card in that card family either).
That leads many people to think that they can’t get the same card again if they’ve had it before, but that’s far from being the case for a few reasons. One is that Amex’s definition of a lifetime seems to be ~7 years, so if you last had a card a decade ago, you might be able to earn the welcome bonus on that card again now.
American Express also sometimes has No Lifetime Language (NLL) offers where the wording regarding your potential ineligibility if you’ve previously had the card is absent. Similarly, Amex will sometimes have ‘Expand Your Membership’ welcome offers for cards you currently hold which allow you to earn yet another welcome bonus when being approved for that same card again.
Other times, you can get approved for a new Amex card with a welcome bonus even if you’ve had the card before and even if it does have lifetime language. The key thing to remember here is that Amex only says that you ‘may’ not be eligible, not that you absolutely, 100%, with a cast-iron guarantee, no takesie backsies, are not allowed to earn another welcome bonus for the same card whatsoever. Considering Amex doesn’t do (or extremely rarely does) a hard pull on your credit if you’re an existing cardholder, there’s no harm checking to see if you’ll be approved as the worst that’ll happen is Amex saying that yes—you are ineligible for a bonus, at which point you can choose not to proceed with the application.
21) Amex referral links sometimes lead to popup prison
Continuing on the American Express theme, sometimes when you apply for a new Amex card you’ll encounter popup prison. This is where Amex will warn you that you’re not eligible for the welcome offer on the card you’re applying for.
This is sometimes due to the aforementioned lifetime language, but not always. In some cases, it seems that using someone’s referral link can cause that. We’ve heard of several data points where someone applied for a card using their partner’s referral link in order for them to earn referral bonus points too, only to get the popup message. However, when they subsequently applied for the exact same card using a direct or affiliate link, they were approved.
While it’s a shame to miss out on household referral bonus points, if you’re finding that you’re in popup prison with Amex for a specific card that you’re very much interested in getting and you’re using a referral link, try applying via some other link.
22) Hilton Amex Offers exclude Advance Purchase rates
This is a quirk that we tend to highlight when writing about Hilton Amex Offers, but it’s another one that merits inclusion on this list.
With most hotel Amex Offers and Chase Offers, it doesn’t really matter what type of rate you book provided your stay is at a property within any eligible countries/regions listed in the terms.
Hilton is an exception though. In order for you to receive the statement credit from the Amex Offer, you have to book a rate where you pay at the hotel. That can include rates like their Semi-Flex rate, but it does mean that Advance Purchase rates—where Hilton corporate rather than the hotel takes payment—aren’t eligible.
Your ideas
That’s a relatively short list of just some of the quirks out there in the points and miles world that can be easy to overlook. There are many more though, so please share other examples in the comments below that you think other readers would benefit from knowing about.
The post 20+ points & miles quirks to be aware of appeared first on Frequent Miler. Frequent Miler may receive compensation from CHASE. American Express, Capital One, or other partners.
