Just the Tip(s)

Category Archives for Just the Tip(s).

Tomorrow: NYC Miles and Points Meetup! 6pm in East Village!

by Harlan 7 Comments

Grab a drink and mix

Grab a drink and mix

If you’re in New York, come geek out for a few hours with other points and miles aficionados.

We talk about our trips, routing rules, best redemptions, the pros and cons of various business/first class products, and other awesome topics.

I’ve always had a great time and look forward to meeting new peeps!

Here’s the link to RSVP.

The 411:

Professor Thom’s, 219 2nd Avenue, New York, NY (between 13 & 14 St)

Tuesday, June 23rd, 6-9pm

If you can’t make this one, join the Meetup group and come to the next one!

Bottom line

Come grab a brewsky and introduce yourself to other people who love points and travel!

Say hello if you see me!

Use Avios for Connecting Flights to Save Money

by Harlan Leave A Comment

I’ve been thinking about taking a trip down to New Mexico recently and it got me thinking about fare constructions and how to get to regional airports as cheaply as possible.

There's still lots of value to be had from Avios

There’s still lots of value to be had from Avios

The idea here is to fly on Oneworld into a hub city or cheap destination, and then use Avios for the (usually) more expensive, shorter leg of the itinerary.

LGA-DFW-ABQ

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Ibotta: Get Cash Back When You Shop

by Harlan 4 Comments

a group of plastic bottles with a pump

So… I’ve been getting into coupons lately. And ways to get cashback or maximize my spend as much as possible. I recently wrote about Paribus, which has already saved me some money on Amazon purchases.

And today, in my internet wanderings, I kept seeing this app mentioned over and over: Ibotta.

ibotta review

Loving Ibotta

I’ve already added it to the Services I Like page, but wanted to do a quick article about it, too.

What the hee haw is Ibotta?

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Reminder: Club Carlson Program Changes in One Week! Book awards by May 31st

by Harlan 3 Comments

Also see: 

The time draws near.

RIP

RIP

I managed to burn most of my Club Carlson points during my trip to Ireland earlier this month (reviews of Radisson Blu Royal in Dublin and Radisson Blu in Galway are up so far). But I also had a paid stay at the Radisson Blu St Helens and ended up earning ~44,000 Club Carlson Gold Points between that and the room charges in Dublin.

Nearly enough for 2 nights at a Category 5 property... if booked before next week

Nearly enough for 2 nights at a Category 5 property… if booked before next week

Book now, change later?

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Quick tip about booking NYC or DC flights with Avios

by Harlan 5 Comments

There are a few cities that have multiple airports, so this tip could work for:

  • New York (JFK, LGA, EWR) – NYC
  • Washington, DC (IAD, DCA, BWI) – WAS
  • Chicago (ORD, MDW) – CHI
  • London (LHR, LGW, LCY) – LON
  • Paris (ORY, CDG) – PAR
  • Tokyo (NRT, HND) – TYO

I encountered this when searching BA.com for space to get to Boston from New York.

When I search for award space, I usually just type in “NYC” – because I’m open to JFK or LGA. So I rarely specify an airport.

But BA.com will not give you the complete picture of award space if you don’t specify an airport. 

Make sure you search city code and airport code

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My experience renting a car in Ireland (Woof!)

by Harlan 43 Comments

a landscape with trees and a river

Also see: 

Thinking about renting a car in Ireland?

Woof:
verb: to declare something bad, ugly, terrible, or nasty.
interjection: use as an expletive to express disgust or surprise.
Can be a replacement for damn that sucks!

Upon landing at DUB, I knew the next step was to go pick up the rental car.

So here’s how I did it (made the booking not picked up the car).

The booking

I ran a quick search on the Chase Ultimate Rewards website – they generally have fantastic rates on rental cars. That’s how I got such a good deal in Hawaii. Keep in mind that they ONLY service airport locations and you MUST pick up and return to the same location.

They quoted me at ~$325 for a 6-day rental. Not bad.

But when I hopped on kayak.com to compare and they had rentals pricing out at 9 Euros per day. And 85 Euros for the 6-day rental (~$97). Now that was a screaming deal. I booked a car at Dollar via priceline.com.

renting a car in ireland

My Kayak to Priceline to Dollar car rental booking – 85 Euros

My only criteria were:

  • 4-door (for ease of getting luggage in and out)
  • Automatic transmission
  • Unlimited kilometers (I wanted to drive a lot)

So, I did it. I thought I’d gotten a better deal than what the Chase Ultimate Rewards site was displaying.

Now that I’m back safe and sound, I’m not so sure any more.

Pickup

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Enroll in Citi’s 60-Day Return Guarantee Program

by Harlan Leave A Comment

I was trolling around on the Citi website today and decided to look through my Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select Amex benefits. Lots of good things in there. I like this card because it’s an American Express card not issued by Amex and is no longer open for enrollment. I can use it for Amex Sync offers, Small Business Saturday, and possibly to load up my Serve account (haven’t gotten that far yet).

As I got to the “Shopping benefits” section, I noticed there was one for which I had to manually enroll in on the website.

The 60-Day Return Guarantee program

There it was, hanging out there in the corner like a creep.

asdasd

Citi 60-Day Return Guarantee program

Screenshot 2015-05-15 11.30.58-1

Enrollment screen – good for a year

I clicked on it, and there was a little button that said “Enroll.” If I enrolled, it would be good for a year. 

So I did it. Why not. Then I was told about the benefits:

Citi 60-Day Return Guarantee

How to use the Citi 60-Day Return Guarantee

The benefit is good for $250 per claim and up to $1,000 annually. Things returned must be new and unopened. Fair enough. Really not so shabby at all. But then I thought…

WHERE DO I SEND THE STUFF? 

Apparently to their office in Ohio lol. But whatever. Then I was like… uhhhh… do I pay for the shipping (I think so)?

And then I started to think if I’d ever wanted to return something after a merchant’s return period had run out. Or what if I bought something while traveling and can’t get it back to the shop? Or what if the store doesn’t allow returns?

It hasn’t happened a lot, but here and there… yeah, definitely. Maybe once or twice a year. As long as I put the entire amount of the purchase on this card, I could return it and get the money back. Nice.

This is old news

So I thought I’d stumbled upon something new and exciting but nope. This thing’s been around since 2012. Practically Stone Age for the points and miles crowd.

I wanted to mention it here because I’d never heard of it in all my excavations about terms and conditions. Maybe it’s been around so long that it’s not mentioned any more? In any regard, it lives!

Discover, Chase Sapphire Preferred, and Chase Freedom all have similar programs. And the one for the Chase Sapphire Preferred, anyway, is up to $500 per item and you have 90 days to return it. A month more and double the protection that Citi offers.

Chase Sapphire Preferred

Chase Sapphire Preferred return protection

However, I couldn’t find much online on the Chase website, so kudos to Citi for making it so easy to find and understand.

Also, apparently, you have to enroll manually for this benefit with Citi – it is not an automatic feature of Citi credit cards. So I wanted to toss it out there in case it might help someone and they’d like to enroll.

Bottom line

Citi has a program that I didn’t know about before today called the 60-Day Return Guarantee.

They’ve kinda hidden under the “Card Benefits” section of the their website, near the bottom. You have to find it and manually enroll to receive the benefit for 1 year for free.

Has anyone else, um, heard of this? Has anyone ever actually used this perk – or something similar offered by another credit card? How was your experience? 

Use Paribus to Get Money Back If There’s a Price Change

by Harlan 14 Comments

I forget where I saw the link. I think I clicked through something from Twitter and fell into the rabbit hole of the internet. But it ended up being a good thing, because I found this new service called Paribus.

What it is and how it works

paribus service

How Paribus works

Paribus is a service that monitors price changes for you at 18 (so far) popular merchants. If there’s a price drop, Paribus submits a price adjustment claim on your behalf. And the merchants included are some good ones:

  • Athleta
  • Banana Republic
  • Best Buy
  • Bloomingdale’s
  • Bonobos
  • Gap
  • J.Crew
  • Macy’s
  • Newegg.com
  • Nordstrom
  • Old Navy
  • Piperlime
  • Sephora
  • Staples
  • Target
  • Walmart
  • Zappos.com

To get started, you can sign up for free. You connect the email account where you get your receipts. It monitors your inbox for receipts and keeps a log of your purchases.

All my Amazon purchases

All my Amazon purchases

If there’s a price change on anything you bought, they ask for an adjustment for you. The service is free to use. You link a credit or debit card to your account and they’ll issue the refund in the form of a statement credit (they use Stripe as a payment processor).

This can be easy – and maybe unexpected – money coming your way.

The fact that it’s free to sign up makes it a no-brainer. And I must say I’m impressed with the merchants they are starting with.

I could see this being super useful around the holidays when so many prices are being slashed left and right for Black Friday shoppers.

Keep in mind that Paribus still has to follow the price adjustment rules of each individual merchant.

The CamelCamelCamel angle

CamelCamelCamel is a website that tracks items for sale on Amazon.com. They keep records of historically low prices for everything. So you plug in the item you have your eye on and it tells whether or not the price might drop based on previous trends.

If you buy your things from Amazon while they’re at their lowest, you won’t have to even utilize Paribus. You’d simply save the money upfront, which is always good too. But even if the price of something you bought drops even more, Paribus would be there to get a price adjustment for you.

I can see these 2 services being super useful for savvy web online shoppers when used in conjunction with one another.

Bottom line

Thought I’d share what I learned about Paribus. It’s free and easy to sign up, so you really have nothing to lose.

Does anyone else already use Paribus or CamelCamelCamel to track prices and shop? Would love to hear thoughts about either service as I am still new to both.  And of course any others that are super handy slash in the same vein as these. Let me know in the comments below!

Aer Lingus business class seats showing up as economy on United website?

by Harlan 11 Comments

A-ha, so now I’m finally getting to it: the crux of all my recent Aer Lingus posts.

I noticed that when selecting Aer Lingus business class seats on the United website, they are showing up as being in the U fare bucket – which is economy class.

I was perturbed about paying for business class seats (with Avios) only to see that I’d maybe been booked in the wrong fare class.

However, I called British Airways and Aer Lingus to verify that I am indeed in a business class seat. But then I went to look again on the United website to make sure it wasn’t just a glitch.

For this dummy booking, I selected economy class to Dublin and business back from Dublin.

Aer Lingus fare buckets on United

Aer Lingus fare buckets on United

It looks like economy is being booked into the T bucket and business is being booked into U – but U is economy.

I plugged in the record locator into the Royal Jordanian website, and sure enough, their system displayed the same information.

EI booking on RJ site

EI booking on RJ site

But, it still says business on the BA website.

Aer Lingus booking on BA website - business, confirmed

Aer Lingus booking on BA website – business, confirmed

Bottom line

Just in case anyone else got in (or wants to get in – space is still very open) on the lucrative amount of award space on the Aer Lingus BOS-DUB route and had the same questions I did…

Of course, I’ll be pretty miffed if it does actually end up being economy, but 6 hours over the pond isn’t so bad. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again if I have to. I’d be a tyrant to get my Avios back, though.

But that’s worst case scenario stuff. I’m gonna let this be a trust fall with British Airways and assume they’ll catch me (there is a good joke and punchline in here somewhere…).

Has anyone else noticed this mislabeling on the United website? Even better, has anyone flown the flights and can confirm they are indeed in business class? 

Either way, I will have Aer Lingus trip reports soon enough. Looking forward to it, and to visiting Ireland, so very much.

Stay scrappy out there!

Use the Royal Jordanian website to check Oneworld bookings

by Harlan 13 Comments

…and to get confirmation numbers. 

Booking those Aer Lingus flights last week with Avios has kicked up a few little issues that I’ve never dealt with, so thought this might be useful to post.

British Airways gave me a confirmation number when I booked the Aer Lingus flights… but not for Aer Lingus. I could only access the reservation on the British Airways website.

I wanted to be able to pull up my flights on the Aer Lingus website, but didn’t have the confirmation code that British Airways gave Aer Lingus.

Enter Royal Jordanian (with a HT to George at Travel Blogger Buzz via Twitter).

Royal Jordanian website interface

Royal Jordanian website interface

On the Royal Jordanian website, hover over “Plan & Book” and then click anything in the “Manage the Essentials” part of the dropdown menu.

Manage

Manage Booking

Once there, click “Manage Booking” or follow this link.

You can plug in your record locator and name and pull up a whole host of interesting services like:

  • Change frequent flyer number
  • Obtain other airline’s record locator
  • Verify fare buckets
  • Easily check flight duration and aircraft type
  • Email yourself a receipt
  • Get a ticket number

All important things for preening and double-checking reservations. I could, for example, use Avios to book a flight on American, and then add my AAdvantage frequent flyer number to make sure I get elite benefits like early boarding.

I can also simply take the record locator for the AA flight and then plug it into the AA website… something that British Airways doesn’t give you on their website or in any of their emails (someone correct me if I’m wrong – I just booked a US Airways flight with Avios and couldn’t find the freaking US Airways record locator for the life of me).

There's my US Airways record locator - how handy!

There’s my US Airways record locator – how handy!

And it shows up perfectly when I plug it into the US Airways website

And it shows up perfectly when I plug it into the US Airways website

Why this works

I noticed in the web address on the RJ website that they were pulling from Amadeus – the same system that Check My Trip uses. It’s a bit dated and still has the copyright as 2014, so take that for what it’s worth. But it works like a charm.

With regard to Oneworld bookings, you should be able to preen the following airline bookings on the RJ website:

  • British Airways
  • Finnair
  • Qantas
  • Royal Jordanian (duh)
  • Cathay Pacific
  • LAN/TAM
  • Iberia

But not AA or US Airways… they don’t use Amadeus. It is handy, however, for adding AA flights booked with Avios to your AA account. And for adding your AA number to the reso to receive elite benefits.

And who knows, sometimes they end up crediting award bookings as paid flights on accident.

Bottom line

Handy little trick, thought I’d share for my Oneworld peeps out there.

Let us know if something similar exists for SkyTeam. United is really good about showing the other airline’s record locator on their website already.

And on this note, other tips are certainly always welcome!

Good availability: BOS-DUB Aer Lingus biz class August thru November

by Harlan 4 Comments

Hi, it’s me again.

Consider this post to be that phone call right after you hang up but then discover something cool and call back again for another 30 seconds just to add another thought or two.

In researching my previous post, Booking Dublin: A Change of Plans, I wanted to verify award availability on Aer Lingus business class for the BOS-DUB route for the rest of 2014. Partially because I wanted to see where my own rebooking could fit in, and partially out of pure curiosity (because who doesn’t spend their Sundays looking at random award availability?).

Well, it’s still out there, and the clock is ticking. You have until April 28th, or until availability dries up – whichever comes first – to book yourself flights to Dublin and back.

It’ll set you back 50,000 Avios, but 50K points to Europe round-trip in business class is a great deal, especially considering that these flights are ~$5,000 each if purchased.

I went to United.com and filtered for nonstop award availability. It’s all the BOS-DUB route.

Check for the blue and green days – those are the days when the business class flight is available (the yellow is just for the economy flight, which is only 12.5K Avios each way or 25K Avios round-trip – still a great deal especially considering it’s only a ~6-hour flight).

April and May have scant availability

April and May have scant availability

June and July are dismal

June and July are dismal/nonexistent

Ah, but August and September... fall in Ireland anyone?

Ah, but August and September… fall in Ireland anyone?

October and November are great as well - maybe for Halloween or for Thanksgiving?

October and November are great as well – maybe for Halloween or before the holidays?

How to search and book

For this award, start out by finding the space on United.com

Screenshot 2015-03-29 16.28.47

Be sure to tick “Nonstop Flights Only”.

When you find the flights you want, make a note of the dates and flight numbers (or just leave it on your screen), and call British Airways.

Chosen at random, but flights on these dates would be

Chosen at random, but flights on these dates would be over $8,000

I’ve found the best number to call British Airways on is 1-800-247-9297. At the prompts, press 4, then 2. Then wait for an agent. Hold times are usually not long on this number.

Feed them the dates and flight numbers and mention it’s for Aer Lingus business class.

Also make sure the Avios are in your account if you are transferring them in from Ultimate Rewards or Membership Rewards (or Starwood, or wherever).

Be sure to ask them to waive the phone booking fee – I say something like, “I tried to book online, but was forced to call – can the fee be waived?” And they always take it off.

Booking 2 business class tickets cost me 100,000 Avios and ~$228.

Here is a breakdown of all the taxes, fees, and surcharges:

Cost to book Aer Lingus with British Airways

Cost to book Aer Lingus with British Airways

Bottom line

There’s still great award availability to Dublin from Boston, and at a great price, if anyone’s still interested in booking.

Just wanted to share the info, as I’d been wanting to go to Ireland for a long time. In fact, I am tempted to book another ticket in the fall because I know it will be so beautiful there. But, moderation.

If anyone does book, enjoy! I will be there in early May – say hello if you see me on the plane or around Dublin!

Barclays Rewards Fan Zone: Earn 500+ FREE Arrival+ Miles

by Harlan 9 Comments

Barclays Arrival+

Barclays Arrival+

Note: this may be a targeted offer, but definitely worth it to see if it’s on your account. 

Barclays is now offering the “Rewards Fan Zone” where you can earn extra Arrival+ miles by completing various (easy) “activities”.

Rewards Fan Zone

To see if you’ve been targeted, simply check your Arrival+ card on the Barclays website. Here’s what showed up for me:

Barclays Arrival+ Rewards Fan Zone

Barclays Arrival+ Rewards Fan Zone

After you log in to the Barclays website, navigate over to the “Barclaycard extras” tab to see what shows up for you.

I was on the cusp of 5,000 Arrival+ miles, and the activities chosen for me to complete were enough to put me over the edge for my next $50 award redemption, with absolutely no spend required.

Rewards Fan Zone interface

Rewards Fan Zone interface

A couple of my tasks

A couple of my activities

As you can see, the activities are super easy to complete, and really only take a second or two per task:

My activities

My activities

It’s stuff like connecting your Barclaycard to social media, following them on Twitter, watching a short video, etc. The miles posted instantly, right after I completed each activity.

My Rewards Fan Zone activity

My Rewards Fan Zone activity

Bottom line

Nothing major, but you can get an extra few bucks worth of travel redemptions for clicking a few buttons.

If you’re on the cusp of your next award redemption, it’s totally worth it to check to see if you’re targeted for this.

More than anything, I’m glad Barclays is continuing to offer enhancements on the Arrival+ cards like:

I’m curious to see what else they continue to roll out for this card and for the new Rewards Fan Zone to make it competitive within the rewards card industry. That curiosity has been my biggest driver for keeping this card as long as I have (along with a great retention offer).

Kudos to Barclays for continuing to innovate in a crowded market, even if it is only for a few extra hundred miles. I’m looking forward to seeing what they roll out next.

Was anyone else targeted for this? Are your offers better than mine? Would love to hear if offers differ from what I’ve posted!