Hello from the SFO Polaris lounge! I’m flying to Japan in ANA First Class tonight thanks to wide-open award space that happened earlier this year. At SFO, the lounges all close by 10 pm (Centurion at 9 pm, KLM at 7:45 pm), but the flight is at 1:45 am, so ANA issues $30 meal vouchers per passenger in the form of a Mastercard Gift Card. Terms state the merchant must be categorized as “food, dining, or restaurant.” It’s the same GC that United, Alaska, and Delta issue (though I hear they are sometimes Discover cards), with the same zip code of 60173. You receive a QR code and the card number, expiration date, CVV, and billing zip code. From some internet sleuthing, I found the entire billing address: 1475 E Woodfield Rd, Schaumburg, IL 60173.
Categorytravel deals
e* here. I just returned from a brief stay at Miraval Arizona, where I went with my husband, a close friend, and fellow miles & points blogger Miles For Two. It’s been on my bucket list for a while as many in our miles & points community have been there in recent years. Thanks to the BOGO + credit card rebate promotion, we were able to book a trip to the recently reopened resort and get away from the polluted air that we’ve been dealing with in California for the past month or two. Since we haven’t been able to safely travel internationally for a long time, this was a great way to ease back into safely traveling with the new normal.
The sweepstakes periods and promo codes are (Los Angeles and Portland are already over, but San Francisco is on right now!)
Hello everyone!
I’ve been getting bombarded for over a year by FoundersCard (referral link, see end of post for details) to join their program at a lifetime rate of $295/year. That wasn’t very appealing to me at the time, since I couldn’t justify how to get more than $295/year of value from the program. My friends Kenneth and Tonei were telling me about some of the great benefits. I’m going to rank them here as well as a few thoughts:
Most Valuable Benefits to Me
| Total Rewards Diamond status | This can be a great benefit for some people for the following reasons:
I go to Vegas once a year for CES (the largest convention in the world and the most expensive week in Vegas), and already have MLife Platinum status from the Hyatt Diamond match. It wasn’t clear to me whether having this status would significantly benefit me during my annual trips, since I already have Platinum status from the Total Rewards credit card, and haven’t really benefited from it in terms of getting hotel discounts. However, that complimentary stay in the Bahamas sounds pretty sweet!! |
| First Republic Bank $350 offer |
Only applies to New York City, Boston, Greater San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Portland, Santa Barbara, San Diego, and Newport Beach. If you’re in one of these locations, this is a very valuable benefit. Kenneth tells me they have very personalized and awesome customer service too. |
| Quarterly American Airlines promotions | Currently, there is a Business ExtrAA bonus points program, which might be interesting. Sometimes there are challenges to AA status. I think it will be worth keeping an eye on these quarterly AA promos. |
Other popular benefits I’d like to point out
| 15% off AT&T Plans | I’m on T-Mobile, but I also get 25% corporate discounts on all 3 major carriers, and I don’t think it stacks. If you don’t already have a corporate discount, this might be helpful to you. If you have a family plan or expensive plan, this could really be a huge savings. |
| Discounted hotel rates | I usually use points to pay for hotels, or if it’s for work, they must be booked through our Concur system anyways, so I wouldn’t be able to apply any discounts. Many of the hotels are luxury hotels that I still can’t afford even with a discount anyways. But if you want to stay in a luxury hotel for a discount, this one’s for you. For example, if you want to book the Park Hyatt Tokyo, it is 40,000 yen/night, and you’d be able to apply a DSU if you’re Hyatt Diamond. |
| 15% off HotelTonight | Same reasoning as above. |
| Cathay Pacific Marco Polo Silver status and 5-25% off flights | This translates to Oneworld Ruby status. I’m not sure how this would benefit my husband or I in the near future, and we are currently already AA Platinum (Oneworld Sapphire) from the Q4 status challenge. The 5-25% discount could potentially be a large savings though. |
| Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Silver status | Earn 50% more miles when flying Virgin Atlantic or Delta Airlines, lounge access, premium check-in, and choosing Economy seats within 14 days of departure. Not really something I see myself using in the near future. |
| 5-10% off Virgin America flights and Gold or Silver status match | This discount code is valid on most fares except for L, S, and N fares. However, I already have VX Silver status (partly thanks to the VX credit card) and while they are my favorite domestic airline, I don’t fly VX quite enough to really benefit from this discount. |
| 5% off Jetblue flights | I like Jetblue, but I rarely have the occasion to fly them. Being a budget airline, 5% is probably not going to be a huge savings. If you fly Jetblue a lot though, it can add up. |
| 15% off Qantas flights to AU/NZ only | 15% is a great discount, but I rarely fly Qantas either (to tell the truth, I’ve never flown Qantas before). If I saw an awesome fare deal in economy, I’d consider jumping on it and using this discount, but the next time I go to AU/NZ, I’d more likely fly in a premium class with miles and points! |
| 1 year of TripIt Pro, $39/yr after | I personally have Lifetime Pro, but this could be useful to many people, especially if they don’t already have it from a credit card or from their workplace. |
| 6 months of CLEAR | CLEAR is definitely a nice-to-have, but it’s not available in most airports, and sometimes even at my home airport (SFO), the CLEAR line is not any faster than the TSA Precheck line. I already pay $50/year for my CLEAR membership, but don’t consider it must-have. |
| 20% off Silvercar | I love Silvercar cars (Audi A4s!), but they’re not at enough airports to be useful to me, and this is definitely a luxury, since even with the 20% off, it would be difficult to beat other rental car prices, especially when you use status and corporate codes, etc with the other companies. |
| 50% off OneMedical membership | This one is hyperlocal, but OneMedical is a great company that I hope will grow quickly throughout the country. Currently, I am choosing not to be a member yet because there aren’t enough locations that are convenient to me. |
| $18 to Dollar Shave Club and free shipping | Michael Wu noticed this one. They sell things other than razors too. 🙂 |
| 3 years free Dashlane Premium | This is a secure password keeper and digital wallet. I highly recommend using one, but I currently have a paid subscription to 1Password that works great for me. |
| 20% off Backblaze | This is a great unlimited cloud backup solution, and again, I highly recommend using one. A year is $50 (the discount would provide $10 savings) and 2 years is $95 (the discount would provide $19 savings). I currently have a paid subscription to Crashplan, which is great, and the minor savings is not quite enough to incentivize me to upload terabytes of my files all over again. |
| $100 to Trunk Club | This is a subscription service where they basically send you a box of fashionable clothes. $100 seems like a good incentive to try it out. |
| $35 Zipcar membership and $20 towards first drive | For those without cars, this may be a nice benefit. I do have a car and otherwise I use rideshare services. |
| Up to 14% off Singapore Airlines flights, 5-10% off Emirates flights | Both of these discounts could potentially be good for many people. For me personally, I’m most likely not going to be flying these airlines on cash fares, but using miles and points in premium classes. |
| Up to 36% off UPS shipments | From my limited experience, the discounts eBay/Paypal provides on shipping labels purchased through them are comparable. There could be sweet spots though. |
Benefits That Are Already Attainable Elsewhere
| Car rental company status and discounts | If you have a World Elite Mastercard (i.e. Barclay Arrivals+), you would have Avis, National, Sixt, and Hertz status already. You probably have access to a bunch of discounts already too, or know where to get them. 😉 |
| Hilton Gold status | This is a benefit that is already conferred by the Amex Platinum card, but my husband and I are already both Hilton Diamond thanks to status matching to Hyatt. |
Other Benefits
Admittedly, I am one of the worst prepared frequent travelers out there. Due to taking so many frequent trips, and being a bit scatterbrained, I tend to barely plan, always forget to bring something, lose things in hotels, miss experiencing things, and make small mistakes that could have happened with better planning. But things somehow turn out okay in the end. But hopefully you can learn from my mistakes!
We left on a Friday afternoon from San Francisco to London, and onwards to Zürich. Alex had shown up to the airport before I did, and the check-in agent had asked to see the credit card that was used to book, but that was all cleared up when I arrived. But before we left SFO, we went lounge hopping! First we went to the Air France lounge with my Priority Pass, which had a very nice selection of alcohol but a somewhat limited selection of food. We wanted to check out the JAL and Cathay lounges, but they weren’t open at those hours. So next we went to the BA Terraces lounge. The food selection here was a bit better but the alcohol was not as nice. What’s interesting about this lounge is you board directly from the lounge!
Our longhaul was on BA 284 on a 747-400. Alex and I were seated next to each other in the center. I had spent the previous few days trying to convince BA to let us choose our seats online beforehand for free, as I was a new AA Platinum member, but due to claims that either BA’s systems weren’t seeing my status, or that my fare class was ineligible for free seat selection, I wasn’t able to do so. Fortunately, when check in rolled around, the seats we wanted were available. The amenity kit wasn’t very interesting, and the food was decent, but overall nothing super amazing about BA J, though it is nice.
Landing in London, we had a 3 hour layover or so before we needed to head to Zurich, so we went lounging again! This time was the British Airways Galleries lounge. I find it amusing that they give you a very upfront view of the First Class lounge as you are going up to the Galleries lounge. The Galleries lounge is quite nice, with a nice selection of hot food and alcohol. The lounge felt a bit commercialized though, with staff offering perfume samples and ads on the the walls.
We landed in Zurich in the afternoon and headed straight to the hotel. For our first stay in Zurich, we stayed at the Novotel Zurich City West, which I booked at around $130 a night, but with a 6000 Alaska Mileage Plan Miles bonus for booking my first stay through RocketMiles. Zurich was very pretty and had excellent public transport, but was way too expensive and not terribly interesting. I did have a great time at Widder Bar, and Uetliberg was very pretty.
I got a kick out of these dancing mice:
Onwards to Berlin! We noticed a couple of days before we left that we had bought hand-baggage only fares on both Air Berlin ZRH-TXL and British Airways TXL-LHR. Even though I was American Platinum, we would still not be allowed a free checked bag. So what we did was that Alex bought a checked bag, and I used an extra duffel bag that Alex brought as a carry on. Since we had to return to Zurich for one night for our flight back to the US, we loaded our extra luggage into my large luggage and left them at our hotel when we would return to Zurich.
None of our intra-Europe flights seemed worth it to use miles on. All the oneworld shorthauls had too much tax that made it not worth it to use Avios, and I had no Star Alliance programs that had cheap intra-Europe redemptions.
We stayed at the Grand Hostel Berlin for the 4 nights we were in Berlin, joined by one of Alex’s friends Jon. I hadn’t stayed at a hostel for about 2 years at that point. It was fun! We drank and socialized with other hostel guests each day. We had a private room and Jon stayed in a dorm. I remembered why I don’t tend to stay in hostels as much anymore: while it was quite fun and we met other travelers, Jon complained about being unable to sleep at night due to the noise, and it was way too hot in our room and we had poor sleep as well. Also, the shared bathroom situation wasn’t very comfortable either. I forgot to bring sandals for the showers so was walking around with my bare feet. I think I’ll still occasionally stay in hostels to meet other people when travelling alone, but you are trading comfort and security for socialization and money savings. For our touristy activities, we went to check out the Reichstag building, Checkpoint Charlie, the Holocaust memorial, the Bauhaus Archives, the Brandenburg Gate, the DDR musuem, and a Christmas market. Also, we had dinner at Lorenz Adlon Esszimmer, which was amazing modern European food, with views of the Brandenburg Gate. Berlin was fairly interesting, and the food was much cheaper than Zurich, though we failed to find any nightlife, possibly because we were looking in the wrong places and it was early in the week. Next time I want to check out the techno clubs in Berlin!
Next, London! We checked out some lounges in TXL, but none were particularly special. The British Airways lounge is nicer than the Airportclub Lounge, no matter what Loungebuddy might say. TXL is interesting in that the departure area is also the check-in area, so there is no post-security area and all the lounges are outside!
London is one of my favorite cities. I booked us for 2 nights at the H10 London Waterloo because I had $450 or so in Expedia credit (if used at Expedia VIP Access hotels) and it was the nicest VIP Access hotel just above $450. I’ve been trying to get rid of my Expedia points for quite some time and finally found a use for them. It was also conveniently right next to the Ministry of Sound, which we were planning on hitting up.
About the H10 London Waterloo: Wow. Just amazing. I had never heard of the chain before, but apparently they are an upscale hotel chain based in Spain. It was one of the nicest non-major chain hotel I’ve ever stayed at, and the price tag really wasn’t bad at all. We got a welcome amenity at the front desk of a glass of cava, and when we got to our room, we found a free large bottle of beer as well as marshmallow treats. Also, the bed and room were super comfortable to sleep in, which was a welcome change from our Berlin hostel. Oh, but the Expedia VIP Access thing was a total crock though. There didn’t seem to be anything particularly special that we got with it.
We were somewhat lucky with our timing, because we found out Benny Benassi would be playing at the Ministry of Sound that weekend! We met up with more friends to go clubbing. We may have pregamed a little too hard, as one of our friends drank so much that the club wouldn’t let her in, and she and the friends accompanying her disappeared somewhere into a backroom for 30 minutes, before she was sent home. For our troubles though, the rest of the girls ended up getting VIP passes for the night.
With all trips though, you have to go home eventually. So we said farewell to London to fly back to Zurich (to catch a flight connecting back through London lol.) Fortunately on this segment, we caught the terms of hand-baggage only fares and bought a slightly higher fare that included bags. This time, we were flying Swiss, so we were flying out of the new Star Alliance terminal at LHR, T2, the Queen’s Terminal. T2 is a really nice, and has a selection of 5 Star Alliance lounges to pick from (though the 2 groups of lounges are on complete opposite ends of the terminal and are not practical to hop around between.) We were closer to the United lounge and Lufthansa lounge, so we went to check out the Lufthansa lounge with access from my Star Alliance Gold. As Star Alliance Gold, we were given access cards to the Senator lounge. The Lufthansa Senator lounge in LHR is REALLY nice, and has excellent food and drink. We also went to check out the Plaza Premium Lounge in LHR. I’ve gone to other Plaza Premium Lounges in Asia and found them quite nice. This one was no exception, with pretty good food and a selection of drinks. I found it surprisingly Asian themed though, with Thai food and beer.
For our one night in Zurich before we had to fly back to the US, we stayed at the Sheraton Zurich West. I managed to use a Best Rate Guarantee to get the rate down to 132 CHF a night, with a 2000 Starpoints bonus instead of taking 20% off. The Sheraton was quite nice. I nearly forgot that I had access to the Sheraton Club with my SPG American Express Business card, and due to some confusion with the front desk by not showing it at check in, and not showing it later when I went to ask, wasn’t sure if I actually had access or not. Fortunately, I was able to clear things up and had a very nice breakfast the next morning before heading back to the airport.
On our way back, along with a ton of shopping at both the Zurich and London airports, we went to check out the Aspire lounge (accessed via Priority Pass) in LHR that we had missed earlier. It was a bit crowded and the food was just okay, though they did have some nice champagne. Side note: every single lounge in Europe seems to have the ingredients to make Bloody Marys. I ended up getting very good at making Bloody Marys on this trip. Our flight back to SFO was on an A380 and we picked a center middle seat and a center side seat on the Upper Deck. I passed out right after dinner and slept for around 3 hours before being woken up again for a light meal.
Landing back in SFO was somewhat depressing after seeing how nice LHR was. I told Alex to download Mobile Passport and somehow he got through Customs & Immigration at about the same time that I did with Global Entry. Overall, great trip and if I see any more BA business class sales, I’m totally grabbing them.
tl;dr travel tips and lessons
I just received this message from @Silvercar:
Hey Esther! Silvercar here. Next time you need to rent a car, give us a shot. No lines, no paperwork, no upsells and no hassles. To top it all off, you get a new, fully-loaded Audi A4, every time. And our rates are competitive with the big brands, seriously. We’ll even give you your first day free when you make a reservation for 2 or more days. Just use code FREEDAYDM. Check us out by going to our website or by downloading our mobile app. bit.ly/1KZENKa Hope to see you soon!
Access the old version of the Amex Offers website. American Express rolled out new version of the Amex Offers website a couple of months ago, but the new interface is much less convenient to see and add all your offers at once. Fortunately, the link to the old version of the Amex Offers website is still working! H/T Miles to Memories.
Buy United miles for as low as 2.03 cents/miles with a targeted 85% bonus for buying miles. 2.03 cents/mile is pretty good, especially if you are looking to book premium cabins on Star Alliance. You must have been targeted for the 85% bonus, and you must buy at least 30,000 miles to get that price, but you can easily check if you were targeted by clicking this link and logging in. I personally was targeted for the bonus and will likely be purchasing the minimum required to get the 2.03 cents price. H/T Travel Codex
A fare war has erupted from the San Francisco Bay Area to Hawaii after Virgin launched their new route SFO-HNL. Fly to Hawaii for as little as $398 round trip, which is a great deal to Hawaii. H/T Travel Skills
Free $15 for Chase Freedom cardholders when using Visa Checkout. $15 minimum purchase required, unlike the previous Visa Checkout offers where you could buy a $0.49 game code from Newegg. H/T Doctor of Credit
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