posted 03-29-2005 11:18            

Is there any way to know how many miles I need to book a $750 ticket to Puerto Vallarta without actually purchasing the ticket?

posted 03-29-2005 13:21               

From at least those three example (all low end), looks like 8000 miles gets you $100 credit. In your case, you'd be looking at worst case 60000 miles/points (perhaps less if they have a sliding scale, less points for a larger redemption).

Card has it's pluses and minuses compared to airline affinity cards. A plus is that you have guaranteed redemption - whatever flight you can find ticket availability for (at whatever price), you can use your points towards. It also means if you get a sale fare, your points go further.

A minus is the potentially poor redemption value. 35k miles on most airlines will get you from the East Coast to Hawaii. 35k points with Cap/One only gets you $437 worth of 'credit' with them, rarely enough to get to a ticket to Hawaii. My FF award tickets to Hawaii have always had an effective redemption value of at least 2 cents/mile (one trip was over 3c/m), whereas Cap/One only gets you 0.8c/m.

posted 03-29-2005 14:35            

As I suspected, to make sure you're going to get what you want, it's probably better to accumulate Capital One miles. But my AA affinity card will get me a flight with fewer miles -- if I can get the limited FF seats available. The other advantage to AA miles is the ability to use for upgrades which, as I understand it, you can't do with Capital One --you need to purchase the business class/first class ticket at the much higher rate. And, as I understand it, Capital One will only let you purchase non-refundable tickets to limit your flexibility to make changes.

posted 03-30-2005 11:42               

The catch here is that they didn't make it very clear how, or even that you could opt out of the new program. But I did.

posted 03-30-2005 15:38               

Several years ago, they sent one of those guarenteed issue applications to an address that I hadn't lived at in several years. The individual there applied for, and received, a Captial One card with a very low limit of $500. He provided an incorrect SS#, place of employeement et..... Yet Capital One issued the card and submitted all of the inacurrate information to the credit reporting agencies, who in turn added it to my credit reports.

I found out about it through a routine check of my credit files. When I called the credit agencies, they said Capital One had to resolve the matter. That's were the fun started.

First, they refused to give me any information over the phone because I couldn't prove who I was but, they demanded payment. After a several choice words and a couple of threats, they actually looked at the file and said whoops, maybe we made a mistake. Well correct it.

About a week later, my credit file had been corrected. Another week after that and Capital One put the same information BACK onto my file. Apparently they didn't think I'd check again. The next threat to them was rather specific and carried a monetary value for reporting obviosely false information to a credit bureau since they had already corrected it once (I kept the coppies). It was fixed permanently and the bad information was removed from my credit files.

This has been several years ago and I still check my file every couple of months for fraud. The Capital One account still shows up, it just reports as paid in full and as agreed to.

Several years later, I decided I'd take them up on one of their offers. No where in the literature could I find an annual fee of $59. This time they issued me a card with a $100 credit limit on it and tried to charge me $59 for the priveledge. I cancelled the card immediately and that's were the fun started. They insisted that I pay an annual fee that was not listed on their application (I kept the app and asked if they like it faxed to them). Eventually they agreed to cancel the card and reverse the fee. I still have a late payment mark for that card on my credit files but it shows closed by consumer, account paid as agreed.

posted 04-01-2005 20:48               

quote:

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Originally posted by DanM:
My plan is the same as lyoder. It's called GoMiles now, and I am very happy with it because it lets me shop for the cheapest ticket on any airline and then get a credit. I've always found that if I shop, I can get the ticket cheap enough that my miles are more cost effective than other plans where I have to give up x points for crossing two regions or some such formula.

[This message has been edited by DanM (edited 04-01-2005).]

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Ditto.

posted 04-02-2005 14:59               

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Thanks, Jim