30% Bonus with point transfers to Virgin Atlantic

[Pumbaa]

Hi K3nnis,

I did the numbers with transferring to Hilton from MR and they still didn't stack up to good value compared to flight redemptions with Singapore airlines

50 000 points for a nice room at Hilton per night requires 19 230 points amex MR points factoring 30% bonus
28 000 Amex points = 1 way Perth-Singapore J > 1.5 nights at the Hilton

 

[k3nnis]

Thanks Pumbaa for the anaysis
I won't be doing the full award night, I will do cash+points i.e. 25000 + $ for example conrad HK.

I'm from SYD.

 

[Pumbaa]

Fair enough

I always find with hotels personally I prefer paying cash. You get to earn points, achieve status which is not that hard or expensive to achieve and is reasonably affordable.

J tickets are just a bit out of the price range for me when you compare them to Y tickets. But paying $250-$400 a night for a 4/5 star hotel depending if you can book during sale periods compared to paying $50-$100 for a motel I a no brainier. Especially when you can earn hotel points and status so easily and cheaply.

Earn 20 000 spg points with hotel stays transfer to AA and get 25 000 points and you're pretty close to being able to fly Perth-NZ J return on Qantas!

 

[k3nnis]

Yeah totally understand where you are coming from. I'm trying to save as much cash as possible hence I am using cash+points for the conrad HK plus I won't be travelling for a while after that. So I am going to burn the points And also conrad HK I think is pretty expensive using cash only. I am Hilton Gold so hopefully I will be treated well

 

[JohnK]

So 25,000 Amex MR points gets you 60,000 HHonors points. I guess it is a good way of getting some cheap redemptions on HHonors points + pay.

Where is that 30% refund on HHonors points + pay redemptions when you need it?

 

[Chicken]

So is anyone here thinking of leaving AmEx with what's coming in a month's time, but cannot because of Flying Club?

I've started a partition. Would be great if everyone can sign it, and see if VS would release us from AmEx!

 

[Hubbins]

So to be vague what are the changes that are happening next month

 

[Chicken]

So to be vague what are the changes that are happening next month

Platinum charge and Platinum reserve are going from 1.5 mile currently, to 1 mile for most transactions, 0.5 mile for bills / utilities / tax office transactions.

See all the other threads here about AmEx.

 

[Chicken]

I've started a partition. Would be great if everyone can sign it, and see if VS would release us from AmEx!

Just to test, not many people worried about relying on American Express for Virgin Atlantic Flying Club?

 

[JohnK]

Just to test, not many people worried about relying on American Express for Virgin Atlantic Flying Club?

I don't quite understand.

Is the point of the exercise to scare Amex so they increase points earn again? The changes do not affect me much as I try to avoid paying tax in life in general. The less tax I pay the more money I have in my pocket.

 

[Chicken]

Is the point of the exercise to scare Amex so they increase points earn again?

It's about VS partnering with a Visa or MasterCard issuer. AmEx earning rate is getting worse and worse (from 1.5 point to 1 point and 0.5 point), acceptance seems to be going backwards, and the point earning is a mess (merchants in wrong categories, we the cardholders getting wrong amount of points credited).

The changes do not affect me much as I try to avoid paying tax in life in general. The less tax I pay the more money I have in my pocket

It's not just tax, but all 1.5 earning cards are now down to 1 point per $1, and bills, utilities, transports are now down to 0.5 points.