Venture points - Revision history

Editor: /* Hotel transfer partners */

2021-10-30T06:45:02Z

‎Hotel transfer partners

Editor: /* Comparing to the other transferable points programs */

2021-10-30T06:44:09Z

‎Comparing to the other transferable points programs

Editor: /* Hotel transfer partners */

2021-10-30T06:34:23Z

‎Hotel transfer partners

Editor: /* Airline transfer partners */

2021-10-30T06:33:23Z

‎Airline transfer partners

Editor at 06:14, 30 October 2021

2021-10-30T06:14:59Z

Editor: /* Capital One "transferable points" credit cards */

2021-06-14T20:21:37Z

‎Capital One "transferable points" credit cards

Editor: /* Capital One "transferable points" credit cards */

2021-06-14T20:20:48Z

‎Capital One "transferable points" credit cards

Editor: /* Capital One "transferable points" credit cards */

2021-06-14T20:18:20Z

‎Capital One "transferable points" credit cards

Editor: /* Capital One "transferable points" credit cards */

2021-06-14T20:17:48Z

‎Capital One "transferable points" credit cards

Editor: /* Cashing out your points */

2021-06-14T20:15:56Z

‎Cashing out your points

@@ Line 86: / Line 86: @@
 <ul class="bulletlist">
-<li>'''Wyndham Rewards'''. Venture points transfer at a 1:1 ratio.  Since we value Wyndham points at {{Value|Wyndham|1}} cents each, this seems like a low-value redemption. However, Wyndham points can be much more valuable when used to book vacation rentals. If this is something that you will be able to frequently take advantage of, the ability to earn 2x Wyndham points per dollar with the Capital One cards may be the main reason you'll want to take advantage of. If not, it may still be worthwhile for more valuable Wyndham hotel redemptions.  {{Link|Wyndham}}.</li>
+<li>'''Wyndham Rewards'''. Venture points transfer at a 1:1 ratio.  Since we value Wyndham points at {{Value|Wyndham|1}} cents each, this seems like a low-value redemption. However, Wyndham points can be MUCH more valuable when used to book vacation rentals. If this is something that you will be able to frequently take advantage of, the ability to earn 2x Wyndham points per dollar with the Capital One cards may be the main reason you'll want to take advantage of. If not, it may still be worthwhile for more valuable Wyndham hotel redemptions.  {{Link|Wyndham}}.</li>
 <li>'''Accor Live Limitless (ALL)'''. Accor is the loyalty program for a very large number of primarily European and Luxury brands, including Novotel, Sofitel, and Fairmont. They offer a fixed-value reward program, where each point is worth exactly .02 Euros (around 2.2 cents). Venture points transfer at a 2:1 ratio, so you are getting around 1.1 cents per Venture point. This is slightly more than you would get by using your Venture points for regular travel purchases.  {{Link|Accor}}.</li>

@@ Line 200: / Line 200: @@
 === Comparing to the other transferable points programs ===
-While we really like the Capital One program, we think it is somewhat less useful than the other three big transferable point programs (unless you can frequently take advantage of the Wyndham vacation rental opportunity).
+The things we love about the Capital One program are:
 <ul class="bulletlist">
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 It is also somewhat more difficult to earn lots of Capital One points with bonus categories. The Savor cards offer decent rewards on dining, groceries, and entertainment. But overall, Chase, Amex, and Citibank offer some higher reward rates and some additional categories.
-<li>'''For frequent flyer tickets, Membership Rewards is, by far, the best option'''. It has many more airline partners and the most transfer bonuses, and it is the easiest program to accumulate a lot of points. On the other hand, if you aren't willing and able to get a business card, you can only earn 1.5x points per dollar with Amex (and then only with the annoying 30-transaction minimum on the Everyday Preferred card). So, you might choose to use the Venture as your general-purpose card and earn your Membership Reward points through bonuses.</li>
+<li>'''For frequent flyer tickets, Membership Rewards isa better option'''. It has many more airline partners and the most transfer bonuses, and it is the easiest program to accumulate a lot of points. On the other hand, if you aren't willing and able to get a business card, you can only earn 1.5x points per dollar with Amex (and then only with the annoying 30-transaction minimum on the Everyday Preferred card). So, you might choose to use the Venture as your general-purpose card and earn your Membership Reward points through bonuses.</li>
-<li>'''For general-purpose points, we recommend Ultimate Rewards for most people'''. We love hotel points, and for most people, Hyatt is a much better partner than Wyndham and Accor. Ultimate Rewards is a bit weaker than Capital One for frequent flyer tickets, but has the advantage of 1:1 transfers with all their partners. And if you are collecting Membership Rewards as well, you may want to use most of your Ultimate Rewards points for Hyatt stays. And if you need to  "cash out", you can get up to 1.5 cents per point (or 2.25% on everyday purchases) with Chase, versus 1 cent per point (or 2% on everyday purchases) with Capital One.</li>
+<li>'''For general-purpose points, we recommend Ultimate Rewards for most people'''. We love hotel points, and for most people, Hyatt is a much better partner than Wyndham and Accor. Ultimate Rewards is a bit weaker than Capital One for frequent flyer tickets but not enough to ovecome Chase's advantage with Hyatt and richer portfolio of cards. And if you need to "cash out", you can get up to 1.5 cents per point (or 2.25% on everyday purchases) with Chase, versus 1 cent per point (or 2% on everyday purchases) with Capital One.</li>
-<li>'''Capital One might be a better option than Citi as a third program'''. If you are already have stashes of Membership and Ultimate Rewards points and Amex and Chase cards that earn good bonus categories, Capital One might be a better option than Citibank (as a third program). This primarily comes down to whether you can get approved for a Capital One card and whether the ability to acquire Wyndham points is more valuable than the higher transfer rate to Turkish Airlines. In any event, if you are going for a third program, you might as well take advantage of all four.</li>
+<li>'''Capital One might be a better option than Citi as a third program'''. If you are already have stashes of Membership and Ultimate Rewards points and Amex and Chase cards that earn good bonus categories, Capital One might be a better option than Citibank (as a third program). In any event, if you are going for a third program, you might as well take advantage of all four.</li>
 <li>'''Capital One does provide the ultimate one-card solution'''. If you absolutely want to stick with a single card, the Venture card is probably your best bet. You have the option of 2% cash back, while maintaining the upside of potentially getting more value through frequent flyer tickets or good value Wyndham redemptions.</li>
-<li>'''However, both Chase and Citi have two-card solutions that are probably better and don't cost any more each year'''. The Citi Double Cash / Premier combo earns a great set of bonus category rewards, the same cashback rate, and slight more valuable points for frequent flyer redemptions. It is also easier to get a periodic signup bonus boost. The main thing you'll miss is the Wyndham option, but for most people, the all-in-one bonus categories of the Premier card more than make up for that.</li>
+<li>'''However, both Chase and Citi have two-card solutions that are probably better and don't cost any more each year'''. The Citi Double Cash / Premier combo earns a great set of bonus category rewards and the same cashback rate. It is also easier to get a periodic signup bonus boost. The main thing you'll miss is the Wyndham option, but for most people, the all-in-one bonus categories of the Premier card more than make up for that.</li>
 Like the Citi combo, the Freedom Unlimited / Sapphire combo also has the advantage of bonus category rewards. More importantly, most people will get great value out of redeeming the points on Hyatt hotel stays, without the difficulties of using points for frequent flyer tickets. In most cases 1.5 Hyatt points is much better than 2 Wyndham points.

@@ Line 90: / Line 90: @@
 <li>'''Accor Live Limitless (ALL)'''. Accor is the loyalty program for a very large number of primarily European and Luxury brands, including Novotel, Sofitel, and Fairmont. They offer a fixed-value reward program, where each point is worth exactly .02 Euros (around 2.2 cents). Venture points transfer at a 2:1 ratio, so you are getting around 1.1 cents per Venture point. This is slightly more than you would get by using your Venture points for regular travel purchases.  {{Link|Accor}}.</li>
-<li>'''Choice Privileges'''. Since you can "buy" Choice points for .8 cents each with the Cash & Points trick, it doesn't make sense to transfer your Capital One points to Choice. You'd be better off cashing them out at 1 cent each (or transferring them to some more valuable program. {{Link|Choice}}.</li>
+<li>'''Choice Privileges'''. Since you can "buy" Choice points for .8 cents each with the Cash & Points trick (or receive 2 Choice points for each ThankYou point you transfer), it doesn't make sense to transfer your Capital One points to Choice. You'd be better off cashing them out at 1 cent each (or transferring them to some more valuable program. {{Link|Choice}}.</li>
 </ul>

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 Like the Membership and ThankYou Rewards programs, Capital One occasionally offers transfer bonuses (where you get bonus miles when you transfer your points to a specific airline partner). See {{Link|Transfer Bonuses}} for more information or Frequent Miler’s [//frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/current-point-transfer-bonuses/ Current Transfer Bonuses page]. for a list of current bonuses.
-The number of miles you get for each point depends on the airline. With some airlines, you get as much as a full mile per point (or 2 miles for every dollar spent with your card). In the worst cases, you only get ½ mile per point (or 1 mile per dollar). And many of their better airline partners are in-between—you get ¾ miles per point (or 1.5 mile pr dollar).
+When Capital One first launched the transfer program, your points didn't transfer one-to-one. With some airlines you needed to transfer 2 Capital One miles for every actual frequent flyer mile. With other airlines, you needed to transfer 3 Capital One Miles for every 2 frequent flyer miles. The rationale was that Capital One was giving you 2x points for every dollar spent, rather than just 1 or 1.5, and didn't want to give you a full 2 airline miles per dollar.
 {{Table|center|7in}}
@@ Line 38: / Line 40: @@
 !style="width: 25%;"|Other
 |-
-|'''Air Canada''' (1:&frac34;)<br/>(Aeroplan)
+|'''Air Canada''' <br/>(Aeroplan)
-|'''Air France / KLM''' (1:&frac34;) (Flying Blue)
+|'''Air France / KLM''' <br/>(Flying Blue)
-|'''Cathay Pacific''' (1:1) <br/>(Asia Miles)
+|'''Cathay Pacific''' <br/>(Asia Miles)
-|'''JetBlue''' (1:&frac34;)
+|'''Etihad'''
 |-
-|'''Turkish Airlines''' (1:&frac34;)
+|'''Turkish Airlines'''
-|'''Alitalia''' (1:&frac34;)
+|'''Alitalia'''
-|'''British Airways''' (1:&frac34;)
+|'''British Airways'''
-|'''Etihad''' (1:1)
+|'''Emirates'''
 |-
-|'''Avianca''' (1:1)
+|'''Avianca'''
-|'''Aeromexico''' (1:1)
+|'''Aeromexico'''
-|'''Qantas''' (1:1)
+|'''Qantas'''
-|'''Emirates''' (1:&frac12;)
 |-
-|'''EVA Air''' (1:&frac34;)
+|'''EVA Air'''
+|
+|
 |-
-|'''Singapore''' (1:&frac12;)
+|'''Singapore'''
+|
+|
+|
 |-
-|'''TAP Portugal''' (1:1)
+|'''TAP Portugal'''
+|
+|
@@ Line 69: / Line 71: @@
 {{/Table}}
-At first glance, Capital One has a better set of frequent flyer transfer partners than Ultimate Rewards and ThankYou Rewards. However, it is harder to earn lots of points with the Capital One program.  More importantly, with many of the partners you get less than 1 mile per point.
+Capital One brings together many of the useful options that are available in the other programs such as somewhat hard-to-deal with Avianca for great Star Allinace values, British Airways for short-distance Oneworld flights, Air France / KLM for solid access to SkyTeam flights, as well as Air Canada and Cathay Pacific's solid programs.
-Similarly British Airways is great for many shorter Oneworld flights and Air France / KLM Flying Blue can be good for SkyTeam flights, but you'll get 1:1 transfers with the other transferable point programs and only 1:&frac34; with Capital One. Air Canada is another good Star Alliance partner and one that is not available with Ultimate and ThankYou rewards, but suffers from the lower transfer rate.
+Capital One has perhaps ThankYou Reward's best partner in Turkish Airlines (which is fantastic for many United and Star Alliance flights and isn't a partner of Membership Rewards or Ultimate Rewards) and some nice partners that aren't available through ThankYou Rewards.
-While Avianca can be a pain to deal with, it is often a great option for Star Alliance flights and is available as a 1:1 transfer partner (just like Membership and ThankYou Rewards). Cathay is another good 1:1 partner (for Oneworld flights), but is a partner with all the other programs. Etihad can be an attractive option for many of its partners, including American Airlines, but is also available through both Membership and ThankYou rewards.
+Etihad can be an attractive option for many of its partners, including American Airlines, but is also available through both Membership and ThankYou rewards.
 Finnair and TAP Air Portugal, Capital One's unique partners, aren't particularly useful. Neither are Qantas and EVA, which are also part of the Citibank ThankYou points program, but not part of the generally more useful Membership or Ultimate Rewards programs. The possible exception are good rates for flights on El Al with the Qantas program or to access extra premium-cabin award space on EVA.

← Older revision		Revision as of 06:14, 30 October 2021
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	Unfortunately, it can be hard to get approved for the Venture or Spark cards. But if you can, they typically have very valuable signup bonuses and give you the flexibility of earning 2 or more Capital One "miles" per dollar.		Unfortunately, it can be hard to get approved for the Venture or Spark cards. But if you can, they typically have very valuable signup bonuses and give you the flexibility of earning 2 or more Capital One "miles" per dollar.
−

	{{TOC}}		{{TOC}}

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 {{/Table}}
-A combination of the Spark Cash and VentureOne cards lets you earn 2x points on every purchase and gives you the flexibility of either transferring points out or getting real cashback, while a single Venture or Spark Miles card only allows "cashing out" points against travel purchases.
+A combination of the Spark Cash and VentureOne cards lets you earn 2x points on every purchase and gives you the flexibility of either transferring points out or getting real cashback, while a single Venture or Spark Miles card only allows "cashing out" points against travel purchases.  We'd start with a Venture and if we could get approved for a Spark Card, downgrade it to a VentureOne at the end of the first year.
 === Collecting multiple signup bonuses ===

@@ Line 139: / Line 139: @@
 |$0
 |-
-|{{Card|SparkMiles|short}} (Business)
+|{{Card|SparkMiles|short}} (business)
 |50,000
 |2x all purchases
@@ Line 150: / Line 150: @@
 |-
 |-
-|{{Card|Spark|short}} (Business)
+|{{Card|Spark|short}} (business)
 |50,000
 |2x all purchases

@@ Line 114: / Line 114: @@
 === Capital One "transferable points" credit cards ===
-Only the Venture and Spark Miles Cards earn points that can be directly transferred to airline and hotel partners. However, if you have one of those cards, points from the VentureOne, Spark Cash, Savor, Savor One, and Quicksilver cards can be transferred to your "miles"-based card and then transferred out.
+'''Only the Venture, VentureOne and Spark Miles Cards earn points that can be directly transferred to airline and hotel partners'''. However, if you have one of those cards, points from the Spark Cash, Savor, Savor One, and Quicksilver cards can be transferred to one of these cards and then transferred out.
 A combination of card allows you to earn bonus "miles" on restaurant and dining and to increase the number of "miles" you can earn from signup bonuses.

@@ Line 99: / Line 99: @@
 === Cashing out your points ===
-<blockquote>
+<ul class="bulletlist">
-If you don’t want to mess around with frequent flyer tickets, your can always use your Venture points to pay for most other travel purchases. Even better, you can get actual cash from the points you earn from Spark Cash or Savor Card.
+<li>'''If you don’t want to mess around with frequent flyer tickets, your can always use your Venture points to pay for most other travel purchases'''. Unlike programs like Ultimate Rewards, you don't need to make your purchase through a travel portal that is run by the credit card company. You can just use your Capital One Card to make almost any travel purchase and then use your points to "erase" the charges on your  statement. For example, you can make a direct purchase at Hilton, a secret hotel purchase on Hotwire, or a payment directly to a taxi cab driver, and then use your points to offset the charge on your statement.</li>
 You have up to 90 days to make a redemption, so you can eventually use points you haven't earned yet to offset purchases you make with your card.
@@ Line 109: / Line 106: @@
 Unlike many other fixed-value points, there is no minimum redemption. If you have a $2 train ticket, you can use 200 points to "erase" it. However, if you only want to use points for part of the charged amount, you'll need to use at least 2,500 points.
-You also have the option of making a point-based purchase directly through Capital One's travel portal. But you'll probably receive better pricing, and often receive additional benefits and reward points, by booking elsewhere and then using your Capital One points to offset the credit card charge.
+<li>'''You also have the option of making a point-based purchase directly through Capital One's travel portal'''. But you'll probably receive better pricing, and often receive additional benefits and reward points, by booking elsewhere and then using your Capital One points to offset the credit card charge.</li>
 === Capital One "transferable points" credit cards ===