I was checking AwardWallet the other day and noticed something in the left hand bar that I'd never registered before. If you scroll halfway down the page, you'll see it too - 'Referral Bonus Points: 0'. Except that mine said: '500'. I didn't know what these were so I clicked to find out. Apparently, if you give out a free AW code and someone uses it to get an upgrade, AND at a later date pays AwardWallet a subscription fee, you will get some referral points. A few months ago I remember that some blogs recommended AW users to buy a subscription at the time because AW was increasing the fee a month or two down the line. I gave out a code last year and two people who used the code paid for subscriptions. I was given 250 points for each referral. AW offered to convert them into American Airlines points (875) or Hilton points (1000). I opted for the latter. So, a bonus 1k points for me that I never knew I had. Worth checking your AW accounts to see if you have any!
If you'd read my blog post on valuation, you'd see that 875 AA miles can be worth £10 whilst 1000 Honors points is worth £4. But of course if you don't collect AA miles at all they're worthless to you...
Correct. When I first started out in this game, I was collecting free miles for every airline/hotel promo that was blogged about, regardless of my usage of their services. Nowadays I tend to focus on a smaller number of airlines/hotels, which is less time consuming. I do have an AA account with a few miles but I've never used their airline. I'm using Hilton more, so I'll get more value out of them. The AA miles may just expire.
The AA devaluation really crushed its value for me, although between the MBNA credit card and the chance for Qatar or Etihad First Class rewards for a reasonable 62.K each way, I'm still hanging in there...
Yeah, it's still a decent programme but not many spectacular values left. Speaking of the card - have you ever bought something and refunded it on that one? Interesting results...
I don't exhaustively analyse it, but it appears that it just nets back off. I'm not sure whether if your refund takes your statement balance below zero, then the next month that negative amount is "ignored"...
I haven't looked at it for a while, but it used to be very interesting indeed - and certainly worth experimenting with. I'll dig out my cards when I get back and see what the situation is now.
