Delta New Member Bonus - My Final Tally

Last August, Delta came out with a promotion for people who had never had a Skymile frequent flyer account. I wrote about the nuts and bolts of the promotion here and here. In summary, the promotion gave you points for completing various tasks ie flying, buying, getting credit card all within the first year. Since I never had a Delta account, I signed-up and it has been a fun ride.

My year ended last month and I earned 69,691 miles due to it.

Earning over 69,000 points in one year with little effort is pretty darn good.

How I Did It

First, I took a flight to Atlanta and earned 6,000 miles (1,000 actual miles + 5,000 First Flight Bonus)

+6,000 miles

Delta.com

Next, I applied and was approved for the Delta Amex Gold. The promotion I went with was 45,000 miles after spending $5,000 in 6 months. I wrote about getting the card here. The New Member Promotion gave 5,000 extra miles for being approved for the Amex Gold card. The 5,000 New Member miles did not post automatically. I had to call and fight for the points.

45,000 AMEX Sign-Up Bonus
5,000 New Member Bonus
5,011 Miles Earned for Spend
----------------------

+ 55,011 Miles

The final section of the New Member Bonus I completed was the partner section. I wrote about it here and here. I earned the rest of the miles through various partners.

Super Shuttle Trip                     550 miles - 50 miles for the trip and 500 Partner Bonus Miles
eRewards                               1000 miles - 500 miles transfer and 500 Partner Bonus Miles
Club Carlson Point Transfer      750 miles  - 250 miles transfer and 500 Partner Bonus Miles
Dining Rewards                      1790 miles - 90 from dining, 1,200 sign-up bonus and Bonus
DoubleTree Stay                    1000 miles - 500 miles per stay and 500 Partner Bonus Miles
Hilton Stay                             1000 miles - 500 miles per stay and 500 Partner Bonus Miles
Hilton Stay 2                          1000 miles - 500 miles per stay and 500 Partner Bonus Miles
SkyMiles Shopping                  510 miles -  10 miles from purchase and 500 Partner Bonus Miles
SkyMall Purchase                    520 miles -  20 miles from purchase and 500 Partner Bonus Miles
Fedex Package                        508 miles -  8 miles for cost + 500 FEDEX Bonus
----------------------

+8628

I did not get the partner bonus from FEDEX package because it did not post prior to the close of my year. I wish the terms and conditions were a little more clear about this, but its an interesting story.

As a mathematician might notice that everything above adds up to only 69,639, but my point balance is 69691. The last 52 miles were things I tried to trigger the bonus. My failed attempts included Thanks Again and Transferring 5 US Airways miles into 1 Delta Skymile. Therefore, not all partner bonus will trigger the bonus.

Conclusion

If I could have done anything better, I would have tried to take more flights. The promotion would have awarded me 2,500 miles in addition to miles flown for my next 4 roundtrip flights. Every time I needed to take a flight, I tried to book with DELTA, but it never worked out. Either the price was to high or the routing did not work.

The other regret was the FEDEX slip up. For two months, I wanted to send the package to earn the points, but I didn't. I can only blame myself on this one.

Overall, this promotion was tons of fun and very reminiscent of US Airway's Grand Slam. I am unsure if the promotion is still alive; however, the web page is still up. If it is not, Delta Points has a code for 5,000 miles for new accounts.

Thanks for a fun year Delta!

Now the next challenge, how to spend these Skymiles?

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I Did It For The Points: Ordered an Ebook

Yes, I ordered an ebook. Normally, this would not be blog worthy except that I have no use for the ebook nor do I plan on downloading it. I simply Did It For The Points.

A little back story....

One of the first promotion I wrote about on the blog was Delta's New Member Bonus. A promotion that I have written about here, here, here and here. If you have never had a Delta Skymiles account, you can sign-up for this promotion and earn extra miles by completing tasks within one year. One of those tasks is purchasing items for Delta's partners.

My promotion year was coming to an end quickly and I had 2 partner opportunities available or 1,000 miles left. With few partner options left, I saw that I had not purchased from SkyMall. Now the question was to find an item that did not cost to much.

One of the tricks I learned from US Airways Grandslam is how to get all the products to appear in order by cost. To do this, type a quotation mark " in the search engine box:

Then choice to sort results from low to high:

After doing these steps, all of the products offered by Skymall will appear in order of price. Here is are some of the cheapest items Delta Skymall offers:

I thought of buying a adapter plug for South America, since I could use it later in the year. I even thought about buying a Bieber manual toothbrush as it would be a gag gift. The problem with both wasn't the price, but that added shipping cost. Skymall charges shipping rates by the amount you spend.

My Bieber toothbrush would cost me over $10 ($2.99 regular cost + $7.25 delivery cost) to get shipped to myself.  A little too much for a gag gift!

I started to look a little further down the list and came across three eBooks with "free delivery." This was just what I was looking for:

I choice the Change book, checked out and a few days later the points arrived into my account:

SkyMall gives you 5 miles per $1 spent with them. So, I earned 20 miles for spending $4 on the eBook.

The 500 miles came from the New Member Promotion. My $4 purchase netted me 520 miles or 105 for every $1 I spent. Not to shabby.

So I spent $4 on an eBook, I don't plan on reading. But I walked away with 520 miles.

Do It For The Points in action!

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 Follow us on Twitter @doit4thepoints! Have a question for me? E-mail me at jd@doitforthepoints.com

It's Official Delta is Going Revenue Based

It was leaked yesterday but it looks like Delta has officially announced that they will be going to a revenue based program focused on Medallion Qualification Dollars (MQDs).

You will need to spend:

$2,500 for Silver
$5,000 for Gold
$7,500 for Platinum
$12,500 for Diamond

That is all IN ADDITION to qualifying on miles or segments.

Interesting to note though....the MQDs fee will be waved for members who have a U.S. Delta SkyMiles credit card from American Express as long as they spend $25,000 in eligible purchases.

Here is a link to the press statement announcing the new program.

Delta Really Wants Me to Fly On Them (Targeted Offer)

On Thursday, I received an email from Delta offering me an additional 1,000 Skymiles and $100 e-certificate toward a Delta Vacations if I book a flight by November 6^th and fly by December 6^th.

The terms of this promotion are here:

Eligibility: Only members who receive this communication directly from Delta Air Lines are eligible to participate in this offer. This offer is non–transferable. To participate in this offer, eligible members must register online by November 6, 2012. Members must register for this offer before taking a qualifying flight to be eligible for bonus miles. 

Validity: Purchase and fly one qualifying Delta marketed and operated flight at delta.com between September 6, 2012 and December 6, 2012, and earn 1,000 bonus miles. A qualifying flight includes any Delta or Delta Connection® carrier flight. Codeshare flights operated by carriers other than the Delta Connection carriers are excluded from this offer. Bonus miles do not count toward Medallion® qualification or Million Miler™ status. 

Mileage: Earn a one–time 1,000–mile bonus for purchasing a qualifying flight at delta.com. 

Travel Period: Travel must be between September 6, 2012 and December 6, 2012. All travel must be completed by December 6, 2012. 

The terms and conditions do not mention if the qualifying flight has to be roundtrip. However, to play it safe, I am going to do a round trip.

What makes this a sweet promotion is that it fits perfectly with the new membership promotion aka Delta Grand Slam that I talk about here. If you are signed up with the new member promotion, you receive bonus Skymiles for your first five trips. If you combine the two together, you can rake in some real Skymiles simply for flying.

For example, if you have never flown with Delta and are registered for both promotions (new member and this new one), your first flight would earn you the following:

5,000 (new member bonus 1^st flight) + 1,000 (this new promotion) = 6,000 + actual miles flown.

For me, linking the two promotions would look like this for my next flight (my second on Delta):

2,500 (new member bonus flights 2-5) + 1,000 (this bonus)  = 3,500 miles + actual miles flown

The terms and conditions do not restrict you from getting bonuses from two offers. Warning, I have not tried earning bonus points from these two bonuses, Delta might try to limit you to one bonus. Let’s cross our fingers and fight with Delta later, if we need to.

If you want to see if you qualify for this promotion, go here.

The rules state this is a targeted offer to those who received an email. However, it can’t hurt to try to see if you qualify, even if you did not receive an email. I asked a few friends to try and only one qualified, so YMMV.

With this new promotion, I think its time for me to start searching for a mileage run in the next 90 days….3,500 bonus miles + actual miles flown makes almost any cheap fare a great mileage run!