Hotel Review: Austin Country Inn and Suites

After a great night at the Hyatt Regency, my sister and I moved on for two nights at the Country Inn and Suites. The hotel is located north of downtown Austin in the St. John neighborhood. My sister was thinking about working at a school near the hotel and I though it important that we spend time in the neighborhood.

We booked the trip very last minute. The hotel is a category 3, costing 28,000 Gold Points a night. However, one of the unique benefits of having the Club Carlson Visa Card is that you get the last night free on award nights. Therefore, 28,000 points got us 2 free nights at the Country Inn and Suites. Due to our late booking, the cost for one night was $150; costing us $300 for the stay. Trying to keep the cost low for the trip, I spent my points which were earned by applying for the Club Carlson card. The Cash + Points offer was not available when we booked, but that would have been the option I would have chosen.











The lobby has a homey feel to it:

The check-in was a breeze. They did not recognize my Gold status, they did not thank me stay nor did they ask for a credit card. She just hand us keys and sent us on our way.

The hotel is old and had a funky smell. I could not pin point what it was, but both my sister and I both noticed it.

We were given a room on the third floor at the end of the hallway. This is where the real fun began as we found a surprise in our room. And no it was not a welcome gift or at least I hope it was not a welcome gift!

As you can see, at 62 seconds in, I find ants. Lots and lots of ants in the room. Some of them dead, others limping around and others trying to get out.

We quickly walked back downstairs to the front desk to ask for another room. The front desk attendant was  very apologetic and "upgraded" us to a Queen Suite. The only real difference was a couch. I don't now if a having a couch automatically makes a room a suite, but I'll go with it.



The hotel had a very small gym.

And an outdoor pool. It was very nice to jump in the pool after spending all day in the Texas sun.

The hotel serves breakfast every morning. I did not try it, but my sister did. She said it was average, but adequate.

As I stated here, one of the weirdest things we encountered was the spinning shower head.


               

Cool to look at, but not very practical.

One last compliant was the wireless internet was slow. Almost AOL dial-up slow.

The hotel would not be a place I would stay at again. However, the hotel served it purpose as being close to the school, she wanted to work at. We spent time and got a real feel of the neighborhood especially at night.

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Exchange Gift Cards

Did Grandma give you a gift card to PETCO for Christmas, but you don't have a pet?

Well, United has a solution; Gift Card Exchange. United will allow you to exchange your gift card for miles.

To exchange your gift card, you needs to go to this website and complete three easy steps:

The amount of miles that you earn depends on the amount of the gift card and demand for that merchant. The website provides you with a chart to show you approximate number of miles one can earn.

Now the exchange is offering a 25% bonus:

I decided to try out the exchange with a $25 Best Buy Gift Card. The exchanged offered me 840 miles like the chart above shows.

Since I paid $25 for the card, the 840 would cost be 2.9 cents per mile. Not a great redemption value. However, if you get the card for free and don't want it then it may be a good redemption.

Here are a few additional things you need to know about the exchange:

Here is a list of most of the gift cards that they will exchange for miles:


Abercrombie & Fitch                Dick's Sporting Goods         Lowe's                              The North Face
Areopostale                             Disney Store                      Macy's                               TicketMaster
Armeine Exchange                   Domino's Pizza                   Nieman Marcus                  Toys R US
Banana Republic                      DSW                                  New York & Company        United Artists
Barnes & Noble                        EB Games                          Nike                                 Victoria Secret
Bass Pro Shops                         Ethan Allen                        Nordstrom                        Walmart
Bath & Body Works                  Finish Line                         OfficeMax                         West Elm
Bed Bath & Beyond                  Flemings                            OfficeDepot                      Zappos.com
Best Buy                                 Foot Locker                        Old Navy
Bob Evans                               Forever 21                          Omaha Steaks
Bon Ton                                  Four Seasons                       Orvis
Bonefish Grill                          Gap, Gap Kids                     Overstock.com                        
Brooks Brothers                       Guess                                 Payless
Buca di Beppo                         Guitar Center                      PETCO
Burton                                    Hollister                             Pottery Barn
Cache                                    Home Dept                          Puma
CB2                                        HP                                     Pipeline
Chico's                                   J. Crew                               REI
Coach                                    Justice                                Regal Entertainment
Columbia                               Kmart                                 Rite Aid
Converse                                Kohl's                                  Saks Fifth Avenue
Crate & Barrel                        L.L. Bean                            Sears
CVS                                       Land's End                           Target
Carrabbas Italian Grill            Legal Sea Food                    The Body Shop
Champs Sports                       Lids                                     The Container Store
Dean & Dulca                         Lord & Taylor                      The Great Indoors

I would not recommend this as a way to earn miles except if you have no use of gift card. There are cheaper ways to earn the miles than buying gift cards for the purpose of exchanging for miles.

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Chase Sapphire Secondary Benefit: Free Movie Ticket on Friday

Most bloggers are going to write today or tomorrow about a major benefit that happens this Friday.

 On the first Friday of each month, one earns 3 points per $$$ spent at restaurants.

That's a great promotion, but there is another promotion that is happening on Friday. Chase Sapphire is a Visa Signature card. On Friday's until August 2, any Visa Signature cards will earn you 2 for 1 movie tickets through Fandango.

Tickets under this promotion are only good for Friday show and you can only use this offer once every 30 days. Therefore, you can use it one more time before the promotion is over. To participate in the offer, go to this website.

I used the promotion to by myself two tickets last Friday. Why two tickets my ask for me? I don't like people sitting next to me. Buying two tickets makes sure this doesn't happen.

Oh, the Heat was a great movie. I highly recommend it for great laughs.

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Buy/Transfer Miles

Here at Do It for the Points we have always encouraged people to have a goal in mind when they are building up their miles and points bonuses. Why are you getting those items, why are you trying to reach a minimum spend...the end result should always be a trip that you have in mind or a goal of booking a certain hotel or flight. As we've seen in the past few weeks the quick devaluation of both hotel and airline points is on the horizon. It may not happen all at once, but it certainly doesn't bode well for those that hold onto their points for a rainy day.

But if you find yourself short of the requisite number of points you need or the same can be said for your traveling partner you can always consider buying or sharing miles to get you to the level you need to be. United offers you the ability to buy miles in 1,000 mile increments starting at 2,000 miles. The cost is $35.00 per 1,000 miles so that equals about 3.5 cents per mile. You can also transfer miles  from account to account at a rate of $15 per 1,000 miles and a transaction fee of $30.00 per transfer. Other airlines, famously US Airways, regularly have promotions that will boost the amount of miles you buy by up to 100 percent. I don't recall United doing a promotion like this recently, but it's certainly not out of the realm of possibility. Just keep your eyes out.

This method is not cheap and is not always the best way to go about gaining miles. But if you find yourself just short of an award ticket and you see the availability and don't want to miss out on the flight, it's something to consider. If you weigh the costs and see that the opportunity cost of buying, for example, a business class ticket, versus purchasing the miles to get a business class award ticket on the same flights, you might consider buying the miles to make sure you can secure that award ticket.

Now some people might be saying...why would I buy miles...the goal of this hobby is to travel for free. But that's where I say you are off track, travel is never free, there is always an opportunity cost you are paying into the hobby to get to that minimum spend or other tricks of the trade that do cost money. The end goal is to bring down the price of a business class or first class ticket to the levels that the average person could afford. If you are stuck to get more miles and need to figure out a way to get some into your account fast, it's not always a bad idea to see if buying or sharing them is in your best interest. But I would explore every other avenue first.



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e-Miles

One of the passive ways to earn United mile is using e-Miles. I use the word "passive," because you won't get point rich with e-Miles. One can only cash out of e-Mles once earning  at least 500 miles and this takes time. Why bother you might ask? Every point counts and sometimes airlines have bonuses for transferring points into your account. United had a promotion at the end of 2012 that gave one a 25% bonus on partner miles transfer into United MilagePlus accounts.

I have been a member of US Airways e-Miles for a very long time. It was one of the first point earning strategies that I did. I shut that account down to open up a now no longer offered Delta e-Miles account. e-Miles only allows one to have one account at a time.

Under the e-Miles FAQs:

        "What happens if I receive an invitation from another sponsor which I prefer? 

               Member can cancel their e-Miles membership at any time. To re-enroll, you will 
               need to visit e-Miles.com and complete the member enrollment process.

               NOTE: Once you cancelled your membership any e-Miles miles earned that have 
               not already been deposited to your preferred frequent flyer or sponsor account 
               will be lost.

This question gives us valuable information. For one, you are not allowed to have more than one active e-mile account, but more importantly two: you may switch between programs freely. Some people have reported using different email accounts to have multiple e-Miles accounts. I would caution this strategy  At any time, e-Miles might shut all of your accounts for violation of the terms and conditions.

Typically, e-Miles is an invitation only program. However, one can apply here for the United e-Miles program. Under this link, one will earn 100 points from the beginning. Check your email accounts for special offers from United.  Often, they will send offers to join e-Miles with 250 miles automatically deposited into you e-Miles account, meaning you are half way to you first deposit.

At the moment, one can only transfer miles to their preferred airline. However, e-Miles has indicated that changes will be coming to allow for deposits into multiple airlines regardless of your preferred airlines. e-Miles has partnerships with Delta, US Airways, United, AirTran, Southwest, Hilton Honers, Priority Club, Frontier, Alaskan, Southwest and Amazon.

After signing up for e-Miles, you will be taken to a front page with various offers. Many of the first offers will be asking you to create your profile. While creating your profile, I would recommend choosing the first two columns (High Interest or Somewhat Interest.) By doing this, you will increase the number of offers that you get.

Every few days, you will receive an email saying that you have new opportunities available to you. After receiving this email, click on the link to go to your homepage to see the offers. Each offer normally gives you 5 miles + additional miles for signing up for the offer. The only requirement to get the 5 base miles is to click on the"continue" button and answer a few short questions. Again, always try to pick "high interest" and "somewhat interest". 





The time commitment for e-Miles is a few minutes every couple of days. Nothing major.

Once you earn 500 miles, you are able to deposit into your United MilagePlus account. The deposit normally happens within a week of your request. It takes me about 3 or 4 months to hit 500 miles without any major effort of cost

Again, e-Miles won't make you points rich. However, combined with partner bonuses, a few minutes every couple of days may result in a good chunk of miles.

I hope you give e-Miles a chance. 

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Earning Miles for Switching Insurance Carriers

Last month, I received an email offering MilagePlus miles for getting switching one's insurance to Allstate.

At the moment, one can earn 500 miles for switching one's auto and home insurance.

The small print mentions that one needs to provide your local Allstate agent or the 1-800 agents your MilagePlus number from the beginning of your inquiry. In addition, the small print mentions that this offer will expire on August 12, 2013 and is valid in participating states only. However, it doesn't mention which states are participating.

A quick look at the United offer page, shows the offer valid in the following states and territories: Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire,
New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and Washington, DC.

The offer page mentions one can earn from 500 to 6,500 bonus award miles for switching your insurance to Allstate. Call a local Allstate Agent or 1-855-514-9043 for your free quote and to find out how many miles you can earn. Therefore, one has a chance to earn more miles for switching to Allstate. This AllState webpage states that one could earn 4,500 miles for switching both your auto (2500 miles) and home insurance (2000 miles). I would recommend taking a screen shot of the page, if you decided to use this offer.

One should always check to see what the price of insurance with the miles and without the miles. I am not definite that the cost of a policy earning miles is more than one that does not. However, one could image a scenario where the policies could be different prices. Allstate has to pay for those miles otherwise.

At the moment, US Airways is the only other airline that allows one to earn miles for getting insurance. The big difference is that one can earn miles for simply requesting a quote.

Everyone needs insurance if they own a car or home, why not try to earn miles by doing it.

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How to Earn Miles: Actually Flying!

As JD mentioned in yesterday's post this month we are going to forget about burning all of the points and miles you've earned and instead focus on 31 different ways that you CAN earn miles. For beginner, and even some experienced folks like me, it's always great to lay out the different ways that you can earn miles to use for awesome trips of a lifetime. That way you can make sure you are earning the maximum miles while minimizing the money you spend to get them! We are focusing on United for the simplicity of explanation, but most of these tricks will work for all of the major airlines.

One of the easiest and most straight forward ways to earn miles on United is to.....actually fly United! Now I know that most of you are saying....wait you are suggesting actually flying to earn miles?!?! With all of the tricks of the trade that we will detail over the course of the month it is easy to see how flying is not always the best bang for your buck way to earn miles, but it is often the easiest way to earn miles when you already have to fly.

When I first entered the points and miles hobby I didn't have an airline of choice. I liked a few airlines but I was a poor college student and then a poor graduate student so I would just choose the airline that had the cheapest fare. I would also often not bother to put in my frequent flyer number when I did fly. I figured that I would never get enough miles to fly across the country...let alone across the world...so why bother?

But after researching the basic how-to's of earning miles to use around the world I saw the benefits of trying to focus my flying on one airline to maximize my earning potential. That airline for me is United and their MileagePlus Program. I have been a member for years but since I would forget to credit my flights in college between DC and Seattle I only have about 70,000 lifetime flight miles....though I have flown much more than that on United.

United's earning through the MileagePlus program comes in two flavors. The first is Redeemable Miles (RDMs) which are the miles that you get for the miles that you fly and can be redeemed for award travel down the line. These miles are the ones that we want to focus on if you are just earning miles to redeem for award trips. The second kind, Premiere Qualifying Miles (PQMs), are used to determine elite status on the airline. These miles are the so called "butt-in-seat" miles that you earn from sitting on an airplane and flying. But for the average traveler the only number you really need to worry about is the redeemable miles that you will get from flying.

The amount of miles that you earn is determined by how far you are flying and what "fare class" your ticket is in. When you purchase your ticket there is often a random letter next to your ticket (i.e. Economy(L)). This letter shows what fare class your ticket was purchased in and in turn will tell you how many miles you will get for your trip. On the chart below you can see that for most people they will earn 100 percent of the miles that they fly on an itenirary because they will be booked in M,E,U,H,Q,V,W,S,T,L,K,G or N classes. These are the basic economy classes and the discounted economy classes. If you fly in a really high fare economy class, such as Y or B you could be earning 125 percent of the miles that you fly. That percentage goes up all the way to 250 percent for a high fare First Class ticket on a flight with a First, Business and Economy class. Unless there is a major major deal, you are willing to drop lots of cash or United's computer system goes haywire (which is actually a possibility) the average flyer will be earning miles in the lower 100 percent earning bucket.

Eligible United fare classes	Award mile earnings	MileagePlus Premier earnings
Purchased fare class	Base award miles (including class of service bonus)	Premier qualifying miles (PQM)	Premier qualifying segments (PQS)
F, A (3-cabin Global First)	250%	150%	1.5
F, A (all other)	175%	150%	1.5
J, C, D	175%	150%	1.5
Z, P	150%	150%	1.5
Y, B	125%	150%	1.5
M, E, U, H, Q, V, W, S, T, L, K, G, N	100%

To make sure you earn these miles you will need to make sure you have a MileagePlus account (the link above has the sign up page). You also need to make sure that your MileagePlus number is registered on your ticket. You can check this by going to your reservation and looking at the passenger details. If your MileagePlus number is not show showing you can add it in at that time. United is also a member of the Star Alliance  so if you are flying on one of their airline partners (i.e. Lufthansa, Singapore, Thai, or US Airways (for now) to name a few) you might be able to earn miles on a paid flights with them as well! Make sure you check the earning charts for each airline on United's website  to make sure you are in a fare class that will earn United miles. When you book with their partners, make sure you insert your United MileagePlus number so you will earn the miles on United and not in their program.

So...it's that easy! Have an upcoming trip or planning trips for the future? Do your research (or send us a note, we would love to help) and figure out if there is an airline that works for your city or area and can become "your airline." Make sure you are a member of their airline and if it's within your budget and travel needs to fly them when you need to travel, do so and watch your mileage balance grow!



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