by PointsGuru | Sep 25, 2016 | Restaurants
The summer of 2016 is a great time to be alive according to many on Twitter as Chiptopia Summer Rewards will be available for a three month period from July through September. The program is basically Chipotle Rewards but it’s not exactly the easiest rewards program to follow as they have came out with a 3-minute video to explain parts of it. It also has tiered levels where you can earn more than just the typical free entrees.
Chiptopia Rewards has three status levels:
Mild- you need to make at least four purchases of at least $6 during the month, which gets you a free entree
Medium – you need to make at least eight purchases of at least $6 during the month, which earns you a free entree
Hot – make at least 11 purchases of at least $6 during the month, which earns you a free entree
Kids Eat FREE on Sundays!
Every Sunday in September kid’s can eat FREE whenever you buy a burrito, bowl, an order of tacos or a salad – NO coupon needed! The free kid’s meal comes with a Dragons Love Tacos activity sheet and includes fruit or kid’s chips AND an organic apple or milk drink. These kid’s meals are priced at $3.75-$4.75 at my local restaurant, so this is a nice discount! Please note that this offer is only for kids 12 and under and not valid for catering orders. You may try and see if this will work on a delivery order.
Your purchase total resets to zero every month so don’t plan on carrying over your totals for one month to another. When you redeem for a free entree that counts towards the next status level. If you drive for Postmates or have a family and want to add up more than one purchase per day that wouldn’t count towards status.
You will receive additional rewards if you qualified for status for all three months, as follows:
Earn Mild status for all three months, receive a complimentary entree
Earn Medium status for all three months, receive $20 in Chipotle merchandise
Earn Hot status for all three months, receive catering for 20
Basically if you eat Chipotle four times in a month you’ll get a free entree. It’s best not to sweat all the other tiers and obstacles when all you get is an $8 or so award. Although this program does compare higher to other restauraunt programs such as Pei Wei. Chipotle’s is very generous with its rewards, offering a free entrée after roughly $24 of spend. This compares to a reward threshold of $90 of likely spend at Domino’s Pizza, $40 at Dunkin’ Donuts, and $62 at Starbucks.
What’s the Catch?
The only cons to this rewards program is that only one entree a day counts, the resetting each month of entrees, and that it only lasts for the summer (for now only 3 months long promotion).
New Menu Items Announced
The Mexican fast-food chain also announced it’s adding a spicy chicken and pork chorizo to the menu in select cities including Columbus, Ohio, New York City and Sacramento and San Diego Calif. It’s the first new meat rollout since the company’s founding in 1993. The chorizo is a take on the classic Mexican sausage, seasoned with paprika, toasted cumin and chipotle peppers. They expect to expand chorizo to all of its U.S. location by this fall.
Additional 5% Back on Fast Food or Restaurants on Chipotle using a Credit Card?
Bad news for those of you who have one of the worst credit cards in the U.S. Bank Cash+ Card which once was one of our favorite cards. They took away the 5% for restaurants and downgraded it to only 2%. Chipotle comes up as a restaurant with this credit card so you will only get 1%-2%. You will not get 5% on Chipotle transactions with this particular card. However, if you use a Chase Freedom card which offers 5% back on restaurant/fast food purchases for the 3rd quarter (July-September 2016) you will get the full 5% back up to $1,500. If they run this promotion again perhaps in the Spring that is around the time that Discover Card will also offer the 5% back promo again on restaurants which include fast food.
by PointsGuru | Sep 14, 2016 | AAdvantage American
Rocketmiles is offering a fantastic promotion right now with American Airlines AAdvantage miles. You earn 1,000 to 10,000 miles per hotel night booked using the service and these 3,000 or 4,000 bonus miles are extra. Just make your booking before Halloween comes to an end.
This Rocketmiles offer is only available for those that use the service for the first time. The 4,000 bonus miles offer is intended to American Airlines elite members those that are not elite will get the 3,000 miles bonus offer which is still generous. The bonus and base miles earned from your first booking using Rocketmiles can sometimes offset the cost of the hotel itself.
You can access and sign up for these 3,000 and 4,000 offers here and here.
The only catch is that hotels booked using third party sites such as Rocketmiles are not eligible for the hotel loyalty program stay/night credits or points. Some hotels may extend possible elite benefits for third party bookings. The best place to use Rocketmiles is for booking non-affiliated hotels where you do not have to worry about status related benefits or stay/night credits or points. For the most part just make sure that the prices are competitive to other websites such as Hotwire, Orbitz, Kayak, Google hotel search, and Hotel Tonight. (more…)
by PointsGuru | Sep 14, 2016 | Tools & Gadgets
There are tons of tools and apps to help us get where we want online these days but finding the right ones to do the right thing at the right time is also something we might need a tool for. That is why I created this post mainly for myself to come back to and help me book award travel or any travel at all. As tools start charging I will drop them and add ones that offer more features. Bookmark this page and come back often!
1. Muchopoints uses an algorithm that calculates and filters the hotels that will provide customers the most points to make the best choice to maximize their points when booking hotels . Muchopoints, currently in Beta, plans to offer end users with the option to manage all their hotel programs with one single log on. This will be similar to AwardWallet where users will be able to track all their points and elite statuses for supported hotel programs. Hopefully they do the same for Airlines. Here are the supported hotels at this time:
- Hilton HHonors
- Marriot Rewards
- Best Western
- Le Club Accor Hotels
- IHG Rewards Club
- SPG – Starwood Preferred Guest
- Choice Hotels and others coming soon!
Pexportal is a similar website that uses an award travel search engine where you can search for mileage airfare.
2. StatusMatcher can help you match loyalty program elite status from one carrier to another. For example, leverage your Silver status with American Airlines to obtain Platinum status with Virgin America or Hilton HHonors to get IHG Platinum Status.
3. HotelUpgrade offers free hotel perks and complimentary upgrades when you book your room directly on the hotel’s website and then confirm your reservation with the HotelUpgrade app. It’s free to download the app and available on iOS with an Android coming soon. You are able to get bonus points for your stay, free parking, suite upgrades, restaurant discounts, free drink coupons, and more possible upgrades. I’m looking forward to trying this app out especially since they are automatically confirmed upgrades and you still get regular loyalty points because you book direct with the hotel such as Marriot.com or Hilton.com then go over to this app to see what magic it can work.
4. RentLuggage – If you’re taking a ski trip, to play golf, or camping and need the perfect piece of luggage you may consider RentLuggage. This will save you money and time by avoiding the expense of purchasing new luggage just for one trip. They ship the luggage directly to your door, and they provide free return shipping from anywhere in the continental United States. New RentLuggage customers can use Promo Code RENTNOW at checkout to save an extra 10% off your luggage rental. I can’t think of a trip I would need it for but you might.
5. Miles Wallet is similar to Award Wallet but it is free and automatically retrieves your reservations and activities on loyalty programs without a time limit. So you can find all of your future bookings but also your past bookings as well as the complete history of your loyalty accounts. It also alerts you to any activity such as a balance and status but detailed. This not only helps you keep track of programs but helps prevent you if there’s an attempt to hack your accounts. Award Wallet has a fee and does less. You can also sign in with your FB account.
6. Hotel Hustle is something I have been waiting for and it has finally arrived to help you find hotels available for certain stays comparing the points it will take. I normally have to open all three browsers, windows, and tabs to get award bookings completed so hopefully this will help out. [wandr.me/Hotel-Tools/Hotel-Hustle]
7. Hotels By Day offers hotel rooms for short term, day use for reduced prices compared to overnight stays. Imagine you have to check out of your hotel room when you have a late flight or arriving early with a late check in. This app comes in handy to spend a few extra hours in a hotel room to drop your luggage, relax, go to the pool or shower before heading out to the airport or checking in to your main accommodation. You could also use it for a quick private meeting with a friend to spend a few hours for the middle of the day. Like many of these apps, it’s new and currently has just in a handful of major US cities but stay tuned as they expand to more locations internationally in 2016.
8. Tools To Find The Best Plane Seats: Routehappy (routehappy.com) scores flights based on a variety of criteria, including legroom, width and amenities such as power outlets. It also scores comfort based onIn-Flight Entertainment and
Wi-Fi. Routehappy uses an algorithm for scoring based on aircraft, seat, amenities, trip duration, and ratings. They have a partnership with Google Flights to let people know when there are things such as wifi on the plane so you do not have to directly goto their site. Seateroo (Seateroo.com) is an app that lets you swap seats for a price. If you’re stuck in seat 36A the last row of economy class on a long International flight you could fire up Seateroo and find a passenger who is willing to swap seats with you. You negotiate a price (minimum of $5, with a 15% service fee deducted from price paid to the other passenger) and swap seats when you’re permitted to move about the cabin.
10. Open Hotel Alert makes sure you get a spot in your preferred hotel on your next vacation or business trip if it’s sold out when you try to book. The app will text or email you when something opens up. You get an alert as soon as something is available and the app will give you a direct link to book to jump out and book the room which is how Open Hotel Alert makes money—through Booking.com.
Top Flight Apps – (Name and percentage of installs on smartphones)
1. Skyscanner, 0.67%
2. Flightaware, 0.64%
3. TripIt, 0.26%
4. SeatGuru, 0.04%
5. GateGuru, 0.04%
11. Basetrip, a travel research tool that not only answers any question you have about any country in the world, it also neatly organizes the information. Simply enter your citizenship and the country you’re traveling to and Basetrip will pull up information on that country’s weather, type of outlet, currency, cost of living, tipping practices, internet speeds, emergency phone numbers, necessary vaccinations, location of your embassy, and more, complete with links to all the resources. You also have the option to read tips from other readers about each country and add your own.
Discontinued
Ticketsroundtheworld.com seems to be similar to one of the discontinued tools we loved that was recently purchased and shut down by AirBnb. It’s only a matter of time before the big dogs with big money come and swoop up all the smaller sites to try and monopolize your pocketbook and limit your choices. Vamo – Incredible way to build an itinerary and pick which cities you want to travel when booking complicated trips such as Europe or Asia. Update: Vamo has been purchased by AirBnb so look for them to be integrated into their product soon.
by PointsGuru | Sep 12, 2016 | Retail
As the original rewards card site to hit the web we are always looking for the latest ways to save on purchases by making sure we are using the right credit card. We found a new browser extension named Kard which helps you decide which credit card to use when shopping online to maximize your rewards that does not require any personal information.
Kard is a free tool (free Kard Download) that puts all your credit card rewards in one place—no personal information required. That’s right: you don’t have to give up your bank login information, your credit card number, or any other usernames and passwords. All Kard needs to know are what types of credit cards you have: Chase Sapphire, Amex Blue Cash, Discover It Miles, etc. Kard’s Chrome Extension will notify you whenever you have a deal available as you shop online, allowing you to earn more miles, points, and cash back on everything from daily purchases, to that occasional splurge.
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by PointsGuru | Sep 12, 2016 | American Express
American Express or AMEX Offers give us some of the best credit card deals to work with and this week they have released a few to keep in mind when booking travel this fall and winter. Check out more AMEX offers here.
1. Virgin Atlantic Discount
- $200 off $1,000+ in airfare only after registering an AMEX card
- Must book online at virginatlantic.com or through Virgin Atlantic’s mobile app
- Tickets must be purchased by November 11, 2016
- Flights must originate in the US
2. HotelStorm
- $75 back on $300+ purchase at Hotelstorm.com/amex (or by phone)
- Check your AMEX account to see if you qualify
- Expires March 12, 2017
3. Red Lion Hotels
- 40% off your stay when you use promotional code “AMEXPROMO”
- Only available for stays booked through redlion.com or by phone
- Must book by December 1, 2016, for stays through December 30, 2016
- Can NOT be combined with any other offer or special rate
- Excludes GuestHouse and Settle Inn Extended Stay hotels
