Founder and CEO of Upgraded Points, Alex is a leader in the industry and has earned and redeemed millions of points and miles. He frequently discusses the award travel industry with CNBC, Fox Business...
Edited by: Kellie Jez
Kellie’s professional experience has led her to a deep passion for compliance, data reporting, and process improvement. Kellie’s learned the ins and outs of the points and miles world and leads UP’s c...
11 comments
Raf
February 06, 2018
I love your posts, however sadly enough, nothing of that is applicable for Europeans..One needs to be US resident to apply.. Do you have a way around that?
Thank you kindly
Alex Miller
February 06, 2018
Thank you for the compliments. Unfortunately there’s no way that I know of to get around this, Raf. Sorry!
Michael
February 12, 2018
Enjoyed the post Alex and liked how you broke down how each point was accumulated. Please keep putting out these types of posts. Very helpful!
Matt Stone
March 22, 2018
This is a scam how would anyone use their points like that?
Alex Miller
March 22, 2018
I can assure you it’s not a scam, Matt 🙂 If you read all the articles in the series, we literally tell you exactly how we did it, for each flight – step by step.
Iggy
March 25, 2018
I have done similar with our trip this year (2018). Our last BIG trip O/S was 2015, but we did go to New Zealand for a month in 2017, but I bought the airfares (more points). After 2015 I had just 140,000 pts left in my Qantas FF account. Changing Credit Cards to a new bank provided Amex and Visa cards netted a 60,000 sign on bonus, then in 2017 changing to a Amex proper airline linked card (Qantas) netted another 60,000 pts. Buying a new vehicle and paying $20,000 deposit with the Amex card (@ $1 = 1.25 pts) helped also along with monthly expenses on the Amex and non-acceptable Amex businesses (used Visa $1 = .5 pts). Earned over 300,000 pts within Oneworld, so enough to fly Business class Melbourne to Paris, Prague to Shanghai and Shanghai to Melbourne.
Alex Miller
April 13, 2018
Nice work!
Danny Chen
April 13, 2018
Thanks Alex for sharing this trick. However, you haven’t included the annual fees for each card. Each of them may cost $95 per year, and you have six of them. But anyway, this is a excellent post.
Alex Miller
April 13, 2018
You’re right, these cards do carry individual annual fees. For example, The Chase Sapphire Preferred is $0 for the first year which is nice but then is $95 after. The Amex Platinum Card at the time of me getting it was $450 per year, but then you get an easy $200 airline credit and with us using the Amex Centurion lounges (and using the global entry credit) – as well as a ton of other benefits, it really brings the cost down. But yes, there is an out-of-pocket expense for sure.
William Bell
June 29, 2022
We have 300000 Amex points and want to fly New Zealand to Europe return between June and September 2023. What would be the best Business class option?
Thanks
Bill
Jarrod West
July 06, 2022
Hi Bill,
Your best option likely would be transferring to ANA to fly business class with a Star Alliance carrier.
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