Another credit card rewards question - Barclay

[disneypharm]

I posted this inadvertently on the Community boards and didn't get any responses. I have a new Barclaycard Arrival Plus World Elite MasterCard. I had to spend $3K within the first 3 months and received 40,000 points (well actually almost 50,000). I also have about over 40,000 points on my Southwest card. DH and I got our Southwest cards 3 years ago and used all our points (plus any accrued from spending) for buying flights to our last 4 vacations (and a couple of solo trips). We use my SW card on everything and pay it off right away (never carry any balances).

SW card rewards always felt easy to use. Pick our flights and pay directly with my points. I also remember when we got our SW card, we were told that 50,000 is about 4 one way tickets, but in reality we got about 6 one way tickets per 50,000 points. Well, Barclay points seem different. I have done some online searches about using these points and am actually more confused about them than before.

So, are 50,000 Barclay points equal to 50,000 Southwest points? Do you have to buy your flights and then they deduct the amount from your account? I know Barclay points are accured much faster than SW points (double points on all purchases), but if they worth less than SW points, then what is the actual benefit. If one round trip ticket to Orlando is almost $400, then 50,000 wouldn't get me more than a round trip ticket. Sorry about my rambling, but you can see I am very confused!! Any help is appreciated.

 

[Frwinkley]

With Barclay, things sort of work in reverse. I'll do my best to explain. I too used my SW card for years, but didn't like that I was limited to just using SW.

With Barclay, you are free to use any airline. You book your flights and than request a redemption in the form of a statement credit. It's pretty much dollar for dollar. For example, let's say you booked air travel that costs $400. You would request a redemption of 40,000 points. That would appear as a credit to your statement. You have 120 days to request the redemption.

The nice thing about Barclay is you accumulate points twice as fast. We charged every expense related to my daughter's wedding and just allowed the points to add up. When it was time for a vacation, we had the points waiting. You can also redeem your points for hotels, rental cars, cruises and even some attraction tickets.

Hope this helps!

 

[disneypharm]

Thank you Frwinkley. I guess the main point is "It's pretty much dollar for dollar. For example, let's say you booked air travel that costs $400. You would request a redemption of 40,000 points." So, what you are saying is that 50,000 points that we have will get us about $500 worth of airline tickets, hotels, rental cars, cruises, etc. Right?
We mainly travel with Southwest airlines and always liked being able to cancel our flights if needed, so I guess we cannot do that if we buy our flights with Barclay. Also, twice we bought 4 round trip tickets (8 one-way) for almost 70,000 SW points from our home to Orlando. These tickets were about $150-$170 each way. That was about $1200-$1500. 70,000 points from Barclay will get us $700 worth of tickets. I know Barclay gives you double the points, I still have to accrue 140,000 points to get the same number of tickets. Hopefully, this makes sense. In addition, I will not be getting the annual bonus points, to replace the annual fee of $89.

So, since we put all our expenses on one card to accrue points for our annual vacation, I am trying to figure out which card would be the good one to use. DH thinks we need to stick with SW card and looking at the above, I am leaning towards SW card too at this point. Oh well, it is still nice to have the $500 that we got.

Another question. Can we use $500 towards our trip to Disneyworld next year. Can we use it to bring the price of package down?

 

[jedijill]

Have you looked into the Capital One Venture Card? It works the same way as the Barclay Card. You earn 2x points on all purchases and then can redeem for any travel purchases or cash back. I signed up and got a 40K point spending bonus. You do have to redeem for the whole amount....I'm trying to pay for my entire cruise on points so I'm breaking it up into payments and redeeming as I have enough points. AKA, the $250 down payment was redeemed for 25K points. I'll keep doing it until the cruise is paid off.

Jill in CO

 

[CalDisneyMomof2]

Thank you Frwinkley. I guess the main point is "It's pretty much dollar for dollar. For example, let's say you booked air travel that costs $400. You would request a redemption of 40,000 points." So, what you are saying is that 50,000 points that we have will get us about $500 worth of airline tickets, hotels, rental cars, cruises, etc. Right?
We mainly travel with Southwest airlines and always liked being able to cancel our flights if needed, so I guess we cannot do that if we buy our flights with Barclay. Also, twice we bought 4 round trip tickets (8 one-way) for almost 70,000 SW points from our home to Orlando. These tickets were about $150-$170 each way. That was about $1200-$1500. 70,000 points from Barclay will get us $700 worth of tickets. I know Barclay gives you double the points, I still have to accrue 140,000 points to get the same number of tickets. Hopefully, this makes sense. In addition, I will not be getting the annual bonus points, to replace the annual fee of $89.

So, since we put all our expenses on one card to accrue points for our annual vacation, I am trying to figure out which card would be the good one to use. DH thinks we need to stick with SW card and looking at the above, I am leaning towards SW card too at this point. Oh well, it is still nice to have the $500 that we got.

Another question. Can we use $500 towards our trip to Disneyworld next year. Can we use it to bring the price of package down?

Right before you're due for your annual fee, you can downgrade to their no fee version of the card. The perks aren't as good but if you're only opening it for the bonus then I guess it doesn't really matter anyway.

You can use the $500 towards Disneyworld so long as it's booked as a package. I've heard recent reports that using it for food, tickets etc. will not be counted as "travel expenses". YMMV. However, if you charge it back to your room, this may be considered travel expenses.

To be honest, I think that you're over thinking the cards. They're two completely different products. The sole purpose of the SW card is for SW. It is for people that are loyal to the SW brand. So, a very good card to have for people that fly SW a lot. The Barclay card is a great card for people that are out to find the best deal of any airline or brand. Southwest isn't always the cheapest so the Barclay is great for people that want to redeem their points for any and all travel - they're not tied down to one brand. Another similar card is the Chase Sapphire Preferred. You can redeem your points for many airlines or hotel brands. As a PP mentioned, Capital One has a similar approach as well. Branded cards are fantastic cards for people that solely use that brand so in your case, if you ONLY fly Southwest, the SW card may be the best card for you.

Hope that helps.

 

[LynnTH]

Have you thought about the Chase Sapphire Card. We just got that one (have the SW cards already). I got 50,000 points for spending $4000 in 3 months and 5000 points for adding DH as a user. So by the time all that was spent we had about 60,000 points. These points can transfer to SW at a 1:1 ratio. So, that might be an option. (They also transfer to hotels and other airlines and other travel stuff). So, this is the main card we are using now for our day to day purchases and we mostly fly SW. You get double points on travel and dining I think.

 

[disneypharm]

Thank you all. I appreciate your help. I am starting to figure out how to use my card.
@CalDisneyMomof2 - I agree that I am overthinking it. When I applied to get the Barclay card, I assumed it would be exactly like SW card. Get the points and buy tickets with it! I am still happy to have about $500 worth of points, but that would not get us the number of tickets I was planning on getting. I guess we can use it to bring down the cost of our package.
@LynnTH - It seems that Chase Sapphire card would have been the better choice for us. If the points transfer to SW at a 1:1 ratio, then can I transfer the points to our SW account and then get ouor tickets, or have to still pay for our tickets and ask them to reduce our charges?
@jedijill - If Capital One Venture Card is the same as Barclay card, I am not sure if it would be a better choice!

 

[jedijill]

To me the Barclay and Venture cards are more flexible. You buy the tickets in cash, and then erase your purchase with points. That way you can use them for anything travel, not just SW tickets and you don't have to mess with transferring points to different accounts.

Just my 2 cents.

Jill in CO

 

[hsmamato2]

as others have noted, OP you're comparing apples to oranges. SWA is a points based reward(xxx points gets you one flight,etc) while Barclays is a cash back card in the sense that once you make a travel purchase with it, you can remove xxx amount of dollars from the bill to be paid. So yes, it's more of a set amount than SWA (which has such flexible points and sales) but it's more flexible in that it can be applied to random hotel costs,airfare,etc. I found the card not too useful-- in the future,for any new cc's you may apply for, the Sapphire preferred is a good match to your SWA usage,as points can be transferred easily to them(and to other program also) a good rule of thumb,when applying for travel reward cards is have an idea of what type of reward suits you best,and choose a card that maximizes that avenue- And I MUCH prefer travel rewards to cashback, I can leverage a LOT more $$ out of those rewards than the cash....

 

[hsmamato2]

@LynnTH - It seems that Chase Sapphire card would have been the better choice for us. If the points transfer to SW at a 1:1 ratio, then can I transfer the points to our SW account and then get ouor tickets, or have to still pay for our tickets and ask them to reduce our charges?
@jedijill - If Capital One Venture Card is the same as Barclay card, I am not sure if it would be a better choice!

it sounds like you are focused on saving on airfare,specifically SWA(I don;t blame you,it's easy to get hooked!) then yes, the CSP is a great card to apply for. certain brands work well together. Chase puts out CSP and SWA cards. and the CSP can be transferred to other program also.