I know its an ongoing debate which is better. Let me just say I am a big miles person and I am attempting my first premium awards booking on CX via AA and it has been nothing but a hassle so far. Sure it will be great if it works out, but at the moment I want to bang my head on the desk between award seats showing on other airline websites and then being told that AA can't see that award availability, to award space not freeing up until I get closer to the departure date to having to pay a fee for booking within 21 days of the flight when the thing didn't show up until within that 21 days to begin with, to the fact that once I got one ticket on request I find out two days later they mispelled my name on the ticket and I ended up having to cancel the award and lost the seat on that flight and had to rebook at a different time.
I'm ranting a bit here and this stuff will pay off massively if I can pull it together, however for someone who does not have flexibility and who does not want to spend hours going through flight listings and even more hours on the phone with customer service reps who may or may not know what they are talking about then cash back may be a better bet when it comes to airlines. You won't be flying in first class with a cashback card, but if you have limited flexibility and/or need multple tickets and don't want to have to try a year in advance before you know your schedule then you probably wouldn't be able to pull it off anyway. Hopefully the payoff in my case will be worth the stress and time.
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@Anonymous wrote:Using miles can take time, but if you are not looking for optimal valuation it does not take that much time. Here is miles versus cashback in a nutshell (IMO):
Miles can make sense when you have heavy spend on a card. For low spend (less than 2-3k a month), miles don't do much outside of sign-up bonuses. It will take forever to earn enough miles to do anything with it. However, when you spend a lot on a miles card, the rewards are often worth more than just mere cashback. For instance, I only use two miles/points cards (CSP/Freedom so arguably only 1 miles/points card) on a regular basis. I have others I pick up for bonus offers, but I rarely keep them long-term. I spend a lot on dining and travel, so the CSP makes a lot of sense. These are also the bonus categories for the CSP so I get a lot of value out of it. My average redemption from UR points is a bit under 3 cents per point, so to me the CSP is better than a 5% cash back card.
However, points/miles cards have drawbacks. Cash is more flexible. Cash is an easy and effortless benefit. Every penny of cash is useful while several thousand miles might be useless unless you can hit the next big cutoff for your next spend. Most cashback cards have a 25 dollar or less redemption level while most miles cards have much higher minimum redemption levels if you want a decent deal (i.e. not blow miles at 1 cpp or something silly).
Most of my category bonus cards are cashback cards. If I spread my spend across multiple miles/points cards, it would take me years to redeem anything of value which tends to be international business/first class travel (domestic economy travel = poor redemption value generally other than maybe with BA which is not as good as before). If I had lower dining and travel spend I would even get rid of the CSP for cashback cards for those categories. Given my relatively high dining and travel spend though, the CSP makes a lot of sense for me.
I am sorry to hear about your frustrations with redeeming points. If you stick with it, it will get easier. However, if it is too much of a pain or if your travel plans are always during peak travel season, a cashback card might make a lot more sense. Neither type of card is always better than the other.
Hopefully, a lot of this has to do with the steep learning curve and that I am going during high travel season and trying to get one of the top line products in the world. Ideally things will become clearer as the departure date approaches and award space hopefully opens up.
@B335is wrote:
I like miles only because it forces me to take a vacation when I'd otherwise redeem cash for statement credit and waste away at home.
American seems to be incredibly slow at getting partner tickets issued. I heard United is faster and haven't tried Delta partners yet.
Yes not only slow at getting them issued but they don't even seem to have the same award availability that other partner airlines have. Has me chasing my tail sometime because AA can't be bothered to show CX award availibility on their website. This has been an eye opening experience on how that organization is run administratively.
I was once a huge points fan; and, as my signature shows, I am invested in many loyalty programs. It's becoming a huge annoyance trying to redeem points and devaluations have become a yearly occurrence for at least one of the programs I participate in. I have really started focusing on cash back cards because there's still a decent number of 5% ones available for specific categories and the Double Cash is just... amazing. I've picked up the Cash+, BBR, Sallie Mae, and Double Cash in the past few months, and I've really been enjoying them quite a bit. I've been trimming a lot of my cobranded cards, and I expect to close several more this year.
