topic Re: What to do with MR points? in Credit Cards

What to do with MR points?

Jaylima91 — Sat, 26 Aug 2017 17:20:50 GMT

So, I have just over 108K MR points in my name, however, I don’t know what to do with them. What’s the best travel deal to use my points? I currently have the Amex Platinum.

Open to all suggestions, will consider a few, will decide on one.

Thanks!

Re: What to do with MR points?

Anonymous — Sat, 26 Aug 2017 17:25:47 GMT

@Jaylima91 wrote:
So, I have just over 108K MR points in my name, however, I don’t know what to do with them. What’s the best travel deal to use my points? I currently have the Amex Platinum.

Open to all suggestions, will consider a few, will decide on one.

Thanks!

No offense to your question but that is an impossible one to answer. Overall the best value for Amex points is to transfer them to airline partners and book award flights. That is something that you would need to look into yourself because there are all kinds of travel possibilities and no one but yourself knows where you want to go, where you live, how many are in your travel party, what class of airline seat, preferred airline, dates of travel, etc, etc. This is something that we can't do for you so my suggestion is to go the Amex rewards program page and start exploring.

Re: What to do with MR points?

Anonymous — Sat, 26 Aug 2017 17:28:48 GMT

I will GLADLY take them off your hands.

Re: What to do with MR points?

Jaylima91 — Sat, 26 Aug 2017 17:42:45 GMT

@irish Hmmm I guess my VAGUE question warranted a VAGUE response.

My question should’ve specified that I want to know what some of you guys are using it for currently. Any specific promos going around with MRs.

I can see where this thread is headed.

Thanks guys. I’ll log in to the Amex website and see what I find.

Re: What to do with MR points?

wasCB14 — Sat, 26 Aug 2017 18:04:34 GMT

@Jaylima91 wrote:
@Anonymous Hmmm I guess my VAGUE question warranted a VAGUE response.

My question should’ve specified that I want to know what some of you guys are using it for currently. Any specific promos going around with MRs.

I can see where this thread is headed.

Thanks guys. I’ll log in to the Amex website and see what I find.

There's a British Airways promo. One of their partners is American Airlines.

I fly a variety of airlines, but sometimes on short notice, and booking an AA award flight through BA lets me avoid a close-in award booking fee.

Re: What to do with MR points?

Anonymous — Sat, 26 Aug 2017 18:22:02 GMT

@Jaylima91 wrote:
So, I have just over 108K MR points in my name, however, I don’t know what to do with them. What’s the best travel deal to use my points? I currently have the Amex Platinum.

Open to all suggestions, will consider a few, will decide on one.

Thanks!

This subject takes a fair amount of research. For that amount of points, it's probably worth it for you. I think Irish was pretty good with that response. There are many travel hacking blogs and youtube videos out there that I would recommend just to get a general idea. You should be able to move forward from there. You wont find a specific answer to this question here.

Re: What to do with MR points?

Anonymous — Sat, 26 Aug 2017 19:47:05 GMT

Here's a super broad example: https://slickdeals.net/f/10368088-air-canada-roundtrip-flight-los-angeles-to-nagoya-japan-414-travel-august-october

$400 from LA to Japan AND back (LONG layover though). This doesnt specifically help you, but this can give you an idea of what's out there and maybe a better understanding of how to search for it.

Re: What to do with MR points?

Anonymous — Sun, 27 Aug 2017 12:40:54 GMT

I transferred them to British Airways with the 40 percent bonus and used them to book a hotel. Worked out to be 1.1 cent per MR.

Re: What to do with MR points?

Anonymous — Sun, 27 Aug 2017 12:44:44 GMT

@wasCB14 wrote:
@Jaylima91 wrote:
@Anonymous Hmmm I guess my VAGUE question warranted a VAGUE response.

My question should’ve specified that I want to know what some of you guys are using it for currently. Any specific promos going around with MRs.

I can see where this thread is headed.

Thanks guys. I’ll log in to the Amex website and see what I find.

There's a British Airways promo. One of their partners is American Airlines.

I fly a variety of airlines, but sometimes on short notice, and booking an AA award flight through BA lets me avoid a close-in award booking fee.

One thing to mention is that British Aveos are worthless when booking American Airline International flights. And there are three credit cards with big AA sign up bonuses.

Re: What to do with MR points?

K-in-Boston — Sun, 27 Aug 2017 12:59:05 GMT

@Jaylima91 wrote:
My question should’ve specified that I want to know what some of you guys are using it for currently.

I transfer my points to Starwood 3:1, then to Marriott 1:3 to make an even exchange for Membership Rewards. I typically book rooms during times of higher demand and have been using the 5th night free when redeeming points, so I am effectively getting about 2 cents per point. 2 cents isn't extraordinary, but I try to only rack up MRs on purchases that give me more than 1 MR point and doing this (and Chase UR points to Marriott) is a good way to combine with my primary SPG card to build up massive points without having to think too hard when it comes time to redeem.

Re: What to do with MR points?

UpperNwGuy — Sun, 27 Aug 2017 14:16:09 GMT

I transfered all of my MR points over to Jet Blue's frequent flyer program and have been using them for repeat award flights from DCA to CHS to visit my 95-year-old father. It may not have been the best value of all possible redemptions, but it worked well for me. As a general rule, I never redeem any kind of points (MR, UR, or TYP) for flights or hotels on the financial institutions' travel portals. I always transfer them to airline frequent flyer programs: MR to Jet Blue, UR to United, and TYP to Air France. If I lived near or often visited a Delta hub city, I would transfer MR to Delta.

Re: What to do with MR points?

mongstradamus — Sun, 27 Aug 2017 15:13:09 GMT

I have actually been thinking what I want to do with my points . I am probably going to try and save up to transfer to Ana to fly business class to Far East in 2020 probably.

Re: What to do with MR points?

BronzeTrader — Sun, 27 Aug 2017 15:40:19 GMT

One question. Can you transfer MR points to family member's transfer partners' account? I have MR points in 3 family members and I really like to pool the MR points together. I know some site, like SPG if I remember correctly, you can transfer points later among family members.

Re: What to do with MR points?

Anonymous — Sun, 27 Aug 2017 15:48:28 GMT

@BronzeTrader wrote:
One question. Can you transfer MR points to family member's transfer partners' account? I have MR points in 3 family members and I really like to pool the MR points together. I know some site, like SPG if I remember correctly, you can transfer points later among family members.

You can only transfer points to another person's airline or hotel rewards program and in order to do so, they must be an authorized user on one of your Amex cards. There is no way to directly transfer MR points to another person's Rewards account.

Re: What to do with MR points?

K-in-Boston — Sun, 27 Aug 2017 16:05:04 GMT

Yeah an issue we ran into was we couldn't even transfer MR points from my wife's ED to our primary account even though she is an AU on 4 of my Amex cards and I am an AU on hers. We had to transfer to SPG then to my SPG account.

Re: What to do with MR points?

wasCB14 — Sun, 27 Aug 2017 18:05:12 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I transferred them to British Airways with the 40 percent bonus and used them to book a hotel. Worked out to be 1.1 cent per MR.

I'm not aware of any way to get a good value on hotels with MRs. They are really meant for flights.

Some people can get like 5 cpp from SPG...but they are likely to be earning Starpoints directly.

Re: What to do with MR points?

K-in-Boston — Sun, 27 Aug 2017 19:10:29 GMT

Yes, I'm getting 5-6 cents for SPG via Marriott. The bulk of my SPG points are from my SPG card but since I'm all-in I'm essentially getting about 2 cents for MRs and URs.

Re: What to do with MR points?

Anonymous — Sun, 27 Aug 2017 20:10:23 GMT

@wasCB14 wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
I transferred them to British Airways with the 40 percent bonus and used them to book a hotel. Worked out to be 1.1 cent per MR.
I'm not aware of any way to get a good value on hotels with MRs. They are really meant for flights.

Some people can get like 5 cpp from SPG...but they are likely to be earning Starpoints directly.

Well all the airlines have cards and I have ton of airline miles and also will get 200 dollars in airline gift cards from PRG. Which only 20 dollars has been used for tax on award flights. So better to use MR points for my hotel. Much better deal to transfer them to BA as I got 550 dollars from my 50000 MR points than if I booked with Amex directly and would have gotten 350 dollars of hotel usage.

Re: What to do with MR points?

Anonymous — Mon, 28 Aug 2017 21:14:35 GMT

American Airlines devalued their point system pretty significantly I hear. Sister-in-law is not happy about it at all since she signed up not that long ago with one of their promos.

Re: What to do with MR points?

Jaylima91 — Mon, 28 Aug 2017 21:17:32 GMT

Thanks guys for all the suggestions. I’m trying to find the best promo for my points to fly to Europe. I heard British Airways has a pretty good transfer promo going on.