Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Yes, your Chase card is indeed a United Explorer card now. Continental s last flight departed on Mar




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Cathleen McCarthy is a journalist shore club hotel miami whose articles on travel, commerce and consumer topics have appeared in dozens of publications. She writes "Cashing In," a weekly column about credit card rewards programs, for CreditCards.com
I have two rewards cards, a Chase Continental (although shore club hotel miami I guess now it's United shore club hotel miami Explorer) and a Citi AAdvantage for American. Both cards offer me double miles on flights booked with the cards and double miles on purchases. But I have to log into the credit card account to see my purchases, then log into the airline account to see the miles. Information on both sites gets updated at different times, so it's not always easy to see the 1 to 1 (or 1 to 2) correlation between purchases and miles. I'd love a simple way to see both at the same time, to verify that I'm getting the rewards I've been promised. Is there a better way? -- Neville
Yes, your Chase card is indeed a United Explorer shore club hotel miami card now. Continental s last flight departed on March 1 and if you had logged into your account at Chase.com in the days after, you would have found your Continental account had automatically morphed into a United account. I'm surprised Chase hasn't issued you a new card by now -- not that the card itself will behave any differently, without or without its proper logo.
I'm confused shore club hotel miami about what you mean by double miles on purchases, unless you mean purchases shore club hotel miami (other than flights) on the airlines themselves shore club hotel miami -- i.e., meals and in-flight merchandise. Just to be clear, both the Citi American AAdvantage card and the United Explorer shore club hotel miami card offer double miles on charges shore club hotel miami made on their respective airlines but only one mile per dollar for all other purchases.
As for the delay between shore club hotel miami the miles appearing in your credit card accounts and your airline accounts, there's not much you can do about that. The reason for the lag is that your miles don't actually appear in the airline's loyalty program -- i.e., your frequent flier account -- until your credit card bill has been paid in full for that month. While Citi and Chase have partnered with the airlines shore club hotel miami to produce shore club hotel miami the deal you get via your credit cards, they remain separate entities and keep separate accounts.
Here's how it works with the miles earned via an airline credit card. During the current billing period -- say, this month, before your next credit card bill comes due -- your miles are being logged by the bank that manages your credit card, but those miles (or any reward points, for that matter) aren't redeemable until you've paid in full for charges made in that billing period. At that point, the bank reports the miles earned that month to the airline and they go into your frequent flier account.
Once miles have been transferred to the airline's loyalty program -- whether by flying or by making charges on a co-branded airline credit card -- the airline manages the miles, not the bank that issued your credit cards. That's true of American AAdvantage and United MileAge Plus, just as it was for your Chase Continental OnePass card. In fact, it's true across the board for all airline shore club hotel miami loyalty programs .
In a sense, the miles you're earning shore club hotel miami for any charges accrued since your last payment are phantom miles. The banks are holding them hostage until you cover the charges you made to earn them. As far as Chase and Citi are concerned, your miles are a reward for charges made and paid for, not debt accrued.
Cathleen McCarthy is a journalist whose articles on travel, commerce and consumer topics have appeared in dozens of publications, including the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Portfolio.com. Cathleen shore club hotel miami answers a question about a rewards and credit or debit cards from a CreditCards.com reader shore club hotel miami each week.
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