I like travelling by Air France once a year and I think I am going to be looking for a new credit card soon - any ideas?
For the past umpteen years I've had the TD Visa Infinite. It used to be that booking flights through Expedia cost exactly the same as booking through the Air France website, even during seat sales. That seems to have gone out the window. Last year, the prices on Expedia were higher but I did the Best Price Guarantee and got back the difference, which was about $65.
HOWEVER - the other day when I booked flights on Air France, not only were the Expedia flights a lot more, it was giving me - and the phone agent who tried to help - errors for the dates I wanted when it came time to pay, because "the inventory was not yet in the system". HUH? You're showing the flights and the prices, but I can't pay for them? And I couldn't escalate the issue to a manager.
Worse still - or maybe it was a good thing after all - I was told that the Best Price Guarantee did not apply to flights!! This is something new. And to add insult to injury: it was cheaper overall to book through Air France and I can't even use my points at the same burn rate to pay for the flight, because "book anyway" adds another 25% to the amount of points needed (e.g., 250 instead of 200).
Needless to say, I am a whole lot less impressed with Expedia and TD Infinite.
We put all our spending on this card - about 35-40K/year, which results in about $700 a year in points if booking through Expedia.
One benefit is that the Infinite card has no annual fee under my banking plan.
I'm wondering if I can do better without too much expense and trouble?
AMEX has some great points offers on their high end cards if you can push your spending through an AMEX. With your spending level you could get a serious pile of points going. Also if you're high income.
I will say though, you will have to pay some annual fees, the situation is getting harder(see the canadian churning reddit "datapoints" threads). The fees are worth it though, if you prefer business class transoceanic flights, for instance. 10hr+ economy flights are not for me.
Also, I would recommend Prince Of Travel yet again, he has some great videos, website and articles on which cards for what purpose and how to get the best benefit from them. Which points can be converted to where, etc.
The big value is in business/first class flights, since they are effectively devalued through the points system. It's really the only reason I "churn".
In other news, my 40k points came through on my Gold Amex; I sneaked in the $5k minimum spend in 90 days by the hair of my teeth. Keep in mind those 90 days start at the day you apply.
Feel free to contact me for a referral if you're interested, I have an AMEX Cobalt and Business Gold which can refer those cards, as well as personal Gold, and maybe Business Platinum and possibly others.