Free Miles, Stacking, and Capital One Offers

Years ago, before I knew much about travel hacking, I attached my Alaska Airlines account to my Safeway account. I got free miles for years just by grocery shopping and didn’t think much about it. They don’t do that anymore; however I’ve been on a journey of learning way more about earning points and miles and am way savvier than back then – but there are still many things out there that I am just discovering. I hope to share some of my current hacks. Unfortunately this hacking game only work for Americans. I’m not sure why my European, Canadian and Australian friends get mostly left out of this game.

My favorite has to be Delta’s “12 Status” promotion with the Seattle Seahawks. Just by signing up on a quick online form every summer at 12status.com, Washington State residents get 1 mile for every Seahawks passing yard. They have been doing this since 2016 but haven’t announced if it will continue next season. Both M and I got 4000 miles added to our Delta accounts this year and we didn’t even watch a single Seahawks game on TV. Thanks Geno Smith!

Delta has done this for several years because they are in a huge competition for the Seattle airline market with Alaska Airlines. Alaska responded by allowing priority boarding in Seattle for everyone wearing Russell Wilson jersey’s. Russell was their CFO- Chief Football Officer during those years :>) It is funny that Seattle is so football crazy that you need to win over Seahawks fans if you want to compete in the airline market. I’m not sure other cities have free miles promotions for football.

Free Miles and Points are awesome, but I haven’t found too many giveaways like the Delta-Seahawk thing.

Stacking is where you can really pile on the rewards. In the Miles and Points game, stacking is when you can get multiple rewards on one transaction. There are many ways to get miles points from the company you are purchasing with as well as with the credit card you are using.

Another overlooked way to get easy points is Delta’s connection with Airbnb. We stay in a LOT of Airbnb’s. There is a link on the Delta website to the Airbnb website. If you book following this link you can get 1X Delta points for every dollar on Airbnb. I did this for a long time until someone at a Nomad meetup told me I could get 2X miles by doing the same thing with British Airways Avios Points. I am also stacking my points because I book with a credit card that gives me 3X Chase Points on accommodations. I have been doing this for a while and my Avios are starting to add up. Here is the link

My latest stacking hack that I just started using is on the Capital One Offers website. I’m not talking about the Capital One Travel Portal and I’m not talking about the Capital One Shopping Portal. You need log in to your Capital One account and go to the Offers page CapitalOneOffers.com. They give you personalized offers and they seem to change every day. Some days the bonuses are higher… some days they are lower… I haven’t been doing this long enough to understand their logarithm but I assume this is a marketing ploy to get users to try new companies.

I mostly use Expedia for hotels if I don’t buy directly from the hotel. For me, sometimes the offer for hotels is as high as 5X!

Click to go straight to Expedia and login to your Expedia account. When it is time to pay, you don’t have to use your Capital One card. The Capital One Venture Cards only give 2X on hotels so I prefer not to use them. I use my Chase Business Ink that both give me 3X on hotels. So it you are following along… I could get 8X by using this hack. You get the 3X Chase points right away but the 5X from Capital One doesn’t get added to your account until 45 days after your stay.

Of course this is in addition to the OneKeyCash loyalty incentive that Expedia, Hotels.com and VRBO are all using now. That is also giving me some discounts once in a while and I don’t really pay attention to it.

Speaking of Hotels.com… I haven’t used that site in years. They want me to try it again by giving me a 10X offer!!!! That would be 13X after using my Chase card to pay for it. I’m excited to give it a try!

VRBO is also on my offers list. Today it is only 2X, but I swear I saw it much higher a couple of days ago. They don’t have near the inventory as Airbnb and the interface is a bit clumsy, so I stopped using it years ago in favor of Airbnb. But even at 2X Capital One points, I should probably give it a chance too. Capital One points are a lot more valuable than British Airways Avios/Airbnb points hack that I mentioned earlier. 2X Capital One, plus my Chase 3X isn’t too shabby. Booking.com is in the same boat… I don’t mind using them if the offer is good. My offers on Trip.com and Priceline are also looking pretty good at 7X even though I don’t remember ever using them.

You can also book direct with hotels on this. It looks like I have a few options like IHG, Marriott and Best Western.

I can still login to my hotel loyalty account and use whatever card will get me the best deal. I have an IHG Chase card that I will use if I want to book a IHG hotel because it already has a big multiplier. Lots of people have Marriott Bonvoy card accounts that would work the same way. Going through this offer to Best Western looks like a fantastic deal at 9X Capital One points plus the huge IHG card points bonus.

The Virgin Atlantic flight deal also sounds great at 5X. You can use the Virgin site to book lots of other airlines in the Star Alliance. In the last couple of years, I booked through Virgin (usually using miles) to travel on Aeromexico, Delta, Korea Air and Tarom (Romanian carrier) airlines.

So, if you guys are wondering why all our long haul flights in the next few years are going to be in Business Class, it is because of this (lol, not sure we’ll fully realize this, but I’m going to try!). This Capital One Offers stacking trick has really gotten me excited. I don’t really understand why more people aren’t talking about this. I have done Google searches and Youtube searches, but it isn’t something that really comes up much. After talking to some travel hacking experts, I am pretty sure there isn’t a catch. I’m new at this, but it is something that seems super easy. I hope this inspires people to give it a try.

I feel like there are other travel hacking tricks out there that I haven’t found yet. I know some people use Rakuten but it works best with American Express points and I don’t have or want those cards at this time. The credit card miles and points game really has 2 games. One is learning how to spend points, and one is learning how to get them. It is a continuous journey to get better at both games. Let me know if there is something out else out there in the “getting” game that I should be looking at.