Question
Does anyone have any experience/ opinions with the Amtrak MC? I like to travel often between WAS and NYC for weekend leisure trips and I’m looking for a way to do this less expensively. Earning FF miles for such a short flight does not seem a good use of miles so I’m thinking about the Amtrak MC. I would spend about $1000 per month on the card. Any opinions or other option you would consider? Thanks for the input.
Answer
Does anyone have any experience/ opinions with the Amtrak MC? I like to travel often between WAS and NYC for weekend leisure trips and I’m looking for a way to do this less expensively. Earning FF miles for such a short flight does not seem a good use of miles so I’m thinking about the Amtrak MC. I would spend about $1000 per month on the card. Any opinions or other option you would consider? Thanks for the input.
I'm not sure what you're asking. Do you want to know FTers' thoughts about flying versus taking the train between WAS and NYC? Do you want to know whether people think that the Amtrak MC is better or worse than some other credit card? Do you want to know how the Amtrak Guest Rewards program compares to an airline frequent flyer program?
You can get the Amtrak credit card and still continue to fly between NYC and WAS. Similarly, you can travel on Amtrak between NYC and WAS without getting the Amtrak credit card. And as far as I know, the cost of an Amtrak ride between NYC and WAS is the same for Amtrak MC holders as for everyone else.
The Amtrak MC earns Amtrak Guest Rewards points, as does traveling on a paid Amtrak ticket. If you charge $1,000/month of non-Amtrak purchases to the Amtrak MC, you will earn 1,000 Amtrak Guest Rewards points per month; 2,500 points are required for a one-way trip between WAS and NYC.
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I use the Amtrak MC as a back-up to my Starwood AmEx despite the fact that I rarely travel on Amtrak. The purpose for my use is to earn miles that can be transfered to Continental.
With that said, Amtrak has zone awards so depedning on the zone that you travel to and the class of service, you'll have to decide if the card is worth it to you or not. I like the fact that I can earn Continental miles without an annual fee.
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I am not exactly clear on what you are asking as well - you can see a direct comparison of the Amtrak CC's vs all airline / hotel etc cards on my site
http://www.andrewcram.com/frequentflyerCC.html
So you can see things like bonus points, %rates, etc etc
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Do you want to know whether people think that the Amtrak MC is better or worse than some other credit card?
These are the questions that I had. Sorry my orginal post was not very clear. I have been finding that traveling for free between WAS and NYC using FF miles does not seem to be a good value and was trying to see if it is worth my effort to accumulate Amtrak points instead via their credit card. I rarely buy a paid Amtrak ticket. I guess the real question is what is the best way for me to get free trips to NYC- Use UA FF miles earned via my regular paid flights elsewhere or Build Amtrak points using the Amtrak credit card. My main objective is to get free trips from DC to NYC either via UA miles or some other means and I'm looking for the best credit card to help me do that.
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My main objective is to get free trips from DC to NYC either via UA miles or some other means and I'm looking for the best credit card to help me do that.
Airline award tickets cost you 25K miles (15K miles until the AA & UA promo ends at the end of the year) and Amtrak award RT tickets cost 5K points (& up). Base solely on the credit card use and not counting the signup bonuses, the answer is clear.
P.S. Unless if you don't mind paying the $95 annual fee you can sign up for Diners Club MC. It earns 1 pt/$ and you can transfer its DC pts to Amtrak and most of US airlines programs 1 to 1.
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It sounds like you should sign up for the Amtrak Guest Rewards Program and sign up for the Guest Rewards MasterCard. Check the Amtrak forum on Flyer Talk for periodic sign-up bonuses for the MasterCard.
You can also find Amtrak discount codes in the Amtrak forum, although most discount codes these days are for two people traveling together.
To maximize your point earnings for paid travel on Amtrak, take a look at the multi-city ticketing strategy described in this thread:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=442186&page=1&pp=15
By using the strategy, you will earn 400 Guest Rewards points for each one-way trip between WAS and NYC. If you pay for these tickets with the Guest Rewards MasterCard, you will earn enough points after five one-ways to get the sixth one-way for free.
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The Amtrak Guest Rewards MC has a bad history of changing its terms without notice in ways that really wallop some members.
The first time this happened was when they changed the number of miles that could be transfered from GR to airline programs from unlimited to an annual cap of 25,000. There were a lot of posts from members who were then caught with a lot of miles in GR that would take years to use up.
The second change was even worse, in that Amtrak couldn't even argue that it was implimented to stop abuse. This one involved eliminating UA as a partner airline, leaving only CO. Many of us had obtained the Amtrak MC for the purpose of getting UA miles, and while partners come and go, the no-notice change left a lot of folks stranded with Amtrak miles.
The rules of most programs say that terms can be changed without notice. That rarely happens because companies know that after doing that, customers will shy away from participating believing it may happen again. You don't have to guess whether Amtrak would do that sort of thing-they already have.
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I appear to be a bit late in responding to this but would like to add my two cents: I agree with the quote below (sucked when they took away ability to transfer into UA) but I do still keep the Amtrak Guest Rewards Plat Mastercard, and of course the main reason you would do so now--unless you travel Amtrak (which I typically don't)--is for Continental miles.
Just know, as I came up against this in February of last year, that a regular member (not "select" member) can only transfer up to 25,000 points over into Continental miles per calendar year (select members can transfer up to 50,000). Not knowing this was my own fault, but it then hampered my ability to use any miles last year after a big February transfer into Continental!
I use this credit card as a backup to AmEx membership rewards, at places that don't take Amex...it used to be my main card but now, since it's only good for Midwest and Continental airline miles, I've greatly reduced usage.
The Amtrak Guest Rewards MC has a bad history of changing its terms without notice in ways that really wallop some members.
The first time this happened was when they changed the number of miles that could be transfered from GR to airline programs from unlimited to an annual cap of 25,000. There were a lot of posts from members who were then caught with a lot of miles in GR that would take years to use up.
The second change was even worse, in that Amtrak couldn't even argue that it was implimented to stop abuse. This one involved eliminating UA as a partner airline, leaving only CO. Many of us had obtained the Amtrak MC for the purpose of getting UA miles, and while partners come and go, the no-notice change left a lot of folks stranded with Amtrak miles.
The rules of most programs say that terms can be changed without notice. That rarely happens because companies know that after doing that, customers will shy away from participating believing it may happen again. You don't have to guess whether Amtrak would do that sort of thing-they already have.