Question
Is anyone familiar with the "Amalgamiles" program. This is a program from Amalgamated Bank of Chicago, where, with a secured credit card (secured by your deposit in a savings account) and a $29 fee, you can get a MasterCard that gives you 1 mile for each $ spent.
Specific questions: How hard are the rewards to get (hotel travel, air travel). They claim no Blockout dates (like Capital One does) ... is it true?
For people with "challenged" credit, this would be a great way to share in the travel "booty"
FWIW, the program states 60K miles max in a year, 5K max per month ... but that's 60K more a year than you'd get with a "no miles card"
Answer
I'm not directly familiar with it, but most of the banks that claim "no blackout dates" can make this claim because they are issuing their own "miles" which have no relationship to the airlines' FF miles. That means you cannot combine them with airline miles earned through other means (i.e. flying). Basically you earn X number of points and the bank buys a ticket for you. Though there are no blackout dates, there are strict dollar limits on the cost of the flight. Not a great deal in my opinion.
If I were unable to obtain a standard credit card, I would consider one of the many mileage-earning debit cards offered by the banks.
Answer
US Bank offers a Korean Air SKYPASS secured Visa card - and since Korean is in Skyteam you can earn and redeem additional miles on Delta etc and soon (next week?), Northwest and Continental as well - pretty low fees etc and a fairly sizeable 'legitimate' bank.
This card has the benefit of helping build / rebuild a good credit score.
Debit card wise you can get a heap of $2 = 1 mile cards from US Bank / Chase / Bank of America / Citibank or for $65 per year you can get a $1 = 1 AAdvantage mile debit card from Citibank that you can add all those cereal miles etc to.