Skymiles not much good for flying, but still work for magazines

    Anyone with Delta Skymiles has been dismayed in recent years by the fact that they have become increasingly worthless.
    In the Golden Age of Skymiles we earned 1,000 miles per segment and Medallion flyers got 25- or 50-percent bonuses. Round-trip tickets were readily available for 20,000 miles and first class tickets cost 35,000 miles. A trip to Europe was 50,000 miles with business class at 80,000.
    Then Delta raised ticket redemption levels and put in draconian capacity controls. It's still possible to get a 25,000-mile round-trip ticket, but only in the dead of winter on a day when no one is flying. Eighteen months ago when I needed three domestic tickets I ended up spending almost 200,000 miles. At one time this would have been nearly enough to buy round-trip tickets for two on the Concorde!
    There is one good value floating around out there, and that is that magazines can be purchased for miles for far less then if you shelled out real money for them. The Economist magazine, for example, is one of the most expensive weekly magazines in print, with a yearly cost of almost $100. They rarely discount. But it's available through the Miles for Magazines program for 3,200 Skymiles. Nobody values Skymiles at two cents any more, but even if for some crazy reason you do, this is a great deal on a great magazine. So if we can't fly with our Skymiles, at least we can sit home and read!
    I recently ordered The Economist and Harper's Magazine. I was also going to order a couple of magazines that required $2 in cash, but found that these came with an "auto-renew" feature. Having learned my lesson, I will never allow a magazine permission to auto-renew on my credit card.
You can see the list of magazines available below. To order magazines for miles, click here.

Hilton HHonors announces First Quarter 2012 promotion

    Hilton has announced its First Quarter 2012 promotion, and while there is some moaning and groaning over at the flyertalk.com board, I think it's decent enough for several reasons.
    The promotion, simply called More Points, offers a bonus of 1,000 bonus HHonors points per night from Jan. 1 2012, to March 31, 2012. As an added bonus guests who stay at least two weekend nights, counting Thursday night as a weekend night, will get an additional 5,000 bonus points. So if I'm reading the offer correctly, a stay of Thursday and Friday night would garner 7,000 bonus points.
    Here's why I think the Hilton offer is generous enough. Promotions have been decreasing across the board at all hotel chains. Most hotels offer fewer promotions at the start of the year as everyone is concentrating on booking enough stays to guarantee their loyalty status for the next year. And many chains offer absolutely nothing until Feb. 1.
    Using Jinny as an example, she will need 28 Hilton stays to keep her Diamond status for 2013. There is a natural desire to get ahead of the curve and get a few more than 14 stays under her belt by July 1. That way she will almost be assured of making Diamond for the next year. Aware of this, the chains then roll out some better promotions after mid-year, to make sure that people who have already earned their tier status don't stray to greener pastures.
    The fact is that with this promotion a traveler with 12 nights that include two weekends is almost certain to earn enough regular and bonus points to get a free hotel room anywhere in the world. In places like London these rooms cost as much as $500 per night. So unless or until the program gets gutted, it's a pretty good deal.
    We can always hope for more, but for a First Quarter promotion I think it's okay. Be sure to check the exclusion list as a number of hotels aren't participating.

Up to 3,000 free AAdvantage miles -- this one is easy!

    I just got 2,500 free AAdvantage miles from American Airlines, and you can get up to 3,000 free miles, too. The link is at the bottom of this post.
    I don't get to fly American very much. It's hard to out of Memphis. But I like the airline, and unlike Delta, they have not devalued their loyalty program to the degree that the Skymiles program has been gutted. So you can get a round-trip ticket on American for 25,000 miles far more often than on Delta. In fact, sometimes American offers round-trip tickets for only 15,000 miles.
    In addition, AA miles transfer into the HHonors program at the rate of 6 miles to 10 HHonors points. It used to be 5-to-10, so even AA has been devalued a bit, but the ability to trade for HHonors points can be really helpful when you need a few extra hotel points.
    So what do you need to do? Just agree to receive some emails. For each weekly email (a few may come more often) you agree to receive you will get 500 AA miles. If you already are subscribed to one of the emails, you don't get that offer. I already received one email each week, so I only got 2,500 instead of 3,000 miles (the offer is for 2,500 miles, but after you sign up they give you an extra 500.)
    I was pretty impressed with the website making the offer. It featured an auction appraiser pretending to "appraise" my email address.
    By the way, there's nothing to stop you from setting up a separate email account to receive airline and hotel mail. Just be sure to visit the AA site before you try to sign up for this offer to change your email address. Personally, I like getting the NetSAAver fares and sweepstakes offers. You can cancel these emails later, but don't do so until your bonus points have posted to your account, with may take a couple of months.
    One other tip. If you are trying to keep points alive in a program you don't use very much, try earning a few miles with a rental car or hotel stay. HHonors lets you pick which airline you want to "Double-Dip" with, and I choose American from time to time just to keep some activity. This works for any airline.
    I calculate the value of these points as between $25 and $40. Not bad for getting some emails, most of which I'd like to get anyway. Oh, and you also get your choice of four different sweepstakes to enter. They didn't have a trip for one to Las Vegas, so I picked the family vacation to Hawaii. I can hear the hula music now! Oh, wait -- that's Lucy listening to Youtube.
    Here's the link:
Appraise to Win Sweepstakes

Good Luck!