Is it worth it: Alaska Airlines Mileage Purchase

So, it starts with a story of a naive little girl seeing this blogpost about Alaska Airline mileage program and how good it is etc etc. She then managed to break into her little piggy bank, take lots of money out, and buy mileage when it’s not even at its optimal purchase point. You all know how the story goes. She regrets her purchase.

Let’s do the math here. The girl managed to purchase the below with $1448.56:

Miles Purchased:	49000
Bonus Miles:	19600
Total Miles:	68600

She then managed to get (redeem) a one way ticket from LA to Shanghai (with Osaka as a transfer destination in between), for almost all of those points. When we think about it logically, she basically bought a ONE-WAY ticket for almost $1500, even though she could probably get a round trip economy ticket with that price. (She even paid an extra $26 of fees).

• MISTAKE #1: Cherry didn’t wait for the optimal purchase time with more bonus points. 40% seems to be an all year round “special promo” that’s really not that special.

• MISTAKE #1a: Cherry didn’t wait for optimal purchase times like Black Friday or Cyber Monday.
• She naively thought that flight ticket would NEVER be on sale, even during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. WRONG. She bought the tickets the night before Cyber Monday, which turned out to be a big mistake, since Expedia had great sales on Cyber Monday. $200 off round trip tickets (hey!). Expedia had $800 something roundtrip (economy) tickets from LAX-PVG at the time, and with $200 off of that…. Omg…. what a loss.

• MISTAKE #2: Cherry didn’t check the conversion between SPG and Alaska Airlines.
• The conversion used to be great! 1:1, as claimed by major blog posts like the points guy. Apparently, that was still the case earlier in the year, say, August 2018. Too bad it’s not the case now (November 2018). It’s now 3:1. Cherry thought she was so rich with her 100K SPG points. Too bad it only translated to 30K in the end. Not enough for even one single business ticket. Sad, sad, sad.

• MISTAKE #3: Cherry miscalculated the time it took for the mileage purchase to come through and the SPG transfer purchase to come through.
• The mileage purchase, surprisingly, took more than a couple days to complete. It’s pretty counterintuitive since it should be a SIMPLE PURCHASE, but as with everything Alaska does in my experience, EVERYTHING IS DELAYED. In addition, the mileage transfer takes even longer. It’s been well over a week since the points have been deducted from my SPG account, and the mileage is STILL NOT in my Alaska account. STILL NOT. [Even tried calling them, waiting on the line like a hopeful little kid and oops, of course there's nothing they can do.] Well… can someone explain to me, why I ever initiated that transfer. So guess what Cherry’s current situation is? She bought her one way ticket to Osaka and Shanghai, and did not buy a return ticket. (How will she come back, or will she ever…) The current price on Expedia, for an Economy ticket from PVG (Shanghai) to LAX (Los Angeles) is $308. Not much yeah. But how about those useless mileage transfer? If she doesn’t use them, they’ll probably devalue.

Rule of thumb #1: most, if not all points eventually devalue over time since companies will not be willing to bring up even more cost on money they already received. It’s always wise to use up points ASAP especially when the redemption or conversion looks like a good deal.

Rule of thumb #2: good deals don’t last (period).

• Of course, that’s not the end of Cherry’s first points-hunting mileage-seeking experience full of mistakes. There’s more to come. Promise me you won’t make the same mistake. Till next time, peace.