Heading To San Fran For Free

SanFrancisco_0.jpg

Well almost free.   I didn’t feel like using up all my Jet Blue points right now since most of it was free.  I ended up purchasing the flight back with money.

My wife and I have been talking about taking a short trip because my free night from my Hilton Ascend card is expiring soon.  I should have just used it in Thailand last summer.  She has never been to San Fran and since I recently received 50,000 points for opening the JetBlue business card, I thought we could try out JetBlue Mint seats.  Since JetBlue points go by the value of the ticket, I looked for the cheapest Mint flights.  They were $499 (just over 30K points) each a few nights a month.  I mean nights!  I am not scheduled to land in San Fran until 1:45am pacific time.  Since this flight is regularly 30 minutes delayed, I will be lucky to land at 2:15am.  Anyway, it ended up costing me 60,400 JetBlue points and $11.20 in taxes for two seats in Mint to San Fran from Boston.  I used her Chase Sapphire Reserve card on the taxes because the card offers trip cancellation and interruption insurance, trip delay reimbursement and lost luggage reimbursement.  I already receive free checked baggage with Mint seats in case we want to check a bag.

 

For the return flight from San Fran, I bought two coach seats with my JetBlue card.  I didn’t really want to use all the points I had for this trip.  Two coach seats cost us $256.40 including taxes and fees.  The reason I used my JetBlue card for this one other than the extra points was that you get free checked baggage when booking with the card.  So if we do bring a checked bag it will be free both ways now.

Since I am 6’4″ and can’t stand coach seats (yes JetBlue has the most legroom in coach) there was no way I wasn’t getting extra legroom seats for a flight from the west coast.  I also didn’t want to pay for them.  So I waited until today to move our seats to extra legroom.  Now that it is a new year, my Amex Gold card has given me my $100 credit back for airline fees.  I also have the Bank of America Platinum rewards card that also gives you a credit of $100.  It would cost $99 each for extra legroom.  To get the credit from two cards at once, I moved my seat first and used the Amex card.  Then went back in and moved her seat and used the Bank of A card.

I don’t think I mentioned the Bank of America Platinum Rewards card in my last blog.  The reason I got this card last spring was that I received 50,000 points for spending $3,000, received credit for Global Entry and $100 in Airline Fees.  The card is only $95 a year so they are essentially paying you $5 every year for the card.  In the first year, they are paying you $605.  50,000 points are worth $500 and you get the Global Entry fee waived.  The great thing is I already used the $100 airline credit last summer since they give it to you right away when opening and now that it is a new year I have the credit again.  I could actually cancel the card when the annual fee posts and end up with +$705 from them.  haha.

Now for staying in San Fran.  I had that free night certificate from the Amex
Hilton Ascend card.  I called and used that for one night.  I had enough Hilton points for two more nights but when I tried to book it online it was showing me 120,000 Hilton points for two nights.  I tried one night and it only showed 60,000 points for one night and 52,000 points for the other night.  So I had to book those nights separately.  I had to call the Hilton to let them know the three reservations are actually one.  I will remind them again before we go.

Anyway, I still needed to book one more night and I didn’t have enough Hilton points.  I was just going to pay for the 4th night.  I look it up and it is sold out.  I start searching other hotels and the ones that are not sold out were charging $1,300 a night.  I was like WTF!  I learned one lesson from this booking.  I should have looked into seeing if anything was going on that week in San Fran or made sure I could book the hotel before booking the plane ticket.  I came to find out that a huge cybersecurity conference is going on all week and all the top companies will be in town.  Thankfully my friend Jeff lives in the San Fran area and I may be able to sleep my last night at his place.  If for some reason I can’t sleep at his place then I guess I will just have to make a tent and sleep on the sidewalk like half of the locals do.

Leave a Reply