US Airways has sent out an e-mail to targeted users (which may just be all US Airways credit card holders as I do not know anyone that did not receive the e-mail) that there is a bonus offer tied to spending on the card.
US Airways has normally given out spending offers for cards that had been somewhat dormant in use. These offers were things like spending $500/$750 per month for three months to earn 10K/15K bonus miles. Those were great offers! I had somewhat anticipated a card-wide offer to their customers to do something to generate more spending since the US Airways card will disappear at some point. Since Barclays is losing that card, they are going to want to encourage as much spending on the card now. To do that, they have instituted this bonus offer.
Bonus Miles For Spending
The offer is a 20% bonus on all miles earned by spending on the card from July 1 – August 31, 2014. Some people have mentioned receiving a 30% bonus offer. So, if you spend $1,000 on the card each of those two months, you will end up with an additional 400 miles at the end of the period.
To put it in comparison to the offers they regularly sent out to truly targeted cardmembers, here is how the math plays out. My wife has received an offer a few times for spending $750 a month for three months to receive a 15,000 mile bonus. If she spent that same amount of money over this month period for this bonus offer, she would receive 450 miles instead of the 15,000 miles she received under the previous offers. That is really a big difference!
Does this 20% bonus on spending make it worthwhile for you to switch your spending to this card for 2 months? It would really depend on what your point goals are. The limit of this offer is 10,000 miles, so that would be your cap. If you were trying to spend $25,000 on this card to get the 10,000 elite miles, you would end up with 5,000 bonus miles. If spending the $25,000 were a goal of yours anyway, and you can handle that kind of spend in two months, then this might be the time to do it. Otherwise, I would not switch my spending to this card just because of this bonus offer. There are a lot of other cards out there that offer better return on spend – including another card from the Barclay stable, the Barclaycard Arrival Plus.
There is one plus about this offer – you do not have to register. It is already tied to your account. Plus, there is no minimum spend for this offer. So, if you just use this card anyway, you can look forward to seeing a 20% bonus at the end of the period!
Here are the terms:
| ¹Offer is valid for select cardmembers and is not transferable. You will earn a 20% bonus on the miles you earned on purchases with your card between July 1, 2014, through August 31, 2014 (the promotional period) up to a maximum of 10,000 miles. To receive your bonus miles, your account must be open and in good standing. Purchases made during periods when your account is delinquent, or your account is otherwise not in good standing as defined in your Credit Card Cardmember Agreement do not qualify for this offer. Your bonus miles will appear on your statement 6-8 weeks after the end of the promotion. Net retail purchases do not include such things as the purchase of money orders, traveler’s checks, foreign currency, lottery tickets, gambling chips, wire transfers, person-to-person money transfers or using the account to obtain a cash advance. |
Foreign Transaction Fee Waiver
In addition to the bonus miles, they are also offering a credit to your account on the foreign transaction fees that are incurred during the same period (July 1 – August 31). The foreign transaction fee is 3% of all spending from foreign sources (including purchases made through foreign vendors/payment processing online). This card should have it waived all the time anyway, so this is still not a huge incentive. If I was traveling internationally during those months, I would not grab the card just because of that.
Summary
It is nice to see Barclay trying out some things to incentivize spending on the US Airways card. As I mentioned earlier, they need to do some things to encourage more use before they lose the branding. I think many people sit on the card and only use it for the occasional bonus offers and the anniversary bonus (for those cards that have it). Another reason people may keep it is for the companion tickets and the reduced mileage on award tickets (5,000 fewer miles for US Airway flights), but both of these perks do not require any spending. For a mileage earning card, the American Express SPG is actually better as you basically get a 1.25 mile per dollar earning on all spending (if you transfer in blocks of 20,000 Starpoints). Since US Airways is a transfer partner at 1:1, the only reason people would really put any regular spend on the US Airways card is if they are going for the elite bonus.
Hopefully, we will see more (and bigger) offers from Barclay in the next few months! If you do use the card, though, at least you will see 20% more miles for the next two months!
I’m getting 15,000 miles for $500 spend in June, July, August. Never use the card except for this.
Data point: I have the us airways MasterCard and didn’t receive the targeted email.
If you are interested in having it tied to your account, you may want to call them and just mention that you did not receive the e-mail but are interested in using the card under this promotion and can they help you. Never hurts to try!