Legacy Priceline Visa Discussion - 2% cash back on all purchases

Finance
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I have the legacy Priceline. Very valuable. Important to keep in mind that if you use the card for ordinary purchases and then redeem for Priceline, your effective net cashback is a good bit higher than you think once you add in the 5x points you’re earning on Priceline and the repeating 10% back.

EXAMPLE:
Buy $10,000 worth of (ordinary) stuff= 20,000 points.
Buy a $300 Priceline express deal= Earn 1500 points.
Redeem your 20k points for the Priceline deal- get 2000 points back.

You’ve now gotten $10300 of stuff and have 3500 points.
Get a $52.50 Priceline reward, earn 265 points, redeem your 3500 points and get another 350 points back for 615 points.
Now get $9.23 in Priceline purchases, earn 50 points, get 61 points back for 111 points, we’ll round that off to $1.50.

You’ve now paid on net $10,000 for 10,363.23. That works out to a whopping 3.63%. (Probably works out to 3.666% repeating) Now this is exaggerating a little- getting those tail end 10% redemptions used in any reasonable amount of time requires sufficient Priceline spending and multiple cycles of redemption. But even just looking at what you have after one redemption it’s fair to say you’re netting over 3.5% on your original purchases.

It’s especially good when express deals are very often the best possible deal available. Throw in the Upromise portal or similar dishing up 5-8%+ cash back on top, and it’s hard to do better on a redemption.

82

Are you still earning this bonus on all PL deals?

I haven’t in awhile. Did my first NYOP car deal in awhile tonight, and will be curious to see how it posts.

83

So I’ve pretty much always redeemed for Hotel Express Deals. Never seen the 10% bonus not post. Takes a couple days I think.

84

Just did this. Always had the 10% credited back instantly when it was working. Today, no 10%.

85

NYOP for rental cars is dead as of today.

I also am still not getting an 10% rebate for express deals, nyop, “exclusive” prepaid hotel deals, or anything else since last year.

86

Can anyone confirm whether ticket purchases at the Spirit customer service counter earn the 1.5x travel redemption bonus?

87

Sorry to keep bumping this thread, but I have news:

As of March 28, I am getting 10% travel bonuses again on PL hotel, car rental, and also airfare–at the exact same merchants that weren’t awarding bonuses for months. :slight_smile:

88

Excellent news! Was afraid this was going to get phased out.

89

Even bigger news coming. Priceline’s 20th anniversary is being celebrated at the end of the month through mid-May.

From a Priceline Visa perspective, an email went out that says from April 30, 2018 to May 19, 2018, instead of 5x on priceline.com qualified purchases, purchases will be 15x.

This email did reconfirm the 10% back on points for priceline.com and travel purchases, but the 1.5x redemption option on all MCC airfare is still not publicly discussed.

The current definition of priceline.com qualified purchases that count at 5x or this extra 10x promotion is as follows:

Pay Now Hotel and Rental Car rates (but charges have to be done by priceline.com not another company).
Cruises (unsure if it includes non-priceline.com bookings)

In the fine print, it does say: cruises (based on MCC), NYOP, Express Deals and Trip Protection.

Further, each day a different city is being promoted (for the 20 days). I don’t know which city is on which day (except San Diego is on May 11th).

I think this will be the promo site when it is up and running:

Now, the sad news is NYOP Car is gone. Only NYOP hotel is left.

But not all is so sad, William Shatner will return for this special anniversary in digital messaging on the Priceline site (although, I am not sure he is contracted further).

Rasheed

90

What is qualifying for the 33% discount on points redemption these days? Does it mirror the 5x categories or is it exclusively NYOP and express deals still? Basically, I’m trying to figure out if Pay Now Hotels can double dip on the 5x earn and 33% discount redemption.

91

Hmm… I didn’t get my 5% back on my recent Priceline purchase, only 2%:

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92

If I purchase airline tickets through priceline.com, what will be the merchant code on my credit card bill? Will it be priceline or the airline itself?

I am not concerned about the 33% boost for now as my points are not yet high enough. But I would like to get 5x points for the ticket purchase.

Thanks!

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Note that airline purchases have NOT been earning 5%, just the redemption bonus.

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What did you get? I think “pay now and save” deals have been consistently showing up as PL, but have only been getting 2%

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Great questions. IIRC “pay it now hotels” get neither kicker. I am consistently getting the redemption bonus on all flights booked direct and through PL’s portal (i.e. even when they aren’t hidden/opaque flights). Express deal hotel and car bookings have been reliably earning both.

96

Thanks DaveHanson. I was planning to use a PenFed AMX to earn the 5x points for airfare purchases. This requires airline MCC code. Priceline seems to offer lower fares than offered directly by the airline for my particular trip.

97

Has anyone had their 10x anniversary bonus points post?

98

Interesting, that’s a change from years past. To your more recent question - no, I haven’t had anniversary points post. I did make a different Express Deals purchase, got the 5x, but haven’t yet gotten the 10x.

99

Interesting, that’s a change from years past.

What’s the change? And thanks for the datapoint on no 10x yet.

100

I was referring to my earlier point about not getting 5x on “pay now” non-opaque hotels. I definitely used to get 5x on those purchases, but not anymore.

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