UPDATED March 21st, 2011: If you have not signed up for this card I would suggest you skip it. Capital One is only holding a billion miles and my guess is that it is too late to sign up! Here’s the info from Capital One:
Submit your miles soon because it’s first come, first served. Once the one billion miles are gone, your chance to claim up to 100,000 miles will be too. Don’t get left on the runway!
Instead I would look at another of the best credit card offers.
UPDATED April 5th, 2011: The billion miles are taken. The offers is not longer available. Time to move on to another promotion.
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It’s not often that you have an opportunity to get 110,000 points for signing up for a credit card. In fact, this might be the most points you’ll ever get for a credit card.
However, before you get too excited, there are a few things you should know:
- Capital One does a credit pull from all three credit bureaus so that does impact your credit score. As always, I think you should at be (at a minimum) tracking your score with Credit Karma. You want to be aware of how applying for multiple credit cards impacts you credit score. I’m currently using myself as a guinea pig, so I should have some more definitive answers soon.
- As I read this forum, I noticed there’s a lot of bad vibes towards Capital One. I had a C1 card (for the 0% foreign currency exchange), and I never had any issues.
- You need to have 100,000 points in an air miles account to be eligible for 100,000 of the bonus points.
- The terms and conditions leave some room for confusion.
With my disclaimer officially in place, let’s proceed.
110,000 Venture Rewards Sign Up Credit Card Bonus
Sign up for the card and spend $1,000 in the first 90 days, and you’ll get 110,000 points.
At this point, you can match miles that were “earned through any single eligible airline credit card program.”
You can then use those points to book travel through their booking portal. At an estimated penny value per point, that would be a $1,100 value per credit card.
The program boasts that you can earn more points than other popular programs:
I honestly don’t know enough about the program to know how valuable the points really are.
About the Airline Matching Deal with Venture Rewards Credit Card
Here’s the example they offer on the site:
Let’s say you’ve earned 75,000 miles with an eligible airline credit card program. Capital One would match your existing miles with 75,000 Venture miles once you meet your minimum purchase requirement and submit your airline rewards statement. That means your new Venture account would start with a total of 75,000 miles.
Eligible Accounts Include:
- Alaska Airlines® Visa® Card
- American Airlines® Card
- Continental Airlines® Card
- Delta® SkyMiles® Card from American Express®
- Frontier Airlines® MasterCard®
- Hawaiian Airlines® Visa Card
- JetBlue® Card from American Express
- Spirit Airlines® Free SPIRIT™ MasterCard
- United Mileage Plus® Visa Card
- US Airways® Dividend Miles MasterCard
- Virgin America® Visa Card
Other:
- AirTran Airways® A+ Visa Card (1,000 Venture miles per A+ Rewards® Credit)
- Southwest Airlines® Rapid Rewards® Visa Card (1200 Venture miles per Rapid Rewards® Credit)
Thus, the obvious question is – what if your miles were earned from flying? Would those not be eligible for a match? What if you got your miles from a credit card sign up bonus? Would that be considered ‘eligible airline credit card’ points? Finally, by looking at your airline statement, how do they know how you earned your points?
My wife and I will be trying out this card so we can report back on how it goes. However, there is a limit to the first billion points, so if you’re going to act, act fast.
Below are the full terms and conditions from the website:
- Available to new Venture card customers only.
- Minimum purchase required. Customer must make at least $1,000 in total net purchases using the new Venture card within 90 days of account opening.
- Limited time offer. A maximum of one (1) billion total Venture miles will be issued as part of the “Match My Miles” program. Offer ends on or before May 13, 2011.
- Miles and match limits apply. Capital One will match up to 100,000 miles that were previously earned through any single eligible airline credit card program. See below for a complete list of eligible airline card programs, and how the Venture miles match will be calculated for each.
- Registration and documentation required. Upon approval, new Venture customers will receive registration instructions for Venture “Match My Miles”. If you provide an email address with your application, Capital One will communicate with you through that address. You will need to complete a form and then submit a current airline rewards program statement as proof of your existing miles/rewards. Only one (1) statement may be submitted, and it must be received by Capital One within 45 days of account opening. Documentation must indicate that the eligible miles/rewards are held in the name of the Venture card customer, and must be submitted at one time.
- Miles are reserved for customers once registration and documentation are complete, earned upon reaching the minimum purchase requirement, and awarded within two (2) billing periods of when they are earned.
- All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The listed airlines and credit card programs are in no way affiliated with Capital One, nor are they considered sponsors or cosponsors of this program. Capital One does not provide, endorse, nor guarantee and is not liable for any third party product or service shown here.
1-for-1 Mile Matching (1 Venture mile per 1 airline rewards mile/point):
- Alaska Airlines® Visa® Card
- American Airlines® Card
- Continental Airlines® Card
- Delta® SkyMiles® Card from American Express®
- Frontier Airlines® MasterCard®
- Hawaiian Airlines® Visa Card
- JetBlue® Card from American Express
- Spirit Airlines® Free SPIRIT™ MasterCard
- United Mileage Plus® Visa Card
- US Airways® Dividend Miles MasterCard
- Virgin America® Visa Card
Other:
- AirTran Airways® A+ Visa Card (1,000 Venture miles per A+ Rewards® Credit)
Southwest Airlines® Rapid Rewards® Visa Card (1200 Venture miles per Rapid Rewards® Credit)
Hat Tip to the View From the Wing Blog for reporting this bonus.
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About Craig Ford
I still have had trouble finding and being accepted for a credit card that offers miles without the rest of the agreement (like interest rates) being completely unacceptable.
Liz,
Very good point. I’ve never had a cc balance so I don’t even look at things like the interest rate. However, this card wouldn’t be for people who plan to have a balance.
Hi Craig,
Enjoy your website. I am a Capone card holder and they offered me to ‘upgrade’ to the Venture card. The customer service agent told me that they will not do a hard pull on my credit reports because I have a history with them and they will use that history to decide on my eligibility for the Venture card. This sounds good so far.
The card I have now with them has no annual fee but the Venture card has a $59 annual fee. They offer 2 points per dollar spent on the new card. Their points are not the same as miles on other programs. They simply divide the number of points you have by 100 and the result is the number of dollars they allow you to spend on a flight. For example a domestic flight with most of the airlines in 25,000 miles, this can take someone from Boston to San Diego and back. To pay for a flight like that often will cost more than $300 which would equate to 30,000 of the points on the Venture card. The good thing is they do not have blackouts or any restrictions, any flight you purchase will be covered by the points, the flight paid with miles might have seat restrictions and limited availability.
The other issue I have with the Venture card is how they determine what amount of miles to match? I have 2 frequent flyer accounts with well over 100,000 miles but currently do not have any credit cards associated with them. I have had credit cards in the past but they are now cancelled. I have a credit card with Delta Skymiles but only 60,000 miles in the account, most of which were not from the credit card but from other activities. The terms and conditions are consfusing. The customer service rep told me that I just need to send in my statement with one of the airline programs which I have more than 100,000 miles with and they will match them. The terms of the promotion seem to indicate that I needed to earn the miles with a credit card.
The third issue is the billion miles. That amounts to only 10,000 new cards where they match 100,000 miles (or points). This is not that many accounts when there are 300,000 million people in the country.
Any comments?
Ian
Ian,
Yes, if you already have a card that they will upgrade there will not be a credit pull, that is correct.
In order to justify the annual fee you’d need to be sure you’re getting a least that much value. I think the question to ask is how do you usually use your reward points and how much do you usually spend on tickets. If you were to charge 20,000 on a Starwood AMEX you could get 25,000 points on most airlines. With this card you would get $200 worth of flights. Ultimately, the question is would you rather have 25,000 points or $200. I think I’d rather have the points because they have more potential value. But, yes you do lose out on flexibility.
I’ve got my match and all I did was submitted my American Airlines statement. No proof of credit card usage or ownership was required.
Your third issue is the biggest one. If you are going to do it I would to it TODAY before the miles run out. If I were in your shoes I’d do it in a second because you might not get the points (if they are already given out) and lose out on $59 annual fee (you can just ask to go back to your other card if you don’t want to keep paying the fee). However, you may just end up with $1,000 worth of free travel. Worth the risk in my books.
Sorry. It should be $400 worth of travel with Venture Rewards. At that number I’d take $400 worth of travel over 25,000 points if I were planning to fly domestic.
Oopps, I meant 300 million and not 300,000 million people.
I just found out from another customer service rep that I am not eligible for the bonus miles promotion because I am upgrading. This of course after I already switched to the new card. I am in process of reversing the entire transaction because I am only interested in the bonus miles and not in the new program. I also lost half the value of my rewards as they were cash rewards and were converted to the new program which is miles and as miles they can be cashed out at 50% of the value.
I have decided to cancel everything I have with Capital One and close all accounts with them and never to do business with them again.
Ian,
That has got to be so frustrating.
I’ve heard a lot of negative feedback about Capital One and I’m sorry that your experience matches the experience of so many.
It’s annoying how much companies will do to get customers and how little they will do to keep customers.