Capital One cards like Venture Rewards Card (learn more here) and VentureX (learn more here) are popular in the points world, not only due to their lower annual fees and benefits, but also because they point each 2x points on ALL purchases. This makes them a great everyday card!
Like other banks that earn flexible points and allow you to book travel in the bank's travel portal, but also to transfer points from the bank to Airline and Hotel Partners (Chase Partners and Amex Partners can be found here and here); Capital One also has their own list of Airline and Hotel Partners to transfer points to.
Why Transfer Points?
It generally costs less points to book direct with an Airline or Hotel, than it does to redeem points in a bank travel portal at a fixed rate.
What I really want to hit on today with this post, is two additional points use options that are unique to Capital One.
Unique Ways to Use Capital One Miles
Combining Miles
Yes, Chase also always you to combine points (learn how here), but also across other accounts who live at the same physical address as you. American Express doesn't allow you to combine points at all! (Although technically you can transfer someone else's points to your loyalty accounts, but you have to be an authorized user on their card (this can take up a 5/24 spot) and have been for 90 days before you can transfer).
Capital One allows you to share miles with any other Capital One member, who also has a point earning credit. This is a great way to pool miles together for a trip or to use miles to split a cash travel cost, such as using points to split the cost of an airbnb with friends, who are also Capital One cardholders.
How to Combine Capital One Miles
Alas, you're going to have to make a phone call to Capital One.
1. Call the phone number on the back of your Capital One credit card.
2. Tell the agent you want to move some of your miles to another Capital One Venture-miles earning cardholder.
3. The agent will confirm your identity and then ask for the cardholder's name and card number.
4. Confirm how many miles you want to move.
That's not too bad!
The second miles use feature I want to hit is, on is using your miles as a statement credit to "cancel out" travel related purchases on your card.
Travel Eraser
Typically I want to get the "most" out of my miles by transfer them to airline or hotel partners, as mentioned above. But, travel can be expensive and the costs can add up! Using Capital One's points "Travel Eraser" feature allows you to minimize out of pocket costs, by redeeming your points at a 1:1 ratio on "travel" coded purchases on your CO credit card.
For example, my family recently flew to Paris for our summer vacation. I was able to book two of the four of us in Business Class "saver" seats with points, but that left two of us in Premium Economy, not all seated together.
After I checked in for the flight, there was an option to pay for a cash upgrade from Premium Economy to Business Class, for $480 per person. At first this seemed really expensive, as in "I don't want to really spend $960 more on our flights". However, I then realized that if I charged this $960 to my Venture Card, then I could use points to "erase" a portion of the cash charge to lower my overall out of pocket costs; which is exactly what I did
How to use "Travel Eraser"
1. Log into your CO account
2. Navigate to "view rewards" and click on a credit card with miles.
3. You'll be taken to the Rewards Homepage of that credit card. Scroll down to view the options:
4. Click on "Cover travel purchases" top right).
5. A window will pop up that shows all of your "travel" eligible purchases from the past 90 days that you can select to redeem points towards.
6. Select the purchase you want to redeem points on. Type in how many points you want to use. Note: you do NOT have to use points to cover the full charge. You can use points to cover a partial amount.
In my case, I paid $480 per flight and didnt want to use up all of my miles to cover this price. I wanted to do a partial amount and use 20,000 points per flight to redeem for a $200 credit; so that my "out of pocket" cost for each flight is $280 (ie $480-$200).
Since I had two flight costs I was doing this for, in total I used 40,000 points to "redeem" for $400 statement credit. This means that the $960 purchase I put on my Venture card; now became a $560 charge instead - which helped in my trip budgeting.
Summary
Again, using Capital One miles for Travel Eraser isn't the highest "value" you can get from your points (in comparison to transferring to airlines and hotels. You get a fixed value 1 cent of per point when redeemed this way... but to me, for this situation, it was WELL WORTH the use of points! We all got to together in Business Class one the way to Europe; especially since it was our kids first business class flight (I know, bougie!! I never dreamed I would fly business, let alone my kids at ages 7 and 8!)
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