Booking Air Travel? A Tip to Maximize Cash Back
While earning cash back on most internet stores is surprisingly easy, earning cash back on air travel has, at least in my experience, always proven to be a unique challenge. However, it seems that William Shatner can once again prove useful.
The Cash Back Challenge
As a general rule of thumb, any airfare results that you get on one travel website should also be available on other websites – in other words, that same fare you pulled up on Expedia should be bookable on Orbitz or even the airline’s own website (there are of course exceptions: student airfare, consolidator fares, special airline deals, etc.).
You may notice that the price sometimes varies by a few dollars — this is usually because major booking websites like Expedia, Travelocity, and Orbitz tack on a booking fee for your purchase raising the price by a few dollars.
This becomes problematic when you look at what sort of cash back is generally offered on travel sites. For the most part, very few airlines offer cash back for purchases made on their website; some offer a meager return, some (like American Airlines, which I frequently fly) offer nothing. On the other hand, booking websites like Orbtiz, Travelocity, etc. offer sizable cash back but that five dollar booking fee often wipes out (or worse) the benefit from potential cash back. Until recently, this meant that it was pretty much a wash: either get the cash back and see it get wiped out by a booking fee, or skip the cash back and skip the booking fee.
Enter Priceline
Priceline.com has changed the situation, though. Priceline.com is usually known for the “Name Your Own Price” feature, where you can bid on hotel and airfare; however, Priceline also offers traditional bookings just like any other travel website. What makes them different is that Priceline now does not charge a booking fee — so that itinerary you found on Orbitz that includes a $5 booking fee would cost you $5 less at Priceline.com. Priceline also offers generous cash back at several sites including FatWallet (4% back at time of writing) and EBates (2%).
I recently helped a friend book a $250 airline ticket that she found on United’s website. By choosing to book it at Priceline instead, she got the same itinerary for the same price that United.com offered, but also earned 4% cash back through FatWallet; that’s $10 saved - not bad!
So keep Priceline in mind next time you’re looking to book airline tickets.
Scoring Cheap Hotel Rooms
A couple of times each year, two or three of my friends and I will end up taking a weekend trip somewhere to explore a city for a few days. We are always on foot — so always relying on public transportation — and definitely prefer to stay in the “heart” of a city for both convenience and experience. Thus part of the planning for these trips inevitably involves trying to arrange a hotel room. Unfortunately, hotel rooms in “the heart” of a city can often be quite expensive.
Sometimes I have found you can get lucky using a normal travel search engine — Travelocity, Hotels.com, Expedia, etc. — but these days I find myself frequently turning to William Shatner for help.
Enter Priceline
Well, not quite William Shatner, but the company for which he is a spokesman — Priceline.com. You may have seen their television advertisements, where they talk about “naming your own price” for hotel bookings. Priceline also offers airfare, but I’m going to focus on bidding for hotels. Priceline’s system is simple — they break their hotels into geographic categories (in New York City, for example, the categories incldue Upper East Side, Upper West Side, Times Square, Downtown-Soho, etc.), as well as star-quality rating (1 star through 4 stars).
To try to name your own price, go to Priceline’s website, click on “Name your own Price”, and tell it the city, dates, and number of rooms you are looking for. You’ll then be taken to a page where you specify which areas in your city you want to try to bid for, as well as the hotel star-quality level. You then name your own price, and click submit. Because of the auction nature of the site, you have to provide your credit card information upfront, because if the bid is accepted you will be charged immediately. If your bid is not successful, you will not be charged, and can rebid after a day or two.
Student Ticket Agencies
I needed to book a domestic flight for next month, and with such high airfare prices lately, I spent the last few days trying to find the best airfare deal. While I wouldn’t call the ticket I ultimately purchased a great deal, given the current economic climate I’m pretty happy with it, and, much to my surprise, I ultimately ended up booking it through StudentUniverse.com.
STATravel and StudentUniverse.com
There seem to be two major student ticket agencies out there — STA Travel and StudentUniverse. These ticket agencies target students and (in some cases) faculty, and employ some weak level of verification that you really are a student. In the case of StudentUniverse, my .edu school email address acted as verification . Both STA Travel and StudentUniverse heavily market international and “study abroad” travel services (flights, hotels, train tickets, etc.), but also sell domestic air tickets as well.
Trouble with STA Travel
Take this as anecdotal evidence if you will, but I ended up going with StudentUniverse partly because of the difficulty I had using STA Travel’s website, which seems to both be poorly designed and questionably functional. Read more
Avoiding Airline Fees
I hate annoying fees. Which is why I was not thrilled this morning to read that effective May 12, American Airlines is charging a $25 fee for checking a second bag in most cases (excluding international travel). That makes them at least the eighth carrier to make such a change. Alaska, Continental, Delta, Northwest, United, and US Airways have all announced similar $25 second-bag fees. Even low-cost carrier JetBlue has announced a $20 fee for second checked bag.
When I travel, I rarely check a bag — it does not matter if I’m going on a one-day trip or a two-week trip, I can usually fit everything into my carry-on bag. Unfortunately, the only time I can’t avoid checking a bag is when I’m moving in and out from school for an extended period of time (summer), when I easily fill two bags to capacity. This means that now, in addition to trying to stay under American’s 50 lb limit, I’ll have to give careful consideration as to whether or not I’m willing to pay for an extra bag — $50 round trip.
Unfortunately, with soaring fuel costs and airlines filing for bankruptcy left-and-right (R.I.P. ATA, SkyBus, Aloha, Eos…), these added fees are becoming a common occurrence. Just last month, Delta raised or added fees for an astonishing ten different categories. Its becoming increasingly important to be aware of the changing fees when flying so that you don’t get caught at the airport.
6 Steps to Avoid Fees
- Always purchase from the airline directly if possible (up to $10 saved). Travelocity, Expedia, and Orbitz are great resources for comparing airfare — however, all three charge service fees for buying tickets through them that can range from $5 to $10 a ticket. You can usually avoid this fee if you book through the airline directly. If the itinerary is all on one airline, the airline often, if not usually, will have an equal or better price. Does your itinerary have multiple airlines? Sometimes you can still book through an airline by selecting an “All airlines” search.
- Always purchase over the internet from the airline ($10 or more saved). Most airlines are now charging fees for booking travel over the phone or at ticket counters at airports. Simply purchasing online from the carrier can avoid that fee.
- Check-In Inside ($2 or more saved). Or, better yet, check-in at a Self-Check In Kiosk. Just don’t use a skycap — several airlines now charge for curbside check-in on a per-bag basis.
- Know Your Airline’s Baggage Rules ($25, $50, or more saved). This is the big one that gets most people, and it doesn’t help that the rules are constantly changing. You need to know three different types of restrictions — limits on the number of bags, size of bags, and weight of bags.
- Number of Bags - As mentioned, the big news now is that most airlines are charging for a second checked bag. The going rate seems to be $25 each way. Some will still let you have a third bag, but that will cost you even more.
- Weight of Bag - The standard baggage limit for legacy carriers — American, United, and Delta, at least — seems to be 50 pounds, which is a surprisingly easy weight to hit, especially when you’re trying to avoid the last fee. Go over the 50 lb limit on Delta, and that will cost you $80 each way. Go over it on United, and they’d like a $100 for that 52-pound bag.
- Size of the Bag - This is a less common problem, but most carriers also limit the size of the bag. If you’re using a normal piece of luggage, you shouldn’t have a problem, but its worth checking.
It is hard to stress how quickly these fees can add up, especially given that they apply each way. On Delta, now, if you bring a third bag that weights fifty-one pounds and is oversize, round trip, those fees can add up to $610.
- Know Your Carrier’s Food Policy. Or Don’t Fly Hungry ($5 or more saved) - Only a few airlines even offer snack service these days in domestic coach (Continental being a notable example with coach meals on some domestic flights) — if you’re the type that is going to get hungry, plan ahead. Most airlines are more than happy to give you some food — but for a price. You’ll cringe when you pay $3 for a candy bar on American.
Airport food is usually slightly cheaper than airplane food, but for the best value — and most healthy meal — bring it from home. Over at the Beat of Hawaii and Beyond blog, there is a very informative piece on “How To Eat Well At 30,000 Feet” that talks about how to prepare a meal for a flight.
- Know Your Change Options - Unfortunately, on most airlines, changing airline plans can be expensive after ticketing. On United, to confirm a change in advance will now cost you $150. However, these policies are not uniform and some are quite generous. On Southwest, they won’t charge you a change penalty, just the change in price (you may even get a refund if its cheaper). On American, they’ll let you make a same-day change to an earlier or later flight for $25. Even more useful on American, though, is that on most domestic fares you can standby at the airport for free same-day for an earlier flight — if there is room on an earlier flight, they’ll put you on for free.
No one likes being hit with extra fees, but with a little planning you can work to avoid them.
Anyone else have any tips for avoiding airline fees?
Ryanair Airport Check-In Refund
File this under the “annoying” category. While in Europe last month, I flew a quick leg on Ryanair — one of Europe’s low-cost carriers that provides dirt cheap airfare and tries to get you by charging for everything extra they can. Ryanair also pushes you to use web check-in; if you check-in at the counter, they make you pay a check-in fee. What is annoying, though, is that if you don’t have an EU/EEA passport, you have to check-in at the airport, and thus have to pay the check-in fee. At Stansted, that fee was 3 GBP.
On the help section of their website, though, they have this section: “Where a passenger is unable to avail of Online Check-in by reason only of not being the holder of either a valid passport or a National Identity Card, issued by the government of an EU/EEA country, any airport check-in fee paid will be refunded upon application.” So, from that, due to my US passport, I should be entitled to a check-in fee refund of the 3 GBP. Of course, Ryanair provides absolutely no information on how to do this on their website.
Luckily, there is the internet, which led me to the post “WARNING: RyanAir Online Checkin” over at Less Than a Shoestring who managed to figure all of this out. Apparently, to request the refund, you need to write to them with your name, flight details, and confirmation number to:
Ryanair Refunds Dept
Ryanair Head Office
Dublin Airport
Co Dublin, Ireland
Yes, that’s right, you actually have to write in, which just makes this process even more annoying. So if you’re going to write to get the fee refunded, its probably a good idea to mail it while you’re in Europe. From the United States, it cost my ninety cents to mail the request to Dublin.
Ryanair will reply to your letter at the email address you used to book the ticket (so while I have to pay international postage, they don’t respond in kind). Frustratingly, they got back to me telling me that they needed a copy of my passport identification, and that, you guessed it, they would appreciate it if I mailed it to them in Dublin. Now, there was no way I was going to provide them a copy of my passport, but I did send them a heavily censored copy of my identification page that removes most of the private information, which should suffice.
At this point, its pretty much a matter of principle that I am trying to get this fee refunded. The current weak value of the dollar makes this slightly more worthwhile, too — 3 GBP is somewhere around 6 USD right now, so even spending two dollars to get four back seems somewhat worth it. While it probably is not worth getting worked up over a single 3 GBP fee, it almost certainly is worth writing in after a round trip (which would have TWO check-in fees) or several legs.
Maximize your money on Amtrak train travel
The subject of Amtrak came up recently in a discussion with a friend about traveling over the summer. Having spent some time on the East Coast, I have come to appreciate how useful Amtrak can be for traveling in certain situations. That being said, Amtrak is certainly not always a cheap option. Luckily, there are a few things you can do to mitigate the cost.
Book Early
Simple rule: the later the book, the greater the risk of a more expensive ticket. Amtrak ticket prices go up as seats fill up.
Discounts, Discounts, Discounts
One of the amazing things about Amtrak is that there are virtually always discount codes out there that can save money. For example, on my last trip to Philadelphia, I used a coupon code that reduced the price of our second and third tickets by 50%. While the discounts are not always that great, in my experience I have almost always been able to save at least 10% on tickets.
These discount codes are given out to various audiences around the United States, but there are several places on the internet that pull together these discounts. They often are restricted to certain track lines, seasons, or number of passengers — so sometimes it takes a few tries to find one that works. Two important caveats: first, these discount codes can in theory make it difficult or impossible to cancel and get a full refund (I have successfully refunded tickets purchased with discount codes in the past, but some codes may prohibit it — your mileage may vary). Second, while you should not run into any problems picking up the tickets at a ticket counter, I would recommend using the QuickTrak machine to avoid any questions about the discount.
I recommend checking the list of 2008 Amtrak discounts kept on the FlyerTalk forums. Otherwise, doing a Google search for “Amtrak discounts” will usually yield useful results.