Capital One has sent the following e-mail out to their cardholders, announcing two negative changes to redeeming rewards (emphasis is mine):
Recently, we’ve been working to provide you with even better ways to manage and redeem your rewards. As we update our program, we’ll be making changes to some redemption features you may have used in the past.
As of September 15, 2015, the following redemption options and features will change:
- If you gave someone else permission to redeem rewards on your behalf, they will no longer be able to do so as of September 15, 2015. You’ll need to redeem your own rewards after that time.
- The ability to transfer rewards from one Capital One® account to another will be unavailable; however, we know this feature is important to our customers and will be working to bring it back at a later date.
Remember, if you’d like to use the above features, please do so before September 15, 2015. We look forward to improving your rewards experience in the future!
I think it’s kind of hilarious (in a non funny way) to say they are working to provide even better ways to manage and redeem rewards and then announce two negative changes to the program, especially when they haven’t exactly added in positive changes recently.
I know for some people, especially those with a spouse who doesn’t like the idea of chasing rewards points and redeeming them this will be a major hassle, being able to redeem for them (or simply being able to transfer the points into your account) made things much easier.
Given that they don’t have a set date for when you’ll be able to combine points again, I wouldn’t hold my breathe that this will be returning in the short term. Personally I don’t see this as a massive issue, but negative changes are never a good thing.
We also have two separate Capital One VISA cards for my husband and myself. This recent change is a HUGE negative for us and we will be seeking other air miles credit cards because we do use the transfer feature a lot in order to combine our points onto one card to pay for hotel, airfare, etc with the eraser.
If you have ever used the travel purchase eraser you know that if you are even one air mile short you cannot erase ANY of the hotel or whatever the expense was—so we need to combine the points in order to pay for our travel.
Capital One took a good thing and threw it out the window. I don’t like their comment about it will return in the future without any set date for this…….really? We are not waiting……..starting our shopping for new air miles cards as of September 15 2015!!
Capital One will keep us IF they instantly reestablish the rewards transfer on their program. Otherwise, we are gone!
I don’t mind these changes at all… since I don’t even have a single Capital One credit card 🙂
I’m having some issues with DoC’s rss feed. I’m showing just a headline but nothing else shows up (like links to post or post text)…
Something going on that you all are aware of?
Not that I know of and it’s definitely not intentional, I hate truncated rss feeds. If it keeps happening, let me know what rss reader you’re using.
This not being able to transfer rewards to other accounts is a HUGE negative for me. My husband and I own our own business. Have a business card and a personal card from Capital One. I just recently combined all points and redeemed for airfare. I moved them to the personal card account because I only needed 42000 miles per ticket. When I tried to book using the business card, I needed 60,000 miles per ticket. Don’t know what the difference was but obviously I moved the points to the personal card. We use the business card a lot and build up points MUCH faster on that card but we have to use more miles to redeem on that card. Makes no sense but that is the reality. REALLY liked being able to move the miles.