The Offer
Direct link to offer [note: this is an affiliate link from million mile secrets. The offer link I have is for the regular bonus, as is the current sign up bonus displayed on the barclay website].
- Sign up bonus on the annual fee ($69) version of the card is 45,000 points, usually 32,000 points. Broken down as follows:
- 30,000 points after first purchase
- 15,000 points after you make $1,000 in qualifying purchases within the first 90 days of account opening
- Sign up bonus on the no annual fee version of the card is 20,000 points, usually 12,000 points. Broken down as follows:
- 12,000 points after first purchase
- 8,000 points when you make $1,000 in qualifying purchases within the first 90 days of account opening
The Fine Print
- Annual fee card:
- 5x points on every $1 spent at participating hotel stays
- 2x points on all other purchases
- 5,500 anniversary points every year
- $69 annual fee not waived for the first year
- No annual fee card:
- 3x points on every $1 spent at participating hotel stays
- 2x points on all other purchases
- No annual fee
Our Verdict
I wouldn’t recommend this card for every day spend, as there are much better options out there. The only category bonus you get is on Wyndham properties, so it might be worth getting if you stay there regularly. The other reason to get this card would be for the sign up bonus, we’ll work out if this is worthwhile or not. Their rewards program basically allows you to redeem for free hotel nights, gift cards or airline miles. . Here are the rates:
Gift cards:
- 6,500 points: $25 gift card
- 12,500 points: $50 gift card
- 25,000 points: $100 gift card
This means at best the no annual fee card will get you $75 in gift cards, at best the annual fee card will get you $175 (but remember you have to pay the $69 annual fee as well). There are other options which will give you a lot more value when redeeming for gift cards or cash.
Airline Miles Conversion
- 5 points = 1 mile
This would mean the annual fee bonus is 9,000 airline miles and the no annual fee bonus is 4,000 airline miles. Obviously this is a terrible deal.
Hotel stays:
The Wyndham brand covers a lot of different hotels (Ramada, Travelodge, Super8 and more). Their award chart is as follows:
This basically means you could get two free nights at a Tier 6 hotel with the annual fee version card or 7 at a tier 1 hotel. Unfortunately AwardMapper doesn’t include Wyndham properties. I did a little bit of searching and was able to find a few $200 properties in the tier 6 range. If you had planned to stay at those properties anyway it would be a saving of $400. That said, there are much better credit cards on the market (e.g the Chase Hyatt which gives $50 + two free nights). We’ll be creating a dedicated best hotel credit card post (it’s already 90% finished) to show you your best options for different circumstances.
At the moment I personally wouldn’t recommend going for this offer, if you’re thinking about it have a look at properties you might stay at and see how many points they’d cost first. We’ve updated our master list of credit card bonuses with these new offers.
Direct link to offer [note: this is an affiliate link from million mile secrets. The offer link I have is for the regular bonus, as is the current sign up bonus displayed on the barclay website] | Screenshot of offer
Hat tip to MMS
My interest would be gift cards .Any way to avoid the annual fee? Is it charged first billing statement or perhaps waived? Is there a way to earn the points and get the gift cards without paying the annual fee on the fee card? Your website is 100% totally awesome by the way!