This deal has now expired. You can view a master list of current credit card sign up bonuses here.
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Contents
The Offer
- Receive 20,000 Lufthansa Miles & More miles after your first purchase
- Receive 30,000 Lufthansa Miles & More miles after $5,000 in spend within the first 90 days
The Fine Print
- $79 annual fee not waived, unless you are a Senator or HON Circle Members
- Annual fee must be paid or you risk forfeiting your sign up bonus miles
- Deal valid until June 30th, 2014.
- Available to new Cardmembers only
- No foreign transaction fees
Card Highlights
- 50,000 mile sign up bonus
- Free annual companion ticket after first purchase and on card anniversary
- 2 miles per $1 spent on all miles & more integrate partners
- 1 mile per $1 spent on all other purchases
Our Verdict
The usual sign up bonus on this card is 20,000 miles after first purchase and up to an additional 15,000 miles for balance transfers ($1 transferred = 1 mile, comes with a balance transfer fee of 3%). This deal is really only going to be worthwhile if you can manage the $5,000 minimum spend requirement, which a lot of people may struggle with (read our posts on manufactured spending or other tactics for reaching minimum spend requirements).
Signing up for this card is also really only worth it for the sign up bonus (it earns a paltry 2 mile per $1 spent with partners and an even worse rate of 1 mile per $1 spent on all other purchases), because it’s only available to new card-members we wouldn’t recommend applying for this card if you’ve held it before. If you’ve never held it before and you can meet the $5,000 minimum spend requirement, it may be worth applying for. Let’s have a quick look at what you can do with 50,000 Lufthansa miles.
Redeeming 55,000 Lufthansa miles
After you spend $5,000 to trigger the 30,000 additional bonus miles you’ll have a total of 55,000 miles. We look at some ways you can redeem these miles below.
Redeeming miles for credit at selected locations
Lufthansa allows you to exchange your miles for at the following places at a rate of 330 miles per Euro (approximately valuing points at 0.41 cents each (assuming a currency conversion of $1.38USD:€1)
- Chic outlet shopping
- FC Bayern Munich
- HEINEMANN Duty Free
- Munich airport
- Moscow Domodedovo Airport
- Lufthansa Inflight Shopping
- Lufthansa WorldShop
This doesn’t present great value, at most you’re going to get $225.5 in value if you redeem your miles this way. You also lose the ability to do any sort of price comparison as well which would further devalue your redemption rate at these locations.
Redeeming miles for flights
Lufthansa is a German Airline and also a member of Star Alliance (meaning you can redeem your miles with any of the 26 airlines in the Alliance, such as United). 55,000 miles is enough for a number of options if we take a look at their award chart. Here are some of our favorite options:
- Roundtrip to Hawaii in economy class: 40,000 miles
- Two roundtrip domestic flights: 50,000 miles
Personally I won’t be taking advantage of this offer. I’ve got enough miles stashed at the moment that it’s not worth the hard credit inquiry. If these miles could somehow be redeemed for gift cards at a rate of 1 cent per mile or more, I’d probably jump on this opportunity. If you do decide to apply for this card, read our tips on how to get approved for the Barclays Arrival. It was written for the Arrival card, but it’s really applicable for any Barclay card you apply for.
Hat tip to a reader wanting to remain anonymous. Looks like Well Traveled Mile was the first to post about this
The master list of credit card sign up bonuses has been updated to include this information.
Read our full review of this card | Apply for this card | Screenshot of this offer