For almost a week I’ve been conflicted about a points transfer option.
Virgin America points will soon convert to Alaska Mileage Plan miles at a rate of 1:1.3. This in itself seems like a fair trade. I’ve been working (slowly) towards building up my Alaska account by getting the credit card from time to time. (I currently have 166,000+ Alaska miles.)
I also have 54,500 Virgin America points. I transferred 40,000 SPG points there over the summer due to JetBlue’s points match promo.
With SPG removing Virgin America as a points transfer partner as of January 6 (last night), I had a decision to make.
Do I hold onto my remaining SPG points, which most of you know are quite flexible and valuable or transfer some more to Virgin America.
With the SPG transfer bonus plus the Virgin American to Alaska Mileage Plan conversion, 20,000 SPG points would eventually become 32,5000 Mileage Plan miles. Definitely a nice swap of points to miles!
I went back and forth all week about what I wanted to do but still had not made a decision at 9:30PM on 1/6!
With just over a couple of hours left to go, I figured I’d get an outside opinion. I gave my brother a call to see what he thought I should do based on the miles/ points in all of the involved accounts.
My initial plan was transferring 40,000 SPG or nothing. He came up with a good middle ground.
His suggestion was to just transfer 20,000 SPG and hold onto some SPG points for another day.
I thought about this option and decided it was a pretty good plan. (I could also replenish some of my transferred SPG points by eventually sending my Marriott points there.)
When I went to SPG to make the transfer, I noticed that Virgin America was no longer there! Since I knew the transfer partnership didn’t end yet, I gave SPG a call. The friendly rep was happy to help me out.
My points were immediately deducted from my SPG account and I was told the transfer to Virgin America could take from 4-6 days. (When I did this transfer over the summer it happened more or less instantly from what I recall.)
I checked again this morning and am waiting on the points to show up in my Virgin account, but I do have the confirmation e-mail from SPG so there shouldn’t be any issue.
Did you decide to transfer any of your SPG points to Virgin America while you still had the chance?
Interested in earning some valuable airline and hotel miles/points? If so, check out these offers below!
- Apply for the Alaska Airlines Visa card and earn 30,000 bonus miles by spending $1,000 or more in the first 90 days.
- Apply for the SPG American Express card and earn 25,000 bonus points by making $3,000 in purchases in the first 3 months.
- Apply for the SPG American Express Business card and earn 25,000 bonus points by making $5,000 in purchases in the first 3 months.
FYI: If you apply and get approved for a credit card at the links above I may receive compensation. Thank you in advance for your support.
Rusty- Thanks for the data point! I checked a short while ago and my points have also posted, so less than 24 for me.
Bothofus2- I had planned to do the transfer online but Virgin America had already been removed. I was told the points should transfer in 4-6 days but it took less than a day!
DaninMCI- I was close to sending 40,000 SPG and then backed out. I’ve also never flown Virgin America or Alaska but I’ll find myself with somewhere in the 270K range when the accounts merge. In the end, I’m sure you’ll find a good use for your miles. Keep faith! 🙂
I transferred over 60k from SPG to Virgin about a week or so ago leaving me about 2k in SPG. Since most SPG hotels I’ve needed or tried to use took 20k or so in points for a $300’ish hotel room I figured this was a good value/use. I got most of my SPG points from the SPG card last year with a 35 or 40k sign up. I already have 106,000 in Alaska miles, mostly from BofA cards. I had a few thousand in Virgin miles from a small sign up bonus, Silvercar rentals, etc. So this gave me about 77k with Virgin. Keep in mind I’ve never flown Virgin, ever 🙂 The transfer from SPG took maybe an hour at the most.
Two days ago I saw some of the blogs about how time was running out on this deal so I did the math again and figured I’d move some of my Marriott points over to SPG and do it for another 20k so I transferred some points over to SPG, was almost instant. I then transferred to 40k to Virgin. It took awhile. Maybe 2 hours, guessing. So this gave me another 25k or 102k with Virgin. This should give me 132k’ish toward Alaska or 238k total.
Not bad considering I also have multiple companion passes with Alaska from those credit cards. Now I gotta figure out what to do with them. The original plan with Alaska was to just book first class flights to Hawaii. Now I’m rethinking my goal with these. I was sucked in by the generous award charts like 50k in business on AA to Europe however……after doing a little searching I may have transference remorse. Most of the random searching for awards is showing my mixed cabin redemptions to places like Asia or Europe on AA or Delta. For example I can book an AA flight to Europe but it’s first class from my home airport to the hub and then economy over the water on the long haul. I guess there is always Hawaii 🙂
I called Starwood Thursday night, they advised me to do the transfer myself online, versus have the agent do it. The agent indicated there was concern that if she initiated it and it could take 4-10 business days that the points would be “stuck” somehow. I followed her guidance and manually did the transfer of 63k points Thursday night and it was completed and showed up in Elevate account early evening Friday (about 20 hours).
My points took < 24 hours to post.