Capital One is losing two transfer partners effective 5/13/20: Qatar Airways Privilege Club and Hainan Airlines Fortune Wings Club.
I suspect that neither of these partners were particularly valuable for most readers, but it’s still never good news to see partnerships decrease.
I reached out for comment from Capital One to see if they had immediate plans to replace these programs and they offered this response:
Capital One is always assessing its rewards program, and which redemption options are most relevant to our customers.
Again, this probably isn’t much of a hit for most folks. The part that bothers me the most is that I’d prefer to get more notice before any program changes partnerships. I’d hate to be working my way toward a specific award only to find out with a day or two of notice that the partner will no longer be available. Of course, in the current economic environment, it probably shouldn’t be shocking that things like this could change quickly.
H/T: Doctor of Credit
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While I found the Capital One travel partners useful for cashing out part of my initial Venture bonus, it is difficult to really build up a meaningful amount of points for transfers unless you make this your primary card. The main reason is there are no spend bonuses. Earning 1.5x transferable miles for all spend is decent, but matched or beaten by Chase Freedom Unlimited and Citi Double Cash – and those cards have premium cards that allow you to earn more points quickly. It’s a good card, but really a backup card unless they find a way to incent more spend
I also find capital one’s customer service to be horrible. I always get routed to a foreign call center where the agents either done understand the issue or do not have the ability to resolve the issue. For this reason, I focus my spending on AMEX and Chase.