Earning credit card points and airline miles is relatively easy. Spend on your travel credit card, fly with an airline or leverage their partners and you have travel rewards in your account. But when it comes to redeeming them, things get tricky.
Redeeming airline miles and credit card points can be a convoluted process. You can use each airline mile currency to book flights on the airline it’s attached to, but also on the airlines’ partners. And since most airlines have multiple partners, you can sometimes book the same flights for varying amounts of miles depending on the loyalty program you book with.
To make things even more confusing, the fact that you can transfer popular travel credit card rewards currencies — think American Express Membership Rewards and Chase Ultimate Rewards — to multiple airlines adds another layer of complexity when searching for the best possible deal.
Thankfully, there’s a tool that makes this far easier: point.me. This online service looks like an online travel agency like Expedia or Orbitz, but lets you search for flights you can book with points and miles.
Just plug in your origin, destination and dates, and you’ll be presented with available award flights. Plus, point.me will even tell you the best types of points to use for your desired flight and where to transfer your credit card rewards, if applicable.
Let’s take a closer look at point.me, how to use it and why we like it.
Point.me is an online tool that helps you book award tickets with your credit card points and airline miles. It shows you available flights and the best ways to book them with the points you already have.
Searching for award flights with point.me
As discussed, searching for award flights with point.me is nearly as easy as searching for a flight on Expedia. Simply head to point.me’s website, log into your account and enter your flight information at the center of the screen.
For this example, I’ll look for a flight from New York-JFK to Paris-Charles?de Gaulle (CDG) in business class next March. Point.me will search all area airports, meaning it will also look for flights from Newark (EWR) and to Paris-Orly (ORY).
Next, you’ll see search results. You can filter these based on airline, time and number of stops. Likewise, you can sort them based on point.me’s picks for the best flights, or by lowest price or duration. You can also link your loyalty programs to point.me and have the tool only show results for loyalty programs you have a balance with.
Clicking on a flight will display all available booking options. In this example Air France flight, point.me shows me all of the different types of points I can redeem for this flight.
When you click “Select Deal”, you’re brought to a page that shows you how to transfer points and book the award ticket you’ve selected.
And that’s all there is to it. Point.me automates the award search process and shows you all of the best possible ways to book an award ticket. It takes the manual searching out of the process, giving you a quick and easy way to find the best award ticket for your next trip.
How much does point.me cost?
Point.me isn’t a free service, but that doesn’t mean it’s expensive.
You can pay for point.me on an as-needed, monthly or annual basis. 24-hour passes cost $5, a monthly subscription costs $12 and an annual subscription costs $129 per year.
There’s also a premium plan for $269 per year that includes a points consultation with point.me’s staff, five day passes to give to friends and a 10% discount on the company’s concierge services.
Point.me offers a variety of concierge services, including a full-service award booking option where a point.me representative actually books an award ticket on your behalf. Concierge can also help you plan out a points strategy or plan a mileage run to help you earn or maintain airline elite status. These services all cost $200 per trip per passenger.
Also note that Bilt Mastercard? card holders have access to a limited version of point.me in their Bilt accounts. This limited version of the service can only search for flights on Bilt’s transfer partners.
What we like about point.me
Here are a few reasons why we think point.me is an essential tool for travel rewards enthusiasts who want to stretch the value of their points and miles.
Accurate search results
In my experience testing point.me, the service has almost always provided accurate search results. This means the flights that you see on the point.me portal are actually bookable with the airline.
While you’d expect this to be the case, not all award search platforms are so accurate. Knowing that I can rely on point.me’s award search results gives me peace of mind when building a trip.
That said, no software is perfect. If you need to transfer points from a credit card to book an award ticket, make sure to double-check point.me’s search results with the airline’s website before you initiate a transfer.
Shows all booking options
Another big benefit of point.me is that is shows you all of the ways to book a specific award ticket. So if you have different types of travel rewards available to you, you can see which works best for your points portfolio.
It will also show you what credit card points transfer to bookable airlines, and the taxes and fees associated with each booking.
Easy to follow booking instructions
I also like how point.me gives step-by-step instructions on how to book an award ticket. It will tell you where to transfer your ticket and walk you through the steps to book, leaving little room for error.
What we don’t like about point.me
While Point.me is a great way to search for award flights, no product is perfect. Here’s what we don’t like about point.me.
Search results are often slow
Unfortunately, point.me search results take a while to load. This is likely because the application needs to search dozens of airline loyalty programs at once, which can take time. That said, we’d love to see its search speed improved to make comparing the cost of flights on different dates easier.
No calendar view
Speaking of comparing prices, I would like to see point.me add a calendar view that shows prices across multiple dates on the same route. This would make finding award space easier for travelers with flexible schedules and for those searching for the best deal across the course of a month or two.
Bottom line
Overall, point.me is an essential tool for frequent travelers who want to make the most of their points, miles and credit card rewards. It makes searching for award flights a breeze thanks to its straightforward user-interface. And while it can sometimes take a while to load search results, the results are almost always accurate.
Looking for a travel credit card? Find out which cards CNN Underscored chose as our?best travel credit cards.
