Frequent Miler on the Air - Virgin Red Rewards Mastercard | Card Talk Ep3 | 8-22-24

Episode Date: August 22, 2024

The Virgin Red Rewards Mastercard is a new card that's coming out soon to replace the old Bank of America Virgin Atlantic Flying Club credit card. In this episode, we'll discuss more about this upcoming credit card. (00:10) - The Virgin Red Rewards Mastercard replaces the old Virgin Atlantic Flying Club credit card Learn more about the Virgin Red Rewards Mastercard here. (02:10) - Earning rate: 3X Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Hotels and Virgin Voyages ✦ 2X dining, at grocery stores, on select streaming services and for EV charging ✦ 1X everywhere else (03:03) - Virgin Red Rewards Mastercard Perks (05:46) - Is this card worth it? Visit frequentmiler.com/subscribe to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media. Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn Heads

Welcome to Card Talk, the show where we help you decide if this credit card belongs in your collection. The Virgin Red Rewards MasterCard. This is a new card that is coming out soon. As we're recording this, all you can do is get on the waiting list. You can't apply yet. But this is a card that's replacing the old Bank of America Virgin Atlantic Flying Club credit card in fever of this Virgin Red card.

Now, Virgin Red is the Virgin Group's new loyalty program, newish, that is aiming to be the one program for all the Virgin Group properties, businesses. And right now, Virgin Red and Virgin Atlantic are still operating as separate rewards programs, but it's very easy to link your accounts. And then it's really just one thing

because your points are equally accessible. Once you link your accounts, you don't even have to move your points from one to the other. You can either redeem rewards through Virgin Atlantic, like rewards like flights on Virgin Atlantic or flights on Virgin Atlantic's partners. Or you can redeem points through Virgin Red for things like Virgin Voyages, Virgin Group hotels, Virgin Hotels, things like virgin voyages uh virgin group uh hotels virgin hotels things like that um so uh with that background let's talk about the card right so let's talk about and i i when you mention virgin red and so you can use your points for those things one quick caution that you know we've heard a few readers mention this before that when you're on the virgin red app if you hit the redeem button there are not like so many safety steps of like

are you sure you want to redeem as you might expect like basically as soon as you hit the redeem button that's it so uh so just be prepared for that once you download if you're new to virgin red you download the app and you're like oh i want to read more about this cruise thing there's not more to read once you hit the redeem you're redeeming oh, I want to read more about this cruise thing. There's not more to read. Once you hit the redeem, you're redeeming. So just so you know. Anyway, more about the card. Yeah. More about the card. So this card is going to have a $99 annual fee, no foreign transaction fees issued by Synchrony. That's kind of interesting. Instead of being issued by Bank of America, now they're going with Synchrony. Synchrony is more known for like store cards and things. So I'm kind of surprised they do.

They've done a few co-branded type things, not as many as other issuers. Earning rate going to be 3x on Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Hotels and Virgin Voyages, 2x dining grocery stores, select streaming services and for EV charging and 1x everywhere else. So pretty run of the mill, ho-hum, not very exciting bonus categories there. Not even run of the mill or a little subpar, in my opinion. But perks you're going to get. And I say that, by the way, because there are cards that earn transferable points that earn as many points or more in all of those categories that you could transfer to Virgin Atlantic. So that's why the card earning rates are not wildly exciting. But there are some perks, one of which is that you get 25 tier points for every $2,500

in eligible purchases, up to a max of 50 tier credits a month. So if you spend $5,000 a month, you get 50 tier credits a month. And if you were to do that all year long, then you would end up with silver status. You'd be more than enough tier points for silver status and be on your way towards gold. So if you had some other virgin activity status and be on your way towards gold. So if you had some other virgin activity, then maybe you could hit virgin gold. It's a pretty easy supplement there. You'll get a third night free to participating virgin hotel once a year. I don't know what the details will be in terms of what kind of rate you'll have to book or how that's

going to work, whether that will be a great deal or not. But in some cases, it certainly may be you'll get 5000 points as a yearly anniversary bonus. So depending on how much you value the points, that can mitigate a significant portion of the annual fee anyway, if you valued points at, let's say, 1.5 cents per point, to keep the math simple. It's like $75 worth of points, and the card has a $99 annual fee, so that kind of nets out relatively low. And then there's a couple of other options

or a couple of other bonuses for big spenders. If you spend $15,000 and then also again at $30,000 in a calendar year, you get to choose from a number of different choice perks, one of which is a voucher for a companion seat or a cabin upgrade. Now, we don't have the total details about how that's going to work. There was some complexity in how those worked when they had a card issued through Bank of America, but we don't yet have all the details there. So all we know at this point is that you could get a voucher for a companion seat or a cabin upgrade, and Virgin Hotel. It's going to be a participating Virgin Hotel. And again, we don't know what the blackout date situation will be like. But again, those could be pretty valuable. A number of the Virgin Hotels can be quite expensive. Now, to be clear, that's not Virgin Limited. So we're not talking about places like Necker Island or their Kenyan Safari location. We're talking about Virgin Hotels. So there's one in Dallas, for instance.

There's one in Las Vegas. I know there's one in Edinburgh. And so which ones are will participate, I don't know for sure. Or you could choose up to a $300 bar tab credit or blue extras perks packages on Virgin Voyages. If you look up the blue extras perks packages, it doesn't come with a whole lot. It's like a free coffee and a free bag of laundry, free coffee every day and a free bag of laundry and a cocktail party. So the $300 bar tab would probably be the more valuable perk if you were going to be cruising on Virgin Voyages anyway, and you spend 15K on your card. So those are the different choice options. So again, you can get a companion seat, a free night or a suite upgrade at a Virgin hotel or the $300 bar tab on a Virgin

Voyages cruise or the blue extras perks. So we've talked about all that now, Greg. Is this card interesting, exciting, worth it? What do you think? Interesting for a select few. Exciting, not for anyone. Worth it, again, for a select few, I think, to sum it up. But let's talk about a few specific aspects of this. Where I think it's interesting is is for people who

value elite status with virgin um you know the ability to spend your way towards elite status the the way it works is exactly the same as the old bank of america card as far as how many tier credits you can earn uh and how they're earned um the difference is it's a bit disappointing because the old card earned one and a half points per dollar minimum. And so if you're not spending in a category, in a bonus category, you're only earning one point per dollar with this card on your way to earning elite status.

So it's a downgrade from the old card from that point of view. But still, if you like your your lead status, then great. Now for everyone else. So let's look at the the the ability to get these like choice benefits at $15,000 spend and $30,000 spend. You know, it kind of sounds nice, but when I look in the details, like the companion seat thing or the upgrade voucher, we don't know the details yet. But if it's anything like the old one, there were so many gotchas with that old one that you had to be in a really special circumstance for it to be very valuable. Like it was more like a discount off of a very specific situation where you're flying with two people on Virgin Atlantic itself. And, and if you use the upgrade also, it's like,

it only upgrades one cabin. So you'd have to, if you want business class, you'd have to book premium economy and then upgrade that upgrade those kinds of things. So I don't value that a lot. The free night at Virgin Hotels. Yeah. I mean, there's a total of nine Virgin Hotels. So like maybe that's a good value. I mean, I don't know how much they cost, but it doesn't seem that exciting when like, all right, compare you spend $15,000 on this card and you get a virgin free night at a virgin hotel or spend $15,000 on the Hilton Surpass card and get a free night at any Hilton hotel worldwide. I mean, the difference here is like, you can pick from nine virgin hotels or maybe nine. Because and I say that because in the virgin red app, you can book some virgin hotels properties with points, but only some of them and only some of the time. I like I was just

in Scotland. So it's going to be in Edinburgh. So I thought, Oh, well, maybe I'll use virgin points and stay at the virgin hotel there because there's one there. But you can't. There's just not a way to redeem points for that particular property. So is that one going to participate in this? I don't know. So maybe it's not even going to be all nine of them. It might just be the ones, the couple of them that accept points bookings now. Right. All right. Now let's look at the clearest value one, where the value is kind of obvious is if you pick that $300 bar tab credit and you're going to be on Virgin Voyages anyway. So let's at the extreme side, say you value that at full face value, spending $15,000 to get $300. If I did my math right, that's like an extra 2% earning on your spend. But that's only if you hit it exactly and since you're probably earning 1x

on that base spend on the credit card you know you're getting a total of around three percent value uh when hitting a specific target which pretty much any other card that has like that that has these these big spend bonuses you're going to average to better than that i think in value and finally you already mentioned this but there's so many cards that if you want virgin points spend on on like the city double cash to get 2x everywhere or on a uh One Venture card to get 2x everywhere and then transfer to Virgin if you want Virgin points and otherwise transfer to other programs depending on what you're doing instead of being locked in Virgin points. Or if you were like, oh, but I can earn two points per dollar on dining and grocery with

this card. Well, forget about that. Get yourself the Capital One Saver One that has no annual fee and earns three percent back in those categories. But if you have a Capital One card that earns miles, you can turn that into three miles per dollar spent. Or get the Amex Gold card and you get 4X in those categories that you could transfer to Virgin. So you'd have twice the points. You really have to value elite status or those perks at 15K and 30K spend. And I should also mention that we set a $300 bar tab. And now that I read it again, it says up to a $300 bar tab credit

on Virgin Voyages. So I'm not even exactly sure that it'll be 300 across the board, or if that depends on which room category you book or something. So that may be another gotcha in there. So yeah, I don't know. There's too many gotchas here. I'm not interested. There would have to be a huge welcome bonus for me to be interested in getting the card. And then it would probably just be for the welcome bonus. It's too bad because the old card at one and a half points per dollar everywhere

was like not bad for a while until all the 2X everywhere cards kind of took over the market. And now it's like the opportunity cost to spend towards status on this is pretty high. So you really have to highly value the perks that you'll get at elite status. Otherwise, yeah, I just don't see a place for this card in my wallet or in most people's wallets. Right. Right. And as Nick said, there's alternatives to earning virgin points with Capital One and Amex. I still think that one of the best ways, if you really want to earning virgin points with capital one and amex i i still think that one of the best ways if if you

really want to earn virgin points i think city might be the way to go because you've got the city strata premiere that has like so many 3x categories you've got the double cash to get 2x everywhere else then you've got like at fee-free add-ons like the rewards plus that'll give you a 10 rebate on your redemptions including when when you transfer to. So if you transfer a hundred thousand points from city to virgin, and you have the rewards plus also in your, you know, pooled together with your other cards, you get 10% back. So it ends up only costing you 90,000 points. And if you do that during a transfer bonus,

like a 25 or 30% transfer bonus to virgin Atlantic, then you're going to end up with even more miles for even fewer and like it's just it makes this card like a head scratcher to me really yeah and you know transfer bonuses are a good point too if you're into transferable points transfer bonuses to virgin are so common that i look back like last year there were eight of them you know across the year and they're so common that that chances are good that if virgin points are what you really want for some reason um you're gonna you're gonna earn not just better base earning rate with your other cards uh but you're gonna be able to transfer at a with a bonus and so get even more points that way so yeah, yeah, again, I go back to what I said earlier.

If you're into the elite status program, then why not? But otherwise, don't even bother. Yeah, yeah, agreed. And I think that a takeaway for me here is, man, these programs need to consider adding some sort of a perk that you can't get otherwise. Because, you know, if you're not going to offer outsized value on spend, then the card needs to have a perk that you can't get somewhere else and this doesn't happen right no it doesn't you know and i'm kind of surprised like uh it seems like virgin atlantic's often competing with british airways including and having the highest fuel surcharges but um the british airways chase card um does give you a discount on the fuel surcharges when you're booking awards

between the US and England. And why didn't they do something like that here to try to encourage? Because they're trying to get the American audience. So give us a break on those surcharges, man. Right. So if you're listening, Virgin, then you got to do something like that to make this card worthwhile. So thank you for trying. But we need to try a little bit harder, Virgin, then you got to do something like that to make this card worthwhile. So

thank you for trying, but we need to try a little bit harder, Virgin. Okay. If you want more information about this card, don't forget, you can find a direct link to our site in the show notes. Just expand the description box to find a link to our site. That's frequent miler.com. You can join our email list at frequent miler.com slash subscribe, and we'll see you next time.