MISTAKE STORY: In this week's Sunday Thoughts, I discussed how points and miles buddies invited me to tag along for a long weekend next summer. While running award searches on Sunday afternoon, I found 3 saver fares from Atlanta to Lima, Peru for 45,000 miles and $20.60. We rushed to book these awesome awards before they disappeared. These flights were PERFECT and the price couldn't be beat! Right?!

WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.

I go to my spreadsheet to track the cents per point (cpp) of my redemption and to confirm that I booked a killer deal. When searching google flights, I see the flight from Atlanta to Lima is only $700 in business. Uh oh. I add on a Baltimore leg. Only $750.  This fare was only 50,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards (URs) through the portal. To make this deal better, you earn airlines miles for flights booked in the Chase portal, so by crediting this Delta flight to one of its partners (I chose Virgin Atlantic), I'll earn 200% of the actual air miles flown (roughly 7,500 Virgin Atlantic miles) and be more than halfway to having status with that airline.

So I had to call Virgin Atlantic and cancel my flight (only an hour after booking it). Luckily, there were no fees, but now I have 45,000 miles orphaned with Virgin Atlantic!

TLDR: By not looking at the Chase portal AND at transfer partners, I booked 45,000 points and $20.60 for Atlanta to Lima instead of using 50,000 Chase points to fly Baltimore-Atlanta-Lima and earn 7,500 Virgin Atlantic air miles. Always check both the Chase portal AND transfer options and don't make the same mistake that I did!