Points Hound Out With A New Offer To Trade Punches With Rocket Miles
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Points Hound and Rocket Miles are competitors in a new, attractive space for travelers. Essentially, they’re taking some of the commission they receive from hotel chains and turning it into a rebate of airline miles to you, the booking consumer.
Rocket Miles was out with an offer a few days ago that awarded 3,000 US Airways Dividend Miles for your first booking.
To combat that (and, IMO, to keep mind share of frequent travelers) Points Hound is extending their offer of 1,000 bonus miles for new referrals. That means you and anyone you refer will earn 1,000 bonus miles when they make their first booking.
I’m already a member, so if you aren’t and are looking for a referral code, mine is here.
If you already use Points Hound, you should have received an e-mail from them with your referral link. If you didn’t, log into your Points Hound account, hover over “Account” at the top right and click on “Invite & Earn” to get your referral code.
I’ve written a few times about Points Hound which is my preference amongst these two competitors. I definitely still see bugs in Points Hound, but they offer a much better value for me by allowing me to book hotels on rates that recognize my elite status and still earn extra airline miles (they call this “double dip” and it’s not available for all properties).
For sure, Rocket Miles has value as well as a straight mileage play, but I think most travelers can use a good stash of airline miles and hotel points, making Points Hound the clear choice for me.
Sill seeing a few glitches myself. I always get my miles/status in the end though, so I wouldn’t hesitate to use them. However, I would always keep very detailed records of your transactions with them. I’ve had SPG double up stays not post as stays at SPG (fixed by SM with SPG no trouble), and miles not post (email Pointshound fixes this), but you need to know to ask.
Due to the double up rates I almost always book with Pointshound rather than Rocketmiles as well. When Rocketmiles offers double miles though, I almost always find a couple of hotel stays I can suffer through to get the additional miles.
Glenn, I’ve experienced some of the same glitches. I had a stay that I booked as a double dip show up as a standard stay, and some points that required contact to resolve. Not the end of the world but certainly not seamless. I expect the payouts to go down over time and if they do I’m likely no longer a buyer for the hassle factor.
I checked rocketmiles. Seems like they offer 5x the rewards as pointshound. Called their support line to cancel the reservation and somebody actually picked up
Chris, the two hotels go back and forth a bit on who offers more. PH also has levels and as you stay more you move up in level, earning more. I haven’t had great luck with PH phone support myself. I think both are fine, but as I said, I personally prefer PH so I can get elite benefits. Truthfully, I book less than half my rooms through them since a lot of the properties I stay at don’t feature double dip rates.