Delta Lyft – Link Skymiles and Lyft | Hacker News Reader

Delta Lyft – Link Skymiles and Lyft

deltalyft.com

65 pointsdpcx40 comments

So if you spend $1000 dollars on lyft, you're ~1/30th of the way to a free domestic flight. Seems like a better deal would be taking the cheaper of lyft or uber, not chasing the miles. I think a more useful partnership would be with the drivers, because they're usually racking up a lot more money & time with these services than the consumers are, and it would be difficult to get something useful out of this when you're getting a ~1% reward (miles valued about 1c/point) without doing a lot of volume.

There's rarely any airmiles offer that's worth chasing. (If you weren't interested in the first place) Most are just to tempt you.

But it's nice as a bonus.

$25,000 spent on Lyft gives you one domestic roundtrip. Assuming $10 per ride, it's 2500 rides, or 10 years to earn a ticket if you take Lyft 250 days per year.

If you're the kind of person who gets elite status on Delta, you're probably traveling a lot and taking a lot of taxi rides. I only travel a few weeks a year, but I can easily rack up a few hundred dollars of Lyft fares spending a week away from home base.

If you're racking up a lot of flying miles, you probably would want this feature for Uber instead of Lyft since Uber operates in cities outside the US.

Only someone who only frequently flies delta only for domestic travel would find utility of this from Lyft and event then Uber is comparable domestically.

SPG (Sheraton, Westin and friends) has had a similar partnership with Uber since last year.

True. I mostly do domestic and am on the Lyft bandwagon for now. I also do my best to avoid travel as much as possible.

This might play into one of those corporate reimbursement principal agent problems where the employee gets to keep the points but doesn't pay the fare so they will choose options with the best bonus points.

Which is largely the reason hotels cost as much as they do.

Citation needed. Lots of hotels with no or very limited loyalty programs are similar in pricing to the big chains. You could equally argue that loyalty programs help fill rooms and improve yields.

fwiw most large companies get steep discounts at said major hotel chains.

I'll cite my personal experience. I've paid hundreds of dollars for a hotel night when on an expense account. As a tourist in the same city, I'll pay much less.

The loyalty programs are irrelevant for this issue. There's a bit of cartel behavior going on. So long as no one drops price dramatically, all the "business" hotels can stay roughly equal. The "cereal wars" of the late 1990s show what can happen when an industry competes on price -- demand stays constant and revenues drop. Maybe hotels are different, but I'd suspect that's only for tourism. Business travel is likely inelastic with respect to hotel costs.

It depends a lot. I have pretty high elite status on United and I take very few taxis/uber--maybe10 or fewer a year. I do get cars to the airport but Lyft/Uber aren't useful to me for that.

I don't drive and get 'corporate' uber (spoiled me). With my monthly spend 1% could get me to my favorite place business class (DEN - GUA)! Wonder if it has a cap though - many 1% credit card cash back offers I've found cap at just a few hundred a year.

I don't know about Delta's policies specifically but miles usually expire after 2 years or so of inactivity. The really nice thing about this is that earning 5 miles on a Lyft ride is "activity" and resets that 2 year (or whatever) mark. So if you aren't travelling for a couple years (injury, job loss, newborn?) but want to not worry about your airline miles expiring.

I lost a whole bunch of miles I earned on work travel due to inactivity. My job stopped sending me on travel and I wasn't ready to use them yet.

Delta miles don't expire.

Don't they? I tried to transfer an old account and got a hard No from them.

Transferred and bought miles last year to go on a vacation. They will let you do it but charge money or miles.

I think the best economic play is to almost always avoid loyalty programs. They exist to prevent the consumer from having the opportunity to price compare on a per instance basis.

Interesting. Wondering if this means earning only redeemable SkyMiles[1][2], or actual Medallion Qualifying Miles (MQMs)- the ones that actually count towards status on Delta's loyalty program. Since the distinction isn't called out on the Delta Lyft site, either it's a scam, or we could perhaps cynically assume the less valuable type of SkyMiles (redeemable, not MQM).

[1] https://www.delta.com/content/www/en_US/skymiles/skymiles-pr...

[2] quote from the Delta SkyMiles site: "Redeemable miles differ from Medallion® Qualification Miles (MQMs), which are based on distance flown and help you qualify for Medallion status. Medallion status is earned through a combination of the miles or segments you fly plus your annual spending on Delta flights."

> Interesting. Wondering if this means earning only redeemable SkyMiles[1][2], or actual Medallion Qualifying Miles (MQMs) - the ones that actually count towards status on Delta's loyalty program.

I would bet absolutely anything that there is no way Delta's going to allow people to earn MQMs off of Lyft, except maybe a fixed number as a one-time signup promotion (the way they do for the higher-fee AmEx cards). But even that's unlikely.

The whole point of MQMs is that there's basically now way to earn them except by butt-in-seats flying, measured as the crow flies. If you pay $195 or $495 for the two higher-end AmEx cards and spend $25K/year, they throw in a tiny number as a token gesture. But they introduced this system specifically as a result of people complaining that it was too easy to get medallion status on Delta without actually flying.

Beyond that, I'm not aware of any generally-available way to get MQMs on Delta.

In addition to the Amex deals, it's usually possible to buy up to 10k MQMs directly from Delta at the end of each year, albeit at an obscene markup.

You get a bump from flying more expensive fares for MQMs too, not just straight distance, but not as much as you might like if you're paying 3-4x for a fare...

> You get a bump from flying more expensive fares for MQMs too, not just straight distance, but not as much as you might like if you're paying 3-4x for a fare...

Hm, maybe if you're flying first class/Delta One, but I'm pretty sure you don't get any bump from any of the various fare classes that comprise Basic Economy/Main Cabin/Comfort+, even though some are more expensive than others for the same seat.

Comfort+ (W+ fare) gives a MQM boost.

You would be wrong about that. Full-fare refundable economy (fare class "Y") carries a 1.5x multiplier on MQMs.

The full chart of MQM earning by fare class is available here:

https://www.delta.com/content/www/en_US/skymiles/earn-miles/...

You can get 80% of the way to Diamond status from AMEX bonuses alone. That’s a bit more than a token gesture.

In my own case I’m approaching Platinum status but wouldn’t have even qualified for Silver if not for the bonus.

> or we could perhaps cynically assume the less valuable type of SkyMiles

I'm still OK with that. I don't fly enough to get status anyway, but I usually accumulate enough points through various sources like this to get a free domestic flight every year or two.

Looking at the ones that have hit my account, they are not qualifying miles.

Though it would take a silly amount of Lyft spending to have this noticably impact your status, anyway.

It's just a nice little bump. 700 miles since May isn't world-changing, but it's nice (the to/from airport bonus seems like the biggest part of the deal).

They announced this a while back and the signup flow is STILL broken for me. Already have a Lyft account and they ask for a credit card on this signup. I'm not giving them a credit card just to link to my SkyMiles. I use apple pay in the app for a reason.

Unfortunately Skymiles are more like Skypesos. Damn near impossible to get value out of them.

Looks like Delta is also linking up with Airbnb http://deltaairbnb.com

Clever new way to attract customers and earn referral fees, but I think the SkyMiles yield from these programs is too low to bother with.

... why don't these sites live on Lyft or Delta's domains? Feels icky typing personal information into random domain names that have other brands embedded in them.

Is Uber linked to any mileage program?

Not at the moment, but I bet it will be soon...

Dunno about mileage programs, but if you use certain Amex cards to pay for Ubers, you get double Amex MR points.

You also get $200/year towards Uber with a Platinum or Centurion Amex.

There's an Uber + SPG (Starwood) program but you need one stay with SPG. Those points can be then transferred to airline miles.

Not exactly mileage program, but Verizon Up is super sweet deal. I get 20% off for both Uber rides and UberEATS.

Even better, it's linked with Starwood, which is often more valuable.

https://www.spgpromos.com/uber/

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