Category: Delta Skymiles

This offer has been around for a little bit, but I just ended up applying yesterday.  Even though Delta Skymiles are a bit harder to redeem than some of the other airlines, this is still a great offer that I am taking advantage of. For those of you still working on repairing your credit, this is a nice alternative to still earn miles until you can qualify for some of the more juicy credit card offers.

The details are you get 15,000 miles for opening one of the three accounts listed and establishing direct deposit of $100 or more.  Then another 15,000 for your first use of the Skymiles Visa Debit card when you use it as a Visa (not as an ATM or Debit card).  You have to pay the $75 for an annual fee for the Visa Checkcard that comes out after your first statement, and open the account with $100.  The Balanced Banking account is fee free for the first two months, then will start charging a $12 monthly fee if you don’t maintain a $3,000 minimum balance.  There is additionally a $25 fee to close the account before six months.

The best way to attack it if you want to earn and burn is to park $3000 there for six months to avoid the closure fee and the monthly fees.  Another way is to open the account, try your best to get the minimum requirements met before the fees start after two months, close it and pay the $25 closure fee.  This would give you a cost of $100 for 30,000 miles or .33 cents a mile which is great since you usually get at least 2 cents per mile on redemption. And of course you can always keep the account open and use it as your primary checking account, earning miles for every time you swipe the check card as a Visa.

If you want to take advantage of this nice offer like I did, then click here now to sign up. But hurry, You have to sign up for this offer by June 30th, but you have until July 31st to make your first purchase and by September 30 to take care of the direct deposit.

Back in December, Skymall had a promotion with Delta where they were giving 25,000 skymiles out with each order over $500 for the first 1,000 orders.  I like many others took advantage of this offer and since now all of my miles have posted I wanted to post my results so you can decide if it is worth it to do these sorts of offers in the future.  I will admit, I didn’t make the most of this offer but I am happy with my results.

I placed 4 separate orders for Galaxy tablets that ended up after tax and shipping with a cost of $666 each.  Additionally I was able to price match to Best Buy and received a credit of $50 per order.  This gave me a total cost of $2464 which I put on my Chase Sapphire Preferred which gave me 2464 Ultimate Reward points.  I then was able to sell all four of the tablets on Craigslist for $480, $450, $450, and $400.  The price varied so much because I was only able to sell the first one in the high demand before Christmas time and the remaining ones after.  This means I received $1780 for a net loss of $684.

So in essence I paid $684 for 100,000 skymiles or a little less than .7 cents per mile.  One of my potential uses for these miles will be a business class award ticket back to one of my favorite places, Thailand.  I compared the fare over the same dates that I could use these miles and ended with with a ticket that was over $7,000!  While I would never pay that much for a ticket, it shows that I could end up with $7,000 in value for $684 out of pocket.  Another way to look at it would be two coach seats from Miami to Thailand which are worth at least $1,200 each.  That gives you $2,400 in value for $684 cost.  Quite a deal! For a long haul flight like that though I would never fly coach unless I had no other options.

So there you have it and I hope this helps you in the future deciding if a promo is right for you! I know I will be taking advantage of this promo next time it is offered and will tell all of you about it here on TravelWithMiles.com.