Capital One Venture Miles Rewards Credit Card Review

Who Is the Capital One Venture Miles Rewards Credit Card Good For?

If you watch television, you are no doubt familiar with the Capital One travel credit cards, which offer rewards with “no blackout dates for “any seat. In reality, Capital Ones program does not convert your spend to airline miles at all, but rather allows you to credit your rewards against purchases you’ve already made at a straight 1-cent-per-dollar rate.

Capital Ones travel program seems to have a bit of an identity crisis, as they have been rebranding and fine-tuning their cards over the last several years. You regularly run into folks who have a No Hassle Rewards card rather than the Venture Rewards card (its current name), but Capital One still refers to their program as No Hassle Rewards. And they insist on calling their reward points miles, even though they have no correlation at all with airline miles.

In the current system, the Capital One Venture card, also known as the Capital One Venture Miles Rewards credit card, is the one of the top Capital One travel cards, offering a whopping two miles for every dollar you spend anywhere.

Sign-Up Bonuses:

The Venture card used to carry a perennial sign-up bonus of 20,000 miles, but Capital One permanently upped the bonus in the summer 2014 to 40,000 after a $3,000 spend in three months, and then to 75,000 miles after a $4,000 spend in three months.

During promotional periods, the welcome bonus could go as high as 100,000 miles.

Miles Earned:

• 2X miles per dollar on all purchases
• 5X miles on hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel

What Do Your Venture Rewards Miles Get You?

With Capital One travel rewards, you have three different ways to redeem your miles to pay for travel. First, you can purchase flights, hotels and car rentals directly through the capitalone.com reward center, paying with your miles up front. You can book an award ticket through their Capital One Travel portal.

You can also book directly through your airline, hotel or other provider. This allows you to earn points with that chain, or book types of travel not available through Capital One Travel. Then, once the charge shows up on your account activity, you use the Capital One Purchase Eraser to credit miles retroactively against the purchase.

This is one of the best reasons to use the Venture card, because it allows you to use credit card rewards for things you would usually not be able to redeem points or miles against, such as buses, small bed-and-breakfasts, apartment rentals, and award ticket fees and surcharges.

The one caveat here is that you are at the mercy of how the vendor categorizes the transactions. If it’s not listed by them as travel, you can’t credit your Venture miles against the purchase.

Probably the best way to use Venture miles, especially for avid travelers, is to transfer them to airlines’ loyalty programs. Capital One partners with 15+ travel loyalty programs, which include airline and hotel loyalty programs.   

For non-travel rewards, you also have the option to buy gift cards through the Capital One shopping portal, though you get a better redemption rate on travel.

Usage Perks:

• You can earn airline miles on reward flights by booking your flight directly through the airline and then crediting Venture miles against the charge
• No foreign transaction fees
• You can transfer miles to 15+ travel loyalty programs
• Ability to use rewards on any airline, regardless of affiliation
• Miles can also be credited against harder-to-redeem travel awards, such as boutique hotels, cruises and car rentals
• Automatic credit tracking
• Monthly credit score delivery
• Miles never expire as long as you keep the card

Usage Quirks:

• Capital One pulls credit reports from all three major credit bureaus when you apply for the card, so your credit may take a larger hit than usual during the application period
• If you have a late payment, you forfeit miles earned during that period

How Far Do Your Dollars Go?

One of Capital Ones biggest selling points is that its rewards are low-stress, and that also comes into play in terms of the value of your redemption. There is no need to sit on your miles because you are waiting to use them for a big or valuable purchase; Venture Rewards miles always have the same value when you use the purchase eraser to redeem miles, no matter what you redeem them for: 1 cent per dollar. You may increase the miles value if you transfer them to participating travel loyalty programs. 

Additional Cardholder Benefits:

• Fraud coverage
• Visa Signature hotel upgrades and special rates
• Travel concierge service
• Access to Visa Signature special events
• 24-hour travel assistance if card is lost or stolen
• Extended warranty
• Travel accident insurance
• Auto rental insurance