World Traveller 73 
MBNA Surprises Alaska Airlines Mastercard Credit Card Holders with a Conversion Sign Up Bonus
The credit card space is a competitive one that is designed to attract consumers through lucrative sign up bonuses and retention offers. In a bit of a surprise move, MBNA has offered it’s MBNA Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan credit card holders a sign up bonus for sticking with their new MBNA Rewards Mastercard. The bonus is tiered, dependent on how much you had spent on the card in previous months ahead. Read on to see what the bonus offers, and how it might impact your decision making with respect to the future of this card.
MBNA Surprises Alaska Airlines Credit Card Holders with a Conversion Sign Up Bonus
MBNA announced earlier that they would be discontinuing the MBNA Alaska Airlines Mastercard. Existing card holders were told that they would be converted to an MNBA World Rewards Mastercard.
We’ve now learned that MBNA intends to offer a sign up bonus for existing MBNA Alaska Airlines Credit Card holders to remain with the new MBNA Rewards program.
This is in addition to the separate retention offer separately offered by Alaska Airlines.
MBNA Makes a Retention Offer:
In letters mailed directly to credit card holders this week, MBNA has offered a targeted sign up bonus to MBNA Alaska Airlines Credit Card Holders.
The outside of the envelope teased some hint that an offer was pending inside.
Much like the other notice, MBNA didn’t really dress up this offer to make it appear exciting. It has all the excitement of opening a utility bill. It’s fair to say that it was much different than my experiences with American Express, that make every feature seem like an exclusive invitation to the opera.
The Exclusive Welcome Offer:
Earn 35,000 MBNA Rewards Points when you make $2,000 worth of eligible purchases between September 1, 2023 and November 30, 2023 with your MBNA Rewards World Elite Mastercard.
Inside the letter, the content set out of the start of the MBNA Rewards program. The letter highlighted the fact that the MBNA Rewards program was starting on September 1, 2023.
Further on in the letter, MBNA set out the “Exclusive Welcome Offer”. The letter offered “Earn 35,000 MBNA Rewards Points when you make $2,000 worth of eligible purchases between September 1, 2023 and November 30, 2023 with your MBNA Rewards World Elite Mastercard.”
MBNA Rewards is marketing 35,000 MBNA Rewards Points as $350 in travel value.
The letter also reminded customers that they didn’t have to wait for their new MBNA Rewards Mastercard to be delivered; any purchases made after September 1, 2023 could earn MBNA Rewards points.
The letter elaborated on the additional benefits of the card. In particular, the letter outlined the annual birthday bonus, the 5X MBNA Rewards Points for every $1 spend on eligible restaurant, grocery, digital media, membership and household utility purchases.
Lastly, the letter was surprisingly silent about the ability to convert these points to Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles. This wasn’t exactly comforting for those who’s primary reason for holding this card was to earn Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles.
Targeted and Tiered Offers:
What is interesting about this welcome bonus, is that there appear to be tiered offers floating around out there.
While MrsWT73 got an offer for 35,000 MBNA Reward Points for $2,000 in spend, I only got 20,000 MBNA Reward points for $2,000 in spend.
“Earn 20,000 MBNA Rewards Points when you make $2,000 worth of eligible purchases between September 1, 2023 and November 30, 2023 with your MBNA Rewards World Elite Mastercard.”
As a point of comparison, shortly before the letter, MrsWT73 was spending approximately $1,000 CAD a month in spend on this particular card, where as I was only spending about $500 a month in spend on this card.
Surpirisingly, I had actually been a card holder of this card for approximately 2 years longer than MrsWT73, so it doesn’t seem that customer length had any feature in the welcome bonus levels.
Ultimately, both offers are reasonably fair. While it’s a shame to miss out on earning miles, the three months is a pretty fair amount of time to meet this particular welcome offer.
My Take on This Offer:
The fact that MBNA offered a sign up bonus to its existing credit card holders was a smart way in order to buy some time on the part of MBNA to get it’s program together. By offering an easy sign up bonus, this locks in it’s existing card holders, and gives them a reason not to cancel their cards in favor of something else.
Earning 20,000 (or in some lucky cases 35,000) MBNA Rewards points with only $2,00 in spend over a three month period is a pretty easy sign up bonus to achieve for most people.
This also buys MBNA Rewards some time to get their conversion to Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles lined up and finalize any agreements themy may have to completewith Alaska Airlines. The lack of information on this progress in the letter was telling. It is possible that this feature may never come to fruiition, or that the conversion rate isn’t 1:1 like many will expect and hope.
Ultimately, we will both be completing this easy sign up bonus, and taking a wait and see approach before we decide to “hold” or “cancel” this card.
In Summary: MBNA Surprises Alaska Airlines Mastercard Credit Card Holders with an MBNA Rewards Sign Up Bonus
MBNA Alaska Airlines Mastercard holders were surprised with a letter that set out the terms and conditions of an MBNA Rewards sign up bonus for its new program.
MBNA is offering between 20,000 MBNA Rewards points or up. to35,000 MBNA Rewards points for completing $2,000 in spend betwenn September 1, 2023 and November 30, 2023. This isn’t a hard amount of spend to complete over three months, amny many should be able to complete this without much difficultly.
I ma still taking a wait and see about with this card, but I intend to complete the requirements of the sign up bonus, before making any final decisions on keeping or cancelling this card. The conversion to Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan will be the key decision point for our household.
World Traveller 73 
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