All You Can Jet Passes - 10 of Them!

A Month of Free Travel on JetBlue!

Wow! What a sweepstakes to offer! In commemoration of JetBlue winning their tenth J.D. Power and Associates award for Highest in Customer Satisfaction among Low-Cost Carriers in North American, they're giving away ten passes for unlimited travel from September 2 to November 2. That's right - as many flights as you want to wherever you want for ten lucky winners! 

Using Marriott Stays to get TrueBlue Points

Stay at Marriott & Earn TrueBlue Points

When I took a trip earlier this month upstate, I decided it might be a good time to finally set my Marriott rewards to redeem towards a few TrueBlue points. Marriott allows you to choose whether you want to earn bonus Marriott points for your account or in other reward programs. With the Marriott card from chase, you earn 5x points for Marriott hotel stays.

New Badges from TrueBlue

New Badges for Classic Rewards

Without any real fanfare or official announcement, JetBlue recently released some new badges in the TrueBlue program. What's really left, though? You already get badges for visiting a city once, three times, and so on. There's already a badge for transferring referral points, many for social media, and even one for Thanksgiving Day.

These new badges are worth points and tie in very strong to the rewards one can get, so what are they?

Guide to Badges Part IV

Getting Those Points

By now you've amassed a little over 3,000 TrueBlue points without spending a dime if you've been following my badge guides - nice job. It's going to get a lot tougher from here on out to reach level 5, but it's still attainable. The next round of badges will take a little more time and effort, but are still quite worthwhile in the long run. If you've been flying JetBlue at all, you'll also be adding first time visit badges (or third of sixth visit badges) to any of the locations you've been flying to or from. In addition to those, check out the following:

JetBlue Card from American Express

The Best Ticket to Free Flights

The JetBlue card from American Express is the only branded credit card that JetBlue offers for customers in the US. As a smaller airline, it doesn't have multiple versions of the card or others through Visa or MasterCard. While this can be somewhat disappointing for those looking to churn multiple credit cards or load up on sign-on bonuses, there are several reasons why this card is a better deal than most others and a great card to have in your wallet.

The Card

The card itself is nothing special - as of writing it has a 15.29% APR and a $0 introductory fee, with an annual $40 fee every year after the first. As far as annual fees are concerned, this is definitely cheaper than most cards that offer good rewards, which may be in the $70-90 yearly fee range, especially from Amex. This makes it an attractive option to keep around even if one wanted to churn it, since the upkeep is so minimal and the benefits can definitely pay for themselves quickly. Late payment fees are up to $35. I was given an $8,500 limit initially on the card, but that may vary depending on the applicant. The card itself is a normal, thin, plastic card and chooses not to go for the weighted or chipped option that many high end credit cards today gravitate towards, simply because this is not meant to be a status symbol or a conversation starter. It's a card with good benefits, low fees, and helps with obtaining cheap flights - much like JetBlue itself.

The Benefits

Outside of all the standard American Express benefits and great customer service, the Jet Blue from American Express also offers a 20,000 point bonus when $1,000 is spent in the first three months. This may seem small compared to the 30-75,000 point offers on many other airline cards, but don't forget that JetBlue offers regional and domestic flights starting at 5,000 points (and roundtrips at 10,000 points) so this $200 can be stretched pretty far.

Purchases from JetBlue.com are also eligible to receive 8pts/dollar and all other purchases earn 1pts/dollar. This is a really great return when booking with JetBlue and one of the highest payouts from any branded credit card. If the qualifying $1,000 was spent at JetBlue, that'd bring the total bonus up to 28,000 points which gives a lot of options towards free flight bookings or heavily discounted airfare options.

One of my favorite benefits is 50% off in flight purchases - that's half off food, alcoholic beverages, and whatever else you need to make the flight memorable (or forgettable). The discount is returned as statement credit and makes it reasonable to order food and drink on a plane and not feel ripped off. A fantastic option to have in your utility belt for you or your flying companions.

Finally, cardholders can receive a $50 statement credit per year when they purchase a JetBlue Getaway vacation package. These bundles are usually a really great value and knocking $50 off the price tag only makes them a better deal.

The Badge

By far the coolest part of getting the JetBlue from Amex is that it ties into the TrueBlue badge program. After you get through the first few levels of badges, earning them becomes a lot more difficult and this is a nice bonus. It took me over a month to get my badge to come through after receiving my card, but it was worth the wait!

Blue's News - Dec 4

What's new with JetBlue

• Hope you had a good Thanksgiving! I'm back after a quick break spending time with the family, and was so pleasantly surprised to come back to the Truly Thankful JetBlue badge when I logged back in! A free badge, closer to your next level of TrueBlue!

• And since Thanksgiving is over, the holiday season is officially in full gear. Check out some ridiculously cheap $49 flights and $149 Getaway packages for a limited time.

• Finally, JetBlue starts servicing Port-au-Prince, Haiti tomorrow. Having been there myself, I have to say it's an incredible country for a number of reasons and one of the most life changing trips I've been on!

Post by JetBlue Airways.

ShopTrue is Down!

An Upgrade to ShopTrue

I've been waiting for a few days now to write a post about ShopTrue, a great way to earn an extra badge and get extra True Blue miles just by using the shopping portal to purchase from online retailers like Macy's or Home Depot, but the site's been down. And not the good down - it wouldn't resolve and errored out for the past few days.

It seems like someone finally got on top of that mess, though, and the the ShopTrue URL now leads to this:

So if you've been wondering why the site is down, doesn't work, and is straight broken...this appears to be the reason! A new version of the site will debut sometime in the (hopefully) near future and I'll be posting an update with details when it does - as well as if the name TrueBlue Mall will stick.

Until then, sit tight and try to hold off on any purchases that could otherwise be used to earn points, which may be easier said than done. 

Guide to Badges Part III

TrueBlue Badges Part III

In the introduction to badges, I detailed how to sign up and start getting some of your first badges and over 1,000 TrueBlue points in just a few minutes. Then there was the Jet Blue badges guide part II to net you 2,000 points in total. This next installment will cover earning your next few badges....

The Next Four Badges

At this point most of the low hanging fruit has been picked in the badge program. It's been relatively easy to score those 2,000 points without having to make a single purchase or even flight a single mile. Now, though, the level portion of badges begins to come into play as some badges won't be unlocked until you achieve the proper level so progress will be a bit slower and will take more creativity to keep earning for free.

The social media badges are an easy grab as always and Opinionator will require about 10-15 minutes in total to signup and get through a survey or two that you qualify for. I actually stuck with E-Rewards for a while and earned $25 worth of credit on their site, which translates to 500 more True Bleu miles. It took a bit longer than I expected, about 1-2 weeks by doing one survey per day (many I didn't qualify for) and I wouldn't say it's the most effective method for earning free points. It is a direct and reliable source, though, if you're only a few hundred points behind on a reward flight but don't want to spend any cash to buy miles. 

Another unique badge is ShopTrue. While this does require a purchase, which I try t stay away from for the sake of these guides, Shop True has a great selection of stores (Macy's, Home Depot, etc.) so it shouldn't be too hard to find an occasion to purchase through the portal. No points to be earned here with the badge, but your qualifying purchase will earn you at least 1pt/dollar if not more - so the earning potential here is up to you. This will also help moving up towards the next level, where more social media badges lie waiting.

That's 450+ points for these badges (and 950+ if you commit to doing E-Rewards) to round out at almost 3,000 points without flying a single mile! That's 3/5 of the way towards a domestic one way flight via reward points and we've still got plenty more free miles to earn so be sure to check out part IV coming soon.

 - John

Guide to Blue Badges Part II

TrueBlue Badges Part II

In the introduction to badges, I detailed how to sign up and start getting some of your first badges and over 1,000 TrueBlue points in just a few minutes. This next installment will cover earning your next 4 badges, making a total of 10, and getting to level 3. 

The Next Four Badges

The next four badges aren't a whole lot harder than the first six and you can do them without the help of anyone else (later on you'll need some friends' on social media) and without spending any money. The badges we're going after this time are the Recruiter, Leader, On the Map, and In A Badge Mood. What I really love about these is that JetBlue really makes an effort to make them accessible, fun, easy, and logical. Again, you'll need some basic social media accounts to take advantage of these, but that's it!

That's a total of 10 badges unlocked without a lot of effort with almost 2,000 TrueBlue points to show for it. From here on out the badges will take a little more work to acquire and levels will come into play as restrictions for earning better badges, but there are still a lot of ways to score more points without having to fly a single mile. Check out the next installment for more info on the remaining badges that can get you free miles without spending a cent!

- John

Guide to Blue Badges - Part I

Introduction to Badges

One of the interesting aspects of JetBlue's loyalty program is the badge system. You can earn badges and levels much like in FourSquare and similar check-in apps by performing social media tasks, being a customer of partner companies, or just flying per usual. These can net you free points towards JetBlue flights and easily push you over the 5k or 10k needed for a free flight! I'll go over the basics to get you started in this post and later installments will be guides to getting the most free points possible.

Signing Up

Signing up is easy - just head to the JetBlue badges page and login with your TrueBlue account.

Getting Badges

Your first badges are going to be pretty easy - you can get over 1,000 TrueBlue points for just a few minutes of work! Here are the first badges you'll be earning to be 20% of the way towards a free flight:

The first badges that are available to earn.

The First Badges

There you go, 1050 points for just a few minutes of work. There are many more badges to be unlocked that I will cover later, but this will get you started and on your way to racking up those extra points. 

- John