So this is a little complex but for 40 Rapid Rewards credits well worth it.

1. Open a Continental card and get 20,000 OnePass Miles (You will get your miles the day after the end of your first billing cycle)
2. Transfer the OnePass miles into Amtrak Guest Rewards points 1=1 (must be transfered in blocks of 5,000) Miles Post very early every Monday morning.
3. Transfer your 20,000 Amtrak points into 100,000 Choice Hotel Points (must be transfered in blocks of 5,000 Amtrak points, 5,000AGR=25,000CHP) please PM me with how long this step takes so I can update the thread
4. Transfer 100,00CH into 40 Rapid Rewards credits. 5,000CH=2RR please PM me with how long this step takes so I can update the thread

You can also get the midwest miles card which gives a 15k bonus. The AGR card only offers 8k bonus.

Note the max you can transfer out of AGR per calender year is 25k

Edited by nsx to add:

On December 1, Amtrak devalued its conversion to Choice by 40%, then on December 6 Amtrak halted conversions to Choice at least temporarily. People who have already requested conversions will likely receive the number of points they expected, but Amtrak appears to be delaying completion of these conversions.

On December 11, points from Amtrak began vanishing from Choice accounts. This may be the first documented case of a program changing the rules retroactively to reverse legitimate transactions already completed. It's a new low for Amtrak and its program operator Carlson.

This thread is now closed. Please continue the discussion here.

I suppose this works with any CO miles one happens to have?? If so, a real deal. Great find if it works. Thanks.

Anyone else do this -- as I would hate to go thru the hassle and follow up and end up with a bad deal.

Wow, so I would only need 10,000 Continental OnePass miles = 10,000 Amtrak Guest Rewards miles = 50,000 Choice Privileges points = 20 Rapid Rewards credits = 1.25 Rapid Rewards!

Is there an automated online process to convert Continental OnePass miles to Amtrak Guest Rewards miles? This link says to contact the OnePass Service Center.
http://www.continental.com/web/en-US...sfer/rail.aspx

If this works, the Continental OnePass credit card would be a great deal, since you only need to spend $8000 to get a free RR award.

Ignoramus, here, because I've never done the transfer thing, so...

1) Are there fees for any step?

2) Are there restrictions as to how soon you can do each ensuing step (or between any)?

Thank you for describing this, and to anyone who can answer these two questions.

Is this right? If you can do both the Continental and Midwest credit cards, I'm coming up with 70 total RR credits. That means if you do/did both of the 16 credit offers from Chase, you're at 102 credits, without any flying. Total cost for 6.375 RR tickets plus CP = $59 + $59 + $89 + $49 = $256.

Are you saying that once you break the 100 credit mark (where they were flown credits or not) that you would get a CP????

Absolutely!

Pleeease no one tattle on this one!

It would take many a mistake fare to equal this, and there have been many "pledge" threads in that regard.

Pretty interesting!

Too bad the lady friend is still away at law school for a few more months...so the pass wouldn't help us too much as only one of us is travelling to see the other person. Now maybe next year this could come in handy!!! ^

This sounds a lot like when my wonderful wife and I were dating. In 1998 she lived in Tulsa and I in El Paso. Between all my visits to see her and some heavy AMEX usage (and the wonderful double credit for online booking that existed then), I received my first CP while we were still living is separate cities.

The CP came in handy a few times, I would fly there and meet her, or vice versa, then we would travel somewhere together.

I can honestly say that if it weren't for SWA, we would not have married. Southwest gave us the ability to travel often and lot's of RR tickets allowed us to travel on short notice. There were multiple occasions where a phone call on a Friday morning turned into a Southwest Airlines flight that same afternoon

It should come in handy now. According to zachary's math, if you were able to take advantage of all the credit cards you would end up with a CP (which you admit is little use to you at this time), but also six award tickets at a cost of roughly $43 each. That's an insane bargain.

This also effectively means 1:1 conversion to several airlines. I guess I could have predicted this would happen, since I just transferred all my CO miles via another route at a loss.

Yeah with her in Lubbock and me in Dallas...we're in almost the same boat. I sure do wish we could get double credit for flights. I think we've racked up somewhere between 40-50 credits between the two of us lately...and very few times have we been on the same flights together. If not for her busy schedule, I would love to fly in and take her on a trip somewhere. I'll probably go ahead and "earn" a CP mid-next year so that we can use it for the 5 or 6 trips we have on the books so far (she'll be back here by then) plus our trips to Lubbock for TT football!!! I'm sure it will come in handy. Now if only SW flew to Maldives for our honeymoon!

1. No there are no fees for transfers

2. transfer will take between 1-2 weeks for each step.

If you want to do that you will need to act very very fast. Amtrak limits you to 35k in transfer out for regular members and 50k for select members.

However you could transfer 35k dec 31 and 35k jan 1