• What's ticked?
• Accolades
• Contact us

c o l u m n s

• Cheap Charlie
• ChrisCrossings
• Err Travel
• Leocha
• Travel Notes
• Archives

More Card Bonuses
Cheap Charlie · August 18, 1999

Last week I began an exploration of "unknown" and not-so-unknown benefits offered by most everyday credit cards such as Visa and Mastercard and travel and entertainment cards like American Express and Diners Club. I covered insurances that these cards offer such as life insurance, property insurance and collision damage waiver that many cards provide free of charge in various forms.

This week I look at travel benefits and assistance services. I'll start with the best-known for the airline affinity cards -- frequent flier mileage.

Many credit cards now give frequent flier mileage based on your overall spending. Nearly every airline has a Visa or Mastercard affinity card, which gives you mileage with them, so you’ll have to decide which airline you want to collect mileage on, and apply for that affinity card. The best is Diners Club. The best site to use when trying to keep up with frequent flier benefits is www.insideflyer.com. For a more detailed analysis of the changing scene of these airline cards and the role airline alliances are now playing in the reward redemption, check out an earlier Cheap Charlie column, Pick A Card.

Airport lounge usage: (Diners Club and American Express Platinum) If you have longed for access to airport lounges, you may have the key to entry right in your pocket. This often-overlooked benefit is a real moneysaver for international travelers. Diners Club has a network of more than 50 clubs at airports throughout the world. Virtually every club is in Europe, Asia or South America. The network keeps growing. Cardmembers can get access no matter what airline they are flying. Check out http://www.dinersclub.com /diners_lounges.html for a list of clubs included in the program.

The American Express Platinum card is linked with Continental and Northwest airport clubs. Only cardholders flying on Continental, Northwest or KLM can use these clubs on the dates of their flights.

Travel assistance services: You can call a toll-free number provided by your credit card and receive information that will help you plan your trip and help if things go wrong during your trip. These benefits can be real time-savers, and the money transfer features save you money. Perhaps the best part of these services is that the card travel service center can serve almost as a secretary and message center in an emergency.

If you have the right Gold Mastercard, Visa Gold, Discover, American Express, Diners Club, or Mastercard BusinessCard and you travel more than 50 or 100 miles away from your home (depending on the card) additional travel assistance programs take effect generally as follows (specifics vary depending on the card). This is a good reason to read the brochure of benefits that comes with your card.

Before your trip, it is useful to jot down the toll-free phone numbers needed to reach these services. They can save you a load of time. Worldwide legal referral assistance: Referrals to English-speaking attorneys and contact with U.S. embassies and consulates will be arranged in case of arrest, an automobile accident or need of other legal assistance.

In addition, most credit card companies can assist in transferring bail payments from your personal accounts or your credit card credit line. The assistance centers normally follow up to ensure that the bail is handled properly.

Emergency message services: Credit card assistance centers will pass along emergency messages to friends, family and business associates. This allows you to make only one call to the assistance center. They do the rest. I’ve known folks who used this service to tell relatives planning to meet them at the airport that they were stuck in a major weather delay. Another friend used this service to let folks back home know that she had missed an international flight and would be back home the following day. It saved a lot of international phone calls and she didn't have to call her family and friends in the dead of the night.

Emergency transportation and medical assistance: If you become ill or are injured during a trip, most credit card assistance centers will help make arrangements to bring you home or transfer you to another hospital. These assistance centers will all arrange to get children home and provide continuing contact with family members. In the event of death, these travel assistance programs help with the transfer of remains back home. They will also assist in making travel arrangements to bring a family member or close friend to your bedside if you are traveling alone and have a travel emergency.

It doesn't sound like much, but when you have been injured and are laid up in a foreign hospital, having someone else to make phone calls and make complicated arrangements is like manna from heaven. The credit card companies in most cases will not pay for any of the charges to change flights, but they absorb the phone call charges in many cases. All expenses are paid for by the cardmember or the cardmember’s estate. Both Visa and Mastercard Gold cards will assist in filling prescriptions. If the prescriptions are not locally available, they will arrange for delivery.

MastercardBusinessCard goes several big steps further than just assistance with their unique MasterAssist/Medical program. This program is available through several other cards, but it is rare. They actually will pay for a friend or family member to come to stay with you while you are in the hospital away from home. Simply amazing.

Emergency translation services: Credit card companies will provide free telephone translation services and will help secure a local interpreter at your expense if more assistance is needed. I've known travelers who have used this service when they arrived at a hotel where their reservation appeared to be lost. No one seemed to speak English or any other language they spoke. It worked. They got their room and had a good vacation using hand language for most of the week.

Valuable document delivery: If you forget a critical document, the cardmember assistance center can arrange to pick up and deliver the document to you -- at your expense. Once again having someone to do the busy work back home always helps.

More on these service gems as I learn about them. I am looking at new Visa, Mastercard and Discover Platinum Cards to see if their additional benefits are any better than those found with the good old Gold Cards. 'Till next week.

Charlie Leocha is the Boston-based author of Travel Rights: Know the Rules of the Road and the Air Before You Go. Cheap Charlie appears every Monday on this site. E-mail him at cheapch@aol.com or access his Web site.