Questions and Answers

Hi Lucky,

Sorry if you’ve already answered this. Tried searching but couldn’t find.

I’m entrolled in the Virgin Gold Status Match and have the Virgin American credit card. I know that I need 8000 points to keep my status, but the credit card also has a feature where if you spend $10K, you get 5000 points. I’ve searched around and looked at the terms and conditions and don’t really see any reason that it wouldn’t count towards the status match. However, since that’s a lot of spend to accumulate, I wanted to confirm before I tried to do so…

Best,
Neel

Welcome [USER=1955]@NewToMiles[/USER] – Here’s what I found on the Virgin website:

([URL=’https://www.virginamerica.com/cms/elevate-frequent-flyer/status/status-match-terms’]link[/URL])[I]
To retain Elevate Gold Status, matched members must earn 12,000 Elevate Status Points during the Challenge Period, or 8,000 Status points if matched member applies for, and is approved for the Virgin America Visa Signature Card with $49 Annual Fee or the Virgin America Premium Visa Signature Card with $149 Annual Fee. [/I]

and then this:

[I]Elevate Members can earn status Points for their flights purchased with dollars from Virgin America upon completion of travel. Status Points will be awarded based on the published, purchased base fare paid (excluding taxes and mandatory fees) on your own individual eligible fares and other specified activities. Airport facility charges, customer and immigration fees, security fees, baggage fees, in-flight purchases and other fees and taxes are not eligible to earn status Points. The specific number of status Points that will be awarded for eligible flights, purchases and activities will be available on the Virgin America website. The definition of eligible activities and transactions, as well as the amount of status Points accrued for each may change over time. Some travel is not eligible for earning status Points. We reserve the right to determine which travel is eligible for earning status Points and to make modifications at any time. Unless otherwise specified, reward Points earned through other Elevate activities such as purchases through Elevate partners, reward points purchases or reward points transfer activities are not eligible to earn status points.[/I]

So while you can earn status points for purchases on Virgin-related items, everyday purchases will not earn status points.

Note that the 5000 miles for $10K spend you mention is only for the Premium card, the one with the $149 fee. The good news is that you can get that bonus up to 3 times per year. And if you put everything on a credit card, $10K is really not that hard to do. It doesn’t seem that the $10K spend has to be on Virgin-related expenses to get the bonus miles.

I know Greg at Frequent Miler has the Virgin cards. You may want to touch base with him to see what counts toward status points.

Or maybe someone else here in the forum has experience and can chime in.

Thanks [USER=184]@MidSouth Skier[/USER] Appreciate the response. I tried to contact Greg, will keep at it. At this point I’m leaning towards going with it since I cant find anything written that would prohibit the 5K miles from counting to qualification (I have the Premium card) and using the documentation if Virgin doesn’t credit it.