Recall that with the Barclays Arrival Cards, you can book and pay for travel with the card and then redeem your miles for a statement credit. You must choose a travel purchase within the last 120 days to get the redemption.
Based on my own travel plans which I speak about below, I came to the realization that this card may not be the right card, if you, like me, book a lot of your travel well in advance. Reason being, you only have 120 days to get a redemption. What happens if you book travel 6 months to a year in advance and leave a deposit, take the redemption for the deposit, and then need to cancel?
You lose all your miles, thats what happens!
I recently posted that I am trying to accumulate Barclaycard Arrival miles so that I could use the miles to get a credit back for the $1,200 deposit that I left for the Otesaga Resort Hotel in Cooperstown for this upcoming summer. I actually am very close to having enough miles to get the credit and I have 44 more days left to get it. But the trip is not until August. What if something comes up and we need to cancel? I have spent such a long time earning these 120,000 miles, imagine if I lost them????
So I am not going to use them for my deposit at the Otesaga Resort in Cooperstown. Instead, I am going to keep going with my heavy spending on the card and instead use the miles for those 3 darn Jet Blue flights that I needed to pay for to get us to Vegas. The actual flights fall within the 120 day period, so obviously I will know if I need to cancel the trip beforehand.
In summary, if you plan in advance like me, you should not use your miles for deposits but rather for charges that you accumulate during your trip, like the balance of your hotel bill.