Barclay Arrival keeps getting better – earn a few thousand miles for free!

I’ve written before about why the Barclaycard Arrival Plus^TM World Elite MasterCard® is a card that I’m really excited about. Basically the sign-up bonus is great (spend $3000 within the first three months of getting the card, and you will earn 40,000 miles, which are redeemable for $400 worth of travel), and the card is super easy to use (when you use the card, you get 2x miles, which you can spend on travel…any travel!). You don’t have to think much about where to use the card, how to redeem your miles, and all of the myriad other things that can keep you up at night.

Now you can rack up easy bonus miles when you have the card, thanks to a new feature.

A Way to Earn Even More Miles

I just got an excited email from a reader (thanks, Eve!) letting me know that Barclaycard just introduced another great feature connected to this card, which is the Barclaycard Travel Community. Currently, you can earn free miles simply for creating an online profile and posting stories about recent trips you have taken. The miles are deposited directly to your Barclay Arrival account.

It took me about five minutes to earn 700 points (500 for creating a profile and 200 for a story with a photo)!

Earn miles even if you aren’t a cardmember

If you don’t have a Barclay Arrival World Mastercard yet, you can still earn miles.

If you are not a cardmember, once you reach 2500 miles, an Amazon e-certificate will be automatically emailed to you. (Tip: you probably do not want the Amazon certificate, as it is only worth $5!)

Or, you can bank miles now (up to 2400, I assume) in anticipation/preparation for getting the card.

If you are a cardmember, once you link your Barclaycard Arrival account to your Travel Community profile, any miles you earn will be transferred to your Barclaycard Arrival account each month. You’ll see they are referenced as Participation Miles on your statements.

Details…

According to Barclaycard, members will earn miles for the following activities:

• Members will earn 200 miles for each travel story that is posted on the Site
• Every time the story that is authored by a member is kudoed by another member, the member will receive 10 miles
• Completing a profile will earn each Member 500 miles; a profile is considered complete when the following information is added: 1) the City and State in which the member lives 2) At least one travel interest is selected 3) at least one travel companion is selected 4) at least 1 travel style is selected 5) at least 5 cities are added to the “My travels” map
• Barclaycard, at its sole discretion, may also provide members miles for other activities
• Barclaycard, at its sole discretion, can change or remove these miles values and activities at any time, without warning
• Barclaycard, at its sole discretion, reserves the right to pull down travel stories that do not adhere to the community guidelines or are not good faith efforts to provide quality content for Users of the Site.

Got stories?

If you’ve taken any trip, ever, this is an easy way to snap up Arrival miles. Don’t forget that you also get 10 miles for each time someone ‘kudos’ your story. My story already has a kudo, and I handed out a few myself 🙂

While currently there is no explicit limit on the number of miles you can earn from this, of course Barclaycard is hoping that this becomes a fun, interesting community filled with quality posts…not simply a way for a few people to earn a gazillion miles. I hope so, too!

Have any of you joined the Barclaycard Travel Community? What do you think of this new feature?