1. Do this now: Register for double points at Hilton properties for stays between May 2 and September 2.
  2. Do this now: Register for free HotelSlash membership using promo code FREE4LIFE. Incidentally, you can mention the same promo code to get into the employee restroom at the back of the Waste Pro Garbage Truck Museum in Florida. In case you’re wondering, yes, that’s a real place and no, I didn’t make it up. (Thanks to FM)
  3. The Chase Aeroplan card has a new, tiered sign-up bonus of 100,000 miles, and the $95 annual fee is not waived for the first year:

    – 70,000 miles after $4,000 spend in three months
    – 30,000 miles after $20,000 in additional spend in 12 months

    The card also earns 3x points at grocery stores, so it’s particularly friendly for manufactured spenders. (Thanks to C-MontgomeryChurns)
  4. Martins, Giant, and Stop & Shop stores have either 2x or 3x points (depending on location) on Vanilla visa gift cards through Thursday, limit $2,000 per loyalty account, and obviously it’s impossible to have more than one loyalty account, right?

    These are either Pathward or Sutton gift cards depending on the store. (Thanks to DoC)
  5. Staples has fee-free $200 Mastercard gift cards starting Sunday and running through Saturday, limit five per transaction.

    These are Pathward cards.

Have a nice weekend!

Display rack at Staples adjacent to the gift cards, or relic from the garbage truck museum? You decide.

  1. Do this now: Register for an extra bonus for the upcoming Qatar Airways Visa card issued by Cardless. If you register before card-launch and get the card when it launches, you’ll get 5,000 or 10,000 additional bonus Avios after meeting the sign-up bonus, depending on which card you apply for.
  2. The AA eShopping portal has been offering 1.5 miles per dollar at GiftCards.com since last Friday. I haven’t written about it because I keep expecting it to drop like a secret Taylor Swift track, but here we are, six days later and no changes.

    As a reminder, you can order $2,000 in eGift cards per account per rolling 48 hours, and $2,000 in physical gift cards per account per rolling 24 hours.
  3. There’s news about Hilton’s partnership with Small Luxury Hotels of the World, which was announced in February and is now nearing its initial integration. The highlights:

    – The maximum point rate for award nights at SLH properties will be 150,000 points
    – Fifth night free bookings will work at SLH properties
    – Free night certificates will work at SLH properties
    – Bookings will be available this summer

    It’s interesting news today because it might affect your plans for earning free night certificates immediately, it definitely affected mine.

Happy Thursday friends!

A preview of the rock solid integration between SLH and Hilton.

In January’s earnings call, American Express said they’d be refreshing 40 products in the coming year, and we’ve already seen some of that with the Delta and Hilton co-brand cards, each of which has new, coupon-book like credits. With new credits come new games:

Monthly Resy Credits

Delta’s Platinum and Reserve co-branded cards now have a have monthly Resy dining credit. In case you don’t want to actually eat at one of those restaurants this month just to save $10-$20, there are options:

  • Buying anything at a Resy restaurant will trigger the credit, whether it’s a gift card, tee-shirt, or stuffed animal
  • Many Resy restaurants are also on Toast, and Toast sells reloadable gift cards online which usually trigger the credit (Anecdotally there’s roughly a 3/4 success rate for whether this works for any random restaurant, but once you find that restaurant, it works consistently)

SideShowBob233 subliminally let me know that there’s a burger themed bath robe sold at some restaurants, so I guess you could look for that too.

Quarterly Hilton Credits

The Hilton Aspire Resort credit has always been slightly gameable, but only slightly. The Hilton Surpass and Hilton Business cards’ new quarterly credits are more gameable though: All the Aspire methods continue to work, but so does buying physical Hilton gift cards online. Note though that Hilton will silent cancel your orders if you do a bunch back-to-back, so treat it like a marathon, not a sprint.

Happy Wednesday!

SideShowBob233 also subliminally let me know about this bath robe, so I guess you’ve got options.

  1. Citi ThankYou Points has a 50% transfer bonus to Accor ALL Rewards through May 11 for Premier, Prestige, and AT&T Access More card holders, making it a 1:0.75 transfer ratio. With points worth slightly more than 2 cents each for hotel redemptions, this transfer bonus means effectively a 1.5 cent per point ThankYou Point value. EDITOR’S NOTE: Yes, the word “point” appeared way too many times in that sentence. Sorry not sorry though, it couldn’t be helped, or at least I didn’t want it to be helped. The writing was already on point.

    Accor Hotels are effectively the European equivalent of Hyatt, though top tier status isn’t as nice. (Thanks to Emily)
  2. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards Mastercard has new mid-month offers that stack with other offers:

    – $70 statement credit after $750 or more in online purchases
    – $50 statement credit after $750 or more in online purchases
    – $30 statement credit after five online purchases of $100 or more
    – 10,000 ThankYou Points after $1,000 or more in online purchases
    – 200,000 Shop Your Way Points after $750 or more in online purchases
    – 250,000 Shop Your Way Points after $1,000 or more in online purchases

    This card continues to be the best earning no-annual fee card that exists. (Thanks to Jacob M, DC Domer, Roberto, and Mike C)
  3. American Express Offers has an offer for a $200 statement credit with $750 or more in spend at Hyatt’s Secrets resorts by July 14. Gift cards at the front desk continue to be an option to bank this discount for the future.
  4. The Daily Churn discussed a nice RobinHood Brokerage 3% bonus on transferred assets in January. I’ve never posted the deal given the way that RobinHood treated many of us last year, including:

    – threats to liquidate our positions forcibly
    – accounts shutdown and frozen assets
    – blocking ACATS and ACH transfers out of our accounts after demanding that we transfer assets out

    What was our sin? We used the promoted feature of loading funds to our accounts with a debit card, but they retroactively decided they didn’t like that, even if you only loaded once. Why post now then? I’ve heard some excitement over the E*Trade existing user transfer bonus worth up to $6,000, and I want you to know that if you’re considering that, RobinHood may be a better option; but also they’re a terrible company. A wise man once told me “if you’re going to take advantage of a deal, it might as well a terrible person paying the bonus”, so I guess here we are.

Pictured: RobinHood executive breaks into house and takes candy from sleeping child.

  1. Do this now: Register for your personalized United MilePlay offer. I got 7,400 bonus redeemable miles with a $650+ premium fare flight booked and flown by June 7.
  2. The Citi AA Business card has an elevated 75,000 mile sign-up bonus after $5,000 spend a single purchase, and the $99 annual fee is waived the first year. Note: I tried to strip off any tracking parameters from the offer, but it wouldn’t load when they’re stripped off. As usual, I’m not here to sell you credit cards and I won’t earn anything if you use this link.

    If you thread the needle through the terms and conditions and the sign-up bonus sticks around long enough, you can get it twice in just over three months, keeping in mind that business card approvals at Citi require 91 days between applications.
  3. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 or more in Visa gift cards through Saturday. For best bang:

    – Even multiples of $300 typically offer bigger per card discounts
    – Try for multiple transactions back to back
    – Link your cards to Dosh
    – Don’t forget the American Express Business Gold $20 monthly credit
    – Look for lower fee Visas (currently, new cards are rolling out with a $7.95 activation fee)

    These are Pathward gift cards, so have a liquidation plan in place.
  4. You can make six credit card payments with your tax return or extension due today, which is a low friction way for manufactured spend provided you can float the money in case of any potential IRS holds. You get two payments each with PayUSATax [1.82%], Pay1040 [1.87%], and ACI Payments [1.98%]. The same game works with quarterly estimated taxes to scale this throughout the year.

    Usual disclaimer: I’m not a tax professional or an accountant, and you shouldn’t listen to my advice about anything, ever.
  5. Southwest has a promotion for 25% off base fares with promo code SAVE25NOW booked by this evening. There are blackout dates, and not all flights on non-blackout dates are included, but isn’t that what Wanna Get Away+ fares are for?

MEAB vibes.

Let’s discuss recent changes in how major credit card churning banks operate today. I believe some of them are indicative of major banks’ views about current state of the economy their outlook for the near future, but I’ll leave it to you to decide which items apply.

  1. Bank of America has been reducing credit lines on existing consumer and business credit cards in a haphazard fashion, whether or not the cards have activity tied to them. They’ve also been notifying people inconsistently about these reductions, some receiving paper letters, some receiving emails, and some receiving no notification.

    I’d suggest checking your existing card portfolio and if you’ve been affected, a call to customer service asking them to reverse the reduction may work.
  2. American Express seems to have undergone a “credit profile reset” last week. The symptoms that lead to that conclusion:

    – Some that have never had call-in offers for employee cards now have them
    – Some that have been ineligible for referral bonuses are no longer ineligible
    – Some that haven’t had access to AmEx Offers now have access
    – There was a single report of being approved for AmEx cards after being locked out for years

    I have no idea if this is temporary or permanent, so I’d take advantage quickly if one of these scenarios maps to you. Always be probing.
  3. There’s been confusion about how banks combine credit pulls:

    – US Bank inquiries will be combined the next business day after pulls
    – Barclays will only combine business inquires with other business inquiries, and personal inquiries with other personal inquiries
    – Bank of America will often not re-pull credit for up to 30 days, but if it does pull multiple times on the same day, it’ll be combined the next business day
  4. US Bank, the most ghetto of all major churning banks, has a few changes:

    – They’ve reduced the overall value of their mid-tier Altitude Connect card
    – Opening a brokerage account used to be a backdoor into US Bank accounts when you weren’t in their footprint. In the last six months or so, there’s been only mixed success with that method, but apparently opening a CD is a workaround

    US Bank remains a great sleeper bank for churning, don’t sleep on that sleeper!

Have a nice weekend!

A churner enjoying a lie-flat trip hears about US Bank cards.

EDITOR’S NOTE: ⚠️Warning! Your subscription to MEAB is cancelled effective immediately due to rewards abuse⚠️ (Just kidding, that was Bilt, and they were apparently just kidding too)

  1. Kroger stores have a 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercards running through April 23.

    The fuel points market is currently slightly depressed, but if you can hold them for a few weeks you’ll probably get better rates. Kroger account shutdowns are largely a thing of the past with good account hygiene and keeping balances well below six figures.
  2. There’s a new free churning called CardRight that tracks sign-up bonuses, card eligibility rules, when you can close a card without clawback, current card offers, and similar features related to card churning.
  3. H-E-B Stores have a $10 H-E-B gift card with the purchase of $50 or more in Home Depot or Lowe’s gift cards. Scale with multiple H-E-B accounts. (Thanks to GCG)
  4. Yes, there have been scattered reports of big retention offers for Business cards at American Express, and we’ve been hearing them in quasi-private forums for several weeks; no, we don’t know a way to be targeted if you’re not already targeted. Either way though, you should always be checking for retention offers and comparing those to new sign-up bonuses before accepting.

Happy Thursday friends!

Bilt company party invitation preview just dropped.

  1. British Airways has a status tier match for US and Canada residents that hold elite status with Delta, Air Canada, Lufthansa, United, FlyingBlue, Scandinavian, or Virgin Atlantic. You can match to either:

    – BA Silver, which includes oneworld Sapphire status
    – BA Gold, which includes oneworld Emerald status

    Your status lasts six months, and you have to apply by May 7. Both status levels get you access to AA lounges on domestic AA tickets, including Flagship lounges for you and a guest. Just watch out for the food in the non-flagship lounges, it’s unclear about whether or not it technically counts as food, even though it legally does. (Thanks to Connor)
  2. Do this now: Check for Chase targeted Q2 spend bonuses on up to $1,000 in spend:

    – Hyatt: 5x earning
    – Marriott Bonvoy or Bonvoy Bold, or alternate link: 5x earning
    – Marriott Boundless, or alternate link: 5x earning
    – Marriott Bountiful, or alternate link: 5x earning
    – Marriott Premier, or alternate link: 5x earning
    – Ritz-Carlton, or alternate link: 5x earning
    – United MileagePlus Select: 5x earning
    – United MileagePlus Gateway: 5x earning
    – United Quest, Explorer, or Club: 5x earning
    – AeroPlan, or alternate link: 5x earning
    – Southwest (all variants), or alternate link: 5x earning
    – IHG One: 7x earning

    There are other lesser carried card linkss like the old United Presidential Plus card, Disney card, or Amazon card, so check chase.com/mybonus if you didn’t see a link above for a particular card. (Thanks to FM)
  3. The American Express Personal Gold card has an offer via referral for 90,000 Membership Rewards after $6,000 spend in six months, and it includes a 20% statement credit on restaurants for up to $250 in spend. Don’t forget to check for a 10x bonus offer on dining for the referrer too. (Thanks to InenvitableOk7737)
  4. Do this now: Register for double points at Accor Hotels in Europe and North Africa booked by May 12 for stays between May 27 and July 5.

Sample non-flagship AA lounge food. Hopefully the red parts are classy hotdog bits.