1. Southwest has a fare sale for paid and award travel between April 22 and August 27 with promo code TAKE30. There are some blackout dates, and the blackout dates seem more city specific than the terms and conditions suggest.

    Tickets booked before May 28 still get free checked bags and no change fees, and a small bright spot is that the variable Rapid Rewards redemption rates are more favorable on the flights eligible for the promo code too. For some bad analysis redemption values, compare the pre-sale cash price to the post-sale award price and marvel at how your math approaches TPG valuations.
  2. Chase’s Q2 2025 Pay Yourself Back categories for Sapphire cards are: gas, grocery (but not Walmart or Target, and probably not Han’s Deli either), pet supply and vets, charities, and annual membership fees. Charities pay a +25% bigger boost, and redemptions continue to be uncapped.

    They have co-brand card Pay Yourself Back on Marriott Bold, United, Southwest, and Aeroplan with relatively small limits, but the cashout typically only makes sense on Marriott Bold or Aeroplan.
  3. AirCanada Aeroplan has opened registration for a promotion for 3,000 bonus points on a one-way booking, or 6,000 bonus points on a round-trip booking made by April 13 for travel through December 15.

    News outlets have been parroting a 75% drop in bookings between the US and Canada since the trade war started which is likely extremely exaggerated due to flawed study methodology and sample bias. The real number may be closer to 10-20%, but either way it’s bad. I expect this promotion will be copied in spirit by US Airlines relatively soon.
  4. JetBlue and Icelandair have a new partnership, so I guess you can choose between poor redemption values from TrueBlue and poor (future) redemption values from Southwest Rapid Rewards.
  5. American Express Membership Rewards has a 20% transfer bonus to Etihad Guest and a 20% transfer bonus to AeroMexico ClubPremier. The former is a great backdoor way into short-haul AA travel.
  6. Chase Ultimate Rewards has an 80% transfer bonus to IHG through April 30, making it a 1,000:1,800 transfer ratio. In general you can do better by other booking games, but there are use cases where IHG points bookings have outsized value.

Deriving TPG point valuations.

  1. American Express has targeted more accounts with a bonus of 20,000 Membership Rewards for enabling Pay over Time on its charge cards. A few notes:

    – Set a reminder to disable Pay over Time after 121 days to be eligible to be retargeted
    – If multiple cards are targeted, activate quick on all of them

    What happens if you turn off Pay over Time before then? To the penalty box! (Maybe)
  2. American Express has a Q2 referrer bonus for 5x earning on up to $25,000 spend in travel and transit for three months in addition to the 15,000-35,000 Membership Rewards the referrer typically gets.

    The offers available to the referred haven’t changed, but referring to a business card that you close quickly without hitting a sign-up bonus is one way to play the game. (Thanks to mra101485)
  3. Kroger has fee-free virtual Visa and Mastercard $100 gift cards online with promo code NOFEEMADNESS through tonight, and these will earn Kroger fuel points too. This also marks the first time that I’ve seen Mastercards sold at Kroger.com since they transitioned from US Bank to BlackHawk Network for gift card fulfillment.

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  4. Chase’s Sapphire Reserve used to earn 10x points on all Lyft purchases, now that drops to 5x through September 30, 2027 which matches the earn on Inks and the Sapphire Preferred. There’s a new monthly credit of $10 towards Lyft rides for the Sapphire Reserve only through the same time period.
  5. As of today Fiji Airlines award tickets can be booked with AA AAdvantage miles joins oneWorld and uses AA as its currency for dynamic awards. On average, that probably means today is the best day for redemption availability, so I guess there’s no time like the present eh?

April Fool’s day is every day but April 1 at MEAB, so here’s a boring image as your feed cleanser for the rest of the day’s onslaught.

From at least 2017 through 2021, the Walmart mobile app had functionality for making bill payments from your phone through CheckFreePay, much like their in-store money center bill pay option. With the right gyrations it was a great from-home liquidation channel, supported plenty of volume, and in some cases even served as a liquidation channel of last resort.

In Spring 2021 though, Walmart updated the user interface framework and the interface for its mobile apps, and in the process killed bill pay functionality. But, technical users could install an old version of the app and keep access to bill payments. Those payments continued to work for months, and even worked better than before, probably due to decreased transaction load and volume.

Why bring this up today? Is this a timely post? Two answers:

  • No, it’s not timely because there are always games to play with older apps
  • Yes, it’s timely because there are always games to play with older apps

Have a nice Monday friends!

Throwbacks gonna throwback.

  1. Do this now: Register for Hyatt’s Q2 promotion for 777 bonus points per night on up to 20 nights between April 10 and June 9 at casino properties.

    We may not have The Dirty Castle™ any more for phantom spotting, but at least we have The Sad Samba™.
  2. Do this now: Register for National Emerald’s Q2 promotion for a free day with every two midsize or larger rentals of two days or longer between April 1 and June 22.
  3. Staples has fee-free $200 Visa gift cards starting Sunday and running through the following Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  4. This is your last weekend to figure out what to do with your Q1 American Express Business Platinum and Surpass Hilton credits. There are often local angles, but if you can’t find them or don’t want to deal with them, brunch at a corporate Hilton or Hilton Resort will almost always work in a pinch.

And let’s end today with a timely bit of weekend wisdom: In churning and manufactured spend the main goal is usually to take advantage of the spread between profit and loss, generally with very little risk, and turn that into a machine. Well, occasionally there’s a time where you know the spread is going to change for the worse at some point in the near future. When that happens, consider swinging for the fences taking to the extent that your risk tolerance allows.

Have a nice weekend friends!

Hilton Garden Inn breakfasts can be paid with AmEx credits (delicious breakfast not pictured).

  1. Chase made all the United cards dumber this week. The major changes:

    – Every card with an annual fee gets a bigger annual fee
    – The no-annual fee Gateway card doesn’t get XN inventory access unless you have $10,000 in annual spend
    – One time lounge access passes are no longer transferrable
    – You can now earn 1K status with nothing but spend on either of the ridiculously priced $695 personal and business Club cards
    – There are new credits on the annual fee cards, most of which are annoying, carved up throughout the year, and less valuable than they seem
    – Lounge access gets more restrictive without massive spend

    DD has a good rundown on the details of the changes if you care to read more.
  2. Southwest is releasing its winter schedule for travel between November 2 and January 5 today, which means today is statistically speaking the best time you have to game holiday travel, or just to play it straight to book holiday travel directly.

    Now’s a good time to book for other reasons too, like avoiding change fees on cheap tickets and paying bag fees, all of which will be implemented soon. Unfortunately double secret Rapid Rewards redemption values already quietly launched yesterday.
  3. On Tuesday, Bilt will have a transfer bonus of between 50% and 100% to British Airways, Aer Lingus, and Ibera Avios, depending your status level. Because Avios can be transferred freely amongst airlines, this is good for Qatar, Vueling, and FinnAir too.

    Why mention this early? So you can earn Bilt points before then.
  4. Accor ALL has new Q2 promotions for:

    – 2x-3x points on stays 3+ nights in many countries through June 8, valid for two stays
    – 4x points at new properties through September 7, valid for one stay

    You’ve got to book by April 27 and May 11 respectively, so these suck for last minute travel. (Thanks to FM)
  5. Breeze has 45% off of fares booked today for travel between April 9 and September 2 with promo code VACAY. There are a few blackout days around Easter, Independence Day, and National Peach Cobbler Day, but in general Summer travel is wide open.

    We haven’t played Breeze Dartboard Bingo™ for a while, but in honor of National Peach Cobbler today, we’ll take another round. [drumroll] Today’s draw is: Pensacola, FL to Norfolk, VA, PNS-ORF! If you hit Bingo, come see the MEAB front desk for your prize.
  6. AA’s shopping portal has a 500 mile bonus for the referrer and 1,000 mile bonus for the referred, as long as the latter makes a $75+ purchase by April 6 through the portal. The referral bonus is limited to 10 per account.

    With GiftCards.com’s current annoying portal rules, having multiple players with multiple shopping portals is one of the methods for scale (like banana).

Happy Thursday friends!

The other way of scaling.

On most days since early 2024, the the Pepper platform offered bonus promotions on gift card purchases, and those bonuses crept up to the point of absurdity where Walmart, Delta, Home Depot, and other high value gift cards paid 30%. That all changed yesterday when a few things happened:

  • Tuesday morning bonus drops came hours later than normal
  • When they did come, payouts fell from 30x to 18-25x on the best bulk brands
  • In-app deal terms specified that even lower bonuses will be coming next week
  • They announced through multiple channels that lowered bonus payouts were permanent and that bonuses would be shrinking weekly until the business reached sustainability

Why did Pepper pivot? I think it’s been obvious since last year that these rates were unsustainable and that Pepper was losing money on every transaction (and oh yeah they just told us so), so a change was needed for the company to continue operating.

My most controversial blog post in terms of volume of discussion it produced was that based on how venture funding in big tech works, I guessed there was a 50/50 chance that Pepper would either run out of money or that they’d get new funding in March. I think the latter has probably happened and is exactly why we’re seeing all of these changes, and as a corollary I think that means that it’s probably as safe to use Pepper as most any other startup FinTech at this point. It’s also possible that it pivoted for an entirely unrelated reason, but I haven’t thought of another reason that lines up with the public and private data I have.

Regardless of why Pepper changed though, the fact that it did means that likely:

  • Bulk resale rates will creep back up as old, discounted inventory is sold
  • Floated coins in Pepper are probably safer than they were
  • Pepper will probably have extra runway for new development and enhancements, like maybe launching its AI product that (1) somehow knows your favorite color and shoe size, (2) ????, and (3) profit
  • People holding gift cards bought in the last couple of months can soon sell for big profits
  • Gift card resellers have a new post from a rando on the internet to debate repeatedly, and empirically, approximately 12 of those debaters won’t even bother to skim the article before debating

What’s my action, asked nobody? I hit Pepper coin-zero just last week after gradually drawing down my float, but I no longer feel like I need to be there. When resale rates return and deals are profitable, I’ll be playing the Pepper game like it was Summer 2024. I’m also buying some cards at the current bonus in anticipation of the bonus falling next week, and I expect I’ll be holding those cards for a while. Remember though, just because I’m doing something doesn’t mean you should do it too; in fact often it means you shouldn’t.

Pepper’s Spring form revealed to the world.

I’m allergic to booking airfare for my own travel with third parties as a general rule, but the American Express Business Platinum’s 35% Membership Rewards rebate for points bookings (~1.54 cents per point) on your selected airline, or on any first or business class seat, is valuable enough that I use their third party platform anyway. When you book via third party it’s rather hard, or sometimes impossible, to get an airline to help you when:

  • Schedules change
  • You need to make a non-trivial itinerary change
  • You want to pre-pay for services
  • You want to take advantage of travel waivers
  • You want to play games with frequent flyer numbers

But, it’s possible with many airlines to take advantage of American Express Travel’s rebate and to funnel that booking into a different ticket booked directly with the airline. Today, we’ll focus on how to do it with Alaska:

  1. Book a non-basic economy Alaska flight with AmEx Travel
  2. Wait 48 hours
  3. Contact Alaska, and tell them you’d like to refund to flight credit
  4. Wait 2-3 days for the flight credits to come via email
  5. Apply the flight credits to your Alaska wallet
  6. Book airfare directly with Alaska using your wallet

You’ll end up with the best of both worlds, a regular, first party booking but also a 35% Membership Rewards rebate. Of course, it’s possible that airfare prices change between steps 1 and 6, so factor that risk in as necessary.

Good luck!

Next time: An entirely different type of Alaska Airlines game.

  1. Do this now: Make any Hyatt award bookings today that fit your schedule before the award chart is retooled tomorrow and lots of hotels go up in redemption cost. Most award bookings have great cancelation policies, so even speculative bookings probably make sense.
  2. Turkish Airlines and Hilton have a promotion (registration required) for 1,000 bonus Turkish miles for stays through June 30, provided you set Turkish as your preferred travel partner in your Hilton profile. For new Hilton accounts, you earn 1,000 Turkish miles for each stay, but for existing Hilton accounts can you only earn the bonus once.
  3. The Chase IHG Premier Business card has an increased tiered sign-up bonus:

    – 140,000 points after $4,000 spend in three months
    – 60,000 points after $9,000 spend in six months

    The $99 annual fee is not waived for the first year.
  4. The Barclays Aviator Red Card has an increased sign-up bonus of 70,000 AAdvantage miles after making a single purchase and paying the $95 annual fee.

    The best ongoing use case for this card used to be converting it to an AAdvantage Silver after a year, but because Citi will be the exclusive card issuer in 2026, that ship has probably sailed for new applicants. Instead, the best use beyond the sign-up bonus is probably to get a higher (or initial) credit line at Citi after the takeover.
  5. The Chase Sapphire Preferred (100,000 Ultimate Rewards), United Explorer (80,000 MileagePlus miles), and United Business (150,000 MileagePlus miles) cards’ increased sign-up bonuses are live today.
  6. Staples has fee-free $200 Mastercards through Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  7. Since it’s launch in 2021, I’ve thought the Chase United Quest Card was stupid, but it just keeps getting stupider and I’m convinced the product development team for the card lives in an alternate plane of existence. The annual fee has increased to $350, and there are new stupid credits to, uh, justify (?) the stupid increase:

    – $5 monthly Instacart credit, plus $10 one time Instacart credit
    – $150 in credits at stupid Renowned Hotels and Resorts
    – $8 in monthly rideshare credits, except in December when it’s $12
    – $150 in stupid JSX purchases
    – Small TravelBank credits for your first two rentals with Avis or Budget, but only using the United AWD which has generally inflated prices

    This is probably a good change for exactly three cardholders on the planet, and bravo to you if you’re one of them.

An amusement park in the United Quest Card team’s alternate plane of existence.