The Chase Aeroplan Mastercard relaunched with a new structure and 75,000+40,000 mile sign-up bonus, and they’ve removed 3x grocery:
– $195 annual fee is not waived the first year – 2x dining, grocery, and gas, 1x elsewhere – 75,000 Aeroplan miles after $4,000 spend in three months – 40,000 Aeroplan miles after $20,000 spend in one year – $50 semi-annual Air Canada statement credits – 15% discount on some Air Canada metal redemptions – Low level 25k Aeroplan status for holding the card
– $95 annual fee is not waived the first year – 4x travel, 3x dining, 1x elsewhere – Points are worth 1 cent each, no uplift – $100 airline credit – Yet another global entry or pre-check credit
NFCU doesn’t love cycling, so hope for a big credit line.
The American Express Hilton cards have increased sign-up bonuses:
– Aspire: 200,000 Honors points after $6,000 spend in six months – Surpass: 130,000 Honors points and a free night certificate after $3,000 spend in six months – Honors: 70,000 Honors points and a free night certificate after $2,000 spend in six months – Business: 150,000 Honors points and a free night certificate after $8,000 spend in six months
These are all available via referrals, please use another player’s referral or a churner’s referral rather than applying through a blog or head-on.
The Marriott Bonvoy Business American Express has an increased sign-up bonus of 100,000 Bonvoy points and a 50,000 point free-night certificate after $8,000 spend in six months. The card’s $125 annual fee is not waived for the first year.
This is available via referrals. The sign-up bonus is definitely worth the $125 annual fee with no credit reporting, but that doesn’t mean it’s a super strong bonus thanks to the terrible value of Bonvoy points.
Stop & Shop, Giant, and Martins stores have 8x points earning on Zift gift cards through Thursday, limit $1,500-$2,000 per week. Meanwhile Giant Food has 2x earning on Mastercard gift cards with seemingly no cap? Finally Giant Food gets some love I guess.
These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
The latest quick-hit Kroger status: (1) Best Buy still is intrusive, (2) working when Kroger isn’t is better, (3) fuel points command a premium in high-cost oil markets, (4) sometimes new stock is great, (5) sometimes old stock is great, (6) making things harder to correlate makes things hard to correlate, and (7) dining doesn’t always mean what you probably think it does.
And the latest quick-hit Giftcards.com status: (1) Portals don’t usually work with promo codes that aren’t on their site, (2) lots of these promo codes found their way to portals, (3) Mastercards are broken up with portals again, and (4) old limits are no longer accurate, things have gotten better.
Safeway’s 5x on Zift cards isn’t working well this week; many cards are earning 0x or 2x despite the promotion, and Safeway customer support has been reluctant to help. It’s probably best to skip this one unless you’re a masochist, in which case, have at it.
Happy Thursday!
Next time on information density theater: Quick analysis of Zift conversion methods.
This offer is widely available via referrals too, so use another churner’s referral and make their day. If you refer someone else to the card, apologize for the stupid Capital One Travel portal in advance.
And I know you know what this means: it’s time for the next callout on Breeze Route Bingo™. Today’s route is VRB-PVU (Vero Beach, FL and Provo, UT)! If you got a bingo, reach out for validation and your prize.
Happy Wednesday friends!
The Breeze route planner’s previous delivery job was … weird.
As churners scale, inevitably a FinTech, bank, quasi-casino gaming site, or Jamie Dimon (impersonator?) will call and ask exactly what you’re doing with their product and why you’re behaving the way you are.
When this happens, things usually go a lot better if you have a plausible answer already on-deck. A few suggestions:
The Chase British Airways, Iberia, and Aer Lingus credit cards have heightened bonuses for 90,000 Avios after $5,000 spend in three months, and their $95 annual fee is not waived for the first year. Each card has different ongoing benefits after the sign-up bonus so if you’re going to hold the card, it’s worth investigating each. Generally the favorite is the British Airways flavor for its three award ticket fee reimbursements and companion ticket available after $30,000 spend.
Side note: What is British Airways flavor? Don’t ask.
– 50,000 points after $3,000 spend by January 31, 2027 – $95 annual fee, not waived the first year – 3x points on travel and transit – 2x points everywhere else – Points worth 1.0 cents each for travel, or 0.7 cents for a statement credit – Points can be pooled with other USAA cards
With the right plays and payments there’s probably room for another 2x Visa card in lots of manufactured spending wallets, but my compel-o-meter measurement gives this card a solid 5.5 out of 10.
Stop & Shop, Giant, and Martins stores have 2x points earning on Mastercard gift cards through Wednesday, limit $1,500-$2,000 per week. Meanwhile Giant Food has 8x earning on Zift cards which, if you’ve done anything recently with Zift cards, frankly feels like a punk rather than a perk to its customers.
A few weeks ago in a drunken rage (reportedly), we talked about a series on risk in manufactured spend, because apparently sending $173,000 worth of gift cards to a guy named “Rob” that you met on Telegram deserves slightly more analysis than “he seems cool and stuff”.
Enter counterparty risk: the possibility that the person, company, or robotic-AI-cow on the other side of your transaction doesn’t do what they’re supposed to do. In manufactured spend that can mean:
A buyer doesn’t pay in part, or in full
A merchandise reseller “never received” your inventory
A liquidation partner’s accounts are frozen
Someone who paid you with a credit card disputes a transaction after
A company freezes withdrawals
Rob moves to Argentina, which I hear is popular right now
Each of these actually happens in the real world, though fortunately are somewhat rare. Need to beat a dead horse though? See The Plastic Merchant.
Reputation
The manufactured spend community has a surprisingly effective decentralized credit-rating system and we gave it a super unique, fancy name: reputation.
When people you trust have successfully exchanged millions of dollars with someone else (let’s call them a counterparty), that’s what we call in the business “useful information”. It’s certainly better than dealing with DefinitelyLegitBuyer420 whose references consist of his Canadian girlfriend and another Telegram account that was created Tuesday.
Unfortunately though, reputation tells you about past behavior, not future solvency. A reseller that successfully paid you $100,000 last month may still be unable to pay you $100,000 next month. Businesses fail, bank accounts get frozen, employees steal, payment processors shut accounts, fraud happens, and occasionally otherwise honest people decide that your money would look better in their couch.
I guess tl;dr: Reputation reduces counterparty risk, but reputable parties still can go pear shaped.
Exposure
Setting aside reputation, let’s take a hard body stance and reframe counterparty risk directly as exposure: Suppose that you’ve got a scheme with a broker where you’re paid back two Fridays after the broker receives your goods. Every week, you send the broker $20,000 in merchandise, and every two Fridays later, you get that back.
After seeing this work well for months, you decide to triple your volume, and a couple of weeks later, the broker delays payment from Friday until Monday because reasons. Well, congratulations, your 2*$20,000 counterparty risk quietly became 3*$20,000, and if you keep going, maybe it becomes 4*$20,000.
At that point, you need to decide, “Am I comfortable with making a bigger unsecured six-figure loan to Steve from discord?” Because that’s exactly what’s actually happening. This also leads to the now common refrain from whales in manufactured spend.
“Never float more than you can afford to lose.”
Controlling Risk
Ok, so what do we do about it? Simple friends, we manage it:
Commit to an exposure limit: Decide how much money you’re willing to have outstanding with a counterparty, and reevaluate that periodically, knowing that you could lose it all
Watch settlement time: A buyer paying reliably every two days is a different risk from the same buyer paying every two weeks, Faster settlement means less exposure over time, and speed bumps appear more quickly
Scale slowly: A successful $2,000 transaction proves that someone can successfully complete … a $2,000 transaction. It doesn’t prove that they can successfully complete a $200,000 transaction #themoreyouknow
Look for speed bumps and react: Tuesday payments become Wednesday payments, then Friday payments, then bank issues, then supposed hospital stays, then something about being part of the next mission around the moon. Signs usually exist, watch for them
KYC (sorry): A real name, business entity, address, phone number, mutual contacts, and some idea of how the operation actually works are all more useful than a Telegram avatar of a Lamborghini with a beer can in the driver’s seat
Finally, note that good counterparties generally communicate when something goes sideways. “ACH got held, here’s what happened, here’s the documentation, and here’s when I expect it to clear” is very different from silence followed by “sorry bro been busy”.
tl;dr
Counterparty risk can be managed, but let’s repeat the most important point because it’s easy to forget when the money is flowing:
“Never float more than you can afford to lose.”
Happy Thursday!
On the other hand, maybe Rob had a totally valid reason to go to Argentina on short notice, looks legit.
