Search Results for: 190,000

Often the weekend recap on Monday is quieter, but that’s definitely not the case today.

  1. It was only a few short days ago that I said I would speculatively transfer Membership Rewards to Etihad Guest if I was targeted. Capital One obviously heard me and said “let me help you out MEAB” with a tiered transfer bonus:

    – Transfer 1,000 – 10,000 miles: 20% bonus
    – Transfer 11,000 – 50,000 miles: 30% bonus
    – Transfer 51,000 or more miles: 40% bonus

    The bonus is per transaction and not cumulative, and runs through the end of the month. (Thanks to justmeha)
  2. The Motley Fool again has an increased 7,400 AA miles for $99+ spent through the AAdvantage eShopping portal. We care this time because like our hopes and aspirations, the AA loyalty points spending calendar reset on March 1.
  3. The Citi AA Platinum Select personal card has an increased 75,000 AA mileage bonus after $3,500 spend in four months, and the annual fee is waived for the first year. The sign-up bonus doesn’t earn loyalty points, but all spend on the card does.
  4. On Wednesday, MEAB briefly hinted about American Express shutdowns. The total number of shutdowns was small, there’s plenty we still don’t know, the dust still hasn’t settled, and we don’t know if it’s done. Even so, we do know a few things that are easily summarized as:

    – Some shutdowns involved a particular type of spend gaming
    – Some shutdowns involved a few rather heavy hitters that weren’t doing that gaming

    Most of the rampant speculation on public facing sites that I’ve seen is either partially or totally refuted by the datapoints that we do have, so I guess, just don’t believe everything you read on the internet, even if you believe you have 99 reasons to do so.
  5. Office Depot/OfficeMax stores have a promotion for $15 off of $300 or more in Mastercard gift cards running through Saturday, limit ten. (Thanks to DoC)
  6. The American Express Hilton Aspire card has an increased sign-up bonus of 175,000 points and a free night certificate after $6,000 in spend in six months. This offer is also available by referral, so make sure to grab one from P2 or a friend and make their day. Yes, the other Hilton personal cards also have an increased bonus, but without the free-night certificate they’re a big yawn.
  7. The Bank of America AirFrance KLM FlyingBlue Mastercard has a heightened sign-up bonus of 70,000 bonus points, $100 statement credit, and 100 XP after $3,000 spend in 90 days. The offer is presented during the checkout flow when you make a dummy booking on the US AirFrance or KLM website, and the $89 annual fee is not waived for the first year. (Thanks to Don)
  8. Some Wyndham news:

    – The business card has a new 100,000 point sign-up bonus after $15,000 spend in one year, and this one is a keeper for gas station spend
    – The personal earner plus card also has a 100,000 point sign-up bonus after $2,000 spend in six months, and is probably only worth keeping for the first year
    – Vacasa redemptions will have a new pricing structure at 15,000 points or 30,000 points per night per bedroom starting on March 26, and the cash price determines the point price ($250 / bedroom / night or less is 15,000 points, $500 / bedroom / night or less is 30,000 points)
  9. There’s a 250,000 Membership Rewards American Express Business Platinum link with lifetime language available through the AmEx random number generator, and it seems extra pop-upie too. To see it, try some combination of:

    – Connecting to a VPN in Dallas or Denver
    – Trying incognito mode
    – Searching for “American Express Business Platinum” in various search engines
    – Waiting for a 190,000 points offer to expire and automatically reload

    The bonus requires $15,000 spend in three months.

Phew!

Our hopes and aspirations on March 1, 2024.

  1. Rakuten in-store offers has a card linked offer for 1% cash back or 1x Membership Rewards at several grocery chains:

    – Stop & Shop stores
    – Food Lion stores

    You’ve got to re-add the offer to your account an hour after each use to keep earning. No end date is specified, but the offer sticks around for 75 days after it’s added to your account.
  2. Do this now (if you hold a United credit card): Check for targeted spending bonuses for the months of miles promotion. (Thanks to hic2482w)
  3. The American Express Business Platinum has a local maxima 200,000 Membership Rewards targeted bonus now after $15,000 in spend in three months, up from the previous recent high of 190,000 Membership Rewards. As usual with American Express, you may need to try lots of things to see it:

    – Try mobile and desktop web browsers
    – Try connecting to VPNs in various regions of the country, like Texas, Colorado, and SoCal
    – Try pulling up applications after applying through search engines like Bing, Google, and Yandex
    – Try different web browsers, especially FireFox and Safari

  4. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 or more in Mastercard gift card purchases in-store through Saturday. Usually buying these in multiples during a single transaction offers a better overall discount too.

    These are Pathward gift cards which often have velocity limits in popular in-person liquidation channels, so have a plan in place before you go ham, (or even ham salad).

Going ham salad is as gross as you’d think it would be.

Warning: There’s a lot of math in today’s post, but don’t worry, it’s the easy kind that doesn’t cause my P2 to break out in hives.

  1. PenFed has a $750 new savings account bonus for depositing $50,000 by the end of the year and holding it through April 30, 2024. The account earns 3% APR, and the bonus is effectively another 6% 4.5 APR. Last I checked, 3%+6% 4.5 = a good savings rate for cash. (Thanks to DoC, and Anthony)
  2. The American Express Business Platinum card has heightened bonuses via referral, now up to 25,000 Membership Rewards for the referrer and 150,000 Membership Rewards for the referred.

    Obviously 150,000+25,000 is less than the current sporadic offer of 190,000 Membership Rewards, but the referral offer is much less likely to give a pop-up. (Thanks to Gasongasoff)
  3. Capital One Shopping has a targeted $50 or $75 referral bonus for both the referrer and referee available, for a total of $100 or $150 in bonuses. A couple of reminders:

    – You don’t have to have a Capital One account to use Capital One Shopping
    – After approximately $1,000 cash back you should switch to a new account

    So, I guess connect the dots on this one.
  4. Based on news headlines in the space, affiliate credit card bloggers evidently have new access to a new Alaska Airlines Visa 60,000 mile sign-up bonus. As a friendly reminder, VPN into Southern California and use a link that has an embedded Google referral for a 70,000 mile offer if you’re going for the card, and probably go for some business cards at the same time too.
  5. Citi has a new targeted offer by email for a $30 statement credit with $350 or more in hotel spend through December 20. Check your inbox for the subject: “[NAME], Activate your offer today and start earning now!”
  6. Qatar Avios has a 25% bonus for incoming bank point transfers through November 30. For most of us, bank points with Qatar as a transfer partner means Citi or American Express.

    Typically these bonuses post in a week, but the T&C gives them 45 days of wiggle room.

Happy Tuesday!

Ok, this one might actually be hive inducing, sorry.

  1. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card has mid-month offers for online spend by December 14. Reported offers, and this stacks with other offers sent at the beginning of the month for spend at utilities:

    – $40 off of $600 in spend
    – $50 off of $750 in spend
    – $80 off of $800 in spend
    – 200,000 Shop Your Way Points for $600 in spend
    – 7,500 ThankYou Points for $750 in spend
    – 12,000 ThankYou Points ofr $800 in spend

    (Thanks to irieriley, David 99, Greyo, Dave 37, Fish, Bryan G, and Charlie)
  2. Chase Ultimate Rewards has a 25% transfer bonus to JetBlue through January 20, 2024, which for the right redemptions beats booking with a Sapphire Reserve through the Chase travel portal at a fixed 1.5 cents per point, but make sure to run the numbers first.

    Side note: if you’re paying close attention to the arbitrage opportunity for the JetBlue/Spirit anti-trust case and want to collaborate, please reach out to me.
  3. The American Express Business Platinum card has a targeted 190,000 Membership Rewards bonus link that’s been floating around for a few weeks and various ways to pull up that version of the offerhave come and gone and have had limited success. There seems to be a new repeatable way to pull it up: Open the application page from Dallas, TX. Geographic targeting has been more prominent over the last year, and it may be worth getting a VPN with multiple city endpoints as part of your churning toolkit.
  4. American Express offers has a targeted promotion for 17,500 Membership Rewards after $700 or more in spend at Princess Cruise Lines through February 15, 2024. Lately it seems like we might need to say ‘gamers gonna cruise’ instead of ‘gamers gonna game’? (Thanks to Rich)
  5. The Capital One Spark Cash Plus Select business card, which probably is missing at least three words in its title because clearly the marketing team is slacking, has a $750 sign-up bonus with $6,000 spend in three months. The card has no annual fee, but earns only 1.5% cash back on spend, which I guess means those three missing words should be “sock drawer bound”.

The NordVPN Dallas, TX datacenter.

By accident this is the fourth Quad in a row. Inception? Irony? Incompetence? I’m not sure.

  1. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards Mastercard, an Unsung Hero, has started sending its next round of targeted offers. As of this writing we’ve seen:

    – 5% back on all spend up to $100 back per month for September, October, November and December (a total of $400 back)
    – $60 back after four $75 or larger purchases per month for September, October, and November (a total of $180 back)

    I expect that we’ll see a few other variants over the weekend too. (Thanks to BB_Pcola and Jacob M)
  2. DDG reports that the American Express Business Platinum 190,000 Membership Rewards sign up bonus after $15,000 in spend in three months is available by phone, and also includes a bonus 10,000 Membership Rewards for adding an employee card and spending $1,000 in the same timeframe.

    To check, dial American Express’s Small Business team at (855) 531-3491 and ask about different offers available, and note that they may not give you the best offer on the first try so keep asking if there are other offers available until you’ve exhausted the list.
  3. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion running over Labor Day weekend on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercards.

    Secondary markets continue to be running overdrive partially due to the time of year, but also partially due to new end-users entering the market. If you’re working with one, make sure they’re assuming liability for closed accounts within a business day.
  4. Safeway, Albertsons, and Vons family Just4U stores have 6x points on Google Play gift cards through Tuesday. The travel angle is that Just4U rewards can be exchanged for Alaska Airlines miles with some trickery.

    The best redemption is 7 rewards for 1,200 MilagePlan miles, which works out to $116.66 in Google Play cards. You can scale this to an extent, but as a friendly reminder of how strange, weird, and purposefully obtuse this program can be, you’re limited to 22 rewards (2,200 Just4U points) converted to 3,500 MileagePlan miles per week.

The Just4U program workflow, illustrated.

We’re going rapid-fire today:

1. There’s a coupon for $10 cash-back off of a $25 purchase at Walgreens in Google Pay. Clip it, link your credit cards to Google Pay in the mobile app, then go to Walgreens and use your linked card. Technically you can buy anything $25 or more to trigger the deal, but the provably correct choices are: (a) $25 worth of Peanut M&Ms, or (b) a $25 Steam gift card for resale. (thanks to DoC)

2. Reportedly, American Express is sending postal mailers for Business Platinum cards in the mail with a sign-up bonus of 190,000 Membership Rewards points. I haven’t heard of anyone receiving these mailers first-hand yet, but I have to assume that one of you has one or will get one shortly. Keep your eyes out!

3. The Citi Custom Cash card has had an in-branch $300 bonus after spending $1,000 for several months, but you can now get that online at Credit Karma of all places. This card is a souped up Chase Freedom or DiscoverIT card, you get 5x on up to $500 spend per month in whichever category you spend those most money on rather than worrying about rotating categories.

I have a Custom Cash card that I converted from an AT&T Access (less) card with a huge credit line. Too bad I can’t reallocate that credit line to another Citi card that I want to spend more than $500 / month on. It’s pure, unadulterated, wasted Citi credit capacity today.

4. Alaska Airlines has a buy-one-get-one (BOGO) plus taxes and fees (PTAF) sale running for bookings made today on travel between January 5th and March 9th using promo code STARBUCKS. It almost didn’t make the cut for this post because:

  • It ends right before Spring Break
  • It excludes travel on:
    • Mondays, Fridays, and Sundays on some routes
    • Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays on some routes
    • Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays on the other routes
    • Sundays through Saturdays on dates between February 18 and February 28

Confused? I think they’re trying to make the BOGO-PTAF deal a BOGO-PTAF-PITA deal.

The “L” in “L Walker” stood for “less” in my case.

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.

The Past

In recent history, American Express had interesting Q4 referral bonuses released in October that stacked with regular year-round referral bonuses:

  • 2020: +3x on all purchases, uncapped
  • 2021: +4x on all purchases on $25,000 in spend
  • 2022: +4x on transit and travel on $20,000 in spend

There’s a definite trend and it’s clearly headed in the wrong direction. Which brings us to now: The current October 2023 Q4 referral bonus is +0x on all spend, uncapped.

That is, American Express seems to have decided it was too generous on the last versions and hasn’t yet released a Q4 promo for referrals, and probably won’t at this point.

The New Hotness

Rather than a referral bonus, American Express’s October 2023 surprise is a new set of offers for adding employee cards by phone to a primary business account. We’ve seen two variants, and both variants have been seen on the Blue Business Plus, the Business Green, the Business Gold, and the Business Platinum:

  • 7,000 Membership Rewards on $4,000 spend in six months per employee card
  • 15,000 Membership Rewards on $4,000 spend in six months per employee card

Each of these is good for up to 99 employee cards, which if maximized turns into 1.485 million Membership Rewards in addition to the base rewards earned for $396,000 in spend.

It’s likely that the Plum card has the offer too, but the Venn diagram intersection of churners and Plum cards is about the same as the Venn diagram of satisfied customers and the Baymont Wyndham in Lubbock: virtually non-existent.

Happy Monday friends!

Say what you will, but at least the Baymont Wyndham offers a choice of room scent.