Month: March 2021

There are a few shopping portal bonuses with easy payouts for March:

For AA, buy a $100 gift card from GiftCards.com for 6x and credit card spend and skip the extra $200 at a lower multiplier unless you’re buying something anyway through the AA portal (buyer’s clubs, personal use, gifts, etc.). My personal preference at GiftCards.com is the Virtual Mastercard because you don’t pay shipping and they liquidate easy, but if you don’t currently have a way to liquidate those, you can either load it onto your Amazon balance or buy the physical variant.

For the other two, I’m going to be unloading my American Express Platinum’s Home Depot $50 credits twice and buy some cleaning supplies for in-store pickup, once with each toolbar. Make sure you uninstall the toolbars after you buy so it doesn’t mess with future portal earnings.

Is this a lot of work for a small reward? I’m having a hard time deciding. It really doesn’t take long: possibly 5 minutes for the AA purchase and liquidation, and there’s a Home Depot almost literally in my back-yard. I also still need to offload the $50*2 Home Depot AmEx Credits too, but I’m on the fence as to whether the rewards are worth it. I miss when GiftCards.com sold $500 Visas and Mastercards, it was a no-brainer then.

On a whim I searched for “home depot backyard”. I’m not sure what I was expecting exactly, but it wasn’t this.

Office Depot OfficeMax (side note: worst business name yet) is offering $15 off of $300 or more in Visa Gift Cards, limit one per transaction. The deal lasts through Saturday March 13. Buy two $200 cards to get the biggest bang for your buck. Make sure you use a 5x card like the Ink Cash or an AmEx Business Platinum with the +4x office supplies offer attached. Also, make sure your card is linked to Dosh too; it’s not supposed to pay out on gift card purchases but it works anyway like flim-flam strawberry jam.

Liquidation? That’s slightly trickier with these because they’re issued by BlackHawk Network (BHN/Metabank). There are still a few liquidation routes from home available, or you’ll have luck at many grocery stores, or there are instances where these work at Walmart. Experiment some and don’t limit your Walmart game to money orders.

MS Hint: Remember how Visa is not the same as Mastercard? Well, not all Visas are alike either.

Flim-flam strawberry jam (bought with the proceeds of free ODOM cash).

News alert for the weekend: Visa and Mastercard aren’t the same thing.

Ok, yes, this is obvious, but please keep it in mind while you’re out in the trenches: Just because a technique fails with a Visa doesn’t automatically mean it’ll fail with a Mastercard. Seriously, many fall into the trap of never trying a Mastercard after a Visa doesn’t work. The difference in behavior is true of payment processors, merchant coding, cash advances, and debit card processors to name a few. It’s also true when dealing with both prepaid cards and with credit cards.

Another hint: Mastercard debit cards open more doors than Visa debit cards unless you’re at Walmart money centers.

Michelle from 'Full House' making an exasperated face with the caption 'Duh!'
Gee, thanks MilesEarnAndBurn.com!

There’s a fair amount of airline related news that’s happened in the last 24 hours:

1. United is offering 25% off of Economy Plus upgrade fees with the code LEGROOM25 for travel through April 11. You must book by March 7. If you asked me (which I know you didn’t), it’s not worth paying for the upgrade unless it’s less than $10 or your flight is longer than 4 hours.

2. Southwest has a decent fare sale that ends today. Fares start at $29. If you book for late April through early June, you’ll probably be able to change it in a week when the Southwest “switch to any other flight between the same two cities” trick comes back. Update: The trick is back again, at least for portions of April. You may be able to use the fare sale to book the cheapest fare and switch to Memorial Day Weekend.

3. Delta Air Lines is now showing certificate upgrade availability on its booking pages when you’re logged in and if you have a certificate in your account. They’ve also changed their T&Cs so that you can use upgrade certificates on award travel. That potentially makes Global Upgrade Certificates (GUCs) ridiculously valuable for Diamond members and their close friends.

They’re also extending GUCs and RUCs (Regional Upgrade Certificates) that have recently expired or will expire soon through December 31, 2021. I may actually be able to use those GUCs I selected for 2020 that expired earlier this year. Huzzah!

Pictured: Airplane news.

1. One of the Miles Earn and Burn Unsung Heroes has a great offer floating around: The Bank of America Business Cash Rewards MasterCard has a $750 cash back after $5,000 in spend, no annual fee offer. It’s not just worth the sign up bonus, the card is a great ongoing one too. As a reminder, it ears 3% on several methods of online MS shenanigans and you can bump that to 5.25% back by parking some cash, brokerage accounts, or retirement accounts at BoA.

Another bonus hint: BoA Business credit card applications credit inquiries are combined when you apply for multiple on the same day. If you’re instantly approved, maybe lob in another BoA business app too. Just don’t go the same card. An excellent choice is this Alaska Business Card with 40,000 miles and $200 cash back after spending $2,000.

2. Delta sent me an offer for 2,500 Skymiles for changing an already booked flight via the website or mobile app. Thanks Delta, I’d love to do that, but literally every single itinerary I’ve booked says I need to contact Reservations to make the change. Thanks.

Hopefully, you’ll have more luck than I do. The T&C language says that you have to be targeted to get the bonus, but there are reports that it will work for anyone as long as your ticket was booked prior to March 2, 2021.

They left off the real reason I can’t change: Delta IT sucks.

Starting tomorrow, a bunch of Marriott hotels are going up in point cost because reasons. Speculatively book any potential upcoming hotel stays today to avoid further Marriott suckitude.

While we’re chatting about Marriott, let me just add that if you’re big in the Bonvoy program, maybe take stock and see if another less punitive hotel loyalty program would work for you. The program is awful, but I do get why some stick with it: Inertia is hard to overcome, Marriott has a (usually low end) property everywhere, and you like what you know, but trust me — the Lubbock, TX Courtyard is not the peak of travel. And it certainly shouldn’t be in the same league as a 5,000 point Hyatt Place.

You can do better, and you can change your loyalty right now. No snark, just an honest plea to make sure you’re where you want to be and that you’re sure that what you’re doing makes sense for you.

Actual happy Marriott elite on Trip Advisor.

A few follow up items:

1. The SoFi matched round-ups deal is back in March. A quick recap: You turn on round-ups in the mobile app, create a “vault”, then when you spend with the SoFi debit card the charge is rounded up to the nearest dollar and the difference is placed in your vault. SoFi will match those round-ups up to a total of $25 matched. Can you guess what I’m going to say next? Set up debbit to make 28 payments to XFinity of $0.10 in March. Of course, you can make payments with debbit to other stores and providers too if you don’t have XFinity.

Side note: It took me longer to type the above paragraph than to update my debbit config for $25. I wish I could always make $25 for 30 seconds of work; that’d be $3,000 per hour.

2. Reader Katie discovered that when you’re activating Ting burner SIMs, you won’t see port-out information on the account unless you set a password. Ting’s IT must be based on Citi’s IT; fortunately for them they probably don’t have $500 million to lose accidentally like Citi.

3. Another round of Amazon discounts is available for targeted Ultimate Rewards cards. Check for the offer here after ensuring that your Amazon account has at least one Ultimate Rewards earning credit card saved in your profile. As per usual, buy a non-Amazon gift card for resale and use a single point.

4. The promo code FLASH2020 is still going strong for buying fee free Vanilla Visa Gift Cards. These gift cards aren’t as widely discussed online as BlackHawk, MetaBank, or US Bank gift cards, so don’t treat them as behaving the same. Try some things with those Vanillas even if they don’t work with other gift cards!

The Citi wire transfer system user interface, soon to be adopted by Ting Mobile.