Month: December 2021

Do this now: Register for Hyatt’s Q1 2022 Bonus Promotion (2,022 bonus points per night for everyone and another 1,000 per stay if you’re a credit card holder and stay in certain cities for stays between January 15 and April 20).

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s jump into todays points:

1. American Express sent me a link for 7,500 SkyMiles for adding an authorized user to personal Delta Platinum card and spending $500 on the user’s card in six months. If you have a Delta Platinum card, try your luck here.

2. Reader Pavel let me know that Turkish airlines is holding a 30% off sale on both business class and economy tickets booked by the end of the year for travel from now through May 15, 2022. This is a great deal, but there are a few gotchas:

  • Turkish awards can be difficult to book, especially for the first time on a frequent flyer account
  • The award sale is only valid on Turkish metal, so no United or other Star Alliance flights can be tacked on
  • Mixed cabin awards mostly aren’t allowed

Booking tips can be found in Frequent Miler’s Turkish guide.

3. Reader Pavish shared that his local Sam’s Club is now selling $50-$500 variable Vanilla Visa and Mastercard gift cards. There are reports of the same thing in other locations too, so it could be worth checking your local club. The activation fee on these is low at $4.88, and unlike Metabanks, Vanilla cards work well in almost all liquidation channels. My first question is: Can I use a Walmart or Sam’s Club gift card to purchase these? I honestly don’t know the answer, but it’s worth exploring.

Good luck out there.

Thursday Triple, if Thursday was a water polo player.

The airlines (air lines) took over today’s post:

1. Delta Air Lines has an award sale running for Delta One (business class) seats between the US and multiple European and northern Africa cities for tickets booked today or tomorrow. So far, it seems that your best results will be secondary SkyTeam European cities (e.x., forget LHR, AMS, and CDG as destinations, but connecting in those cities is great). I’m seeing discounts running January through March, but check April too — Delta’s award sales are usually further reaching than advertised.

Of course, Virgin Atlantic Miles can still be a better deal for many routes, so search both places unless you’re trying to specifically burn through your SkyMiles collection, or because you might want to book with SkyMiles for the sake of earning status in 2022. No judgement for MQM and MQD seekers, I get you.

2. Southwest Airlines is likely extending their bookings schedule this morning for flights through June 6th. To play the long game with this one for getting a discount for a flight you want to take:

  • Figure out where and when you want to go
  • Find the cheapest flight ± two weeks to and from your desired date to your desired city
  • Book the cheapest flight
  • Wait for the inevitable Southwest adjustment to your flight schedules
  • Switch to the flights you actually want for no additional cash or points

So, which is it? Airlines (Southwest) or air lines (like Delta)?

Airlines versus air lines as plotted by science.

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.

Hopefully you got in on the Target 10% back on gift cards over the weekend. So far spot rates on Target cards have held surprisingly well during this iteration. I didn’t want to spend a bunch of time at a Target so I maxed out my Discover 5% cash back and left — I probably should have tried harder. Anyway, here are a few things to look at for Monday:

1. US Bank sent me a mailer for a $500 sign-up bonus after spending $4,500 in 150 days on their Triple Cash Rewards no-annual fee business credit card, and it turns out the offer is publicly available without a mailer code (affiliate-free link as always). It’s a great sign-up bonus for a card that won’t show up on your credit report and won’t charge an annual-fee, and the card earns 3% at office supply stores and gas stations (limit $200 per transaction on gas); if you’re locked out of Chase Ink cads or past your office supply 5x capacity it could be a nice card to keep in your wallet, otherwise it’s basically a sock drawer card after the sign-up bonus. A few things to note:

  • US Bank combines hard pulls in a single day, so apply for multiple cards at once
  • Historically you can get multiple business cards in the same day with multiple EINs
  • Freeze your SageStream and ARS reports before applying for better approval odds
  • US Bank Visa cards work in many unexpected places where other credit cards don’t, always probe with them

I would have tested getting multiple cards in the same day with different EINs, but on my first attempt the application went pending, so I didn’t think that applying for more was going to help anything. I currently have three US Bank credit cards with ridiculously large credit lines in my portfolio so maybe I should have done something about that first.

2. Meijer is running a promotion for a $10 Meijer gift card free with every $100 Apple gift card purchase, but you do have to clip the coupon on each of your Meijer accounts first. Assuming you were going to buy groceries anyway, this is a profitable deal with current Apple $100 gift card resale rates hovering at around 91%.

3. Friday’s Lowe’s deal for $10 back as a Lowes gift card on $200 in Visa gift cards needs two follow-up items:

Good luck out there dodging holiday shoppers during your MS escapades.

Me (player) dodging holiday shoppers (volleyball) at Target.

Thanks to everyone for your questions and comments over the week, it seems like you’ve had a ton of recent successes and I’m always glad to hear about them (and of course I appreciate hearing about the “less optimal” situations too).

There are a few deals to ride into the weekend:

1. It turns out that in addition to the existing methods for extending the expiration of FlyingBlue miles there’s a new way: Have miles that expire in the middle of a pandemic and then wait. FlyingBlue announced yesterday that any miles expiring before December 31, 2022 are now extended through that date.

2. In August, Chase had a preregistration open for the Aeroplan credit card and offered 10,000 if you joined the pre-registration list. Now, Chase is sending links for signing-up for the new credit card and claiming those 10,000 points. Check your inbox (mine hadn’t arrived as of this writing or I’d see if there was a link I could share).

MEAB mini-review of the Aeroplan card? The sign-up bonus will be hard to use effectively, but 3x uncapped at grocery is great. That said, my Citi Premier also gives uncapped 3x at grocery and lets me transfer to Avianca Lifemiles or Turkish Airlines for the same general award availability as Aeroplan with competitive or better flight prices. So, hard pass. I’d rather just churn a few Inks.

3. Now that the “4-for-us” promotion has ended, American Express has refreshed its referral bonus offers and there are reports of seeing referral bonuses of up to 50,000 Membership Rewards points.

4. Remember the Rakuten in-store card-linked program? Well, Staples is ready to make that one exciting: They’re having another fee-free $200 Mastercard gift card sale (limit 5) which should stack nicely with 2.5% cash back. If you’re going to scale this deal, I’d throw in a few pens and a bag of candy or something to try and avoid drawing Rakuten’s anger.

5. The BestBuy gift card market has been steadily improving since Cyber Monday, I’m seeing spot prices at or above 97% again, and bulk card inventories at aggregators and buyers are slowly shrinking.

6. Lowe’s has its promotion for a free $10 Lowe’s gift card when purchasing a $200 Visa gift card running through Wednesday, December 8. This can be rather lucrative if you have a good liquidation channel for the Visas, and the $10 gift card should sell for $8.00 – $8.50. Hint: Buy the “Everywhere” variety of cards for lower fees and better liquidation options. I’ll be out running this one. (Thanks to DoC)

Update: Reader Avi reminded me to mention that your cards should all be linked to JetBlue’s TrueBlue Shopping to earn 3x at Lowes, and this does work when buying gift cards.

7. Target is back with 10% off of gift cards, up to $500 per card for Saturday and Sunday. It took until February for the market to recover from this sale last year, but I think it’ll recover more quickly this round. To scale the deal go in-store with multiple Target circle accounts, but keep it to no more than $1,500 total per credit card. Spot prices are currently at 90-92%.

Happy weekend!

An example of a “less optimal” situation.

1. American Express’s 10 charge card limit and 5 credit card limit both seem to have changed. Justin O shared that he was approved for a 6th charge card late Tuesday night, and after his data-point many others followed confirming that the limits aren’t currently being enforced or have changed. I lobbed in an application for the Blue Business Plus credit card using a referral link from P2’s account and was instantly approved which puts me at 11 charge cards and 6 credit cards.

Maybe American Express was trying to copy Chase’s loosening of its 5/24 rules? Either way I’m happy.

2. PenFed is sending holiday spending bonus offers via email. My offer was for $50 back on $500 spend on my PenFed card. Other offers include $15 back on three contactless purchases, a $15 streaming credit, and $20 back on $20 or more in wireless spend.

3. Hertz is letting current President’s Circle members gift President’s Circle status to anyone else before December 15, with the status valid through June 30, 2022. You can gift status at this link.

4. American Express has new transfer bonuses for December:

  • 30% to Virgin Atlantic FlyingClub
    • Use for ANA round-trip business class (90,000 miles) or first class (110,000 miles) awards to Japan
    • Use for Delta one-way Business class non-stop awards to or from Europe (50,000 – 65,000 miles)
  • 20% to Singapore KrisFlyer
    • Use for economy Alaska flights to or from Hawaii (12,000 – 17,500 miles)
    • Use for business class Star Alliance flights to the middle east (76,500 miles)

5. Vinh has some great advice and it’s worth repeating his conclusion: “The lesson learned is if you see a new VGC on the rack, go test it out.”

Happy Thursday!

Leaked image of American Express’s new card approval standards.

Introduction

On Monday of last week I was bright-eyed for a blow-out Black Friday weekend for manufactured spend, and unfortunately that was a bit of misplaced optimism on my part. Big box retailers faced with supply chain issues didn’t want to discount things that are going to take months to restock and thus didn’t have a major incentive to discount hot items.

Are you ready for Miles Earn and Burn “Economics 1010”? I’m not sure I’m ready to deliver it, but here we go anyway — let’s discuss this weekend’s macro economic picture to start us off, and then we’ll look at the effects on our game.

Macro

The major causes for this year’s lackluster MS opportunities seem to be:

Impact on Us

Ok, so what happened that’s directly related to us?

  • BestBuy gift cards
    • Bulk BestBuy gift card buyers stocked up on their gift card reserves in the week leading up to the sale in anticipation of the weekend’s deals
    • BestBuy effectively blocked buying bots for their few hot items from Thursday – Monday (but then seems to have ceased those measures yesterday); this meant it was much harder to spend existing gift card supply
    • The bulk gift card resale market became saturated, so much so that one aggregator reportedly had a backlog of $7M in gift cards over the weekend
    • Spot rates for $500 BestBuy gift cards dropped to 96% or lower, and most regular gift card buyers stopped buying
  • Other bulk gift cards
    • The BestBuy gift card debacle pushed serial MSers into Apple, Marshalls, Nike, and Home Depot gift cards
    • Buyer capacity for Apple, Marshalls, Nike, and Home Depot dried up with a new glut of supply normally spent on BestBuy
  • Non-bulk gift cards
    • Second tier gift cards (Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, Gap, etc) had great deal flow with many above-cost opportunities
    • Third tier gift cards (Subway, Red Robin, Dominos, etc) had great deal flow too with many at-cost deals
  • Buyer’s groups
    • The deal flow across second tier retailers was lower than a typical Black Friday weekend, though higher than a typical week
    • Big-ticket item deals (> $400 or so) were more scarce than years past
  • Resale groups
    • Many hot items were unavailable for purchase due to supply issues
    • Big-ticket item deals (> $400 or so) were more scarce over the weekend than even a typical week in 2021
  • Kroger rewards
    • Kroger’s 4x promotion hit a road-block on Sunday continuing into late Monday: 4x rewards weren’t posting
      (incidentally, I believe that this happened because Kroger is trying to fix a loophole in its rewards program to improve profitability, and it seemed to work only to a small extent)
    • Without grocery rewards at a boosted, bulk gift card purchases at Kroger ground to a screeching halt
  • Travel sales
    • There weren’t any major sales from the US carriers beyond what comes every month or two throughout the year. Frankly, it’s a sad state of affairs when the best deal was $50 off of a one-way flight with JetBlue
    • Marriott had 25% off of certain hotel points redemptions, but the list of asterisks associated with that deal was longer than the number of hotels participating (or at least close)

In summary, the weekend was the lamest Black Friday weekend in recent memory.

How I Fared

I still had a great weekend despite everything — that’s because opportunities that I’ve developed over the year continue to work, and even though the weekend wasn’t as great as past iterations there were still plenty of deals to keep me busy. In the end, I hit approximately $60,000 in manufactured spend over the course of about seven hours of focus scattered over a few days, with the rest of the time being spent with my loved ones. I consider that to be a huge success.

I hope you hit your MS goals, or at least struck a nice-balance between MS and time with those you care about. Happy MSing going into the holiday season! There’s still plenty of opportunity.

A BestBuy sales associate helps the mob of Black Friday weekend customers customer.