Month: January 2022

Introduction

Literally no-one: What’s the bane of every manufactured spender’s existence?

MEAB: Great question! It could be: Karen cashiers, broken money order terminals, gift cards that have been tampered with, other customers in line, made up rules, or a dozen other things.

I want talk about a workaround for one of those banes in particular today, credit card fraud alerts.

Going on a Manufactured Spend Trip

The best manufactured spend techniques let you spend large amounts in a single transaction, but these are also the most likely to be flagged as potentially fraudulent by credit card issuers, more so if they are round numbers. In fact, if you have a $2,500 purchase at a grocery store and the bank rhymes with pretty-skank, I’d give you 9 out of 10 odds that you’re going to get a decline on the first swipe and a subsequent fraud alert that takes at least a couple of minutes to sort out.

There’s an easy way around those algorithms though; when banks think you’re on a trip they expect abnormal purchases. So before buying $2,500 worth of “kombucha”, open the bank’s mobile application on your phone and set a travel alert for the state you’re in, even if it’s the same state you’re always in. Afterword, that purchase is likely to sail right through.

Happy weekend friends!

There are at least of four banes of my existence in this image. How many can you spot?

This is absolutely the slowest time of the year for gift card reselling, and 2022 has started out even slower than normal. Kroger is doing its best to change that with a Friday through Sunday 4x fuel points sale, but even that isn’t going to revive the market with meaningful volume given the backlog that aggregators currently have. Here’s what I’m seeing out there, and it’s a bleak January:

Tier 1 Cards

Resale rates (without fuel points) are weak and capacity to buy is currently small:

  • BestBuy: 95.5%
  • Home Depot: 93.5%
  • Apple: 93.5%
  • Nike: 93%
  • Lowe’s: 91%

If you’re really good at fuel points and can use them for yourself, they’re worth $35 per 1,000 which will easily make up for any loss you have when reselling Tier 1 cards. If you’re less good at them, their value is closer to the $15-18 range which can still make these deals worthwhile, provided you find a gift card buyer with capacity of course.

Tier 2 Cards

Tier 2 cards cards like Adidas, Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Gap just aren’t moving right now but I expect that to change by the end of the month. That said, even when these cards start moving it typically only make sense to buy when there a good deal on them, and those deals are likely to be non-existent other than perhaps for MLK weekend, so don’t get your hopes up for any volume.

Tier 3 Cards

Lower tier cards like Domino’s and Bath and Body Works are also at a stand-still, but unlike the tier above, I don’t really expect them to start moving until February and I’m not expecting any major deals on them until then either. So if you got some of these over the holidays, it may be best to order what Domino’s calls a “pizza”, but the rest of the world calls “cheap cheese, red paste, and grease bread”.

How MEAB is Playing It

I’ll be using Kroger’s 4x fuel points sale to offset the loss in selling Tier 1 cards this weekend, but it’s not going to be any sizable volume. Instead I’m focusing on non-gift card reselling techniques to keep the my spend up, and I suggest you do the same.

Good luck out there!

Special thanks to Travel With a Point for noting a grammar error in the original version of this post.

Pizza purchased with your holiday gift card: a bargain rip-off at twice half the price!

1. People that know me well know that I like to mentally explore bad ideas even if I wouldn’t do them, and this item definitely falls into that category. So I don’t recommend you do this, but if you have both a Chase Sapphire Reserve and a Chase Freedom Visa you can come out ahead with $600 in travel credits on the $550 annual fee every year. To do so:

  • Spend your Sapphire Reserve $300 travel credit
  • Downgrade your Sapphire Reserve to a Freedom Visa for a prorated annual fee refund
  • Upgrade your other Freedom Visa to a Sapphire Reserve, pay a prorated annual fee
  • Spend your new Sapphire Reserve $300 travel credit

I think that there’s a distinct possibility that shenanigans like this will get you axed by Chase and I wouldn’t do it, but it’s worth illustrating because the same thing will probably work at other banks with other products that you care a lot less about, and learning the trick could come in handy in the future. (Thanks to discussion over at reddit for pushing me in the right direction)

2. Reader Mark passed along a 2022 version of the American Express Pay Over Time offer for 20,000 points, make sure you check all of your charge cards for eligibility. Additionally, make sure you’ve disabled Pay Over Time on your charge cards at this link to have a shot at being targeted in the future if you weren’t on this round.

As with most (but not all) American Express bonuses, plan on holding the card for 12 months if you take a Pay Over Time bonus offer.

American Express and Chase are like two peas in a pod hotdogs in a bun.

Foreward

In 2021, the simplest way to cash out travel incidental credits on American Express cards, PenFed Pathfinder cards, Bank of America Premium Rewards, and UnionBank Rewards cards was to buy United TravelBank credit directly because it can be banked, combined, and used for airfare on any United flight and it didn’t require any weird gift cards or other “one weird trick” style hacking but was still reimbursed by credit card issuers. TravelBank credit also has a long expiration at 5 years so you’ve got time to figure out how best to use it.

Well a few short hours into December 31, reports came in that United TravelBank had been taken offline. There was an ensuing panic in just about every forum that I’m affiliated with. Fortunately the panic was short-lived, TravelBank came back yesterday afternoon and hundreds of hackers rushed to cash out credits within minutes.

Was rushing to cash-out a mistake? Honestly I think so even though it’ll probably work out just fine.

Being Level-Headed

I have a compulsive urge to knock out all of my yearly credit card annual credits as early as possible at the start of a new year so that I don’t have to think about them all the way until December 31, and I have zero doubt that many of you are exactly the same. That said, I’ve learned to hold back and wait for data-points to come in regarding what works in the new year and what doesn’t, and I hope you’ll do the same. There are legion travel hackers out there who have already all tried to cash out their 2022 credits in non-perscribed ways for:

  • Airline incidentals
  • Travel credits
  • Saks
  • Clear
  • Global Entry / Nexus / Precheck

But, there isn’t yet a datapoint that any of the opportunities that worked last year continue to work now, simply because not enough time has passed for a credit to post. In fact, many things change when the calendar does, like, I don’t know, United TravelBank going offline.

So, maybe wait a few days so we know that what worked last year will continue to work so that you’re not stuck with an unreimbursed $200 charge? If you’ve already become the data point, I sincerely appreciate it and I understand it at my core, but that’s not how I’m playing it (anymore). We’ll all learn from your hard work and we’ll all be grateful for your data-point.

Happy travel credit hacking!

Level headed travel credits.

It’s great to vibe with the flow after the slow week between Christmas and New Years. Here are five interesting things that came up over the weekend:

1. Seth from wandr.me and the Dots, Lines, and Destinations podcast has released a tool that I’ll be using a lot: Where the Widebodies Are. This tool lets you search through airline schedules for where widebody (two-aisle) aircraft are flying domestically. I prefer widebody aircraft because:

  • They often have lie-flat business class seats and quite a few of them for upgrades
  • They often have large premium economy cabins (like domestic first class seats)
  • Typically the outsides of the aircraft are two seats wide in economy, so no middle seats
  • They’re smoother than lighter single-aisle aircraft

2. I’ve had multiple readers tell me that they can’t get PayPal Key, and the old tricks for getting it on your account stopped working over the summer. Fortunately, there’s a new trick for getting PPK:

(Thanks to Agile.Travel for pointing me to this post at reddit)

3. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards Mastercard (a MEAB Unsung Hero) has a targeted great offer to ring in the new year: 15% back on gas, grocery, and restaurants each month for January, February, and March. The minimum spend each month to trigger the offer is $500, and the maximum spend for 15% back is $600. Over three months, that’s $270 back in statement credits. Talk about a nice hit for a no-annual fee card.

Look for the targeted link in your inbox, the subject for mine was “Matthew, your new offer is here. But only for a limited time.  Activate now.“

4. Stockpile is still allowing fee-free purchases of up to $1,000 in stock gift cards per day per email address with a credit card, but the annual limit (per email/IP/cookie) is $2,000 .

5. The Target RedCard $80 back ($40 online and $40 in-store) for opening a new RedCard debit or RedCard credit card deal is back through January 15. Both cards definitely have their uses, and notably can be churned. Just make sure you wait at least three business days between closing and reopening to avoid any speed bumps. You can read more about why this is useful with Target Redcard Hacks.

Running with the cool kids was never more purple.