Weekend Sailing

Thankfully it’s time to sail into the weekend with a few positive notes after a strange week:

1. Two new no-lifetime language (NLL) links for the American Express Business Gold have surfaced, if you’ve had the card before it’s worth checking to see if you’re targeted. The limit on American Express charge cards is currently 10 or 11 per person, depending on the person. Why depending on the person? #noidea

• Link 1
• Link 2

These offers are for 90,000 Membership Rewards after spending $10,000 in three months. The secondary play here is to watch for an upgrade offer to the Business Platinum for another 100,000 or more Membership Rewards, which could come as early as one statement after opening. (Thanks to tehflip499)

2. Are you a Hyatt person? Me too, but generally Hilton is a good program for churners and big redemptions as well, especially because churning American Express cards is as easy as pie (because apparently pie is easy). It’s almost certainly worth your while to learn a bit about it.

To that end, American Express has increased offers on its Hilton cards:

• 70,000 points on its no annual fee card (think of this as about 30,000 Hyatt points)
• 130,000 points on its $95 annual fee Surpass card, which is great for manufactured spend (think of this as about 60,000 Hyatt points and a bonus free night certificate for spend)

As with item (1), the secondary play here is to watch for an upgrade offer to a Hilton Aspire card, but those are rarer than Business Platinum upgrades, and they may require calling in or chatting to discover that there’s an offer on your account.

3. Sigh, Staples has a fee-free Mastercard gift card sale starting on Sunday and running through Saturday, February 12. As usual, the limit is five per customer, but in practice that really means five per transaction. Always try and run at least two transactions back-to-back to minimize the time you have to spend at a store that focuses on selling recycled printer toner to the elderly and repeatedly tries to turn the office supply retail space into a monopoly.

4. The gift card resale market has gone pear-shaped in the last several days with BestBuy resale rates dipping to below 93% and Kroger fuel points spot prices jumping to above $19.50 per 1,000 points. As usual if the rates you’re seeing aren’t at least $19.00 per 1,000 fuel points, look for another use or another buyer. Don’t settle for less.

Have a nice weekend friends!