Month: February 2022

Vinh at Miles Per Day is probably most notoriously known for being shutdown from just about every service out there, and if he avoids a shutdown there’s probably some restriction on his account in place instead.

The latest version in the saga of Vinh’s trek to shutdown with American Express involves clawed back upgrade bonuses, and that post mixed with a request from reader Rich for American Express upgrade and downgrade strategies leads to a discussion about a few American Express rules to live by, in order to avoid having your bonuses clawed back from the Rewards Abuse Team (RAT):

  • When you open a card and get a bonus, keep it open for at least 12 months
  • When you upgrade a card and get a bonus, keep it open for at least 12 months
  • When you accept a retention offer, keep it open for at least 12 months
  • Upgrading a card to a higher annual fee card is ok at any time, even within the first 12 months
  • It’s ok to accept an upgrade offer right after downgrading, but keep it open for at least 12 months
  • Downgrading a card is only ok after 12 months from one of the above events

See a pattern there? American Express doesn’t clawback bonuses provided you do the above. There is one well known clawback case, but it is singular in nature, was tied to a promotional uncapped grocery spend bonus, and had nothing to do with sign-up bonuses, retention bonuses, or upgrading and downgrading.

Now with that out of the way, let’s briefly discuss manufactured spend: American Express rarely shuts people down for manufactured spend, rather they give you a financial review if it’s excessive or just stop awarding points at a particular retailer, like Simon Mall gift cards. You can be more blatant with manufactured spend at American Express than most banks, so probe away.

Happy Wednesday friends!

AmEx only pulls these (checks notes) clawback tools out if the meat is less than a year old.

1. Hyatt announced their category changes and they’re not pretty for many flagship properties. Take a look here, and book before March 22 to lock in the current rates.

2. Office Depot/OfficeMax has $15 off of $300 in Mastercard gift cards. It’s not as nice as the Visa deal because the “Everywhere” cards don’t exist with Mastercards as far as I know, but still a useful sale. As usual:

  • Try to repeat the deal with multiple transactions in a single trip
  • Link your cards to Dosh for an extra $10 back
  • For advanced readers, have each card linked to a different Dosh burner account

3. Do this now: Register for Radisson’s newest promotion that gives a 30,000 point bonus for every three nights stayed through April 30, 2022, up to 90,000 total bonus points. I’m surprised to say it, but Radisson has been ahead of the pack on Hotel promotions recently. Let’s hope they keep it up.

4. Frequent Miler points out that the Nearside debit card has a sign-up bonus of $40 after depositing $200 in the bank account, and you get a normal $50 when using a referral link. The card is interesting because it’s a 2.2% cash back debit card in 2022 without a hard pull on your credit report. Of course it can be quite lucrative with the right plays, so if cash-back is your bag you may want to take a look.

5. The Point debit card was great in 2021 for quite a few reasons (including $10,000 per month in free credit card loads), and it’s been decidedly meh in 2022. The annual fee also used to be $49, but now it’s higher at $99 and the spending offers have been lamer than they used to be, which could be a function of Q1 2022 being slow, or it could be that the company has dialed back its budget.

Nonetheless, for “this week only” (lol), the card has a $100 sign-up bonus when using a referral link and another $100 for the referrer. I’d suggest getting one for your P2 if you already have one for a net $100 win. Just like with Nearside, there’s no hard pull on your credit.

Point was able to lose half their money without even touching crypto.

How about that sportsball team in the big match yesterday? Time to move on yet? Ok, let’s go:

1. There’s an increased bonus on the Bank of America AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue Mastercard: 55,000 points and a $100 statement credit after spending $2,000 within 90 days. The annual fee is $89 and is not waived for the first year.

To see the offer, make a dummy award booking with KLM and when you make it to the payment page you’ll see a banner with the increased bonus. (The public offer lacks the $100 statement credit). If you’re going to go for this, go for more than one and see this post, and this post for tips on how to get approved for multiple cards with a single credit pull.

2. J.T. sent me a copy of his US Bank Altitude Reserve statement and there’s some bad news: Starting on May 1, there will be a 3% foreign transaction fee on foreign purchases made either in US Dollars or in another currency.

I guess they had to make up for some of their expenses in the all-you-can-eat $4,000 US Bank Olympics special.

3. Watch your postal mail for a targeted offer Bank of America Business Cash Rewards for double cash back for up to $150 in rewards, registration required. I think I got this earlier in the week, thought it was spam, and tossed it. Reportedly I’m not the only one and the envelope looks like the worst kind of spam. Oh well.

(I first heard about this deal from Robert Dwyer on the excellent Milenomics podcast, but the first public article I’ve seen was at DoC.)

Pictured: US Bank retooling their money making strategies with foreign transaction fees on their most “premium” card.

This weekend will probably be a great weekend for portal bonuses so check the rates at Dell and at Saks to help offset the pain of liquidating American Express coupons credits.

With that out of the way, there are a few items to note:

1. Yesterday’s Chase Southwest Visa offer for 30,000 Rapid Rewards points and a Companion Pass through February, 2023 is now available as a public link, no need to find someone with a targeted referral.

2. Reader Dean let me know that Capital One waved the annual fee on his Spark Business credit card after calling and asking. So as always, don’t forget to give card companies a call and say something like “I’m considering closing this card, but before I make a decision on what to do, I was wondering if there were any spend bonuses or retention offers?”

Just make sure you watch out for Citi being Citi when you try retention offers with them.

3. On the subject of retention offers, word on the street is that Chase has recently started offering them on more cards than just the Sapphire line. I for one applaud Chase becoming more like American Express (in this regard).

4. I’ve talked to a few of you that have already done the US Bank $4,000 special, and a few more that are still in the planning phases. If the latter category describes you, consider adding a US Bank Cash+ card into the mix because the card has no-annual fee and now has 5% back on flights, cars, or hotels booked with the US Bank travel portal, up to $2,000 in spend per quarter.

Good luck out there!

As reader and Southwest pilot Ryan tells me, every seat on Southwest is first class. I’m not sure if he had these in mind though.

MEAB looking at papers, sitting behind a desk: Something big called the (checks notes) Superbowl is happening this weekend. Be on the lookout starting today for discounts on gift cards, increased sign-up bonuses, and huge portal bonuses, because nothing says American football like a $25 DSW gift card for $15.

Now with the general warning out of the way, let’s look at a few interesting specific plays:

1. Chase has a unique offer for those with a Southwest airline credit card, or for those that know someone that has one. Targeted cardholders are able to generate a link for a Southwest Visa that gives 30,000 Rapid Rewards points and a Companion Pass through February 2023 as the welcome bonus, provided the application is received by March 14. You can try your luck in generating a link here.

The referrer also gets 20,000 Rapid Rewards points.

2. Kroger.com has 5% off of fixed value gift cards between $25 and $100 using promo code FOOTBALL2022. Unlike the versatile US Bank gift cards sold in Kroger stores, these are Metabank gift cards. (Thanks to GC Galore)

3. If you have expiring Cathay Pacific Asia Miles (miles that you earned in 2019 or earlier), you can make them non-expiring by topping up your account with 30,000 new miles transferred from a flexible rewards currency, which for most of us means American Express Membership Rewards or Citi ThankYou Points. Miles earned in 2020 or later don’t expire. (Thanks to milelion, raar)

Fans prepping for the weekend’s main event.

1. Yet another no lifetime language (NLL) American Express Business Gold link has surfaced, and this one doesn’t have an offer code attached to it which likely means it’s more broadly available than the two from Friday. The sign up bonus is 90,000 Membership Rewards after spending $10,000 in three months.

As always, as long as you have an existing American Express credit card AmEx almost certainly won’t pull your credit, and because it’s a business account it won’t show on your credit report once opened either. In other words, lobbing in an application shouldn’t affect anything whether you’re approved or not. (Thanks to Frequent Miler for the link)

2. There’s an American Express debit card and checking account that just about everyone is talking about, and as far as I can tell most of the talk is purely for novelty sake. Here’s my quick take:

  • Almost nothing is likely to recognize the card as a debit card
  • The earn rate is 0.5 Membership Rewards per dollar (just use a Double Cash instead to earn 2 cents per dollar)
  • If debit cards are really your bag, consider Nearside with 2.2% cash back rewards, or one of the other players

If a play does somehow emerge, I’ll write about it so no need to rush out and get it unless you want to be Don Quixote tilting at windmills FinTechs.

3. JetBlue is running some halfway lame deals this week. As of this writing I’m not sure what today’s is, but it’s supposed to involve JetBlue vacations which could mean a cheap way to get Disney tickets or a cruise.

Happy Wednesday!

Your favorite FinTech in the face of an American Express debit card.

I’m sure you’ve seen it elsewhere but in case you haven’t, Frontier is buying Spirit. What color do you get when you mix Frontier green with Spirit yellow? I can’t imagine it’ll be pretty. Anyway, here are a few items for your Tuesday radar:

1. PSA: US Bank Visa and MasterCard gift cards have all had their PINs reset by US Bank, presumably due to rampant fraud. Plan on calling or registering the cards online to set a PIN before using them. These cards are versatile but holding them has always been like holding a live grenade; fraudsters are good at draining them after you buy. Hopefully this move helps. (Thanks to Put-Grouchy)

2. Simon Mall has 75% off of gift card fees (including the $1,000 denominations) using code 22HAPPY75. These are Metabanks so make sure you have a liquidation plan.

3. There’s a 20% transfer bonus from American Express Membership Rewards to Hawaiian airlines. Sweet-spots:

  • Coach awards between Hawaiian Islands (7,500 points one-way)
  • Virgin Atlantic Business Class/Upper Class to Europe 125,000 (points round-trip)
  • East coast to Hawaii in Business Class (40,000 points one-way)

Now, by show of hands how many of you still have Hawaiian miles left over from when their portal worked for all purchases at Amazon? Keep that in mind before deciding to transfer miles; they’re not worth anything if you never redeem them.

4. Check for an American Express offer for $100 off of $300 at Delta. For tips on turning this into a longer term airfare credit, see this post, the same techniques will apply.

Spirit yellow mixed with Frontier green, which coincidentally also demonstrates how I feel when I “get to” fly one of those airlines.

There was a Monday post here, but it was removed after several asks from interested parties (the concern was about repercussions from a dead deal). We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.