Year: 2022

  1. The American Express 99 employee card bonus frenzy has only been available on the Hilton Business, Marriott Business, and Lowe’s Business cards for the past several months, but as of the end of last week the offers are back on other cards too. Current reports:

    – Blue Business Plus: 5,000 Membership Rewards for $1,000 in spend per card [new]
    – Blue Business Cash: $50 statement credit for $1,000 in spend per card [new]
    – Hilton Business: $50 statement credit for $1,000 in spend per card
    – Marriott Business: $50 statement credit for $1,000 in spend per card
    – Lowe’s Business: $50 statement credit for $1,000 in spend per card
    – Green Business: $50 statement credit for $2,000 in spend per card

    The roman numeral trick is still alive and well, and means each of these cards is worth another $4,950 (or 495,000 Membership Rewards) bonus in your pocket.

  2. Check for targeted email from Barclay’s for increased earnings on business and consumer cards through the end of the year or the beginning of next year. A few samples:

    – 5x AA miles on grocery, drug store, and restaurant purchases up to $700 spend
    – 5x JetBlue miles at convenience stores, up to $700 spend
    – 10x Old Navy points, uncapped
    – 5x Wyndham points on grocery, drug store, and restaurant purchases up to $700 spend

    I got none of these. (Thanks to Sideshowbob233)

  3. Check your American Express offers for the following:

    – $75 back after $300 spend at IHG Intercontinental, Kimpton, or Hotel Indigo properties
    – 25,000 Membership Rewards after $1,000 spend at Royal Caribbean cruises

The “American Express employee card bonus offers” remorse shirt.

We’ll be quick today:

  1. Meijer has a $10 store gift card with $75+ in Happy gift cards through Saturday. This one is limit one per coupon, but you can re-clip the coupon after each purchase. A favorite technique with these gift cards is to use a few of them to purchase something in the Meijer electronics department that you can ship to a buyer’s club.
  2. AA’s portal has 1,000 bonus miles for installing their browser toolbar and spending $25 through the AA portal and toolbar by Halloween, provided you’ve never gotten an AA shopping toolbar bonus in the past. You’re supposed to keep the extension installed for 30 days too, so either set a reminder in your phone, create a new browser profile that you use for the bonus and then never use again, or be offline when you uninstall the extension. (Thanks to GC Galore)
  3. Simon.com/volume has 50% off of purchase fees of Visa and Mastercard gift cards using promo code OCT22SAVE50. Note that most of these are Metabank gift cards.

Have a nice Monday!

Example high demand buyer’s club item at Meijer, maybe?

  1. Bank of America has a promotion on Saturday, November 5 for an extra 2% back or 2x bonus miles on all non-cash advance purchases, which really means any normal spend or normal manufactured spend. In preparation:

    – Open another round of Bank of America cards as soon as possible
    – Make sure your credit lines are paid off by November 3rd
    – Set aside time on November 5th to maximize your earnings
    – Bypass the Preferred Rewards 90 day waiting period by opening a business account in branch and asking to be part of the program

    And some related but general advice prosthelytized by Sam and Robert at Milenomics: You should always be ready with a basic game plan for when a big event like this lands so you can spring into action.

  2. Giftcards.com is back up to 8% cashback on the mobile Capital One Shopping portal. Just watch out for the $2,000 gotcha.
  3. Kroger online has $10 off of $150 or more in Visa or Mastercard gift cards through Tuesday
    with promo code OCT2022, and you’ll earn fuel points to boot. While Kroger offers better cards in-store, the online variety is Metabank. (Thanks to GC Galore)
  4. Shop n’ Save stores have $10 off of $100 in Visa or Mastercard gift cards through Wednesday, limit five per account. These are also Metabanks. (Thanks again to GC Galore)

I can’t argue that this isn’t a plan, but it’s not exactly what I had in mind.

  1. Somehow I missed posting the giant Public brokerage sign-up bonus that works even for existing account holders and runs through December 31. You have to transfer non-retirement account equities, and a cash deposit won’t work. The bonus tiers:

    – $150 bonus for $5,000 transferred
    – $500 bonus for $25,000 transferred
    – $2,000 bonus for $100,000 transferred
    – $5,000 bonus for $500,000 transferred
    – $10,000 bonus for $1,000,000 transferred

    You have to keep the equities or the proceeds from their sale at Public for six months or you risk a bonus clawback. I’m conflicted about what to do with this one because public doesn’t support options, margins, forex, mutual funds, or bonds. (Thanks to Mark S for noting the lack of a post)

  2. Redditor professor_doom shares a great tip for making the airbnb booking process sane: Do all of your searches from airbnb.com.au to see a total booking price including cleaning fees, service fees, and resort fees from the main page.
  3. There’s a Chase Offers and BankAmeriDeals offer for 10% back up to $47.50, or 15% back up to $67.50 back with Alaska Airlines. You can game these without even playing the break the correlation to game or being a Jedi. (Thanks to DoC)
  4. A few updates on the yesterday’s Chase Sapphire Reserve 80,000 Ultimate Rewards vs Ink Preferred 100,000 Ultimate Rewards hot-take based on your feedback:

    – If you have access to a targeted 80,000 Chase Sapphire Preferred bonus and are below 5/24, the heightened Reserve bonus is probably above the line for a Modified Double Dip

    – If you’re 3/24 or below and haven’t had a Sapphire bonus in the last 48 months, yes, it could make sense to get both this card and an Ink Preferred. Follow-up question though: Are you missing out on other bonuses by being that low, could you be doing more?

    – The Reserve has a $4,000 spend requirement, while the Ink Preferred has a $15,000 spend requirement. If you don’t have easy access to $15,000 in spend, the Reserve is an easier win. Follow-up question: Can you get access to more spend?

Forget “Three For Thursday”, bring on “Quadsday”. Actually never mind, I didn’t think that one through.

Buckle up, there’s a lot going on today:

  1. Southwest has 20% off of award tickets booked through tomorrow for travel through December 15 using promo code SAVE20NOW. There are blackout dates for when you might want to travel most, November 18th through 23rd and November 26th through 29th.

    If you have any existing award tickets for the same travel dates, this is a good opportunity to reprice and see if you can get a partial refund on points.

  2. The Chase Sapphire Reserve has an 80,000 Ultimate Rewards sign-up bonus and it seems like the miles and points hive mind can’t stop saying things like “ZOMG much point! Very reward!” about this bonus. I’d say it’s skippable because:

    – The Ink Preferred has a 100,000 Ultimate Rewards sign-up bonus, a much lower $95 annual fee, an easier approval, and is churnable
    – The Sapphire Reserve isn’t churnable, at least not more than once every 48 months
    – The Sapphire Preferred sign-up bonus is currently small, so a Modified Double Dip with the Reserve and Preferred isn’t compelling
    – The Sapphire Reserve goes against 5/24

    The major use case for this card is 1.5 cents per point using Chase Pay Yourself Back, and unless you’re cashing out more than 500,000 Ultimate Rewards per year you’re likely better off with another card. Don’t feed into the hype.

  3. Capital One has a 30% mileage transfer bonus to Virgin Red through the end of the month (Virgin Red can be linked to Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club and the miles then work for either). Sweet spots:

    – Business class to and from Europe
    – ANA first or business class to and from Japan

    (Thanks to FM)

  4. American Express has an offer for $300 back after spending $1,500 at the Qantas US site by November 30. Don’t forget about tricking it by breaking the correlation if your travel plans don’t pan out.
  5. Chase has a tiered brokerage bonus for opening a new account and bringing new funds or securities (see The Daily Churn for details on transferring securities to get bonuses without selling stock and creating a taxable event):

    – $25,000: $125
    – $100,000: $300
    – $250,000: $625

    Normally you should stay as far away from non-credit card Chase products as you would from a rabid giraffe with monkeypox, but because this is a brokerage account and because of how US banks comply with the Volcker Rule, I don’t believe this bonus is a risky proposition in the absence of a margin account.

  6. There’s a heightened sign-up bonus of 85,000 miles for the Citi AA Executive card being advertised in some Admiral’s Club lounges, which beats the current public offer by 5,000 miles. (Thanks to Welcome Offer via MEAB Slack)

The travelsphere talking about the Chase Sapphire Reserve 80,000 Ultimate Rewards Bonus.

The Hyatt late checkout benefit is a favorite, but often problematic benefit for exactly one reason: According to my, erm, “completely scientific” measurements, housekeeping will knock on the door and sometimes even enter your room way before your late-checkout time 147.1% of the time. The Flyertalk threads about late checkout confirm this measurement, making it even more, erm, “completely scientific”.

Recently I found a nice solution to knock that percentage way down, possibly to zero:

Put a sticky note over the keycard reader that says “4:00 PM Checkout” (“16.00 Checkout” if you’re outside the US and therefore don’t operate on freedom time).

I’ve never been to a hotel front desk that didn’t have a stack of sticky notes at every station at the front desk, so you probably don’t even need to pack your own set.

Happy Tuesday!

Now you can make sure the housekeeping staff has had plenty of time to caffeinate before they discover this nonsense.

  1. The current Staples fee free $200 Visa gift cards promotion that was set to expire over the weekend has been extended through Saturday of this week, and the limit is still eight. The cards are also still Metabank, so have a liquidation plan in place and note that there are from home and in-person liquidation plays that work.
  2. There’s a Chase offer for 20% back up to $50 at Quill.com, which is $250 in spend for those of you who can’t or won’t math. Quill.com sells Visa gift cards, though they’re still Metabank no matter how you math.
  3. Lowe’s is running a promotion for a $15 Lowe’s gift card with each $200 Mastercard gift card purchased through Wednesday (though it is limit of two per email address, but you have a few of those I’m guessing?) The resale rate on a $15 Lowe’s card is between 85% and 89%, so you’ll make a little more than $6 after the activation fee for each $200 gift card purchased. Alas, these are Metabanks too.
  4. The dying Morgan Stanley American Express Platinum card has a heightened sign-up bonus of 125,000 Membership Rewards after $6,000 in spend in six months. Remember, there are a few obvious and at least one non-obvious reasons that this card is interesting. Also, you can feel fake bougie when you throw down a Morgan Stanley embossed Platinum card.

    You can still be eligible to for this card by opening a Morgan Stanley Access Investing account and funding it with $5,000 with this backdoor application link.

  5. Check United MilePlay for a personalized promotional offer. For me, I got “Book and take a trip one time to get 2,500 bonus miles”, and in the fine print it says the trip must cost at least $300. So, big meh.

Giftcards.com in Recent Memory

Since Summer of 2020, shopping portals have had the following language for purchases giftcards.com: “Orders over $2,000.00 max per month per customer are not eligible”. Of course there’s room to drive a truck through that language. For example, here are vague questions that aren’t answered by the text (but I’ve given my own answer based on experience):

Q: What is a customer anyway?
A: Roughly speaking a giftcards.com account. By the way, giftcards.com does basic matching of multiple accounts by a single customer so scale requires more than just a new email address.

Q: What if all of your orders are under $2,000 max per month?
A: You may get lucky and have more than $2,000 in aggregate purchases track, but that’s not a guarantee. Usually $2,000 is indeed the maximum that they’ll pay out on in aggregate.

Q: Is it $2,000 per shopping portal?
A: No. It’s across all portals, with an asterisk described below.

New Kid on the Block

In August of this year, Capital One Shopping started offering 6% cash-back on giftcards.com. Unlike the other portals, it lacks language about a maximum payout of $2,000 per month. Of course, hitters gonna hit and some people went really big on giftcards.com purchases through the Capital One Shopping portal in August, and continued through September and October. What happened with purchase tracking (and was pointed out to me by AllezSport, thanks!):

– August: Everything tracked
– September: Everything tracked and paid out if it was purchased very early in the month. Afterword, purchases over $2,000 were zeroed out sometime in the last week
– October: So far everything is tracking, but I think they’ll also zero out anything over $2,000 before the payout next month

The lesson here? I guess there are two:

  • Stop buying giftcards.com cards through any portal after $2,000 in purchases if the portal payout matters
  • If giftcards.com appears on a new portal without the $2,000 per month language, go ham early

And an unsolicited piece of advise: Try large purchases with Capital One Shopping, it probably won’t behave the way you think it will.

Have a nice weekend friends!

Sometimes things are bigger than you expect them to be, like this spoon.