Month: July 2023

One of the tenets around here is that you should always keep your points in flexible currencies like Ultimate Rewards or ThankYou Points until you need to book something. Basic, I know.

In the current era of fee free cancellations for (non-basic economy) award tickets though, there’s a strategic reason to hold an airline’s miles directly: they make a great floating backup plan in case your original trip is delayed or cancelled because of massive wildfires, falling inflatable emergency exit slides, or a lost aircraft.

Whenever I have a trip booked, I also book a backup award ticket at a later time in case everything goes United 328. (I also set a reminder in my phone to cancel the backup at my original flight’s departure time.) That means I need to have enough miles in an airline’s program as necessary to support my existing bookings with backups, at least for the next month or two of flights.

Which miles and how many? The first depends on which airport is home and which airline gives you the most options, and the second depends on how many existing bookings you have and how far out your backup plans go. I guess we can borrow from some rando named Einstein, “as few as possible, but no fewer”.

Happy Tuesday!

“It’ll prolly buff out, no need for the backup booking here.”

  1. Walmart has been rolling out new self-checkout software terminals for a little over a year, and now there’s even a new-new self-checkout terminal being rolled out. Each terminal has different uses and what works at one version doesn’t necessarily work at another. Always be probing. (Thanks to Justin)
  2. Southwest has a tiered shopping portal bonus with 2,000 Rapid Rewards points on $500 or more in spend at the top tier. If you could do only one, yesterday’s United portal is almost certainly a better deal. But, why could you do only one?
  3. MGM is getting together with Marriott in a rebound relationship after the Hyatt breakup in an epic love story that’ll be chronicled in Taylor Swift’s new album “From Bad to Worse” (probably).

    All that remains to be seen is how Marriott #bonvoys the relationship. The possibilities are endless, but they’ll certainly fit the “From Bad to Worse” theme.
  4. Costco is doing a thing. These can be quite lucrative but you really better know exactly what you’re doing before you dive in, and don’t forget that you’re also subject to market price fluctuations.
  5. American Express Offers has $250 back on $1,250 or more in airfare with Qatar Airways. It is gameable.

Happy Wednesday!

A sneak peak of “From Bad to Worse” by Taylor Swift, as imagined by Stable Diffusion.

We’ve got a doozy today, and I’ll let you guess which one:

  1. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card is sending out new mid-July offers which stack with offers sent previously, like those from last week. These offers focus on online purchases for total spend through August 14. We’ve seen:

    – $30 statement credit after $500 or more
    – $50 statement credit after $750 or more
    – $70 statement credit after $1,000 or more
    – 225,000 Shop Your Way Rewards after $750 or more
    – 7,500 ThankYou Points after $750 or more

    I’ve been goaded into referencing a retired NBA star for the next couple of months of Shop Your Way offers, so let’s call this set of offers the “Mark Eaton all-star center” round. (Thanks to MS Ninja, birt, Brooke, irieriley, and flypiggy)
  2. The United Shopping Portal has a tiered spend bonus with 2,500 miles after $600 spend in the top tier. Call me crazy, but it feels like this one pairs well with the Shop Your Way Rewards card.

    Unfortunately Giftcards.com is still absent and it seems like it’s never coming back, also I guess like Mark Eaton. (Thanks to DoC)
  3. The Alaska Airlines shopping portal and the Rakuten shopping portal both have card linked in-store offers for Gamestop. The offers are (in theory) unlimited use, but you have to re-add them to your account after each purchase.

    Last I checked, Gamestop has quite a few uses other than for buying weird Star Wars merch or used, scratched PS4 games. Always be probing.

Happy Monday!

Pictured: NBA all-star center Mark Eaton’s bird form celebrates the SYWR card’s latest deal.

  1. Staples stores have fee free $200 Mastercard gift cards Sunday through the following Saturday, limit eight per transaction. If you get an experienced cashier at Staples (lol), you can probably talk them in to multiple transactions back to back.

    BravoPay is a relatively bullet-proof but expensive liquidation option for these, just try and keep your daily transaction volume small. Of course other options exist too.
  2. For approximately the last year, we’ve seen reports that Chase Ink Preferred cards can be approved past 5/24 about every month. Well, this month’s report has arrived. I hesitate to write about these because I truly believe nothing is different than it has been all year, but since it keeps coming up, here’s my understanding of the rules:

    – Ink Preferred mailers sent via USPS with a promotion code bypass 5/24 consistently
    – Ink Preferred online applications with offers of 90,000 points or more bypass 5/24 if you’ve got a good relationship with Chase but aren’t above 8/24
    – Ink Preferred in-branch applications bypass 5/24 if you’ve got a good relationship with Chase

    I don’t believe Chase has different rules for different people, unlike American Express.
  3. Mileage rates for AA have dropped significantly at Rocketmiles, but higher rates are still available at AdvantageHotels by Rocketmiles, because corporate America 🙄. AA boosted hotel stays are typically most interesting if you play the Loyalty Points game, and even more so if you currently have elite status and an AAdvantage card because the offers are 5-6x higher. (Thanks to Gary at VFTW)

What an experienced cashier at Staples looks like.

  1. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercards running tomorrow through Sunday.

    We’ve had fewer than six days without a 4x fuel points promotion this summer, and instead of depressing the fuel points resale market, new buyers are coming out of the woodwork with extra supply and rates are increasing. Incidentally, if your buyer isn’t assuming responsibility for shutdown accounts within a business day, find a new buyer.
  2. Do this now: Register for double elite qualifying miles for flights within California between August 15 and November 15.
  3. Do this now: Register for double points on Marriott Home and Villas bookings two nights or longer. You have to book by July 21 and stay this year to qualify.
  4. If you missed yesterday’s post because you’re subscribed via email and the wrong post was sent, you can see the content here.

Pictured: The reason MEAB snafud yesterday’s post.

  1. Hyatt’s partnership with MGM is ending on September 30. Why might you care?

    – If you don’t go to Vegas: It’s been a really cheap way to manufacture Hyatt Globalist status (but there are still other opportunities)
    – If you go to Vegas: Look into Caesar’s status leveraged with the Wyndham Business card

    You still have until Thursday to status match Hyatt to MGM or vice-versa for status through early 2024.
  2. Do this now (if you hold a Hyatt credit card): Register for Hyatt’s newest Q3 promotion, 20% back on award stays at hotels in the Independent Collection between July 11 and September 17.
  3. The Southwest Premier Business card has an increased sign-up bonus through August 28 for:

    – 60,000 points after $3,000 spend in three months
    – 60,000 points after another $12,000 spend in nine months
    – A companion pass after $15,000 total spend

    For the math challenged, $15,000 spend will earn 120,000 bonus points. This card won’t affect 5/24. Incidentally, if you apply for this card on the last day and call Chase to push your statement close date back, you’ve got a good shot at stretching the companion pass out through February 2025.
  4. Dell is now 15x at Rakuten and 5x at AA, so you can try again if your Monday orders were cancelled.

Math challenged just means you find different loopholes.

Introduction

Lest you have any misplaced notions about whether or not I know what I’m doing when it comes to travel hacking, let me clear the air: I don’t.

What Happened?

Yesterday I was booking a set of partner business class award tickets on United for flights from London, which if you’ve ever played “figure out how to avoid the world’s biggest airport award surcharge”, you’d know that this is one of the only good, above-board ways book a ticket from Heathrow airport without paying hundreds of dollars in cash with your miles. (Yes there are also less above-board ways, but this isn’t that kind of trip.) Anyway, this was the situation:

  • The award cost was 80,000 points plus $5.00
  • I wanted two tickets, so the net cost was 160,000 plus +$10.00
  • I had 128,000 MileagePlus miles

I got partway through the booking up to the payment screen and realized I’d need another 32,000 miles. Which takes us to what happened next:

  • I transferred 32,000 Ultimate Rewards to United
  • I reloaded the booking confirmation page and saw that my balance was as expected in the header
  • I clicked buy

Later, I checked my MileagePlus account and saw that it had approximately 32,000 miles hanging out. It took a couple of minutes to unravel what happened, but the punchline is:

If you don’t have enough miles to complete an award booking, United will sell them to you without making it obvious that it’s happening.

The net cost was $800 for 32,000 miles, oof. This was completely my fault and I should have looked more closely at the checkout screen before clicking buy instead of just noting that my balance had updated in the upper right corner, but (just kidding, there is no but – mea culpa).

Sometimes you beat the award surcharge, and sometimes the award surcharge beats you.

The PSA

When you’re transferring points to an airline or hotel currency as part of a booking, look at everything closely. Especially so if it’s United, and especially so if it isn’t United.

Happy Tuesday!

UPDATE: By chatting with a United’s MileagePlus team supervisor over SMS, I was able to get the charge reversed and the miles deducted. Thanks to everyone who offered their own experiences in being MileagePlused.

Stay tuned for a future post on how I accidentally paid another $800 to use fast-track security at Heathrow 💪 (probably).

I’ve learned of a super-secret, not-at-all-publicized, private sale called “Prime Day” that’s happening tomorrow and Wednesday at Amazon. If you’re a buyer’s group gamer, this is potentially the World Series of sending stuff to some place in another state that you’ve never heard of, so make sure you’re ready. In the mean time:

  1. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 or more in Visa gift cards through Saturday. To scale:

    – Try for multiple transactions
    – Link your cards to Dosh
    – Buy the “Everywhere” variety for lower fees if you can liquidate them

    It’s still relatively easy to liquidate the $200 variety of cards in store, and there’s always BravoPay to liquidate from home.
  2. Dell is currently 10x at Rakuten and 4x at the AA shopping portal, so get your Business Platinum cancelations in at higher rates.
  3. The Chase Aeroplan Visa card’s sign-up bonus is back to 100,000 Aeroplan points. The bonus is:

    – 60,000 points after $4,000 spend in three months
    – 40,000 additional points after $20,000 spend in the first year

    You can turn this into a $1,250 statement credit via Chase Pay Yourself Back. Just don’t use Pay Yourself Back on points earned outside of the Aeroplan card or you may find your Chase accounts shutdown.
  4. Meijer stores have to good promotions through Saturday. Both are limit one per account:

    – 10,000 MPerks Points with $100 or more in Happy, Choice, or One4All gift cards
    – $10 off of $150 or more in Mastercard gift cards

    Meijer stocks both Pathward and Sunrise gift cards. Now if only it was possible to have more than one email address so you could have more than one MPerks account.
  5. The American Express random number generator is back in full force with a new 170,000 Membership Rewards sign-up bonus on the Business Platinum card at the normal card landing page. To get the offer to appear, you’ve got to have the random number generator roll a 4 on its internal dice, which really means to keep trying with:

    – Incognito or regular browser sessions
    – Clicking the link or pasting it into the browser address bar
    – Different browsers
    – Hitting the application through a search engine
    – While being connected to a VPN

    I consider this application and link to be completely safe. This application has lifetime language, but that doesn’t matter for most purposes; instead just stop if you get a popup telling you that you’re not eligible for a sign-up bonus before submitting the application.

Happy Wednesday!

Pictured: “We Buy MyPFS Deal Buyer Retail Maker” buyer’s group HQ. Totally not sus.