Year: 2023

An unfortunate side-effect of manufactured spend and churning is that sometimes you’ll have a bank account or credit card shut down. We saw an unusual spike in shutdown reports from Chase starting Wednesday for a group of spenders going bigger than Chase liked (all tied directly to dealings with a private manufactured spend supplement group, so don’t stress that you’re on the chopping block if you don’t know what I’m talking about). The shutdowns weren’t exactly unexpected, but it still sucks for anyone involved.

Let’s talk strategies to protect yourself in case you’re ever staring at the business end of a bank’s shutdown pistol.

Strategy One: Apple Pay

In nearly all bank shutdowns, the first indication of something gone pear-shaped is a notification from Apple Pay that your card was removed from your wallet, and this week’s shutdowns were no different. So an obvious strategy is: add at least one card from each major bank to your Apple Wallet to serve as a shutdown early warning system.

Sorry Android fans, I don’t know of an equivalent early warning on that platform.

Strategy Two: Transfer Points Out

Different banks have different policies for how long you can use or transfer your points after a shutdown (Chase is the most generous here at 30 days, but plenty of other large banks will forfeit your points the day of shutdown). Then, the strategy here is: transfer your points out immediately at the moment your early warning system triggers. And a bonus, secondary strategy: with many banks you can transfer points over the phone with a customer service representative even if the online transfer functionality is disabled.

Strategy Three: The Strike Back

Usually banks are lumbering, decades or centuries old, dysfunctional entities with disparate systems all tied together through an unholy combination of voodoo prayers, Cobol, and Javascript, and as a result when one part of a bank starts a shutdown, other parts of the bank and other computer systems won’t know about it for hours or days. That leads to another strategy: if an early warning system triggers and a card is shutdown, call the bank immediately and close all of your accounts, also known as the strike back.

When you preemptively close all of your accounts, you’re often preventing bank systems from running any business logic on your profile because they’re designed not to operate on closed profiles. So, instead of a system updating a database to mark your social security number as banned, the system moves on and you’ve probably got another shot at being in the bank’s good graces after the dust settles and you open new accounts in the future.

Good luck, and have a nice weekend!

Bank pneumatic tube to ethernet adapters, used as a communication gateway between legacy and modern banking systems.

Yes, there’s an elephant in the room regarding Chase and a shutdown bloodbath in certain circles yesterday. We’ll save commentary for the future though because the dust is still settling, but I will say (1) if you don’t know why it’s happened then you’re almost certainly not affected. (2) If you are affected, I’m sorry, that sucks, but I’d make sure that Chase followed consumer laws about forced account closure and act accordingly if I were you.

  1. We haven’t talked about bank bonuses much lately given the low interest rate paid by checking accounts and the much higher interest rates paid by high yield savings accounts, but Capital One has a bonus that bucks the trend with $350 and minimal capital (lol) requirements:

    – Open a new checking account with code BONUS350 by October 18
    – Send at least two direct deposits of $250 or more in the first 75 days

    The account has no monthly fees and you can transfer money out immediately after your direct deposit posts.
  2. Southwest will open its travel schedule sometime this morning for travel through April 8, 2024. This includes most school’s spring break vacations and fares for popular routes on Southwest are often cheapest when first bookable.

    Level 201 travel hackers can probably figure out how to have a good shot of being impacted by a schedule change between now and April 8 too. (Thanks to the outstanding Brian M via MEAB slack)
  3. The AirFrance/KLM FlyingBlue program has released promo awards for discount award tickets to and from Europe through March 31, 2024. Notable US cities included in the sale:

    – Chicago
    – New York
    – Detroit
    – Washington DC
    – Denver
    – Atlanta
    – Austin
    – Houston
    – Minneapolis

    Promo awards normally list economy award prices but business class tickets are often reduced too. I’ve had great luck with these in the past, but do remember that there’s a 50 Euro fee for cancelations in the program before you go nuts on booking.

Happy Thursday!

Pictured: The Chase shutdown elephant. What, you didn’t think I was being literal?

  1. The Chase Freedom Flex and Freedom Flex Unlimited cards have a new sign-up bonus:

    – $200 (20,000 Ultimate Rewards) after $500 in spend in three months
    – 5x on gas and grocery up to $12,000 in spend in 12 months

    The offers will stack. These cards are churnable if you’re under 5/24. (Thanks to DoC)
  2. Delta’s shopping portal has a rare bonus for 1,000 bonus SkyMiles with $400 or more in purchases through August 10 which works out to an additional 2.5x on your first $400 in spend through the portal.

    Sadly, Giftcards.com remains absent from airline portals.
  3. Southwest will email you a 50% off of a future flight promotional code if you book two one-ways or one round-trip flight by tomorrow night for travel through the end of September, and of travel on those flights too. A few notes about the promotional code:

    – It’s only good for paid fares
    – There are block outs for holiday travel between Thanksgiving-ish and New Years-ish
    – There are more block outs for travel around MLK day, Valentines Day, and randomly March 3

    Because I’m my own kind of special, I investigated what might cause March 3 to be included in the blackouts. The best I can find is it’s exactly one week before Daylight Savings Time which is peak travel for obvious reasons, so hooray I guess? (Thanks to FM)
  4. American Express has a few transfer bonuses for Membership Rewards through August 31. I’ve rated them on a scale of 1-5 because exactly no-one asked me to:

    – 15% transfer bonus to Avianca LifeMiles (3 stars)
    – 25% transfer bonus to Hilton Honors (2 stars)
    – 30% transfer bonus to Iberia Plus Avios (4 stars)
    – 30% transfer bonus to British Airways Avios (3.8 stars)

    You’ve got to login to see the transfer bonuses, or at least I did.
  5. Chase has a transfer bonus for Ultimate Rewards through September 30. I also rated this one on a scale of 1-5 because I couldn’t help myself:

    – 50% transfer bonus to Marriott Bonvoy (1 star)

    Remember, a Bonvoy point is probably worth 0.40-0.65 cents in general unless you’re trying to sell someone a credit card, especially when you factor that you’re going to be paying resort fees and parking for your free award stay. So, is (0.40 to 0.65) * 1.5 cents interesting for you for an Ultimate Rewards point?

Sure, the Marriott Igloo Valley looks like a bargain at 12,000 Bonvoy Points, but you still pay the $200 resort fee.

Saying American Express’s IT is quirky is like saying Lady Gaga’s outfits are slightly outside of normal; it’s basically the understatement of the year. The quirks are great for us because they open up opportunities, or quirkitunities if you prefer, for all sorts of shenanigans. Today we’ll focus on a single quirkitunity: American Express Offers.

American Express Offers come in a couple of different varieties. You’ll see great ones that are only presented to you if the stars align and American Express likes you, like “50% off of up to $1,000 in spend at FedEx”. You’ll also see, err, stupid ones that are available to anyone with a pulse like “3% back on up to $250 in purchases at Urban Outfitters” (sorry to all my BDG jeans fans). If American Express’s systems see you as a gamer, you won’t get the good ones but you can have 3% off of BDG jeans to your heart’s content, provided that your heart’s content doesn’t exceed $250.

Fortunately for us, there’s a way to bypass the “stars align an American Express likes you” algorithm: Confirm your card again. That is, one of the quirks of American Express’s system is that you can confirm a card as many times as you like, and the best offers will show up during card confirmation. So, it’s a good idea to visit americanexpress.com/confirmcard periodically and look for offers, that’s where the good stuff hides.

The “stars align and American Express likes you” server rack crashing when you (re)confirm your cards.

First, a rhetorical question and micro-rant about travel bloggers: I get that United updating their policies to allow you to buy two drinks at a time could be considered news, and I get that you’ve always got to feed the content monster, but do we really need 16 different articles about it in a single weekend? Is this really what we’re here to do? Don’t answer (remember, rhetorical).

Now, a few items that probably won’t have 16 redundant articles, or if they do they’ll lack a key bit of detail:

  1. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card, an Unsung Hero and the 1987-1988 Larry Bird of credit cards, is sending out new offers for August, September, and October. So far we’ve seen 10% back on Utilities up to $50 or $70 back once per month, but I expect other offers are floating around too. For me, this came both via email and USPS.

    Yes, this will stack with outstanding online spend offers on the card provided you pay your utility online as card not present. (Thanks to Fish and birt via MEAB slack)
  2. Meijer MPerks has 50,000 points with $500 in third party gift card purchases excluding Amazon, limit one per account and you must clip the coupon. This is effectively 10% off of third party gift cards, or more if you can use it all for fuel rewards. (Thanks to GCG, Fish, and RabbMD)

    This deal isn’t quite Memorial Day weekend 2022 when we saw 10% off at the register though, but we’re still approaching the point that traveling to Meijer land could be in the cards (sorry, bad pun).
  3. Office Depot/OfficeMax, also known as the retailer with second stupidest name next to I Love Ugly clothing, has $15 off of $300 or more in Mastercard gift cards through Saturday. As usual:

    – Try for multiple transactions
    – Link your cards to Dosh

    These are Pathward gift cards so have a liquidation plan in place.
  4. Sam’s Club online has $500 airbnb e-gift cards for $459.98, limit two per account. Occasionally you can find airbnb gift cards at 15%-18% off, but only for small, annoying denominations so I consider this a win.

Happy Monday!

MEAB shirt of the day.

  1. United has a new round of targeted MileagePlay promotions, check yours and rebook any flights as necessary since pre-existing bookings won’t count. These typically range between awful and decent, with a moderate bias toward the former.

    I beat the Poisson distribution on this one though, and got a decent offer for 5x bonus miles for booking and flying a single trip through September 20, minimum $100. That one will actually move the needle on a booking for me, so bravo United.
  2. On Tuesday August 1 you’ll be able to transfer Bilt points to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club miles with rather sizable bonuses of between 75% and 150% depending on your status level with the program, which is based on the number of points earned in a calendar year.

    Normally I wouldn’t speculatively transfer miles to any airline that I wasn’t flying on a dozen times a year or more, but I could see my way into doing so with this permission given the high transfer bonuses. Things to keep in mind:

    – Virgin Atlantic is due for a devaluation after they tried and failed in 2021
    – Virgin Atlantic has fees for cancelling and redepositing award tickets ($41-$50)
    – Flying business class on ANA or Delta are the typical sweet spots
    – You’ve often got to call customer service to book award tickets

    So with those caveats, I’d look at what you might book in the next 2-3 months and transfer over enough miles to cover just those bookings, but you do you.
  3. Do this now (if you have a Marriott co-branded credit card): Register for 10,000 bonus points after $7,000 or more in spend through September 30.

Have a nice weekend!

Top: US Airline on-time performance distribution
Bottom: Spirit Airlines on-time performance distribution

  1. Delta has a SkyMiles award sale for flights to and from the US booked by tomorrow night:

    – Mexico and the Caribbean: 11,000 miles round-trip
    – Asia and the Pacific: 70,000 miles round-trip

    Both of these are economy prices, and only the first is competitive relative to other programs. For Diamonds with global upgrade certificates, Premium Select fares are also pricing lower than typical, but still too high relative to other mileage programs.
  2. You can now book flights on Taipei based Starlux Airlines with Alaska MileagePlan miles. Flights are decently priced (or “collapsed economy cheap” compared to Delta, see above):

    – 20,000 miles each way to Asia in Coach
    – 40,000 miles each way to Asia in Premium Economy
    – 60,000 miles each way to Asia in Business

    (Thanks to DDG)
  3. Aeroplan now lets you change an itinerary online. I think you’re in exactly one of two-camps about this news:

    – Boring (If you’ve never called Aeroplan’s call center)
    – Fan-freaking-tastic (If you have called Aeroplan’s call center)

    Currently it only works with bookings that don’t involve vouchers or credits, but my assumption is that’s the majority of your Aeroplan bookings.

Delta’s inspiration for SkyMiles premium cabin bookings.

  1. American Express has new offers for 20,000 Membership Rewards after $4,000 in spend in six months for new employee cards, limit five per account for Business Golds and Business Platinums at last year’s generic links:

    – Business Gold
    – Business Platinum

    The POID on these is K4IY:9976, and the offer has been alive for several weeks (first discovered by reader Jon via MEAB slack), but just hit mainstream yesterday. It’s also been out long enough that American Express customer service confirmed that the offers are properly attached.
  2. Southwest has an airfare sale for flights to, from, and within California through the end of day today using promo code 29OFF. The sale:

    – $29 fares one-way with requisite asterisks within California
    – 29% off of fares on flights to or from California, also with asterisks

    Travel is valid between August 15 and February 14, 2024 for the continental US, and there’s some availability early next year for Hawaii too. For bonus points, do some schedule research and parlay this sale into Thanksgiving travel.
  3. JetBlue has $25 off of one-way flights and $50 off of round-trip flights using promo code FALLTRAVEL booked by this evening for travel between September 6 and November 15. Of course this one has a few asterisks too, because capitalism.
  4. Yes, earlier this week we reported that Kroger would have a 4x fuel points promotion on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. That wasn’t incorrect, but Kroger is laughing up at us from hell by having an overlapping 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards between today and August 8.

    If you’re playing this game with AmExes, just watch out for certain purchases to avoid points clawbacks; remember it’s them, hi, they’re they problem it’s them.

The cable industry learned their asterisk game from the airlines.