Year: 2023

NOTE: I’ll be going on a blogging vacation between December 18 and 31, during which there may or may not be any posts. But, we’ll ring in the new year on January 1, 2024 with the 2023 version of Travel Hacking as Told by GIFs though, so no need to be up in arms. What’s this “may”, you ask? I’m soliciting for guest posts and I’ll use those during the regularly scheduled newsletter. They should be non-sponsored, non-promotional, non-political, and at least travel hacking or churning adjacent. Please reach out to me if you’re interested, it’ll be the third easiest gig you’ve ever gotten!

In person manufactured spend has multiple potential points of failure, but the most silently insidious is buying a Visa, Mastercard, or third party gift card and discovering that it’s been tampered with after you’ve bought it. Time isn’t on your said when that happens because it gives the scammer more opportunity to drain the card before you’re able to act.

Most tampering scams require the scammers to check cards at least daily to see if they’ve been activated, so you’ve got an expectation value of a few hours time between when you buy the card and the moment that a scammer discovers it’s been activated. That means a stack of gift cards on your desk waiting to be liquidated has an increasing likelihood of issues, and a decreased expected net value over time.

The obvious takeaway? Open and inspect cards you buy immediately and liquidate as soon as possible (whether or not you’ve been scammed, but obviously especially if you’ve been scammed.)

Stay safe out there!

The rule also applies to this, err desert, the longer you wait between eating and the food exiting your system, the higher the risk to your digestive health.

NOTE: I’ll be going on a blogging vacation between December 18 and 31, during which there may or may not be any posts. But, we’ll ring in the new year on January 1, 2024 with the 2023 version of Travel Hacking as Told by GIFs though, so no need to be up in arms. What’s this “may”, you ask? I’m soliciting for guest posts and I’ll use those during the regularly scheduled newsletter. They should be non-sponsored, non-promotional, non-political, and at least travel hacking or churning adjacent. Please reach out to me if you’re interested, it’ll be the third easiest gig you’ve ever gotten!

  1. Chase has a 20% transfer bonus from Ultimate Rewards to Aeroplan through January 15, 2024. The rate is almost high enough for me to do some speculative transfers, even though it’s generally a bad idea to do so because points devalue over time.
  2. Virgin Atlantic is devaluing award redemptions on Delta metal tomorrow for travel in 2024 or later. The not bad:

    – European rates remain the same
    – Flights shorter than 500 miles remain the same

    The bad:

    – Domestic economy flight costs increase up to 45%
    – Domestic economy flights between 501 miles and 3,000 miles in length increase up to 56%

    Speculatively transferring points to programs with outsized value is relatively more dangerous than to programs that have a value at or below the mean, which I guess means that I shouldn’t speculatively transfer to Aeroplan. How’s that for a flip-flop in a single page? (Thanks to Thrifty Traveller)
  3. One of my guiding principles is that knowledge for knowledge’s sake is a useful pursuit. In churning, knowledge from how internal systems work can often be applied in the future to something else. To that end, TDD at DoC shares a method for modifying the lower 75,000 points Capital One Venture X referral link to be a higher 95,000 points offer for the referred.

    I very much think this is instantiation of the technique is a bad idea and you shouldn’t apply it, principally because you’re bypassing the bank’s internal business logic by rewriting targeted referral codes to make the bonus higher than intended. Why share then? The same technique could be useful in the future for other aspects of the hobby that won’t be violating banks’ business logic.

Pictured: MEAB on Wednesday.

NOTE: I’ll be going on a blogging vacation between December 18 and 31, during which there may or may not be any posts. But, we’ll ring in the new year on January 1, 2024 with the 2023 version of Travel Hacking as Told by GIFs though, so no need to be up in arms. What’s this “may”, you ask? I’m soliciting for guest posts and I’ll use those during the regularly scheduled newsletter. They should be non-sponsored, non-promotional, non-political, and at least travel hacking or churning adjacent. Please reach out to me if you’re interested, it’ll be the third easiest gig you’ve ever gotten!

  1. Giftcards.com has 10% off of $100 Mastercard gift cards with promo code MERRYMC10 or MERRYMC, limit three per order. As usual, try and go through a portal but don’t be surprised if it doesn’t track when you use the code. Fun fact: You’re also limited to $2,000 in e-gift cards per 48 rolling hours, even though the terms and conditions suggest the limit is only 24 hours.

    It’s a good thing you can create new email addresses though, amirite?
  2. Rakuten has a card linked offer for 2.5x Membership Rewards or 2.5% cash back on in store purchases through December 31 at Safeway and Albertsons stores. Gift cards are excluded from the promotion, but a little obscuration goes a long way.

    You’ve got to re-add this offer an hour after using it each time.
  3. Yesterday we talked about a couple of AmEx offers for spending $300 on Delta gift cards, and later in the day Delta launched a promotion for a free $20 Starbucks gift card with a $300 Delta gift card. So, obviously stack those. (Thanks to GCG)
  4. Bilt is sending targeted email to some cardholders for 1,000 bonus points per retailer for using your card for a single purchase at AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint (???), Comcast, Spectrum, Netflix, Hulu, and Xfinity, limit 5,000 total bonus points. Look for the subject: “Earn 5K bonus points this month”.

Your fourth easiest gig.

NOTE: I’ll be going on a blogging vacation between December 18 and 31, during which there may or may not be any posts. But, we’ll ring in the new year on January 1, 2024 with the 2023 version of Travel Hacking as Told by GIFs though, so no need to be up in arms. What’s this “may”, you ask? I’m soliciting for guest posts and I’ll use those during the regularly scheduled newsletter. They should be non-sponsored, non-promotional, non-political, and at least travel hacking or churning adjacent. Please reach out to me if you’re interested, it’ll be the third easiest gig you’ve ever gotten!

  1. American Express Offers site has a few new card linked offers:

    – 4,500 Membership Rewards after $300 in Delta gift card spend
    – 15x points on $300 in Delta gift card spend

    It’s possible for both of these offers to appear on the same card, and yes, they do stack, and yes, Delta gift cards have a decent resale rate.
  2. American Express has a targeted 20% transfer bonus from Membership Rewards to Singapore Airlines through December 31.

    The best use of Singapore miles continues to be for expanded availability in Business and First class on Singapore metal. They’re occasionally useful for domestic first class on United too.
  3. American Express has a widely available 30% transfer bonus from Membership Rewards to Virgin Atlantic miles through December 31.

    The best use of Virgin Atlantic miles is domestic first or international business on Delta, or international first and business on ANA. Delta awards can be found with flexibility, and ANA awards can be found with timing.
  4. Alaska Airlines has announced that it’ll be buying Hawaiian Airlines in 12-18 months. There are two interesting bits here:

    – Alaska isn’t a transfer partner of any major bank currency, but Hawaiian is. You may be able to leverage transfers to Hawaiian in the future as a backdoor transfer to Alaska MileagePlan.
    – If you’re at all interested in a potential merger-arbitrage opportunity for Alaska and Hawaiian, you should keep a close eye on the Spirit-JetBlue DoJ antitrust trial for a potential blueprint of the future, closing arguments start tomorrow on that one.

Have a nice Monday!

The second easiest gig you ever got.

NOTE: I’ll be going on a blogging vacation at the end of the year and there won’t be any daily posts between December 18 and December 31. After that, we’ll ring in the new year on January 1, 2024 with the 2023 version of Travel Hacking as Told by GIFs though, so no need to be up in arms.

  1. I did my best not to even mention the Hyatt 2024 changes because literally every other travel blog out there has a long form boring essay on the updates (and also probably because for some reason I suck at conformity), but here’s a quick review of the changes with an eye toward gaming:

    – Guest of Honor stays work for paid and award stays and will be earned. When you gift a stay, you also earn an elite qualifying night which sounds splendid in two player mode
    – There are more awards tiers with more options in each tier, some of which are quite valuable
    – There’s at Category 1-8 certificate available if you earn 150 qualifying nights
    – Suite upgrades will soon be bookable online, and Guest of Honor stays will be even sooner

    tl;dr: If you’ve got excess manufactured spend capacity, 2024’s 10 night tier awards could make spend on Hyatt cards, especially the business version, worthwhile.
  2. We’ve had American Express offers for adding up to five employee cards online since July, and a new round of offers for adding up to 99 employee offers by phone since October. Unfortunately the online version of the July offers died, but a new, different set of offers for adding employee cards with a new POID has surfaced:

    – Business Platinum: Spend $4,000 get 15,000 Membership Rewards, limit five
    – Business Gold: Spend $4,000 get 15,000 Membership Rewards, limit five
    – Blue Business Plus: Spend $4,000 get 15,000 Membership Rewards, limit five

    Remember the AmEx offer mantra: New POIDs = new bonuses.
  3. The Gift Card Shop has 50% off of purchase fees on orders over $150 using promo code 2023HOLIDAY through December 8. This is an exact repeat of their Halloween promotion, even down to the same promotional code. Note that InComm spend doesn’t currently award points on American Express cards.

    I’d recommend squirreling this promo code away and trying it again in the future, and also watching for glitches on the sister gift card retailer sites also run by InComm.

Have a nice weekend!

MEAB trying to conform.

Card issuers like American Express and Chase famously have cards with:

  • Statement credits that reset every calendar year
  • An annual fee that posts on the 12th statement
  • The ability to cancel a card and refund the fee for 30 days after it posts

Taken as a whole, these three bullets mean that late November and December are the ideal times to get a credit card with annual credits. For example, the American Express Business Platinum card has:

  • $200 airline incidental credit every calendar year
  • $200 Dell credit every six months
  • $189 Clear credit every calendar year

If you get the card on December 1, 2023, then your 12th statement won’t generate until (at the earliest), December 15, 2024, and thus you can get an annual fee refund through January 14, 2025. That means as long as you hit spend early and cancel the card before January 14th, 2025 you’ll get:

  • $600 in airline incidental credits (2023, 2024, and 2025)
  • $800 in Dell credits (2H2023, 1H2024, 2H2024, 1H2025)
  • $450 in Adobe credits (2023, 2024, and 2025)
  • $567 in Clear credits (2023, 2024, and 2025)
    (though you should discount those Adobe and Clear credits significantly)

There are a few gotchas to watch for, such as how Bank of America’s annual fee refund after an annual fee posts isn’t guaranteed, or how the Chase Sapphire Reserve’s travel credit is tied to cardmember year, not calendar year. But, you’re enterprising people, right?

Good luck!

The triple dip visualized as jello. From top to bottom, red (2023), white (2024), and confused (2025).

Today’s items are all gamable to an extent. I’ve rated them on a Jim scale of 0 to 37 in terms of ease of gaming because reasons.

  1. The American Express Bonvoy Brilliant card has a targeted offer for +10 points per dollar on $750 in spend at grocery stores through the end of the year. Unfortunately the regular spend rate for grocery is only 2x, but even in Marriott Bonvoy land 2x+10x = 12x.

    Gamability: 30 (Thanks to Miles)
  2. American Express also has a card linked offer for 17,500 Membership Rewards on $1,000 or more in ITA Airways airfare through December 31.

    Gamability: 18 (Thanks to irieriley)
  3. SoFi has 17,500 Membership Rewards or $175 back through the Rakuten portal or $200 through Swagbucks for opening a new checking and savings account, depositing $500 and keeping it there for 45 days. The T&C suggest that this only works if you’ve never had a SoFi bank account. It also stacks with a $250 bonus from SoFi if you direct deposit, or “direct deposit”, $5,000 or more.

    If you don’t have a Membership Rewards earning Rakuten account, you can create a new one and earn a $40 referral bonus for doing it. As usual, refer from P2’s account or from a friend’s account, use a bloggers referral only as a last resort.

    Gamability: 33 (Thanks to TV)
  4. Chase Offers has a targeted 10% back up to $40 on airfare of $100 or more booked directly with Air Canada by today.

    Gamability: 34
  5. Chase Offers also has a targeted $50 statement credit with $500 or more booked through the Chase Travel Portal through December 31.

    Gamability: 30 (Thanks to Kyle W)

Happy Wednesday friends!

Deliciousness: 14
Gamability: 2.13

The deluge of promotions between Black Friday and Cyber Monday is waning like the Joyland Amusement Park in Lubbock, TX, but that doesn’t mean that your favorite promotions will die when they’re supposed to. Famously in November 2021 for example, VanillaGift.com had fee free Visa gift cards using code SHOPEARLY2021. That code was scheduled to last for a couple of weeks (which should also be obvious from the name), but it didn’t actually stop working until Summer of 2022.

This isn’t an isolated occurrence either, it’s happened to multiple promotions over the weekend and some of them will no-doubt continue throughout the end of the year, or if you’re lucky into next. What’s the lesson? Companies don’t always bother with expiration dates. Always be probing.

Clearly Lubbock’s amusement park outlived its expiration date.