Month: August 2024

Some new second and third tier credit cards have recently bounced, and often these are where the fun and real profit in the churning space lies. (Especially because payment services often work better with non-major cards.)

  1. The Bank of America Sonesta World Mastercard has a heightened sign-up bonus. This one’s vitals:

    – $0 annual fee for the first year, $75 annual fee afterward
    – 150,000 point sign-up bonus after $7,500 spend (tiered)
    – 2x earn on dining and other noise

    I’m guessing most of you aren’t familiar with Sonesta Hotels or their points program. They’ve got some rather nice properties, but they’ve also got a few infamous properties like Red Lion and America’s Best Value Inn. Their points are generally worth 1-2 cents each depending on the redemption, and redemptions vary between 10,000 points and 60,000 points with the vast majority of properties at or below 30,000 points.
  2. The Credit One Bank Wander American Express card launched. Its vitals:

    – $95 annual fee
    – No sign-up bonus
    – 5x on dining, gas, and other noise

    Points are worth a fixed 1.0 cents each, and can be redeemed in batches of 1,000.
  3. The Synchrony Virgin Red Rewards Mastercard waitlist opened yesterday. There’s no listed special bonus for signing up for the waitlist, but I don’t see how it could hurt to join (famous last words). The card’s vitals:

    – $99 annual fee
    – 40,000 point sign-up bonus with $3,000 spend in 90 days
    – 3x earn on Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Hotels, and Virgin Voyages
    – 2x on gas, grocery, EV charging, and other noise
    – $15,000 and $30,000 annual spend rewards (companion certificate, hotel night, and other noise)

    It earns Virgin Red points which can be freely transferred to Virgin Atlantic miles. You can also earn up to 50 Virgin Tier Points monthly allows you to reach Silver status on spend alone. (Thanks to DDG)
  4. In May, Wells Fargo launched the Signify Business Mastercard and I missed writing about it, but it’s a nice base hit with Wells Fargo becoming more relevant nearly every day. This one’s stats:

    – $0 annual fee
    – $500 sign-up bonus after $5,000 spend in three months
    – 2% cash back earning everywhere

Now, what’s Visa up to lately? There’s probably a lot at your local mid-sized credit union!

You’re supposed to have a portrait of someone who definitely knows what they’re talking about when you link to credit cards in a blog, right? MEAB FTW.

  1. Alaska Airlines has a good award and paid fare sale for flights through December 18 booked by tomorrow night. I’m seeing:

    – Transcontinental flights at 7,500 miles
    – Medium-haul flights at 6,500 miles
    – Short-haul flights at 4,000 miles (which is only 500 miles off the regular price)

    Hawaii flights are showing a steep discount in cash fares with one-way prices hovering around $110, but I don’t see mileage availability to Hawaii in this sale.
  2. Hyatt now has an AA status match on the account overview page for elites with linked AA accounts. Offers vary, but matched status seems to be either AA Platinum or Platinum Pro.

    There’s reciprocal 90 day Hyatt status match for AA elites too which requires 20 nights over 90 days to earn Globalist. There’s lower status available too, but my hot take is that Globalist is the only Hyatt status worth having. (Thanks to EccentricINTJ)
  3. American Express offers has a $225 statement credit with $1,500 or more in airfare spend with Iceland Air through November 5. Gamers gonna game.
  4. The Barclays JetBlue Plus card has a new offer for 80,000 TrueBlue Points after $1,000 spend within 90 days. There’s also ominous language about “paying the annual fee in full” within 90 days, so I guess don’t default on $99 worth of payments this time, cause apparently that happens?

    Remember though that unless you live in San Diego, Los Angeles, New York, or Boston, you’ll be flying JetBlue economy which is only slightly better than traveling via motorcycle side car.

Happy Wednesday!

JetBlue’s new inflight digital announcement system, coming soon.

In sales, computing, and likely a dozen other disciplines, there are two commonly accepted types of scale:

  • Vertical, which means making a single thing do more
  • Horizontal, which means using more things to do more

A simple example for a rideshare business owner is: do you buy a school bus or more cars to move more people, and nearly as important, does your business earn 10x on a Sapphire Reserve?

In manufactured spend, scaling is possible in both ways:

  • Vertical MS: Open more cards, visit more grocery stores, run bigger charges
  • Horizontal MS: Using more accounts, usually with more players

There’s a third type of scale for manufactured spenders too, which is often a great way to make fintechs go further, and that’s what we’re going to call diagonal scale because reasons. Examples of diagonal scale:

  • Multiple players, each with multiple phones
  • Multiple players, each with 99 employee cards
  • Multiple players, each with multiple virtual assistants
  • Multiple players, each with multiple FinTech accounts
  • Multiple players, each of whom calls the CEO simultaneously, collectively known as a basket of Jimmys

For scale, always go diagonal, and remember, a bunch of diagonals = a plaid, and a plaid = a FinTech (we’ve gone full circle friends; now, we just need another square geometry joke or two. Oh wait, we definitely don’t need that.)

Manufactured spenders going plaid.

  1. Office Depot / OfficeMax has $15 off of $300 or more in Visa gift cards running through Saturday. For best results:

    – Link your cards to Dosh
    – Buy even multiples of $300 in a transaction
    – Try for multiple transactions back-to-back
    – Bring your favorite cashier a gourmet cookie or a box of donuts

    These are Pathward gift cards. (Thanks to Jim)
  2. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards Mastercard sent new widely targeted offers for spend at utilities. Because it’s Citi and because this card has its province in Sears, it’s slightly complicated:

    – Minimum utility spend for a bonus: $400-$600
    – 5%-20% cash back
    – Maximum utility spend for a bonus: -$625-$800
    – Good once a month for August, September, and October

    This stacks with mid-July online spend offers too, provided your utility takes payments online. (Thanks to Brandon F and birt)
  3. Discover has 15% off of Apple gift cards when redeemed using your cash back balance through the end of August.
  4. New American Express Delta no-lifetime language (NLL) card links were shared. These seem to be from a mailer and are name locked on the personal side, but the business cards aren’t name locked:

    – Delta Business Gold: 90,000 miles after $6,000 spend in six months
    – Delta Business Platinum: 100,000 miles after $8,000 spend in six months
    – Delta Business Reserve: 125,000 miles after $12,000 spend in six months

    Make sure you’re comfortable with the risk of using a targeted mailer’s links. Because you didn’t ask, my personal opinion is that the risk is very low, especially compared to other AmEx shenanigans. But, no one should take my advice about anything, ever. (Thanks to DDG)

More advice that you shouldn’t take.

  1. Chase Ultimate Rewards has a 70% transfer bonus to Marriott Bonvoy through August 14. This is an all-time high, and makes the program relatively competitive with other hotel programs.

    The real play with this one might be backdoor transfers to JAL Mileage Bank or Alaska MileagePlan in 60,000 Bonvoy Point intervals for 25,000 miles in both programs. The math on that one, because America loves math, is 35,294:25,000 or 1.41:1 Ultimate Rewards to airline miles. (Thanks to Mark)
  2. American Express Membership Rewards has a few transfer bonuses through August 31:

    – 20% bonus to Hawaiian HawaiianMiles
    – 30% bonus to British Airways, Aer Lingus, or Iberia Avios

    The best Hawaiian use cases are either (1) first or business mileage upgrades on paid economy tickets or (2) for speculative arbitragers hoping to earn Alaska miles if the Alaska-Hawaiian merger goes through. For Avios, there’s plenty of good redemption options, but also plenty of bad ones so hopefully you have something in mind before you transfer.
  3. Capital One has a 20% transfer bonus to Qantas Frequent Flyer through August 31. The best use cases of this program are international first class on Qantas metal to and from Oceana, a round the world award ticket, or medium hall economy to and from Europe on AA.
  4. The free Cranky Dorkfest 2024 on September 14 has an LAX ramp visit planned and no current capacity limits. This is an avgeek must-attend-at-least-once event, and the ramp visit makes it even better.
  5. AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue has released August promo awards for travel through the end of January, 2025. Economy flights are 15,000 miles each way, and these cities seem to have greater 50,000 mile business class award availability too. The US and near US cities are Boston, Detroit, Houston, and Toronto.
  6. “Gee, let’s take a trip to beautiful, historic Sacramento” said no-one ever. There’s a reason to visit “The Taco Bell of California” now though: Raley’s, Bel Air, and Nob Hill stores in the area have 20% back in grocery rewards through August 13 with the purchase of high value bulk resale gift cards like Nordstrom which often sells for 90-92% of face value.

    I guess Raley’s is the new Meijer, and Sacramento is the new midwest?

The entertainment district in Sacramento.

  1. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion on third-party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercards running through August 6. As usual, Amazon gift cards are excluded because I guess they want to encourage reselling of other, higher rate brands.

    Bulk resale rates are creeping back up to previous highs now that Pepper rewards nerfed its rewards earning structure, right when we were getting used to the new world order.
  2. Today is Bilt’s rent day, and:

    – It’s the second to last time that awards earn double points on up to $10,000 in spend; on October 1 it’ll be limited to $1,000
    – You get a free second guest and some free booze on Virgin Voyage cruises booked through Bilt today

    I suppose we now know more about Richard Kerr’s tweet’s meaning last month, and I guess we also learned that maybe he’s experiencing an off-by-one error.
  3. American Express has new targeted offers for adding employee cards online at the generic links. (If you get offer not available, put the card on a different login and/or periodically refresh the page and it may become available.) Each is for 15,000 Membership Rewards after $4,000 spend, limit five per card:

    – Business Gold (POID K4IY:9869)
    – Business Platinum (POID K4IY:9870)
    – Blue Business Plus (POID K4IY:9867)

    These have all been confirmed to post even with other K4IY offers. There’s language in the offer’s terms and conditions that says you may have bonus points clawed back if you close the primary or employee cards within a year. I’m not aware of that ever being enforced in practice though.

Preview: Bilt’s next devaluation.