Month: September 2024

Apropos of nothing, do you have an American Express Platinum or Business Platinum card? Hmm, interesting. That probably means you shouldn’t worry about Bilt’s stupid elite status challenge tomorrow, right? Still, I bet you can find a few tens of thousands of words written about the match between Friday and now though. Yay marketing!

  1. Do this now (if you have the Schwab American Express Platinum card): Cash-out as many Membership Rewards today as you can physically bring yourself to do; this applies especially if you’re sitting on 10 million or more points with no redemption plan (if you think I might be talking about you – you’re right, I am).

    Today’s the last day of unlimited 1.1 cents per point cash-out. Starting tomorrow, you’re limited to 1 million per calendar year though points cashed-out today don’t apply to that limit.
  2. Do this now: Cash out any Ultimate Rewards points in increased value pay-yourself-back categories, all of which are set to expire today and may or may not be refreshed or replaced tomorrow.
  3. Do this now (if you have a Chase United card): Check for a spend bonus on spend through December 15. I had three choices:

    – 1,000 bonus miles after $1,000 spend (extra 1x)
    – 7,500 bonus miles after $5,000 spend (extra 1.5x)
    – 18,000 bonus miles after $9,000 spend (extra 2x)

    Even though United MileagePlus miles suck, the third one is a big enough bonus on top of base spend that I’ll hit it.
  4. Meijer Perks has $10 off of $150 or more in Mastercard gift cards in-store through Saturday with clipped digital coupon. This type of coupon can usually be re-clipped after each use.

    Meijer carries both Pathward and Sunrise gift cards.
  5. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 or more in Visa gift cards through Saturday. For best results:

    – Buy in even multiples of $300
    – Both variable and fixed load cards work
    – Look for lower fee Everywhere cards if you know how to liquidate them
    – Try for multiple transactions back to back

    These are Pathward gift cards. (Thanks to Will)
  6. Turkish Airlines has 40% off of economy award flights booked by Wednesday for travel from November 1 until March 31, 2025. Most of Turkish’s network is included.
  7. Weis Markets have 8x points on One4All and Choice gift cards through October 9. Some Choice cards can be easily converted to high resale rate bulk brand gift cards. (Thanks to GCG)

Too soon, or too not soon enough?

  1. Do this now: Register for Hyatt’s double points promotion on stays in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa between October 7 and December 20.
  2. Do this now: Register for Wyndham’s promotion for 7,500 bonus points on paid 2+ night stays with Wyndham, and a bonus 5,000 points if you hold a Wyndham credit card. There’s a whopping limit of 15,000 bonus points if you don’t have a credit card, or 20,000 points if you do.
  3. Transfers between Alaska MilagePlan and Hawaiian HawaiianMiles are now live and must be done in 500,000 or fewer mile increments. Sorry to all of you that are moving 37 million miles, that’s a lot of clicking. Also, is this a good time to remind everyone that Barclays Hawaiian card members can transfer miles to immediate family members? No reason.

    Unfortunately Membership Rewards transfers to HawaiianMiles are currently being rejected and refunded, so that’s great. #bonvoyed
  4. The Chase Aeroplan Visa, notable for 3x earning at grocery stores, has an increased sign-up bonus of 100,000 bonus Aeropan miles after $4,000 spend in three months, and another $16,000 tiered spend in 12 months. The $95 annual fee is not waived. (Thanks to DDG)
  5. Southwest said a lot of words yesterday, but the salient points you probably care about are:

    – Flights with assigned seating will be sold in late 2025 for flights in 2026 and beyond
    – Checked bags remain free
    – Southwest will partner with IcelandAir in 2025
    – A-List Preferred elites will get free preferred seating selection at booking
    – A-List elites will get free preferred seating selection at T-48 hours

    They’re also scrambling to avoid massive losses by trimming markets and selling aircraft so I expect these details to change somewhat as they continue to focus on top line revenue and making the bottom line turn black. No word from Southwest on the diagonal line.
  6. Citi has a new card linked offer for 4% back at Giftcards.com with up to $30 cash back two times by November 10. Historically these promotions ironically haven’t worked when buying Visa and Mastercard gift cards, but in 2024 they’ve been working as you’d expect. (Thanks to GCG)
  7. Reader Mike let me know about a deal at Aloft Hotels via Wells Fargo Deals through September 30. When I went looking for it, I found a few other good ones, all expiring the same day:

    – 10% back at Renaissance Hotels up to $75 cash back
    – 10% back at Hilton Garden Inn up to $65 cash back
    – 10% back at TownPlace Suites up to $57 cash back
    – 10% back at Aloft Hotels up to $57 cash back

    Wells Fargo offers are gamble in the same ways as Chase and BankAmeriDeals.
  8. Wells Fargo points can now be transferred to Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Red at a 1:1 ratio.

BankAmeriGuy is upset that Wells Fargo offers is encroaching his territory.

Introduction

One of the most click-baitey articles that travel bloggers write is: “What is [Airline] Status Worth? [Year] Edition”. I’m sick of seeing these articles, so I decided it was time to come up with the equivalent of the Drake equation, but for airline status because that’s apparently the best I can do with my life, and also it marks the first time that my astrophysics training has a real world application (except not really, see below).

Background

The Drake equation calculates the probability of finding alien life, provided that you’re willing to make a bunch of hand-wavey assumptions and then plug them into a formula. This, it turns out, is exactly what those “What is [Airline] Status Worth?” articles do too, except they calculate a dollar amount instead of probability.

So, in an attempt to make “the one airline status value formula to rule them all”, let’s, shall we say, go.

The Status Equation

\$V_{status} = n_{phone}
 ⋅RH+n_{UI}
 ⋅UI+BM+n_{FPS}​	
 ⋅FPS+n_{up} 
 ⋅FU+BT+ANC+ SSW

Where:

  • nphone = The number of times you’ll make a call to the airline
  • RH = The value of reduced hold time
  • nUI = The number of upgrade instruments you’ll earn and use
  • UI = The value of an upgrade instrument
  • BM = Bonus redeemable miles you’ll earn for holding status
  • nFPS = The number of free priority assigned seats you’ll get
  • FPS = The value of a free priority assigned seat
  • nup = The number of times you’ll be upgraded
  • FU = The value of a free upgrade (unironically abbreviated, I promise)
  • BT = The value of your elite brag tags, you know, like this
  • ANC = The value of ancillary benefits, like rental car status (that you probably already get from a credit card)
  • SSW = The value of your increased sense of self worth for holding elite status

So, just like the drake up equation, make up a bunch of numbers for what could happen and you’ll come up with the dollar value of your status. For example, I decided that my AA Executive Platinum Status is worth $3,430, but that’s mostly because of SSW. Remove that, and it’s probably worth $500.

Have a nice Thursday friends!

What’s the additional value of being served in a Delta branded cup on an AA flight? Science still doesn’t know.

  1. Southwest will be opening their schedule this morning for travel through June 4, 2025. That travel window probably will include some aircraft with premium seats and probably will have aircraft with at least some reserved seating too, but so far we know nothing about either. (Thanks to Brian M)
  2. American Express Offers has a few new offers:

    – $140 off of $350+ at most North American Marriotts through November 23
    – 4x or 10x Bonvoy points at grocery stores, up to 7,500 bonus points
    – $75 off of $275+ at Radisson and Choice Ascend properties through November 30

    (Thanks to DoC)
  3. One of my favorite old promotions dates back to when you could buy Sears gift cards through a portal for 10x-25x, then use those gift cards to purchase merchandise for another 10x-25x, netting a total of 20x-50x for things that were marked up only 5-10%.

    This ain’t that, but Giftcards.com has a smaller scale version through September 27:

    – Start at a shopping portal
    – Buy Giftcards.com gift cards, limit 2x$100 for 10% off with promo code GCC10
    – Go back to a shopping portal
    – Use the Giftcards.com gift cards to buy other gift cards (except Visa/MC)

    Most giftcards.com promotion limits are per transaction, not per account; this one is more finicky in that it comes and goes throughout the day.
  4. Alaska has a fare sale for flights booked by tomorrow night for travel between October 5 and March 5, 2025. I’m seeing great pricing, specifically:

    – Transcons for 7,500 miles each way
    – Hawaii for 7,500 miles each way
    – Short-haul for 4,000 miles each way

    There’s some weird medium-haul pricing at 20,000 miles though, so not everything is peachy-keen or even flam-flam strawberry jam.
  5. Southwest has 30% off of flights booked by tomorrow night for travel between October 24 and January 31, 2025 with promo code FRIENDS. Holiday blackouts apply as you’d probably expect.

Bruceville Indiana is always peachy-keen, even though it’s not serviced by any major airline.

  1. Do this now: Register for a targeted promotion for 50 or 100 American Airlines Loyalty Points earned per 1,000 miles redeemed through the end of the year, but only on new flights booked by October 7.
  2. There’s been a 120,000 Membership Rewards after $10,000 spend in 90 days link for upgrading an American Express Business Green or Gold card to a Platinum card floating around in the darker corners of the internet, and it’s now public. A few notes:

    – If you have a Green or Gold to upgrade, get employee cards first (see item #3)
    – Do the upgrade
    – Order 5 more employee cards with the new POID

    Don’t forget that spend on employee cards counts toward upgrade bonus spend. Also note that this link is of dubious origin so calibrate the reward to your risk tolerance scale. I went for this, but just because I did something doesn’t mean you should too; it might mean that you shouldn’t.
  3. The American Express Hilton Aspire resort credit now only works at a specific set of listed properties, providing further evidence that it’s easier to game these credits than to use them as intended.
  4. MasterCardGiftCard.com has a promotion for 100% off of purchase fees with promo code 100MCGIFT. There’s currently no expiration listed, but the email promoting the code has a copyright date of 2023 which should tell you something about Incomm gift card brands.

    These are Vanilla gift cards.
  5. Some Bank of America payment systems were offline yesterday and may be today too. It’s not you, they’re the problem it’s them.
  6. Amtrak has a promotion for a mystery, per-account bonus multiplier on fall travel through October 31 with registration. I got 2x on my account which means I’ll probably earn 2*0=0 points between now and Halloween. (Thanks to frequentflyerbonuses)

Obligatory photo of Bank of America’s payment processing data center.

  1. Meijer MPerks has $10 off of $150 or more in Visa gift cards in-store through Saturday with a clipped digital coupon. This type of promotion usually lets you re-clip the coupon after each transaction, so four dozen MPerks accounts aren’t needed for scale even though a banana still might be.

    Meijer typically carries both Sunrise and Pathward gift cards.
  2. Reportedly Citi is discussing how much it’ll have to pay to become the sole issuer of AA credit cards in contract negotiations for a new co-branded credit card deal, and rumors say that the Barclays AA portfolio would be purchased by Citi under the new contract.

    If you’re banned by Citi and not by Barclays, I think getting a Barclays AA card now is your best chance to get back with Citi with minimal hassle; of all banks with bad IT and poor practices around closures and blocklists, Citi ranks first. At least Citi ranks best at something right? If you can count on anything in churning, it’s that #CitiGonnaCiti and the most logical, simple thing will never be the one that happens.
  3. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 or more in Mastercard gift cards through Saturday. For best results:

    – Buy in even multiples of $300
    – Remember that fixed and variable load cards work
    – Try for multiple transactions back-to-back

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  4. IHG has a targeted fast-track promotion for Diamond Elite status, requiring only 10 mattress-runs nights between October 1 and December 31 to earn and keep status through the 2025 Elite year.

A readable Citi error message shows that not everything at Citi is dysfunctional.

  1. Do this now: Register for IHG’s second Q4 promotion for 3x points at several brands you’ve probably never heard of for stays October through December. (Thanks to FM)
  2. Best Western Hotels has launched two new credit cards issued by Mercury Financial, and in addition to the sign-up bonuses there are spend bonuses too, like a free night certificate after $10,000 spend on the Premium card:

    – Premium Signature Visa: 80,000 points after $5,000 spend in three months, $89 annual fee
    – Rewards Signature Visa: 40,000 points after $1,500 spend in three months, $49 annual fee

    Both of these sign up bonuses say “up to” and that your bonus will appear before you submit your application, so double check that they haven’t tried to #bonvoy you during the sign-up flow. Speaking of Bonvoy, how do Best Western points values compare? Well, two things: (1) They’re worth 10-20% more than Bonvoy points, and (2) you’re staying at a Best Western, so discount as appropriate.
  3. The American Express Hilton cards have increased sign-up bonuses, and they’re available via referral so go that route before using any public link, and yes it’s ok for P1 to refer P2:

    – Business: 175,000 Hilton points after $8,000 spend in six months
    – Aspire: 175,000 Hilton points after $6,000 spend in six months
    – Surpass: 165,000 Hilton points after $3,000 spend in six months
    – Honors: 100,000 Hilton points after $2,000 spend in six months

    Sometimes these offers appear with free-night certificates too but not this time. Also, remember “to get out of PUJ use BBT”.
  4. The Synchrony Virgin Red Rewards Mastercard is now available. The card’s vitals:

    – 40,000 points after $3,000 spend in 90 days
    – Upgrade certificates or other rewards after $15,000 and $30,000 annual spend
    – 2x at dining and grocery, and other less fun categories
    – $99 annual fee

    In the current state of the rewards landscape, Synchrony cards are slightly preferable to many other issuers, which makes this card worthwhile for me even though it’s a personal card.
  5. Giant Foods, Giant (which is the same-ish but different), Martins, and Stop & Shop stores have 10x points on Home Depot gift cards through Thursday of next week, limit $2,000 per rewards account. (Thanks to GCG)
  6. Chase Offers and BankAmeriDeals have 10% back at Sheraton Hotels, W Hotels, and TownPlace Suite hotels on between $100 and $570 in spend with various expiration dates.

For photos that are, you know, mildly interesting

Giant and Giant Foods stores, but as Oreos.

  1. The Kroger family has a 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards excluding Amazon, and fixed value Visa and Mastercards purchased in-store through October 1.

    Demand in the fuel points resale market has cooled slightly but there’s still capacity available for sellers. Pepper’s recent changes have stabilized the gift card resale market for BestBuy in particular.
  2. Fun fact: I was banned by Chase in approximately 2001 for non-churning reasons, and then in 2004 Chase bought BankOne, a bank where I had existing credit and deposit accounts. The acquisition got me back with Chase. In related news, the Goldman Sachs Apple credit card portfolio is reportedly close to being acquired by the very same Chase bank.

    Astute readers will note that 2024 is very different than 2004, and in 20 years it turns out there’s been verifiable change in the world even though it still kinda looks like it used to. So will it work that way again? I’d say the chance is small, but you miss all the shots you don’t take, right? (Sportsball taught me that.)
  3. The Alaska Airlines acquisition of Hawaiian Airlines was completed yesterday, and according to the press release you’ll be able to transfer your miles between both programs without fee sometime in September. In yesterday’s recusals post, I said “I wouldn’t transfer Membership Rewards to Hawaiian miles for the conversion yet because there’s no bonus and you won’t win any prizes for transferring early.” But with the finalized acquisition, I’ve changed my tune because:

    – September only has a few weeks left and the waiting time for transfers is minimal
    – We don’t know if the Membership Rewards and Hawaiian contract has an exit clause that could be triggered by the acquisition, which might remove the option all-together a-la Bilt

    Quoting yesterday again because it’s still applicable, “[a]fter this debacle I wouldn’t believe anything you see on this site again personally.”
  4. American Express Offers has an offer for $300 back on $1,200 or more in purchases at Marriott Homes & Villas through December 17.

    In related news, gamers gonna game. (Thanks to DDG)

Redemption, 2004 style.