- Staples has fee free $200 Visa gift cards starting Sunday and running for two weeks, limit nine per transaction. The two week promotional window is odd, normally when promotions are extended it’s because either (1) people pick up other profitable things when in store for the promotion, or (2) there’s not enough volume to exhaust the promotional budget in one week, so they extend. Neither feels like the right explanation though.
These are Pathward gift cards. - Giftcards.com has returned to major airline shopping portals. As of this writing, they’re all at 1x and cashbackmonitor.com hasn’t refreshed, but I expect both of these to change soon. Stack with Citi Merchant Offers for 4% back on spend on up to $750.
- Bilt Rewards has two new transfer partners, which solves the, err, mystery of why some travel bloggers were at a Bilt offsite earlier this week. I wonder who paid for the offsite? Anyhoodles:
– Accor Hotels at a 3:2 ratio
– TAP Air Portugal at a 1:1 ratio
Accor Hotels partners with Citi and Capital One but with a worse 2:1 transfer ratio. Accor Hotel points are worth about 2.2 cents per point with fixed redemption values and are often a great deal in the European equivalents of Lubbock, TX. TAP Air Portugal is a Capital One transfer partner with the same ratio as Bilt. - Giant, Giant Food Stores, Martin’s, Stop & Shop have 2x points on Visa gift cards through Thursday, limit $1,500 or $2,000 per account depending on store. (Thanks to his eminence, Stephen at GCG)
- American Express Membership Rewards has a 20% transfer bonus to AirFrance/KLM FlyingBlue through November 10. Sweet spots:
– Promo awards, which are mostly economy
– Business class to and from Europe
– European short-haul
– Delta domestic short-haul
The sweet spots don’t mean transfer speculatively though, you can often find bonuses of up to 30% in multiple bank flexible currencies.
Europe’s versions of Lubbock, like Lübeck Germany, look slightly nicer than the American equivalent.