Year: 2024

  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.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’ve been out of the country for a couple of weeks, but I’m now back. I tried to keep up on responding but fell woefully behind. I’ll do my best to catch-up by the end of the week though.

  1. The generic American Express no-lifetime language (NLL) landing pages for the Business Gold and Business Platinum have new offers:

    – Business Gold: 125,000 Membership Rewards after $10,000 spend in three months
    – Business Platinum: 175,000 Membership Rewards after $15,000 spend in three months

    The generic NLL landing pages for the Blue Business Plus and Blue Business Cash cards are currently offline, but I expect they’ll come online with new offers soon. Of course, there are better offers out there with lifetime language, so I’ll share my recent favorite phrase: context matters.
  2. Chase is switching its insurance provider from eClaimsLine to Assurant on October 1, and if you rely on credit card insurance then it’s probably worth skimming the new terms and conditions for upcoming fall and winter travel. Highlights:

    – Some cards have increased rental car coverage to $60,000 to match the Sapphire Reserve
    – Extended warranty benefit limits reset annually

    I’ve had great luck with eClaimsLine (see the $16,000 smashed Audi claim for example), but we can flush the entire internet’s wealth of knowledge on claims down the toilet on October 1. (Thanks to DDG)
  3. Some American Express personal Gold referrals have a heightened bonus of 100,000 Membership Rewards after $6,000 spend in six months and statement credits for 20% back at restaurants up to $500 in spend. Also, some cats are afraid of cucumbers. (*)

    The referrer gets an additional 15,000 – 35,000 Membership Rewards too, but not in the cucumber case.

Happy Wednesday!

Context matters, illustrated.

* Don’t say you never learned anything at MEAB.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’ve been out of the country for a couple of weeks, but I’m now back. I tried to keep up on responding but fell woefully behind. I’ll do my best to catch-up by the end of the week though.

  1. Do this now: Check for 20,000 bonus Membership Rewards for enrolling your American Express charge cards (Green, Gold, or Platinum) into Pay Over Time. Then, set a reminder to shut off Pay Over time in 121 days.

    If you get the bonus offer on multiple cards, consider activating them in separate tabs as simultaneously as possible because reasons.
  2. Do this now: Add all of your Chase Sapphire and Freedom cards to your Instacart account for free Instacart+ membership, each card adds more time, and you use the same landing page each time too. You won’t be able to do this after tomorrow.
  3. Rakuten In-Store has 1-3x Membership Rewards or 1-3% cash back at Lowe’s with a linked card. Goose the offer with the Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card’s monthly home improvement credit too.

    The terms say this doesn’t work with gift cards, but we all know that’s probably not true because reasons.
  4. OfficeDepot / Office Max stores have $15 off of $300 or more in Mastercard gift cards through Saturday. For best results:

    – Link your cards to Dosh
    – Try for multiple transactions back-to-back
    – Buy even multiples of $300

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  5. Hilton for Business members earn double elite night credits for both business and leisure stays through the end of 2024. You can register for Hilton for Business and link your accounts here if you haven’t already done so. (Thanks to LoyaltyLobby)
  6. The American Express Business Gold card has a 200,000 Membership Rewards sign-up bonus after $15,000 in spend available by referrals only. Different cards from the referrer can have different bonuses, so check them all because reasons.

Commemorative summer coffee mug; presented because reasons.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’ve been out of the country for a couple of weeks, but I’m now back. I tried to keep up on responding but fell woefully behind. I’ll do my best to catch-up by the end of the week though.

You won’t find many cliches at MEAB, but some days it can’t be helped despite a herculean effort, and today is one of those days. So, let’s shoot our (second) shot after the Zigening:

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

– Wayne Gretzky, a former stick-puck legend

In manufactured spend, travel hacking, reselling, and churning often the most profitable plays come from trying something unique. That uniqueness often manifests with bewilderment if there’s another party:

Churner: Can you help me reconsider my application for a Business Cash Unlimited card today?
CS Rep, bewildered: I see seven applications today, did you really mean to do that?

Manufactured Spender: I want to buy $40,000.00 in Mastercard gift cards today.
CS Rep, bewildered: Will my register even let me enter that many zeros?

Travel Hacker: I want to add a partner intra-Brazil flight to my transatlantic itinerary and reprice.
CS Rep, bewildered: Uh, wait what?

Reseller: How many pallets of those Mr. Beam lights can you deliver to my house?
CS Rep, bewildered: Do you know how big a pallet is? Did you mean a box?

On the face of it, generally people don’t expect that any of those examples would work in the real world. But, they might, and it might be really profitable too.

Good luck, and happy Monday!

MEAB, but as a stick-puck guy.

There’s lots of follow-up news to go over today:

  1. AA’s shopping portal finally has a back-to-school bonus for 2,000 miles after $1,200+ spend through August 8, which was predicted by my made up sources a week ago. That makes those sources right half of the time.

    Giftcards.com remains absent from major airline shopping portals.
  2. As you’ve no doubt heard since just about every news outlet in North America picked up the story, Southwest announced a few things:

    – They’ll soon offer assigned seating
    – They’ll soon offer extra leg room seats
    – Red-eye flights *shudder* start in February 2025

    They still won’t charge for checked bags. Will this make me fly Southwest more? Actually, definitely. (Thanks to Brian M)
  3. The personal American Express Gold revamped. The quick reference card:

    – $325 annual fee (up from $250), existing cardholders pay the new price after 10/1
    – 4x dining is now limited to $50,000 spend per calendar year
    – $50 semi-annual Resy restaurants credit (gaming info here)
    – $10 monthly dining credit shifts to 5 Guys from Shake Shack
    – $7 monthly Dunkin’ Donuts credit (lulz)

    The new card is available via both referrals with a 90,000 Membership Rewards sign-up bonus or through luck and a random number generator you might get 100,000 Membership Rewards by applying directly. Just try different browsers, incognito, a VPN, mobile instead of desktop, or going through different search engines until it shows up.
  4. Do this now: Register for new American Express Gold card credits: $50 semi-annual Resy credit and $7 Dunkin’ Donuts monthly credit (lulz)
  5. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion running today only on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercards, excluding Amazon cards. GCG notes that there’s also a coupon for $8 off of two $100 Visa gift cards.

    Fuel points and gift card rates remain more or less steady with last week.
  6. Pepper Rewards, which has effectively tanked most bulk gift card resale rates, has finally devalued its program. As of today, most major brands will earn 1% back in points, rather than the 5% or 10% that they’ve been earning since the beginning of the year.

    My made-up sources say bulk gift card rates will recover by the end of August, and we all know how good they are.

Follow-up recipe from “Churning, Travel Hacking, and Selected Croissant Recipes”.

Last week we had a brief interlude about how an unredeemed point is worth nothing. It’s definitely true, but there’s a corollary for travel hackers:

Outsized Value Requires a Baseline Stash of Points

Chapter 6 Title from MEAB’s fictitious book, “Churning, Travel Hacking, and Selected Croissant Recipes”

Most bank points can be converted to cash for around 1 to 1.5 cents each, and most airline points have a baseline value in the same ballpark too. With that metric it’s easy to say that a credit card sign-up bonus of 90,000 points is worth somewhere around $900 to $1,450.

When you get a stash of points, it’s almost never a bad idea to cash out, invest that cash or use it in your velocity roll, and start earning a new stash. Then the value of your cashed out points grows with other investments.

You can take cashing out too far though. What if, for example, you’re in Germany on vacation and looking to fly home in the nose of a 747-800 in Lufthansa First? You could buy a ticket for over $10,000, or if you’re lucky you can grab a First Class award ticket for about 90,000 points with Avianca Lifemiles; but only if you haven’t cashed out all of your points. That redemption is rather outsized at more than 10 cents per point in replacement cost value, obviously more than the 1 to 1.5 cents value on a cashing-out basis.

It’s easy to see a strategy emerge: Keep a baseline of points big enough to meet your short term travel needs, and cash out the rest. What does short term mean? That depends on how quickly you earn points I suppose.

Happy Thursday!

A sample recipe from “Churning, Travel Hacking, and Selected Croissant Recipes”.

  1. Wells Fargo quietly launched two new Mastercards that pay Expedia One Key rewards:

    – One Key+: $600 One Key rewards after $3,000 spend in three months, $99 annual fee
    – One Key: $400 OneKey rewards after $1,000 spend in three months, $0 annual fee

    I think these aren’t paying commissions to credit card bloggers so you won’t hear much about them, but both cards earn 3% at gas, grocery, and dining which can easily be parlayed into airline airfare credit at most airlines.
  2. Chase Offers has 5-10% back at several IHG properties on up to $570 in spend each through August 14:

    – 5% or 10% back at Holiday Inn
    – 5% or 10% back at Holiday Inn Express
    – 5% or 10% back at Candlewood Suites
    – 5% or 10% back at Staybridge Suites
    – 5% or 10% back at Indigo

    They’re all gameable too. (Thanks to FM)
  3. Hy-Vee stores have $10 off of $150 or more in Visa or Mastercards through Saturday, limit one per transaction.

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  4. Giftcards.com has vanished from most airline shopping portals, though it’s still available on Virgin, JetBlue, and Emirates portals, all of which aren’t run by the same conglomerate as the other guys as far as I know (Cartera). It’s also available on Capital One shopping and Rakuten so we haven’t reached the heat death of the universe (yet).

A churner takes a road-trip to Hy-Vee land in a specially designated manufactured spend vehicle.