Year: 2024

MEABNOTE: 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, 2025 with the 2024 version of Travel Hacking as Told by GIFs though, so no need to be up in arms, but I guess it’s ok if you’re up in legs.

  1. Do this now: Register for Hilton’s Q1 promotion for double points for stays between January 1, 2025 and April 30, 2025.
  2. The Barclays Frontier Mastercard has a sign-up bonus of 100,000 miles after $3,000 spend, Gold elite status, and a $100 flight voucher. You have to have another airline’s co-branded card to be eligible, and you have to spend in either 90 or 180 days, depending on how you interpret the terms and conditions, or more accurately how Barclays interprets the terms and conditions. You can verify your reading comprehension and that your other airline co-branded card is eligible here.

    Make sure to put a reminder in your phone to go verify the other airline co-branded card in Barclays’ systems after you receive the Frontier card. (Thanks to FM)
  3. American Express’s referral bonuses are currently at a relative maximum, and in the last week or so more people have been able to generate the heightened offers. The referrer will get between 15,000 and 30,000 Membership Rewards, and the referred offers are:

    – Business Gold: 200,000 Membership Rewards after $20,000 spend in three months
    – Business Platinum: 250,000 Membership Rewards after $15,000 spend in three months

    It’s ok for P1 to use P2’s referral and vice-versa, and if you don’t have one of those, ask around for a heightened referral offer and make a new churning friend; it’s a great way to network too.
  4. The Daily Churn podcast’s most recent episode discusses two interesting plays combined together that are below surface level but sort-of out in the open, starting at 28:00 minutes in:

    – Gift of College Cards at giftcards.com
    – The Kudos quasi-portal card-linked bonus program (use a friend’s referral code)

    The quick summary is that they’re working well together.
  5. American Express has a new Membership Rewards to JetBlue 25% transfer bonus through December 31, which makes the transfer ratio 1:1. You’ll often do better booking with a Business Platinum though.
  6. A PSA and warning: American Express links that were put together artificially by combining multiple offer components in an unintended way keep finding their way onto public blogs, which is ok, but they’re not labeled or explained as manufactured artificial links. My suggestion: Always know the provenance of no-lifetime language links that you’re using. DDG has appropriately labeled this recently, but not all bloggers are doing so. What’s the link? This time it’s a 100,000 Membership Rewards personal Gold link with a $6,000 spend in six months requirement, but others have surfaced over the last couple of months for Business Golds and Business Platinums too.

    How risky are these links? It’s been over 6 years since there were reports of adverse action for using unintended links, so the risk is probably low, but I don’t like when you’re not told that you’re taking a risk with a manufactured link, even if it’s low. One day of course American Express may decide that it doesn’t like people making links themselves in ways never intended to work. Since no one asked my opinion: The risk isn’t worth it at 100,000 points, but if it were 80*270,000 points we’d be having a serious conversation.
  7. Spirit Airlines has a status match to either Silver or Gold that lasts 90 days, and a there’s a fast-track challenge to hold it for longer (I imagine the challenge won’t make sense for any of you unless your name starts with an “S” and ends with a “hay”). Status doesn’t let you pick a big front seat for free, but it does waive plenty of other fees.

Breakage from failed reading comprehension illustrated.

MEABNOTE: 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, 2025 with the 2024 version of Travel Hacking as Told by GIFs though, so no need to be up in arms, but I guess it’s ok if you’re up in legs.

  1. Hyatt now lets you apply Suite Upgrade Certificates to a reservation yourself online. In the past, Hyatt’s long had a quirk that when (a) standard suites are available at a property, but (b) standard rooms weren’t available with points, you couldn’t book using points and a suite upgrade certificate without working directly with the property and some luck. That’s now fixed with the new change.
  2. Citi is going to be the exclusive issuer of AA cards in a year and change. If you’re Citi banned, getting a Barclays AA card in the next several months may get you back in with Citi when they assume the Barclays AA card portfolio, which is also part of the deal.

    Side note: The Citi AA Business card will often bypass Citi bans regardless of this news.
  3. You can currently buy Hilton Honors Points at 0.5 cents per point, up to 160,000 points. At the low end (e.x., Lubbock, TX), Hilton points are worth about 0.5 cents so this is a wash, but at high end properties it’s not hard to get 1.5-4.0 cents per point, and 8.0 cents per point isn’t unheard of at the Maldives.

    I wouldn’t buy speculatively but if you know that you’ll be staying at a high end property in the next year, there’s plenty of outsized value to be had.

Happy Monday friends!

A different kind of churner’s triple for those banned at Citi, but 30 years ago.

MEABNOTE: 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, 2025 with the 2024 version of Travel Hacking as Told by GIFs though, so no need to be up in arms, but I guess it’s ok if you’re up in legs.

  1. Do this now: Register for Chase’s giveaway of one million Ultimate Rewards. You can bot enter once per day through the end of January. There will be 10 winners in March, and they might as well be you guys.
  2. Target has its annual 10% off of Target gift cards sale tomorrow and Sunday, limit $500 per Target Circle account. A few notes about this deal:

    – You’re now limited to one per Target Circle account, so I guess get more of those?
    – Pepper has pushed the resale value of $500 Target cards to about 90-91%
    – Target RedCard 5% discounts won’t work
    – DiscoverIT cards have Target at 5% in Q4

    This deal scales somewhat easily in store, but historically Target gift card resale prices dip after this sale in December and don’t recover until mid-January.
  3. Chase Ultimate Rewards has a few transfer bonuses through January 15, 2025. Ordered by longest transfer partner program name to shortest because sometimes aesthetics matter:

    – AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue: 20% bonus
    – Air Canada Aeroplan: 20% bonus
    – IHG One Rewards: 70% bonus

    It’s easy to get great value out of the top two programs, but hard for the third.
  4. Staples stores have fee-free $200 Visa gift cards starting Sunday and running for two weeks through December 21.

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  5. The Shop Your Way Rewards portal has a 5% discount when redeeming points for Visa gift cards through December 31. You’ve probably earned these points from a Citi Shop Your Way card, but it is technically possible to earn them by buying stuff at Sears.com too.
  6. Chase Offers has an offer for 10% back on AirCanada purchases of $100 or more, limit $40 cash back. Game? Yes, game.
  7. Giant, Giant Foods, Martins, and Stop & Shop stores  stores have 3x points on Visa gift card purchases through Thursday, December 12, limit $2,000 per account except at Giant, where the limit is $1,500 per household, because they also ordered their limits by name length presumably for aesthetic reasons.

    These are Vanilla gift cards.
  8. VanillaGift.com has a promotion for a bonus $10 Visa gift card with the purchase of $100+ in Visa gift cards. Side note: Yes this is a nice return in absolute percentages, but have you ever tried to drain a $10 Vanilla Visa card?

    These are (obviously) Vanilla gift cards.

Have a nice weekend friends!

Even tool manufactures arrange for aesthetics, don’t judge.

MEABNOTE: 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, 2025 with the 2024 version of Travel Hacking as Told by GIFs though, so no need to be up in arms, but I guess it’s ok if you’re up in legs.

What happens with your points when a major bank shuts down your accounts? If you’re in New York, you’ve got 90 days by law to redeem your points, though the options for redemption may change on shutdown. If you’re not in New York, here’s what the landscape looks like:

  • Chase: You’ve got 30 days to redeem or transfer your miles
  • Capital One: Your miles are immediately redeemed at 0.5 cents per mile
  • American Express: Your points are forfeited at the end of the business day
  • Citi: Your points are forfeited at the end of the business day
  • Wells Fargo: Your points are forfeited immediately

With American Express and Citi, if you’re quick at noticing the shutdown, you can call their redemption departments immediately and likely get your points redeemed or transferred out. The phone numbers for each:

  • American Express Membership Rewards: 800-297-3726
  • Citi ThankYou Points: 800-842-6596

If your points are forfeited, you may be able to mediate or litigate to get your points back, but of course I’m not a lawyer and I’m definitely not your lawyer.

Good luck and stay safe!

Captured: The moment a Membership Rewards bucket drains.

The last week of November saw groups of shutdowns from three major banks: Discover, Wells Fargo, and Chase. If you were affected, sorry – that sucks. But even if you weren’t, we can learn from what happened. Let’s go bank by bank:

Discover

Summary: Repeated negative balances pushed the risk team over the edge.

Explanation: One of the tricks of the trade in high volume manufactured spend is to prepay your credit lines, creating a negative balance on your account in order to be able to spend more than your credit line. Some banks don’t care when you do this, but Discover isn’t one of those banks.

Lesson: Be cautious about overpaying credit lines. Discover isn’t the only bank that doesn’t like it.

Wells Fargo

Summary: Non-standard payment methods spooked the risk team.

Explanation: Sometimes paying a credit account directly via ACH isn’t the best way to pay; as a /r/OldSchoolCool inspired example, CheckFreePay at Walmart Money Centers used to be a great way to pay your Visa and Mastercard bills using Visa and Mastercard gift cards. In the case of recent shutdowns, a payment method that a regular customer wouldn’t normally use was advantageous, at least until Wells Fargo decided it wasn’t.

Lesson: Consider the source of payments to your credit accounts, often banks don’t like abnormal payment methods, and side note: that’s especially true with anonymous payment methods.

Chase

Summary: Prior chargebacks related to fitness club associations finally caught up to bag holders.

Explanation: There was a private manufactured spend group a few years ago that imploded, leaving hundreds of people with outstanding money that wouldn’t be paid back (no, this isn’t Synapse). Some people initiated chargebacks on that money, occasionally well into five figures or more, and Chase finally decided that those chargebacks made account holders personae non gratae.

Lesson: If you ever need to use chargebacks to bail yourself out, make sure the value of the chargebacks exceeds the value of your relationship with the bank.

Good luck out there, and happy Wednesday friends!

Another potential shutdown affecting all churners: Failed identity verification.
(Thanks to Vince for the unfortunately real screenshot)

MEABNOTE: 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, 2025 with the 2024 version of Travel Hacking as Told by GIFs though, so no need to be up in arms, but I guess it’s ok if you’re up in something else.

  1. American Express Membership Rewards has a 40% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic through December 31.

    Virgin Atlantic currently has good availability to and from Europe on their own metal, but surcharges are rather high for business class. If you’re booking that, I’d think of it like buying a cheap coach ticket with cash and using miles to upgrade to business. Either that or just cry.
  2. Southwest has an award sale for flights booked by Thursday with promo code CYBERSALE for travel between January 7 and March 5.

    You can’t apply this to existing bookings, but you can check the price, then cancel and rebook with the promo if the price is lower. Since “on Southwest every seat is first class”, I guess that means first class is included in this sale?
  3. United has an international award sale for co-brand card holders for economy travel booked by Friday for travel between January, 2025 and May, 2025:

    – Mexico, the Caribbean, and Bermuda: 12,000 MileagePlus miles
    – Hawaii for 13,000 MileagePlus miles
    – Spain and Morocco: 25,000 MileagePlus miles
    – Asia and the South Pacific: 35,000 MileagePlus miles

    I didn’t find any business class discounts though, so will I be taking advantage of the sale? I don’t understand the question, and I won’t respond to it.

Happy Tuesday!

Southwest crew takes advantage of cyber-monday deal on first class fog machines.

MEABNOTE: 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, 2025 with the 2024 version of Travel Hacking as Told by GIFs though, so no need to be up in arms, but I guess it’s ok if you’re up in legs.

  1. Meijer stores have 50,000 MPerks Points with the purchase of a $500 third party gift card, including bulk brands like Apple and BestBuy, through December 14. There’s a limit of 50,000 points per account, but what’s the limit on accounts? The limit does not exist.
  2. Meijer stores also have $10 off of $100 or more in Visa or Mastercard gift cards through December 21. This one requires that you clip a digital coupon, but seems to be the variety that you can reclip after each purchase, meaning again, the limit does not exist but different.
  3. Alaska Airlines has a paid and award fare sale through this evening. I’m seeing:

    – Transcons at 9,000 miles each way
    – Mainland to Hawaii 9,000 miles each way
    – Mexico at 15,000 miles each way

    These continue to be the best award sales for medium-haul flights that no-one talks about because something something, apathy is real, something something.
  4. Costco has $100 in Uber Gift Cards for $75 through tonight. There are multiple reports that Uber charges more when you have credits on your account, so apply them retroactively to a ride instead of adding them to your account ahead of time, or just use Uber Eats to order a private taxi for your burrito.
  5. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card, the card that would probably be driving the private taxi for your burrito if it was human, has new beginning of month offers that reset monthly for December, January, and February:

    – $50 statement credit for 5 purchases of $75 or more each, up to $150 for all three months
    – $60 statement credit for $450+ spend, up to $180 for all three months

    (Thanks to Dave M and birt)
  6. The Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus card has an increased sign-up bonus of 40,000 Rapid Rewards points and a $400 statement credit with $3,000 in purchases in four months for applications through December 16.

    If you’re not going for a Companion Pass, which you probably shouldn’t chase if you don’t fly Southwest more than 3-4x annually, then this might be a better option than a pure points bonus.
  7. Preferred Hotels has a promotion for 35,000 bonus points for paid three night stays booked by Wednesday night for travel through March 31, 2025.
  8. Giftcards.com is currently 3x at most airline shopping portals and 4x at Chase portals. AA and Southwest points earned through portals count toward status too.

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  9. The Incomm gift card sites have new deals:

    – MasterCardGiftCard.com: No fees through December 31, code NOFEES24
    – VanillaGift.com: No fees through tonight, code VGCYBER24
    – TheGiftCardShop.com: $10 Zillions with $100+ in Visa cards through tonight, code BF24

    These are (obviously) Incomm gift cards. None of these earn points on first party American Express cards.
  10. Typically Citi offers 20% off of many ThankYou point gift card redemptions on Cyber Monday and today is (maybe? I dunno, I’m not getting up that early in the morning to verify #sorrynotsorry) traditional. With Apple cards reselling at about 91% of face value, you can use this promotion to cash out ThankYou points indirectly at ~1.1 cents each, or even better if you have the Rewards+ card.

Have a nice Monday!

Seatbelts are required in private taxis too.

One of the best pieces of business advice I ever got was at my first startup: “It takes just as long to do a small deal as it does to do a big deal.” That’s often a slight exaggeration because in business, bigger deals usually mean more people are involved, but the sentiment is still roughly correct. Focusing on the big deals is a better use of time when you’ve got a good pipeline.

We can apply that wisdom to all of this weekend’s opportunities in gift card reselling, buyers groups, online arbitrage, point alchemy, and to an extent with travel bookings too. My companion advice to the above for this weekend, specifically, is:

Set a minimum deal size and minimum effective hourly wage for all of your shenanigans. If something flashes by and it’s below that threshold, wait for the next thing. It’ll come.

Have a nice weekend!

Pictured: My first startup, or something.