Month: May 2025

  1. Do this now: Register for IHG’s Q3 promotion for your choice of either:

    – 2,000 bonus points for every two nights
    – 8,000 bonus points for every four nights

    This is valid for stays through the end of August. If you’re going to stay at least four nights, the second option will always earn more than the first.
  2. Bel-Air, Nob Hill, and Raley’s food stores have 15x points on One4All and Lowes gift cards (ok, ok, and some other stupid ones too) through Tuesday.

    Home Depot cards converted from One4All and Lowes resale rates are currently 90%+ in the post-modern Pepper-is-still-broken world.
  3. Speaking of Pepper, they’ve launched a landing page with a waitlist for their AI based shopping platform, but you’re still unable to redeem pending coins.

    tl;dr: There’s even more reason than ever to answer “nah man!” to the “how do I get into Pepper?” question.
  4. Smart & Final and El Super stores have a $20 grocery coupon with a $100 purchase of some gift cards, notably BestBuy, airbnb, Disney, Lowes, and One4All cards through Tuesday, limit one per transaction. The $20 grocery coupon expires on May 20.

    You should be in the 90-92%+ resale range for these cards.
  5. Several people wrote about a no-lifetime language (NLL) offer link at the generic American Express Business Platinum landing page. The bonus is 150,000 Membership Rewards after $15,000 in spend and $500 off of $2,500 in flights booked through American Express Travel within three months. I didn’t post it before because:

    – It’s very specifically targeted
    – There are better offers around
    – Gamers may worry less about NLLs than others

    Since I heard from several of you, I think my assessment to leave it out was wrong, mea culpa.

For those of you new to the game.

  1. Three airline shopping portals have spend bonuses through May 12:

    – AA eShopping: 2,000 bonus miles with $800+
    – Alaska MileagePlan Shopping: 2,000 bonus miles with $400+
    – United MileagePlus Shopping: 2,500 bonus miles with $400+

    Each of these is probably worth burning through your $20,000 annual giftcards.com capacity. Now is that per portal or per giftcards.com account? If you’re not sure like me, vary both simultaneously.
  2. Southwest has a promotion for 30% off of base fares for both award and paid tickets with promo code SUNNY30, which is valid for travel booked by tomorrow night and flights between May 27 and November 19.

    The validity period for this promo is really long, suggesting all is not well at the airline presently being haunted by the ghost of Herb Kelleher past.
  3. Chase’s tool for viewing pre-qualified credit cards is back online. If you’re preapproved though, don’t apply through the tool. Instead use a referral link from another player or a friend, or use Rakuten.
  4. Citi Offers has a card linked offer for $50 off of $200+ in JetBlue flights through June 30. Also, Citi sucks at correlation, and you can often find the same offer on multiple cards.
  5. Chase Offers has a card linked offer for 10% off of Southwest fares with up to $40 cash back, and a card linked offer for $30 off of $150+ at Turo. Chase’s offer system is exactly like Citi’s offer system.

When you feel a knot in your stomach on a Southwest flight, don’t stress; it’s just the ghost of Herb haunting management.

  1. Office Depot/OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 or more in Mastercard gift card purchases through Saturday, limit 10 per transaction. For best results:

    – Always buy in even multiples of $300
    – Try for multiple transactions back to back

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  2. Rakuten has 15% cash back or 15x Membership Rewards at both Dell and Saks this week which is interesting, you know, for reasons.
  3. Rakuten In Store’s card linked program has 1% cash back or 1x Membership Rewards at Food Lion stores, maximum of $10 per transaction. Food Lion often removes a step from manufactured spend which makes this double lucrative in the right stores.

    The promotion has to be re-aded to your account an hour after its first use, though it’s still valid for all transactions within that hour because why not be complex when you can?
  4. SoFi has an increased combined sign-up bonus of $300 + $375 or 37,500 Membership Rewards (targeted) via Rakuten for opening a new account and having at least $5,000 in direct deposits (or “direct deposits”) within 25 days.

    Whether or not you do this deal, consider closing any SoFi Checking and Savings accounts when you’re able because this deal will probably be back in some form again and a literal reading of the terms and conditions doesn’t preclude you from churning.

On the other hand, a literal reading didn’t go so well for another churner over the weekend.

  1. The Rakuten shopping portal is offering $150-$300 or 15,000-30,000 Membership Rewards for credit card approvals with some Chase cards, and you’ll get it automatically with the Rakuten shopping extension installed in your browser:

    – Sapphire Preferred ($300)
    – Freedom Unlimited ($150)
    – Ink Unlimited ($300)

    This absolutely beats any two player mode referral bonus as is and also makes the Sapphire Preferred slightly more attractive than an Ink. If they drop back to their apparently regular bonuses of $50, then you can do better with a referral from P1 to P2 or buy selling a referral click on a marketplace.
  2. Register for Hilton’s Q2 promotion for 1,000 bonus points per stay between June 1 and August 15. Normally I’d take the time to click and register for a promotion at any hotel that I may end up at, but this one is almost not worth the clicks unless you’re staying at multiple Hilton properties over that timeframe.
  3. Qatar Avios has an incoming transfer bonus of 30% from Citi ThankYou points through May 31. In theory they have until the end of June to post the bonus points, but in practice they’re arriving instantly.

    You can transfer Qatar Avios to other Avios programs, so this is effectively a transfer bonus to all of those too.

Chase’s real-world testing for self-affiliate links.

  1. The new month brings new transfer bonuses:

    – Capital One 20% to Qantas Frequent Flyer through May 31
    – Chase Ultimate Rewards 25% to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club through June 15
    – Chase Ultimate Rewards 25% to AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue through May 31

    I expect that American Express will have a bonus or two next week too.
  2. The Chase Ultimate Rewards portal for the Sapphire Reserve has a promotion for 1.5 cents per point when shopping for Apple products through May 31, or “while supplies last”. What kind of supplies you ask? Probably food and water for the hamsters running on wheels powering the bonus. The Sapphire Preferred’s bonus is 1.25 cents per point, but who says you can’t upgrade, redeem, and downgrade? No one after the first year.

    Items purchased this way can only be returned for certain reasons and only with 14 days of calendar delivery, so if you’re a serial returner it’s best to pass this opportunity.
  3. Cardless has a new offer for 100,000 Avios + 150 QPoints after $6,000 spend in 90 days on its Infinite Visa credit card. The card also gets you Qatar Gold status which earns oneworld Sapphire for the first year. The Signature card has a 70,000 bonus at the same link for minimizers.

    Cardless dropped its one card per lifetime rule this week too, which makes the offer more appealing.
  4. I don’t typically report on the end of credit card offers because I assume that if you wanted the card, you’d have it on your radar or already have applied for it. But, can we collectively agree that the news of the upcoming demise of the Chase Sapphire Preferred 100,000 Ultimate Rewards sign-up bonus can’t come fast enough? The last thing we need is another 12 manufactured articles in an eight hour span about a card that’s mid at best.
  5. The now defunct old Priceline card, which once upon a time was worth 8% back on travel if you knew what you were doing before several devaulations, is breathing its last elevated breath by: decreasing earnings, dropping points redemptions from 1.5 cents per point to 1 cent per point, and removing its 10% redemption rebate this summer.

Have a nice weekend!

Powering the Chase 50% Ultimate Rewards Apple bonus.

Introduction

Yesterday’s post about recent American Express shutdowns said that one of the reasons for recent shutdowns includes payments from a third party to an account holder’s cards. That statement led to a bunch of follow-up questions, and most of them were even relevant, so that was a plus. Let’s discuss the subject in a wider, more public context to help spread the love.

The Law, AmEx Style

Let’s start with the American Express payment rule, which is effectively set in stone:

American Express will shut down your account if they learn that it’s being paid with a deposit account not owned or controlled by the account holder.

If American Express figures out that a payment came from an account where the holder isn’t a signer or owner, American Express will shut it down. It doesn’t matter if you’re paying your spouse’s account from your own checking with your consent, your account from another player’s bank account with their consent, or an ACH pull from an account that you control but don’t own, if American Express finds out, they’ll shut down the cardholder’s American Express account.

The Wiggle Room

This rule isn’t particularly well known because American Express usually won’t know if you’re paying from another account, especially for routine ACH transactions. Plenty of churners have been doing this for years and are fine, so the nuance is often lost. So, how might American Express find out?

  • During a financial review, American Express may ask for proof of bank account ownership for recent payments. They’ll want to see a statement or do a three way call with a bank to confirm.
  • For more manually processed payments, like personal or business checks, the account holder information is often listed right on the payment method itself and American Express may notice if it doesn’t match. Recently, they’ve proven that they’ll look back years after the payment was made too if they’re suspicious about something else, so time isn’t necessarily the cleanser that it feels like.

If you do want to make payments for another player from your own bank account, add them as a joint account holder in case American Express ever comes knocking, then everything’s above board and you can worry about other stupid American Express things, like how to get yourself in charge of hiring at a big company for only a week to help liquidate 22 Indeed credits.

Happy Thursday!

Next time: Decoding AmEx’s secret comma laws.