Weekend Update: Synchrony War Continues, American Express Miracle Doctor Strikes Back, and Other News

  1. Do this now (if you have a pre-refresh Chase Sapphire Reserve card): Transfer all Ultimate Rewards from other accounts to your Sapphire Reserve account before Monday to make sure they’re eligible for 1.5 cents per point value on the Chase Travel portal. Points that show up after Monday aren’t eligible.
  2. On Tuesday we discussed mass shutdowns with Synchrony bank for those hitting dining promotions especially hard. Yesterday, Synchrony’s shutdown wave cast a much wider net and nearly all shutdown reports had seen floosie activity in the last six months. You do you, but if I were you and I’d been on the floosie bandwagon recently, I’d self-shutdown any remaining Synchrony cards.

    If you were shutdown by Synchrony, I’d also suggest applying again immediately for the same cards that were shutdown because #citigonnaciti (since I don’t have a synchrony hash tag) I guess.
  3. In April, American Express shut down quite a few churners for what turned out to be mostly related to third party payments routed through sketchy buyer’s groups. Yesterday, there was another mass wave for seemingly the same thing. If “miracle doctors and nurses” doesn’t mean anything special to you, you’re probably safe. If it does and you were involved, well, I hope you’ve self shutdown by the time you finish reading this post.
  4. Chase Ultimate Rewards has a 25% transfer bonus to Southwest Rapid Rewards, bringing your redemption value in the 1.4 cents per point through November 6.

    The major utility in Rapid Rewards bookings vs Chase Travel portal bookings is cancelability with refunds on all booking classes.
  5. JetBlue TrueBlue points can now be used to book United metal flights. Pricing is decidedly “sub-mean but within tolerance”.
  6. I hesitate to mention this because it’s gotten so much undue press, most of it written to feed the content monster, but if you’re always probing you should know there’s a new thing to probe: American Express Business Gold cards now have a $150 credit at Squarespace, a website builder platform and hosting provider, registration required.

    I guess this is a free way to own some variation of sideshowbob233wasrightallalong.com on American Express’s dime (which is really your non-incremental dime).

Have a nice weekend friends!

A sub-mean but still within tolerance bomb can still send a message.

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