Author: matt

  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.

  1. The Capital One Venture Visa card has an increased sign-up bonus of 100,000 miles and a $250 travel credit through Capital One Travel after $5,000 spend in three months, but only via referral. (Thanks to DDG)
  2. American Express has been somewhat quietly shutting down certain churners for a little over a week. Major blogs have started to post stories, but none seem to have any deeper info so I guess it’s up to me to assuage some fears and summarize. Based on 34 data points (so take this with a √34 grain of salt) there are probably three types of shutdowns:

    – Buyers group shenanigans, but not the kind of buyers group that you’re probably thinking
    – Multiple large payments made from an account with a completely different name, even going back as far as 2019
    – Having the same or nearly the same name as someone involved in the above (I have the least confidence in this reason, but it fits the data)

    Most of you won’t need to worry about this unless you were already aware of what’s going on. If you happen fall into the third type of shutdown because of random luck though, the good news is that American Express is only axing certain cards, not all of them.
  3. Southwest released details about its new tier benefits, fare bundles, and co-brand credit card benefits. The summary:

    – Flight credits are valid for between 6 and 12 months for voluntary cancelations
    – Cardholders and elites get free checked bags for themselves and up to eight companions
    – A-List Preferred gets free extra-legroom seats at booking, A-List at T-48
    – Companions inherit status and card benefits
    – Basic economy gets no advanced seating reservations and no changes

    My major complaint with flying Southwest in the past was the lack of assigned seating. They are addressing that issue, but are replacing it with a bunch of other issues so yay private equity. (Thanks to Brian M)
  4. Reader Vince had a guest post at Doctor of Credit about Franki, a card-linked rebate program for restaurants with discounts as high as 20% off. If you have a checklist of things to do when you get a new card, adding it to Franki could be another item.
  5. Kroger stores have a 4x fuel points promotion running on third party gift cards excluding Amazon and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards through May 13. (Thanks to GCA)
  6. Emirates Skywards miles are going through a mid-life crisis:

    – There’s an unannounced (maybe unintentional) 25% bonus from Capital One
    – At the end of next month, Chase and American Express transfers will be offline through summerish
    – Last week they transfers from non-premium Citi cards were devalued

    If you believe the rumor mill, transfers going offline are caused by Emirates switching its backend loyalty program to a new platform and rebuilding integrations, but I have no extra knowledge to help confirm or deny the rumor.
  7. Incomm gift card sites have fee free gift cards for Mother’s Day running now through May 11:

    – TheGiftCardShop fee-free $100+ Visa gift cards with promo MOM25
    – MasterCardGiftCard fee-free $50+ Mastercard gift cards with promo MOM2025
    – VanillaGift fee-fee $50+ gift cards with promo VGMOM25

    Each of these sites has relatively liberal purchase limits once you’ve got a good account, and none of them earn points or count toward sign-up bonuses on first party American Express cards.

Emirates mid-life crisis convertible.

Background

JetBlue added Japan Airlines (JAL) as a mileage partner last week. Over the weekend there was award space using JetBlue miles for booking at least two seats in JAL First Class between the US and Japan for most of the schedule. That sort of availability for booking JAL First is unprecedented; it’s a lot like if you drove to every Walmart in the United States and didn’t find a single person in line at a money center. While technically it’s possible to happen, if it did you’d probably wonder if you were in some sort of bizarro churning novel and whether you ought to visit every roulette table in Vegas and bet on black.

The wide-open JAL First availability was only found on JetBlue though. Other partners that can book JAL First awards like AA, Alaska, and JAL itself had almost no availability for even one seat, let alone two. So, how come JetBlue had so much availability? The dump in inventory could reasonably explained by one of two things:

  • Launch celebration: JAL gave JetBlue plenty of inventory not available to others during initial launch to celebrate the new partnership
  • Bug: A technical error between JAL and JetBlue showed space that shouldn’t have been bookable

It’s too soon to know which of the above possibilities it was, but for the sake of everyone who transferred a bunch of miles into JetBlue’s program and booked awards, let’s hope it was the former.

The Wisdom

This is a wisdom post (without an alliteration, sorry Jen), so what can we learn from all this?

  • When space is only available via a single partner, there’s a chance it’s not real and will either be non-bookable or will get cancelled before you can fly
  • When you’re going to transfer a flexible, valuable currency like Ultimate Rewards into a less valuable program like JetBlue TrueBlue, make sure you’re comfortable with stranded miles in case the booking doesn’t work; do a risk asssessment
  • Don’t forget that many airlines let you hold awards over the phone, so you can test award bookability without transferring miles in and potentially leaving them stranded (but JetBlue doesn’t offer holds, so didn’t matter in this case)
  • New partnerships occasionally open short windows of opportunity

Good luck to those who booked!

Future churning novel brings even more JetBlue-esque craziness.

  1. Meijer stores have a digital coupon for $10 off of $150+ Mastercard gift cards through Saturday. This is probably the type of coupon that can be reclipped after each use, but multiple MPerks accounts are an alternate way out.

    These are Pathward or Sunrise gift cards, and if you have a good liquidation channel this is the kind of deal that can make sense to travel from out of state too. (Thanks to Jonathan)
  2. Meijer stores have $50,000 points with a $500 third party gift card purchase through May 10 (excluding Amazon and phone cards), limit one per MPerks account.

    BestBuy, Home Depot, and Lululemon are great candidates for scaling this one as the market recovers from being high in a Pepper induced coma. This deal can also make sense for out of state travel, but Pepper makes it slightly less so than typical.
  3. Bilt has a tiered transfer bonus of 25%-100% to Southwest Rapid Rewards on Thursday. I can’t find any limit, but I’d be surprised if there isn’t one and it’ll probably be 100,000 points or less.

    Apropos of, let’s say, nothing: What’s better than one mediocre company? Two mediocre companies working together!
  4. Brian M notes that Southwest has new targeted promotions for bonus mileage earned on paid tickets. Brian’s example bonus was +60% earning for A-List members (that’s +35% over normal).

    You can check your promotions at this link.
  5. Speaking of Pepper, I’m still waiting for things to stabilize for at least a couple of days before the next full update. There’s enough for another short-form cluster hug though:

    – Coin redemptions were down for the weekend and continue to be offline, but apparently will come back (?)
    – Buying gift cards was down part of the weekend
    – Coin rebate rates on most brands have dropped to the uninteresting range
    – You can’t buy Amazon or Sams Club gift cards at all
    – Coin rebates now come in four days instead of two weeks

    So, you know; typical Pepper.

Coming out of a Pepper induced coma looks fun, right kids?

EDITOR’S NOTE: We’ve got two special characters in the title today, let’s see what fragile internet infrastructure chokes, you know, for science.

  1. United blocks some Star Alliance redemptions from its US members, but Roame discovered that switching your location in the web site’s header to another country, like, I dunno, Zimbabwe, opens up more award inventory.
  2. Yesterday Bilt added Southwest Rapid Rewards as a transfer partner, which can be interesting given Southwest’s double-variable award redemption pricing that occasionally pushes its value up to ~1.8 cents per point. For people that don’t think in US currencies, that’s a whole 0.8 cents more than a penny worth 1.0 cents per point.

    Side note: I’m often simultaneously both “annoyed at” and “awestruck by” Bilt. Something they’ve been really good at is staying in the news every month with Rent Day, and lately they’ve been good at staying in the news weekly or more with program changes, like JAL MileageBank leakage, adding student loan redemptions for certain loans, earning a point per dollar and paying a 3% for third party credit card rent payments. The card and its benefits are decidedly average and acceptable, so don’t let its marketing machine make you think it’s better than it is.
  3. Staples reportedly has fee-free $200 Visa gift cards starting Sunday and running through the following Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  4. Citi is devaluing transfers for the Rewards+ and Double Cash card on July 27:

    – JetBlue TrueBlue: 10:7
    – Choice Hotels: 10:14
    – Wyndham Rewards: 10:7

    Other cards are unaffected. This coincides with the Emirates Skywards devaluation of 10:8 on the same date, which unfortunately affects all cards. (EDIT: Thanks to Led for letting me know about the Double Cash too)

Have a nice weekend friends!

Bilt’s marketing versus reality, but as a chess set.

  1. Chase is sending targeted offers via email for Hyatt cardholders that awards 5,000 point bonus for setting up recurring payments with three companies for three consecutive months in gyms, internet, phone, cable, transit, and utilities by November 30. Registration isn’t required.

    I debated writing about this given the work involved, but 5,000 Hyatt points are worth $100+ so here we are.
  2. The Barclays Hawaiian Mastercard has an increased sign-up bonus of 70,000 miles after $1,000 spend in three months, and the $99 annual fee is not waived in the first year. The primary use case for this is to transfer to Alaska miles, and I guess 2x Alaska miles at grocery isn’t the worst deal in the world.

    Yes, you can get both the Bank of Hawaii Hawaiian Mastercard and the Barlcays Hawaiian Mastercard, though it may require a call to reconsideration to fix Barclays automated processing which occasionally denies one of the applications as duplicate even when they’re not the same card.
  3. Japan Airlines award flights can now be redeemed with JetBlue TrueBlue miles. The current rates from the US to Japan:

    – 39,900+ TrueBlue miles in economy
    – 64,000+ TrueBlue miles in business

    Pricing is based on regions and segments, and I expect these prices to last no more than 60 days before they’re devalued. Chase Ultimate Rewards and Citi ThankYou points transfer in at a 1:1 ratio, while American Express Membership Rewards transfers in at 5:4 and Capital One transfers in at 5:3.
  4. Speedway store purchases of Vanilla Visas, SecureSpend gift cards, and BetMGM cards are awarding 500 points for every $25 purchased through April 29.

    That’s 10,000 points for each $500 gift card for those that loathe to do math, or I guess even for those not that don’t loathe to do math. (Thanks to GCA)
  5. The Citi ThankYou Points program is reducing the transfer ratio to Emirates Skywards from 1:1 to 5:4 on July 27. Chase, Capital One, American Express, and Bilt will continue to transfer at a 1:1 ratio. (Thanks to CouchQB)
  6. Kroger stores have a promotion tomorrow only for 4x fuel points on third party gift cards other than Amazon and on fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards.

    Let’s go on a tangent; we’ll have more Pepper updates once things stabilize, but a few interim notes relevant to this deal:

    – Fuel points rates are through the roof due to Pepper’s prior public drunkenness
    – Pepper is sobering up with large discounts gone, bulk gift card rates are recovering
    – Amazon is effectively unavailable on Pepper, so the lack of 4x matters more now than in the past

Happy Thursday!

Pictured: Pepper sobering up in the most Pepper way possible.