Author: matt

  1. Meijer has 10,000 bonus points on $100+ in Mastercard gift cards, limit 10,000 points per account.

    Meijer sells both Pathward / BlackHawk Network and Sunrise gift cards.
  2. Kroger stores have a 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards other than Amazon and flexible fuel cards running through July 7. Yes, this is different than the last two-week 4x fuel points promotion that ended the day before this one started.

    The last promotion saw Kroger fighting back against gamers, but gamers just found a variation on the game because good/evil (choose one) always wins, except those times that they lose I guess.
  3. American Express Membership Rewards transfer bonuses to Hilton and Virgin Atlantic ended prematurely. Speculation suggests that they were accidentally released ahead of their intended July 1 date. (Thanks to FM)
  4. Expedia’s OneKey program is devaluing, with earning now based on status tier instead of a fixed 2% cash back on non-flights, no earning on flights, and the removal of its price guarantee.

    The Expedia OneKey credit cards remain an interesting niche play though. If you haven’t heard of this card in a long time, or possibly ever, it’s probably because they don’t pay much in the way of affiliate sales commission; do with that what you will.
  5. Asiana Airlines will complete its acquisition by Korean Air later this year. As of December 17, they’ll no longer honor Star Alliance award bookings, even those already ticketed.

    If you have one of those bookings, I’d start looking (a) at legal recourse, and (b) backup award flights on other carriers.

Have a nice Thursday friends!

The Expedia OneKey cards sit in the corner wondering why no one loves them.

  1. US Bank has double cash back on both its portal and its card linked offers through Friday. Unfortunately, this portal is convoluted enough to need a cheat sheet.
  2. The Synchrony Virgin Red Mastercard is sending targeted bonuses for 1,500 bonus points after two $10+ purchases using Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Amazon Pay. I believe this generic link will work for every Virgin cardholder, but the terms and conditions don’t show on the target page for anyone so ymmv. (Thanks to David)
  3. Stater Bros has $10 off of groceries purchased with a $50+ One4All gift card through July 7. These work on back-to-back transactions too so bring your favorite cashier a thank you $10 Dunkin Paze gift card or something for tying up their line for an hour. (Thanks to GCA)
  4. American Express Membership Rewards has two transfer bonuses:

    – 20% to Hilton Honors through July 14, making the ratio 1,000:2,400
    – 30% to Virgin Atlantic through July 31, making the ratio 1,000:1,300

    Frankly American Express should be bringing you a $10 Dunkin Paze gift card for your trouble in dealing with their Hilton transfer bonus.
  5. Thanks to a comedy of errors at Chase, Ink Plus cards will earn 5x on shipping through Saturday. Too bad Fat Bobby is out of business?
  6. Delta SkyMiles has an award sale through tomorrow night for economy travel in September, October, and November. Selected pricing:

    – Europe: 40,000 – 60,000 SkyMiles round trip
    – Central America and Mexico: 16,000 – 21,000 SkyMiles round trip

    AA and Delta’s economy award sales this week for fall travel should tell you something about how the airlines are doing at filling the back of the bus this fall.

Happy Wednesday!

Meanwhile in the rest of the blog-o-sphere…

This week is going to be a great week for buyer’s groups because reasons, and it’ll be a good time to get your toes wet to prepare for the holiday frenzy too. With that out of the way:

  1. Do this now: Register for Hyatt’s summer promotion for 2,000 bonus points for every two nights starting with your second stay between July 1 and September 7. This maxes out at a 🤏 8,000 bonus points.
  2. Bilt added Preferred Hotels and Resorts as a transfer partner at a 1,000:2,000 point ratio, which matches the Citi ThankYou transfer ratio. Quick, anyone want to guess what transfer bonus Bilt will have on July 1?
  3. Bilt also has a targeted spend bonus on your Bilt wallet page for 5x at Amazon, Walmart, and Target, but only up to a 🤏 $200 in spend through June 30.
  4. AA has an economy award promotion for travel on AA metal in August and September booked by July 7. Generally, sale fares are:

    – 9,000 miles for transcontinental flights, Mexico flights, and Central America
    – 21,000 miles for east coast transatlantic flights to Europe
    – 30,000 miles for other US transatlantic flights to Europe

    So how about that comfort? Well, you’ll get there, probably.

Happy Tuesday friends!

Bilt’s upcoming 🤏 swag sale.

  1. Staples stores have fee-free $200 Mastercard gift cards through Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  2. American Express Offers has a new offer for 20,000 Membership Rewards or a $200 statement credit after $1,000 spend on Air France/KLM flights from the US through August 30.
  3. The Bank of America Travel Rewards card is on Rakuten with a $275 or 27,500 point portal bonus in addition to the regular 25,000 Bank of America point sign-up bonus after $1,000 spend in 90 days.
  4. Stop & Shop, Giant, Giant Food, and Martins 6x points on third party gift cards through Thursday. Per-account limits are either $500, $1,500 $2,000, or $500 on Zift and $2,000 on everything else depending on the chain because why A/B test when you can A/B/C/D/Q/Y test?

Happy Monday friends!

A/B testing biking surfaces.

  1. Do this now: Register for 5x Q3 categories:

    – Chase Freedom (Flex): Gas, EV charging, public transit, “select” live entertainment, and the United Way
    – Discover IT: Gas, transportation, and drug stores
    – Citi Dividend: Gas and home improvement
    – US Bank Cash+: I choose utilities and electronics

    Gas stations are the obvious angle for gamers.
  2. The Southwest Rapid Rewards Shopping portal has a 2,000 bonus miles with $200+ spend through June 29.

    Giftcards.com is the obvious angle for gamers.
  3. Barclays re-tooled its Wyndham card portfolio. The highlights:

    – New Wyndham Rewards Earner Premier Visa 4x on dining, grocery, and travel; $395 annual fee; 90,000 points after $6,000 spend in four months, 30,000 more points after $750+ at Wyndham hotel properties; lots of stupid coupons; Diamond status
    – Updated personal and business cards: annual fees go up, manufactured spend friendly category multipliers go down, sign-up bonuses go up, new stupid coupons, miles don’t expire
    – Existing cardholders retain existing benefits and spending category multipliers, will be able to switch to the new versions of the cards in the nebulous future

    There’s a lot of minutiae in this one, for more detail see this Doctor of Credit post. The tl;dr though is that this sucks for gamers.
  4. Qatar Avios restricted award bookings, specifically:

    – Bookings are restricted to first party and a maximum of 10 other people
    – 6 of the other people are from your “Family & Friends” pool
    – 4 of the other people are form your “My List” profile
    – Those 10 accounts must have a Qatar credit card or flight credited to the Avios account and be at least 30 days old, though transfers from FinnAir also seem to work

    Now is a good time to create accounts for other players that don’t have them yet.
  5. The AA eShopping portal has giftcards.com at 2.5x as of this writing, great for AA status gamers.

How does this one affect gamers? There’s way too much here to know.

A favorite grocery manufactured spend technique has been, shall we say, in a tight spot for the last week. There were dozens of reported shutdowns, and generally speaking each of those reports had lots of affected accounts. The scale is, shall we say, large.

I don’t have any direct solution for this volley between big grocery and big spender, but I do have some advice for not looking like the same person when you’re juggling multiple accounts:

  • Use incognito or separate browser profiles for each account, and be consistent
  • Use a different IP address every time
  • Create bulk accounts over time, not all at once
  • Vary device profiles, such as: Android, iPhone, Mac, and PC, and use varying browsers on each too
  • Use public Wi-Fi, or even better maybe an in-store Wi-Fi
  • Avoid using the same credit card for multiple accounts, Apple Pay is a great way to do this
  • When scripting account creation, use a solution like camoufox, or use Chrome CDP. Selenium is probably a bad idea.
  • Try not to have the same store participate in the same transaction patterns on every single account

In other words, don’t do what, shall we say, Ralph would do.

Happy Thursday!

The, shall we say, culprit.

  1. The American Express Delta co-branded credit cards have new no-lifetime language (NLL) links found on the dashboard for Delta SkyMiles Business site. The offers:

    – Business Gold: 90,000 SkyMiles after $4,000 spend in three months, annual fee waived first year
    – Business Platinum: 110,000 SkyMiles after $6,000 spend in three months
    – Business Reserve: 125,000 SkyMiles after $10,000 spend in three months

    These are available via referral, but you’ll lose the NLL boon.
  2. The Chase Sapphire Preferred card has a 100,000 Ultimate Rewards bonus after $5,000 spend in three months. This is also available via referrals, so use a friend’s and make their day.
  3. The Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card has an increased sign-up bonus of 125,000 Bonvoy points and a free-night certificate worth up to 50,000 points. This is also available via referrals.

    Last I checked, 125,000 Bonvoy points was still worth more than a couple of cases of Costco bananas, but that might be changing?
  4. Cathay Pacific AsiaMiles hasn’t been able to book low level Japan Airlines premium cabin awards since about two weeks ago and now the problem is becoming more public. Compounding, it’s not just AsiaMiles: AAdvantage availability shrunk in the same timeframe though it wasn’t completely eliminated. AA and other oneworld airlines have seen phantom JAL premium cabin awards for several months. In other words, things are spiraling.

    The fact that this happened about 8 months ago and eventually fixed itself leads me to believe it’s a bug, though it’s possible it could have been a test back then.
  5. United Airlines has a partner drive for donated miles to Give A Mile, worthy 501(c)(3) charity that helps reconnect families facing an imminent death. This drive runs through June 21, and even a few thousand miles helps (Thanks to Gary at VFTW)
  6. The Paze frenzy in the churning space has been unmatched since the Great Premium Hyatt credit card rumor frenzy of February 2026. The major updates:

    – Each Paze eligible card now has ten $10 off of $10+ statement credits through the end of the month
    – 10x earning on up to $1,500 spend monthly on Chase cards is still there
    – Newegg was removed from eligible Paze merchants for most purchases thanks to blatant abuse
    – Newegg will be removed entirely from Paze on July 1
    – Other banks have Paze eligible cards with Paze games waiting

    Can I Paze someone to have everyone stop talking about it now?

Happy Wednesday, friends!

(Cases of) banana for scale.

Generally the value of loyalty points goes down over time. There are lots of reasons, but one that eventually affects all programs is inflation:

  • As general costs rise, the number of points you earn with your credit card for buying the same thing also rises
  • As airfare and hotel rates increase, the number of points you earn for the same price increases
  • The dollar amount that hotel loyalty programs pay to a property for an award, typically tied to room rate, increases over time

Other reasons like decreasing liability on corporate books, a desire for increased profits, and a lack of understanding about long term loyalty motivations contribute too. (Marriott: You’re not going to be the corporate king forever even if it feels like it now.)

So what do we do with that? There’s a 101 and a 201 level answer:

  • 101: Earn and burn
  • 201: Sell excess now, buy needed later

Have a nice day friends!

301: Burn and Earn