Author: matt

In the last week there have been consistent datapoints of two types of shutdowns:

  • Citi AT&T Access More card holders having that card and all other ThankYou linked cards axed
  • Synchrony cards with lots of dining activity, especially if using targeted a dining promotion axed

In both cases there was no early warning from a know your customer (KYC) call, so the once reliable Citi indicator isn’t as reliable right now.

If you still have an AT&T Access More card and have any creative charges in recent history, or if you’ve been hitting the Synchrony portfolio with dining promotions, it might be wise to close those accounts before you end up with the issuer closing them for you and potentially banning you in the process. In other words, it might be time for the sneak attack strike back. Live to fight another day!

Live footage of Citi, post sneak attack strike back.

  1. Citi ThankYou has a 20% transfer bonus to Qantas Frequent Flyer through November 8.

    Qantas’s highest and best use is typically for Emirates or Qantas F redemptions.
  2. Citi launched a new “mid-tier” (lulz) AA credit card yesterday. Vitals of the “AAdvantage Globe Mastercard”:

    – $350 annual fee, 4x single use AA lounge passes
    – 90,000 AA miles after $5,000 spend in four months
    – 2x earning at restaurants, taxis, and rideshare
    – 3x earning with AA, 6x with AA Hotels (also lulz)
    – 1x everywhere else
    – 1x Loyalty Points regardless of mileage earning
    – $100 inflight purchase rebate, which practically means inflight booze because AA doesn’t really cater buy-on-board food as a general rule
    – Companion certificate, but not until your second year

    This card gives United Quest vibes, a card which I (in)famously hate. I guess the sign-up bonus is moderately acceptable, but let’s just say I disagree with anyone who says this card belongs with other “best sign-up bonus” list cards.
  3. The idea of #citigonnaciti went mainstream last week when the WSJ made their Strata Elite 4506-C shenanigans public. Their make-good to say sorry about the press getting wind of their incompetence is to refund the annual-fee and award the sign-up bonus whether or not you hit minimum spend.

    If you fell into the 4506-C hole and didn’t get the make-good offer from Citi, perhaps a phone call to customer service is in order.
  4. Staples in-store has fee free $200 Visa gift cards through Saturday, limit nine per transaction. Predicting that Staples fee-free gift cards are coming the week after a Mastercard scale is about a sure as a bet as putting it all on Joey Chestnut.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  5. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 in Mastercard gift cards through Saturday. Buy these in even multiples of $300 for a bigger per-card discount.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards too.
  6. Southwest Rapid Rewards shopping has an offer for 1,000 bonus Rapid Rewards points with $100+ in spend through today.

Happy Monday!

The Citi Strata Elite situation.

  1. Do this now: Enroll in your targeted Q4 United MileagePlay promotion. Mine was 5,000 bonus miles with a single trip in a premium seat with a base airfare of $200+ booked and flown by December 22.
  2. Do this now: Register for Accor ALL’s Q4 promotion for 2x points on 2+ night stays in North America and Brazil.

    Don’t worry guys, they have an Accor in Bentonville that’s a combination museum and hotel for extra culture and complimentary night time haunting.
  3. Kroger stores have 4x fuel points earning on third party gift cards excluding Amazon and fuel gift cards today through Sunday.

    The resale market for BestBuy, Home Depot, and Apple gift cards remains strong, and the resale market for fuel points, uhhh, is still present.
  4. TheGiftCardShop.com has fee-free custom Visa and Mastercard gift cards with promo code SHOPEARLY25 through November 16. Its sister site MasterCardGiftCard.com has 50% off of purchase fees with the same promo code in case you’re more concerned about capacity than cost.

    These are Vanilla / Incomm gift cards.
  5. Stop & Shop, Giant, and Martins stores have 10x points on Zift Zillions gift cards through Thursday, and apparently there’s no limit on earn at Stop & Shop, but a limit on $2,000 spend at the other stores. Little brother Giant Food only earns 8x.
  6. The Celtic Bank Mesa Visa has a promotion for a free year of Instacart+ which stacks with Chase’s free memberships.

Have a nice weekend!

A combination museum and hotel’s night time lighting (I assume).

One of the “endearing quirks” of churners is the uncanny ability to assign a (probably incorrect) cash value to non-cash instruments. For example, I’ll do it right now:

  • What’s the value of a Hyatt point? 2.0 cents
  • What about a Delta SkyMile? 1.1 cents, but only if you fly Delta and have a Delta credit card
  • What’s about an AAdvantage mile that never gets redeemed? 0.0 cents
  • Ok smart guy, what about a Bud Light in the Lufthansa First Class Terminal? -$46 per can, *waves hands* because something something opportunity cost

How about a hard credit pull? This could be a complex calculation involving things like the average credit card sign-up bonus value, the opportunity cost of minimum spend on a 2% card, the loss of a potential 5/24 slot, the small probability that it causes eyes to end up on your account, how much more an incremental sign-up bonus will increase your happiness, and the mental overhead of additional accounting.

But, I like to keep things simple to make it easy to decide if any particular deal is worth a hard pull:

I’d always trade $800 for a hard pull on my credit report (and yes, I’d trade $800,000,000 for one million pulls on my report, interested parties can reach out). The further below $800 I get, the less interesting a deal is for me.

So, my expectation value for a hard pull is $800.

What’s the point of this article? Great question and I’m not sure I know (exactly what you wanted to hear from a, uhh “trusted”, source), but it does serve as a measuring stick: it’s pretty easy to find credit cards that require a hard pull and have a sign-up bonus or ongoing value worth at least $800. If you’re not getting that, perhaps question why and whether or not you should do something different.

Happy Thursday!

Other churner focused endearing quirks? Mismatched socks.

  1. First Electronic Bank’s Bank’s Rakuten American Express card has an increased sign-up bonus of $100, or 10,000 Membership Rewards, after $1,000 spend in 90 days. The card earns:

    – Rakuten portal: 4x up to $7,000 spend per year
    – Rakuten restaurants: 5x
    – Groceries and dining: 2x
    – Everywhere else: 1x

    The card definitely isn’t an unsung hero, but it is a card that earns unlimited 2x Membership Rewards at grocery without RAT concerns, and possibly soon unlimited 2x Bilt points at grocery too. It’s also a third party AmEx. Finally, it’s time for your annual reminder that Rakuten used to be called buy.com, but that was too hard to say and spell, or something.
  2. Existing Bank of America Preferred Rewards members have an opportunity for a $1,000 bonus for bringing $250,000+ in retirement or regular brokerage investments into a new Merrill account, even if have an existing Merrill account with promo 1000PR.

    You can ACATS transfer existing investments. Investments only have to be with Merrill for 90 days after transfer.
  3. American Express has newly targeted upgrade offers for:

    Delta Gold to Platinum: 30,000 SkyMiles + $250 statement credit with $3,000 spend
    Delta Platinum to Reserve: 35,000 SkyMiles + $300 statement credit with $4,000 spend

    Both give you six months to hit the spend.
  4. American Express’s Delta Personal Gold card also has a heightened $500 statement credit + 50,000 SkyMiles sign-up bonus after $3,300 spend in six months through October 29. The offer is presented while making a (dummy) booking, and the annual fee is waived for the first year too.

    This one won’t work with the above targeted upgrade offers in the first year though, thanks to CARD act, also known as the fried twinkee of credit card regulations.
  5. Vanilla Gift has fee-free Visa gift cards with promo code VISA100. I’d be surprised if other Incomm sites don’t also have promotions running, but they’re not advertising them in the same ways that they normally do so I can’t tell. Purchase limits are $10,000 per rolling 24 hours per account.

    These are Vanilla / Incomm gift cards. (Thanks to DoC)
  6. Rove lets you now earn regular loyalty points and elite night credits on some hotel bookings in addition to miles earned directly with Rove.

Happy Wednesday!

Rakuten’s next rebrand.

  1. Do this now: Register for your Q4 Marriott targeted Q4 promotions, including:

    – Five bonus elite nights, usable 2x for stays through January 31, 2026
    – Extra elite night for all stays through December 31
    – 15,000 bonus points every five stays, up to 3x through January 31, 2026
    – 2,000 bonus per stay at AC, Courtyard, or Four Points properties through February 16, 2026
    – 2,025 bonus points per stay, up to 3x through January 10, 2026
    – 2,000 bonus points per stay, up to 3x at Outdoors properties through January 10, 2026

    Some of those numbers look big, but remember they’re still Bonvoy points.
  2. Staples stores have fee-free $200 Visa gift cards through Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards. (Thanks to GCA)
  3. Staples.com has fee-free virtual $200 Visa gift cards, limit four per account. Sometimes obscure portals work on these too, sometimes.

    These are also Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  4. American Express has a few new offers, all of which are valid through December 31:

    – Virgin Atlantic: $250 off of $1,800+
    – Hilton Cards (variation 1): Earn 6,000 bonus points for a $3,000+ purchase (up to 3x)
    – Hilton Cards (variation 2): Earn 20,000 bonus points for a $10,000+ purchase (up to 3x)
    – Qatar: $200 off of $850+ through AmEx Travel

    I’m told “gamers gonna (allegedly) game”. (Thanks to Stowe)

Happy Tuesday!

“Allegedly”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Look – yes it’s cryptic, but it’s also actionable. #teamcrypticallyactionable

Let’s start with the captain obvious statement for the day: Certain plays only work at a single place, but other plays work at hundreds or thousands of places. Let’s give two concrete examples:

  • gift card purchases at Food Lion won’t work for Kroger fuel point resellers
  • account bonus funding with a credit card works at many banks and credit unions

As you get deeper into the stack of manufactured spend plays, you’ll often find that many of them fall into the second category, there are plenty of entities where a particular play will work.

Because churners are often working in small groups, everyone in the group will hit the same entity at the same time and drive themselves collectively to a quick shutdown because the group’s volume became too big to ignore. The corollary is that plays are often longer lived when the group spreads out its targets for (hopefully) obvious reasons.

So, today’s wisdom: If you can run a play somewhere different than everyone else, you’re probably going to be a lot better off for it. Don’t follow the herd when you don’t have to.

Happy Monday!

Did you know? Avoid following herds of pickles too because reasons.

  1. Stop & Shop, Giant, Giant Food, and Martins have 2x point earning on Mastercards through Thursday, limit $2,000 per loyalty account (or $1,500 for Giant Food because sibling spite).

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  2. New no-lifetime language (NLL) Hilton card offers are available and they’ve been shared by DDG (note that DDG says that these are hacked links, but at least the Aspire and Honors links are generally available at hotels on Hilton WiFi):

    – Aspire: 175,000 points after $6,000 spend in six months
    – Surpass: 155,000 points after $3,000 spend in six months
    – Honors: 100,000 points after $2,000 spend in six months

    These are good offers, and they’re great offers for NLL cards, but Hilton’s recent devaluations are significant so make sure you know the award prices for a booking you have in mind rather than blindly signing up for one of these bonuses.
  3. Ether.fi is cluster bombing travel influencers promoting their crypto backed 3% everywhere debit card and crypto account. It’s cool on the surface and by all means please try and work it into your churning portfolio, but you should know:

    – They’ll turn off your cash back earning really quickly if you have a big transaction or two
    – They’re pretty sure “cashback farmers” are constantly attacking their company
    – Their site is rather buggy, and their support doesn’t respond to tickets
    – They advertise debit card features that haven’t been implemented
    – You’re not actually earning cash back, you’re earning SCR which is down 75% for the year

    So, good luck I guess?
  4. Paid flights on Qatar have a 5% discount code and 3,000 bonus miles in most fare buckets (or 10% and 6,000 bonus miles in some expensive fare buckets) using promo code QRPCHILTON for travel booked by October 31 and flown by March 31, 2026.

    Why? Because somehow a Qatar+Hilton partnership gives you bonus earnings on Qatar and exactly nothing with Hilton except their name in a promo code. #marketingfail
  5. Stater Bros stores have $10 off of groceries with $50+ in Visa or Mastercard gift cards through October 21.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gif cards.
  6. Meijer stores have 10,000 bonus MPerks points with $100+ in One4All gift cards through Tuesday, limit 10,000 points per MPerks account.

    Meijer sells both Pathward / BlackHawk Network and Sunrise gift cards.

Have a nice weekend!

A cashback farmer driving to Meijer.