Author: matt

  1. Alaska and American’s shopping portals now have spending bonuses to match United and Southwest’s:

    – Alaska: 1,200 bonus miles for $600 or more in spend through August 14
    – AA: 2,000 bonus miles for $700 in or more in spend through August 13

    For AA Loyalty Point hunters, remember that portal bonuses don’t become Loyalty Points but regular spend does, often even when it shouldn’t.
  2. Alaska Airlines has a great promotion for flights between Kona, Hawaii and the continental US with promo code KONABOGO: Buy one, get one free tickets booked by this evening for travel between August 13 and October 31. There are day-of-week requirements but they’re not too onerous. Given Alaska’s route map, this should be extra exciting for best coasters west coasters.

    Word on the street is that the BOGO isn’t actually coding properly in the buyer’s favor, don’t be afraid to experiment.
  3. Alaska also has a 10% off flights to and from other Hawaiian cities using the same promo code, KONABOGO.
  4. American Express Offers has new Delta airfare statement credits:

    – $75 off of $250 or more
    – $150 off of $500 or more

    The absolute simplest way to game these is to book a non-basic economy flight, wait more than 24 hours, then cancel it. You’ll have a flight credit valid for a year, effectively locking the offer in for later. That concludes offer gaming 101. Now, study for 201 and 202.
  5. Everyone seems to be really excited that American Express Fine Hotels and Resorts bookings can now be changed. I guess it’s not unexciting, but personally I think that the true hack this could unlock won’t actually work. Go ahead AmEx, prove me wrong.
  6. In theory American Express has targeted more people at last year’s link for the Personal Gold card with 100,000 Membership Rewards after $4,000 in spend in three months; I haven’t been able to independently confirm this one though. (Thanks to DoC)

Happy Tuesday!

American Express is out there playing 1D chess to outwit our puny 2D chess playing, FHR booking brains.

  1. Staples has a fee-free promotion on $200 Visa gift cards running through Saturday, limit eight per transaction. On a related note, there have been rumblings that Staples has been rolling out $500 variable load gift cards for the last month or two, and it seems like they may have finished that rollout. Those aren’t fee-free, but they are another option.

    These are Metabank Pathward gift cards so have a liquidation plan in place before you buy too many.
  2. Kroger will have a (probably) final summer weekend 4x fuel points promotion Friday, Saturday, and Sunday on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards.
  3. Costco is selling $500 Alaska Airlines gift cards for $449.99, limit five per member. (Thanks to GCG)
  4. Airfrance and KLM’s FlyingBlue program now allows stopovers on award tickets for no additional charge, either one-way or round-trip, which is an amazing opportunity for travel hackers, especially if you’re able to talk your way into multiple stopovers on a single itinerary, which may or may not be permitted. The quick overview:

    – The length of the stop-over can be between 24 hours and 365 days
    – Different airlines can be combined on a single itinerary

    You currently can’t book these online, so you’ve got to call FlyingBlue directly. In my experience FlyingBlue representatives are some of the most competent out there despite their reputation, the main downside is a typical 10-30 minute wait to talk to one, even as an elite. (Thanks to FM)
  5. PSA: American Express’s sign-up bonus system has been having teething issues for a little over a month. Previously sign-up bonuses on most cards would post within two business days of hitting minimum spend, but recently it’s taken between 7 and 10 days. When it does post, it’ll be back-dated to the day after hitting spend, so it can be hard to track if you’re not watching carefully.

    With AmEx, it’s like a middle-school breakup – it’s not you, it’s them.

Happy Monday!

A text message exchange extracted from American Express’s phone in 7th grade.

There was an isolated group of shutdowns on a relatively lucrative play yesterday, the details don’t matter much for the sake of today’s post but the mechanics matter a lot. The gist is that there was a rash of\ shutdowns that all could be explained as guilt by association, and we saw non-shutdowns where there was no clear association. (Yes, we’re dealing with another obtuse MEAB post, sorry.)

There’s a natural dichotomy in miles and points where one side tugs toward sharing and scaling as a group, and another side pulls at isolation and keeping something in your own pocket. Of course sharing is key for scale and trust is paramount to sharing; but when a bank can link you and someone else on the internet, you’ve got a decent shot at becoming collateral damage when the ban-hammer drops.

The takeaway? Isolate your financial transactions to maximize a play’s longevity (to the extent that such a thing is possible), but trust and share details in your inner circle as long as a bank can’t link you.

Have a nice weekend!

That’s one way to maintain plausible deniability.

Editor’s note: Oopsie on yesterday’s grammar 🤦‍♀️. The good news is that I’ve fixed it and now there’s no google-indexable evidence. Take that robot overlords!

Today’s quick hits:

  1. Kroger is running an in-store 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercards for the second weekend in a row, valid Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

    Fuel points and gift card resale markets continue to climb with more supply bringing new demand from the sidelines back into the game. (Thanks to GCG)
  2. Chase Offers has an offer for 10% back on up to either $500 or $750 spend at Marriott Hotels through July 31. Yes, it’s easily gameable.
  3. American Express offers has two airfare offers:

    – 17,500 Membership Rewards after $1,000 or more in spend at ITA Airways
    – $250 back with $1,250 or more in spend at Qantas Airways

    Both are gameable, but might be a little bit of work.

Happy Thursday!

MEAB switches from blogging to street painting with stupendous results.

One of the tenets around here is that you should always keep your points in flexible currencies like Ultimate Rewards or ThankYou Points until you need to book something. Basic, I know.

In the current era of fee free cancellations for (non-basic economy) award tickets though, there’s a strategic reason to hold an airline’s miles directly: they make a great floating backup plan in case your original trip is delayed or cancelled because of massive wildfires, falling inflatable emergency exit slides, or a lost aircraft.

Whenever I have a trip booked, I also book a backup award ticket at a later time in case everything goes United 328. (I also set a reminder in my phone to cancel the backup at my original flight’s departure time.) That means I need to have enough miles in an airline’s program as necessary to support my existing bookings with backups, at least for the next month or two of flights.

Which miles and how many? The first depends on which airport is home and which airline gives you the most options, and the second depends on how many existing bookings you have and how far out your backup plans go. I guess we can borrow from some rando named Einstein, “as few as possible, but no fewer”.

Happy Tuesday!

“It’ll prolly buff out, no need for the backup booking here.”

  1. Walmart has been rolling out new self-checkout software terminals for a little over a year, and now there’s even a new-new self-checkout terminal being rolled out. Each terminal has different uses and what works at one version doesn’t necessarily work at another. Always be probing. (Thanks to Justin)
  2. Southwest has a tiered shopping portal bonus with 2,000 Rapid Rewards points on $500 or more in spend at the top tier. If you could do only one, yesterday’s United portal is almost certainly a better deal. But, why could you do only one?
  3. MGM is getting together with Marriott in a rebound relationship after the Hyatt breakup in an epic love story that’ll be chronicled in Taylor Swift’s new album “From Bad to Worse” (probably).

    All that remains to be seen is how Marriott #bonvoys the relationship. The possibilities are endless, but they’ll certainly fit the “From Bad to Worse” theme.
  4. Costco is doing a thing. These can be quite lucrative but you really better know exactly what you’re doing before you dive in, and don’t forget that you’re also subject to market price fluctuations.
  5. American Express Offers has $250 back on $1,250 or more in airfare with Qatar Airways. It is gameable.

Happy Wednesday!

A sneak peak of “From Bad to Worse” by Taylor Swift, as imagined by Stable Diffusion.

We’ve got a doozy today, and I’ll let you guess which one:

  1. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card is sending out new mid-July offers which stack with offers sent previously, like those from last week. These offers focus on online purchases for total spend through August 14. We’ve seen:

    – $30 statement credit after $500 or more
    – $50 statement credit after $750 or more
    – $70 statement credit after $1,000 or more
    – 225,000 Shop Your Way Rewards after $750 or more
    – 7,500 ThankYou Points after $750 or more

    I’ve been goaded into referencing a retired NBA star for the next couple of months of Shop Your Way offers, so let’s call this set of offers the “Mark Eaton all-star center” round. (Thanks to MS Ninja, birt, Brooke, irieriley, and flypiggy)
  2. The United Shopping Portal has a tiered spend bonus with 2,500 miles after $600 spend in the top tier. Call me crazy, but it feels like this one pairs well with the Shop Your Way Rewards card.

    Unfortunately Giftcards.com is still absent and it seems like it’s never coming back, also I guess like Mark Eaton. (Thanks to DoC)
  3. The Alaska Airlines shopping portal and the Rakuten shopping portal both have card linked in-store offers for Gamestop. The offers are (in theory) unlimited use, but you have to re-add them to your account after each purchase.

    Last I checked, Gamestop has quite a few uses other than for buying weird Star Wars merch or used, scratched PS4 games. Always be probing.

Happy Monday!

Pictured: NBA all-star center Mark Eaton’s bird form celebrates the SYWR card’s latest deal.

  1. Staples stores have fee free $200 Mastercard gift cards Sunday through the following Saturday, limit eight per transaction. If you get an experienced cashier at Staples (lol), you can probably talk them in to multiple transactions back to back.

    BravoPay is a relatively bullet-proof but expensive liquidation option for these, just try and keep your daily transaction volume small. Of course other options exist too.
  2. For approximately the last year, we’ve seen reports that Chase Ink Preferred cards can be approved past 5/24 about every month. Well, this month’s report has arrived. I hesitate to write about these because I truly believe nothing is different than it has been all year, but since it keeps coming up, here’s my understanding of the rules:

    – Ink Preferred mailers sent via USPS with a promotion code bypass 5/24 consistently
    – Ink Preferred online applications with offers of 90,000 points or more bypass 5/24 if you’ve got a good relationship with Chase but aren’t above 8/24
    – Ink Preferred in-branch applications bypass 5/24 if you’ve got a good relationship with Chase

    I don’t believe Chase has different rules for different people, unlike American Express.
  3. Mileage rates for AA have dropped significantly at Rocketmiles, but higher rates are still available at AdvantageHotels by Rocketmiles, because corporate America 🙄. AA boosted hotel stays are typically most interesting if you play the Loyalty Points game, and even more so if you currently have elite status and an AAdvantage card because the offers are 5-6x higher. (Thanks to Gary at VFTW)

What an experienced cashier at Staples looks like.