The next installment of American Express versus the Floosies dropped. In the new chapter, Chapter IV: That Time Maurice Posed in Duck Face, American Express blocked most floosie merchants, preventing charges from going through. This was made especially easy because the floosie merchants all shared some common traits.
My opinion: The floosies are lucky that it shook out this way and that it wasn’t worse. I bet they’ll strike back though.
My takeaway is that giftcards.com orders through an airline portal should only happen when the bonus is 2x+, or when there’s a cumulative spend shopping bonus.
Recurring American Express statement credits for airline incidentals, $200 Dell credits, $10 telecommunications, $10 GrubHub, $50 Saks, and $20 flexible business credits stopped posting for charges after February 17. Resy 10x and 15x bonus points stopped around the same time too. Don’t stress, it’s not you, it’s them. They’ll get it fixed eventually, this happens roughly every year.
Dunkin, Hilton, Clear, Walmart+, and Resy restaurant credits remain unaffected.
If you search Perplexity for “What are American Airlines miles worth?”, you may get a range of numbers from 1.0 cents each to 2.5 cents each and a lot of hallucinated reasoning behind those numbers too. If you repeat the search, you’ll probably get a different result. Valuing miles is hard, even for AI. So, often we revert to one of the hobby’s normal methods:
A mile is worth the value of selling it on the grey market
A mileage redemption is worth the cash that you would have paid without the miles
A mileage redemption is worth the cash price that the ticket or property is listed for
A mile is worth 1.0 cents, because most programs let you redeem at that level A mile is worth your opportunity cost for acquiring it
Those are all fine and good, but sometimes you need a legally defensible valuation for a mile as part of a settlement, tax action, corporate valuation, or similar rigorous process, and the above answers typically won’t cut it because of logical holes big enough to fly an A380 through. Also, judges in particular hate it when you’ve got a hand-waivey answer with variability left up to the eye of the beholder. So, let’s reintroduce a mileage valuation that’s easily defensible:
A mile is worth what the program will sell it to you for
Right now, I can buy 10,000 AA miles for $338.63, so for the purposes of a legally defensible valuation for miles, AA miles are worth 3.3863 cents each.
Happy Wednesday!
Yes, there’s another common way to determine mileage value.
This seems to be an error on Chase’s part, and they’re fixing it within 10 business days if you call and ask. In theory . So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to check your TransUnion credit report and put a ticket in with Chase if necessary.
FlyingBlue Promo Rewards for March have been released for travel booked in march and flown through August 31. The promotional US cities are Detroit, Seattle, Washington DC, Boston, and Austin.
The biggest volume gift card reselling platform Raise’s GCX, which incidentally via a broker is where most manufactured spender’s gift cards end up, recently made moves that seem to effectively push all but the top three or four sellers into insolvency unless they have a stable of private buyers or a mostly non-existent big alternative. Based on discussions with several anonymous brokers, the new normal is:
New tiers (that sound like Delta status levels) based on quarterly sales volume:
<= $19,999 for Bronze
$20,000+ for Silver
$100,000+ for Gold
$500,000+ for Platinum
$1,000,000+ for Diamond
$10,000,000+ for Delta 360 Diamond Plus
Platform selling fees ranging based on tier level from 15% to 6%-ish (that means if you sell BestBuy at 98.50% of face, you’ll take-home 83.5% after fees as a Bronze member, maybe up to 45 days later)
Penalties for cards that don’t sell quickly enough
Increased penalties for debited transactions (when a buyer says the card doesn’t work)
No more grace period for bad quarters, immediate tier demotion
Longer holding times before payout for many gift cards
If you want to sell on Raise / GCX and compete with the big three current sellers that are paying approximately 6-7% in fees, you’re going to have pay around $40,000 in extra commissions on your way to that tier too. That means:
Raise’s changes are forming an oligopoly of gift card resellers
Smaller resellers are going to drop out (I’ve heard of three already)
The bar to entry to be an effective bulk competitor is higher than ever
Competition for manufactured spenders selling gift cards to brokers will fall
Manufactured spenders will see decreased profits as competition falls
The existing oligopoly will see increased profits as competition falls
Raise is likely to have a simpler business and a smaller support staff with these changes, but they’re also leaving themselves vulnerable to a new marketplace competitor with lower fees and a penchant for marketing that could take over as the new de-facto gift card resale platform. Watch for turbulent times in the short term, and (hopefully) a new reseller focused marketplace in the medium term.
Oh, and since we haven’t talked about Pepper for a while, let’s take a tangent from the main topic to mention Pepper’s weekend: they were offering 20% back in Pepper Coins for Best Buy purchases, and 25% back for Target purchases. Completely auspicious right?
Happy Monday!
GCX/Raise’s totally original status program elite bag tag.
There are two popup-free NLL American Express links that have been floating in the depths of the churning community for awhile, but have recently surfaced:
– Business Platinum: 250,000 Membership Rewards after $15,000 spend in three months – Business Gold: 200,000 Membership Rewards after $10,000 spend in three months
These aren’t modified links, but they are post-targeted links which makes them slightly risky. The links are less risky if your first name is Mike though. No, I’m not kidding, this one is real.
American Express seems to have implemented a new 2/90 rule this year even on charge cards, preventing you from being approved for more than two cards in a 90 day window, shenanigans notwithstanding.
I think AA’s promotions over the last couple of days trying to get someone, anyone to fly in March suggests that their Q1 might not be off to a great start.
Air Canada Aeroplan family pooling is back after being pulled last year because of rampant mileage brokering abuse. If you want to use it in the future in a pinch, I’d set up your pool now because verification can take weeks.
In this case, having the first name Mike isn’t believed to help.
Have a nice weekend friends!
Mike helps a churner celebrate another flight booked at 1.54 cents per Membership Reward point.
The American Express Hilton cards have an increased sign-up bonus:
– Honors: 70,000 points and a free night certificate after $2,000 spend in six months – Surpass: 130,000 points and a free night certificate after $3,000 spend in six months – Aspire: 175,000 points after $6,000 spend in six months
In case you’re in pop-up jail on those and don’t know how to get out, you can find smaller bonuses that are mostly popup immune for the same cards here.
