Author: matt

I had a “Weekend Wisdom” post scheduled for today, but late breaking news preempted it. I’ll let you guess which item caused the shake-up:

1. Meijer MPerks has 10% off on gift card purchases running today and tomorrow with a maximum of $50 back on a $500 purchase per account. Don’t sleep on this one, it isn’t the snooze fest you might think it is. I know of people that literally fly to Meijer territory from other parts of the country and hang out in stores, buying two $500 cards every 10 minutes for an entire day; then they wake up and do it again the next day.

Some gift cards are excluded, but BestBuy isn’t one of them (resale rates are currently in the 96-98% range, which makes this a 6-8% money maker even before your credit card spend).

2. Kroger has been running a 4x fuel point event for online gift card purchases since Monday. I haven’t written about it until this point because it’s been spotty and finicky with cancelled orders all over the place, but that seems to be mostly fixed. With fuel points selling at all-time highs you can come out ahead and never leave home. Your best options:

  • Apple gift cards: Resale rate of 94.5%+
  • Cheers-to-you Happy cards (swap to Home Depot): Resale rate of 94.5%+

The limits are $1,002 per transaction, and $1,002 per rolling 24-30 hour period. Buy the $500 cards for the best bang for your buck, and seasoned accounts work better. Don’t have any seasoned accounts? No time like the present to get ready for the next round, buddy!

3. The Staples fee-free $200 Visa gift card purchase promotion has been extended for another week, running through Saturday, November 13. As before, it’s still limit 5 per transaction. If you do this one, have a good liquidation channel and use a card that bonuses at office supply stores. (Thanks to GC Galore)

Did you guess which item messed things up? Hint, it wasn’t Staples.

Waiting for 10 minutes to pass at a Meijer grocery store.

1. There’s currently a targeted offer on credit cards with Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and several small credit unions for $75 back on a $75 purchase at AT&T in-store. Reader Ling wrote in to let me know that the credit-card linked program Dosh also has a deal for $75 back at AT&T. He made a purchase and both offers stacked, leading to $150 in cash back for a $75 purchase.

I believe both of these deals will continue to work together because they’re run by different companies and run on different reward networks, so if you e got an AT&T store close by it might be worth dropping in.

2. There are a bunch of points transfer bonuses going on right now:

3. Try and register at this link for bonus Hyatt points for nights spent in a Hyatt hotel between now and January 14, 2022. In contrast to a Bonvoy point being worth about half a cent, I think about a Hyatt point as being worth close to two cents, which makes this a great promotion if you’ve already got stays planned. Offers I’ve heard:

  • 30,000 points for each 10 nights (thanks to Gators5220)
  • 12,000 points for each 5 nights (thanks to MK)

Happy Thursday!

A Thursday triple cheeseburger churningburger. As usual, this burger is worth about the same as 1,400 Bonvoy points, but is much easier to redeem where and when you want. #bonvoyed

1. Reader Mark wrote in to let me know that the Target RedCard deal is back, this time worth $80 for each cycle (you get one coupon for $40 off of in-store purchases, and another coupon for $40 off of online purchases). Remember, you can churn this deal. I believe currently you have to wait 48-72 hours between closing a RedCard and opening a new one, which is different than how it worked over the summer.

2. The Point debit card currently has an offer for 15x at Nike.com (or 30x if you’ve gotten your new Point card in the mail), for up to $50 total in cash back. Nike is also currently 5x at the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal and 10% cash back at RebatesMe, and historically physical gift cards have always tracked with portals.

Nike resale rates are around 91% right now, so for buying a $340 card the deal will be worth:

  • With RebatesMe, $53.40
    • $50 back from Point
    • $34 back from RebatesMe
    • -$30.60 resale loss
  • With Chase UR, $19.40 + 1,700 Ultimate Rewards
    • $50 back from Point
    • -$30.60 resale loss
    • 1,700 Ultimate Rewards from Chase

Not bad for probably 4 minutes worth of your time. You can check the current shopping portal rates at cashbackmonitor, and as always, if you sign up for Point use a referral because the referral bonus is $100 while the public offer is $10. Get a referral from a friend, or reach out to me in a pinch.

MS Hint: These are just a couple of debit cards that could be part of your churning toolbelt. Get out there and find a few others, there are some crazy and valuable options.

I mistyped a search at Google with”churning curds” and got this. I call it serendipity.

1. It’s time to buy BestBuy gift cards for resale at Amazon (or to buy regular merchandise if that’s how you roll). Check for the following offers:

  • Discover 40% off up to $40 back when using at least one point
  • American Express 30% off up to $30 back when using at least one Membership Rewards point
  • Chase 50% off up to $15 back when using at least one Ultimate Rewards point

With all of these you should use only one point because the redemption value isn’t great. Also combine with any bonus offers linked to your cards if you have them (AmEx currently has a 5x offer at Amazon for example). If the offers aren’t showing for you on Amazon’s site: unlink the relevant cards, wait a couple hours, add the cards back, wait a couple of hours, then try again. That’ll usually do the trick to get you eligible.

2. Check your email for a targeted spending offer on the no annual-fee Citi Shop Your Way Rewards Mastercard (a still future Miles Earn and Burn Unsung Hero card). The current offer is 10x at home improvement and electronics stores up to $12,500 in spend, and it of course works in tandem with another offer for 10% back on utility payments up to $500 in spend per month until January. Look for emails with the following subject (but prolly replace Matthew with your name, because duh):

  • “Matthew, your limited-time offer is here. Activate now.”
  • “Matthew, activate your bonus rewards offer!”

3. Check for the following American Express coupons offers:

  • 5x at Amazon
  • $25 back on $250 at BestBuy
  • $40 back on $200 at Hertz
  • $200 back on $1,000 at Delta Vacations (hint: You can book Disney with Delta Vacations)

There are other good ones too, just clip those coupons save them to your account.

The feel that American Express is evidently shooting for with their ultra-premium Platinum and Centurion cards.

Q4 is a great time to be in the game, and there are a few MS opportunities that cropped up over the weekend to kick it up a notch:

1. CashApp has an interesting boost for 10% back on online purchases at Sam’s Club up to $20, once per day between now and November 23. GC Galore also just broke news that Sam’s Club is officially recognizing gift cards for rebates with shopping portals. As of this writing, JetBlue has 3x at Sam’s and TopCashBack has 2% back, so between the two you’re looking at a 12% discount or better on $200 in gift cards every day for the next three weeks or so.

Best options: Vanilla Visa, Vanilla Mastercard, and Disney (thanks to Kyle for the Disney tip.) If you’re not currently a Sam’s Club member, spin up a new email address that you haven’t used before and you can get a new membership for $45 with a $45 Sam’s gift card included.

2. I’m getting bored with office supply store deals and getting really sick of $200 Metabank gift cards. In case you’re not like me, Staples has your back with another fee free $200 Visa gift card for up to five cards per transaction. The deal runs between now and Saturday. I’ll be sitting this one out because it’s too distracting with all the other Q4 shenanigans and the deluge of crazy FinTechs launching new products.

3. The Point debit card has double earning between whenever you get your updated card in the mail and the end of the year. That makes it effectively a 2% cash back debit card, or more if you spend in bonus categories (currently 10x on subscriptions for streaming, 6x on rideshare and delivery, 30x at Nike, 40x at HBO Max, 10x at Whole Foods, 10x at Amazon, 10x at Costco, 10x at Trader Joes, and 10x at coffee shops after doubling).

If you don’t currently have a Point debit card, sign up through a referral because you’ll get a $100 sign-up bonus rather than the public $10 bonus. Unfortunately though, they raised the annual fee to $99 for the card, but at least opening one doesn’t do a credit pull or affect Chase 5/24. If you want a card, find a friend for a referral and make their day, but if you can’t find a friend reach out to me and I’ll hook you up.

I don’t think I understood going up a notch until now, but I guess it means going from “bail” to “cabin”. Go cabin everyone!

Gift card sales are picking up in just about every way right now, but let’s narrow today’s discussion to a few fun Visa/Mastercard deals (and don’t forget the current Office Depot / OfficeMax deal going through Saturday):

1. GiftCards.com has a Halloween sale for three $250 virtual Visa gift cards with $75 off using code TRICKORTREAT, for a total cost of about $693 for $750 worth of cards. To make this even better, Citi has a targeted merchant offer for 1.5x at GiftCards.com, you can add it to your card at this link. (Thanks to GC Galore)

Make sure you go through a shopping portal to get to this deal. As of this writing, Alaska is at 4x which would payout at around 2,770 miles. In theory the deal runs through Halloween, but it will probably sell out sooner so jump on it while you can.

2. Simon Mall has 50% off of purchase fees using promo code OCTSCARY50. These are great for their large denominations (up to $1,000), and especially great for running up balances on a Citi Double Cash. Just don’t use an American Express card, they don’t pay out points on Simon purchases.

3. Kroger has $3 back on purchases of Visa or Mastercard gift cards via digital coupon. This one is unique because it reportedly works with variable load and fixed load cards, but only if the face value is over $50. Kroger sells US Bank Visa and Mastercard gift cards which tend to work better in many places than the alternatives.

You have a few Kroger accounts, right? You can create a new one in less than two minutes.

Virtual gift cards in action, but watch out: I have a sneaking suspicion that the printout probably won’t work at a Walmart register.

The Elephant (s) in the Room

Surely you’ve read about the AA elite changes, Marriott point and certificate changes, and Hyatt peak/off-peak changes in a thousand different places so I’m not going to add another “me too” type post, but here are a few concise summaries without all the fluff for your future reference:

  • AA changes (to elite status only, award changes not expected for a long time)
  • Hyatt changes (hotels cost more during peak, less during off-peak, and the same in “normal” times)
  • Marriott changes (#bonvoyed)

What I Really Wanted to Post

With that out of the way, let’s talk about how crazy American Express can be right now, and I hope you can replicate what I did. Background: I opened a Personal Gold card 364 days ago. The annual fee will hit when the statement closes in a few days, so it was a great time to check on a retention offer over chat. I did that, and then a few more shenanigans because reasons:

  • Accepted a retention offer of 30,000 Membership Rewards after $3,000 spend in 90 days
  • Followed this link for an upgrade offer to a Platinum with 25,000 Membership Rewards after spending $10,000 in 90 days, and a bonus 10x on spend at grocery for up to $15,000 in spend from the same card
  • Referred a Player 2 for a new American Express card for a bonus +4x for up to $25,000 in spend for 90 days from the same card

American Express offers stack, and that means that at grocery stores, this card will earn:

  • 24x for the first $3,000 in spend
  • 14x for the next $12,000 in spend
  • 5x for the last $10,000 in spend

You can do this too as long as you’ve got a Personal Gold or Green card that’s been open for at least a year. It’s a good thing that BestBuy gift card resale rates are high right now, amirite?

Basking in the Membership Rewards downpour (with a bonus Easter Egg for Garth)

Background

Bravo is a great platform for sending person-to-person payments with both credit and debit cards. I first heard about Bravo in early 2019 from the now defunct Middle Age Miles blog. It’s never been the lowest fee liquidation option, but if you are earning 5-15x when buying gift cards and you’ve filled up other channels or run out of lower-fee liquidation, it can make sense.

The problem with Bravo though is that the fees started out relatively high and they’ve continued to creep higher, just like ancillaries on Frontier airlines. The evolution:

  • The fees started out at a flat 2%
  • They capped the flat 2% to payments of $499.99 or less
  • Around September 2020 they raised the fees for payments above $10 to be 2.9% + $0.31 per payment (or more)
  • Sometime in the last several weeks, they raised the fee to 3.6% + 0.31 per payment above $30.01

At this point, it’s really, really hard to justify the use of Bravo. That said, I suppose it could still make sense for some of you.

Forcing the Old Fee Structure

Here’s the kicker with the fees though: Until the last couple of weeks you could still send payments under the old 2% flat fee structure. How? By using an old version of the app and jumping through a few other (small) hoops.

Why did this happen? Well, I can tell you in general even though I don’t have any special inside information: a golden rule in mobile app and web development is that the server should validate everything, and the server should be responsible for “business logic” like the fees charged on a transaction. You can never trust a users device to be above board. Bravo’s team clearly didn’t follow this rule. The fees were hard coded into the application itself, so using an older application would give you an older fee structure. It took their team years to finally plug this hole.

Lessons Learned

  • Older apps can unlock functionality that’s been removed or changed, and that can even affect the way you’re charged for a service
  • Backing up your applications on iOS or having quick access to apkmirror on Android will often be useful for future tinkering
  • Sometimes you’ll need multiple versions of an application to accomplish a task

And of course the most important lesson for the software developers out there: Always validate on the server side. Always. (Unless you’re trying to help us out, in which case, thanks.)

Pictured: Bravo’s fix for the “2% in perpetuity” hole.