Category: Credit Cards

  1. The American Express Delta cards have new, highest ever offers through November 4, but caveat emptor because those marked with “*” are “as-high-as” offers, which means without some sleuthing you won’t know what your bonus is until you’re approved (it feels like that sort of offer ought to be addressed by law, but I’m just a guy who writes stuff on the internet, what do I know?)

    – Gold: 80,000* SkyMiles + $250 credit after $3,000 spend in six months
    – Platinum: 90,000* SkyMiles + $300 credit after $4,000 in six months
    – Reserve: 50,000 SkyMiles + two free round-trip flights in Main Cabin or Comfort Plus after $10,000 spend in six months

    – Business Gold: 90,000 SkyMiles after $6,000 spend in six months
    – Business Platinum: 100,000 SkyMiles after $8,000 spend in six months
    – Business Reserve: 200,000 SkyMiles after $20,000 spend in six months

    The personal Reserve free-flight certificates have a value of well over $3,000 for the right use cases, and there aren’t restrictions on fares either. Eligible destinations are the continental 48 states, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands on Delta branded metal with a 21 day advance purchase requirement. These are all available via referral, do that or remember this gem.
  2. The Rove shopping and travel portal launched a few new features today:

    – Third-party gift card sales, which earn miles on purchase
    – A new mobile app
    – In-store earning with card-linked offers

    They’ve also added card-linked dining rewards and revamped their hotel portal. Rove has the potential to be Pepper 3.0 with these changes, hopefully without the unredeemable loyalty currency a few years later.
  3. Google Travel’s AI companion now has access to award pricing and availability for Alaska, AA, Choice Hotels, Hilton, and Wyndham. “In the coming weeks” they’re adding Accor, Flying Blue, Hyatt, LATAM, and Lufthansa group airlines.

    It hallucinates award space that doesn’t really exist, though that is likely a temporary phenomenon. (Thanks to isaacides)
  4. American Express offers has an offer on Hilton cards for 13,500 bonus Hilton points with $4,500 spend, up to three times through December 31.
  5. Stop & Shop stores have 10x points on Delta gift cards through Thursday, limit $2,000 per week. Giant and Martins have 8x, and Giant Food has 6x.

Happy Friday!

Watch out for evaporating award space on, *checks notes*, ZephyrJet?

  1. Giftcards.com has 10% off of $100 Visa gift cards with promo code SD10OFF, limit three. I’m pretty sure the SD doesn’t mean shutdown, but you can’t ever be completely certain. Portals usually don’t combine with promo codes but usually doesn’t equal always.
  2. One of churning’s early achievements is to break American Express’s application status site – not intentionally, but rather from sheer volume. AmEx has just made that trophy harder with a new Application Status site better equipped to handle our shenanigans:

    https://newaccounts.americanexpress.com/eaol/welcome.do

    The first one to break this site gets a commemorative cookie.
  3. United announced new routes to Japan and Europe which is interesting for two reasons:

    – Award availability is usually good at launch
    – They’re adding a bunch of narrow body A321-XLR routes

    You do you, but personally I’m not flying long haul on a narrow body aircraft except in dire situations, so pay attention to equipment when you book these new routes.
  4. Meijer stores have a promotion for 10,000 mPerks points with a $100 One4All gift card through September 8, limit one per mPerks account.

Happy Thursday!

Watch out, the commemorative cookies are going fast.

  1. The Imprint Rakuten American Express card has a $200 or 20,000 Membership Rewards, or 20,000 Bilt Rewards sign-up bonus after $2,000 spend in 90 days depending on your Rakuten account. The heightened bonus ends today.

    Imprint American Express cards are useful for several reasons, not the least of which being that you probably shouldn’t be concerned about an Imprint shutdown so go wild.
  2. Citi ThankYou has a 25% transfer bonus to Leading Hotels of the World’s Leaders Club through September 19. The transfer bonus brings the ratio to 4:1, or exactly the same as the regular American Express transfer rate.

    David shared an interesting analysis of Leaders Club redemptions showing a post-tax value of generally 1.9 cents per Membership Reward transferred, or I guess now per ThankYou point transferred so it is worth paying attention.
  3. Staples online has fee-free $200 Visa virtual gift cards on sale, limit four per transaction and five total.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards and yes, there are liquidation methods, always be probing. (Thanks to DoC)
  4. Hy-Vee stores have $10 off of $150+ in Visa gift cards through Tuesday, limit one per transaction. It should be easy to figure out how to scale this one.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  5. American Express Offers has an offer for $200 off of $1,000 spend at Lufthansa group airlines booked through American Express Travel by October 31.

And yes, there wasn’t actually a Kroger FYI yesterday, oops; stand by for that one later. Also, happy Tuesday friends!

Instructions unclear; liquidating Hy-Vee gift card didn’t work.

  1. The AA World Elite Mastercard has an increased sign-up bonus of 125,000 miles after $15,000 spend in five months, and it’s bringing along an increased $695 annual fee.

    Don’t worry though, there’s still bad news to go with the good news: AA devalued award prices recently so your increased sign-up bonus doesn’t go as far as it would have a few months ago. It’s not quite “heads I win, tails you lose” situation, but there are better ways to get at least 160,000 AA miles, unless you want lots of AA lounge cheese cubes I guess.
  2. Walmart and Sams Club started accepting Apple Pay today, at least at “select locations”. The non-select locations will have support by the end of the year.

    Always be probing.
  3. Staples stores have fee-free $200 Visa gift cards through Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.

Happy Monday!

More good news mixed with bad news.

  1. The PenFed Pathfinder Visa is ending its $95 annual fee waiver for checking account holders on September 28. The card has been popular with churners even though ongoing spend is lame (even with its shenanigans) because points are worth about 0.85 cents for gift card redemptions, and those don’t even sell at face value. But, some churners had 10+ Pathfinder cards, why?

    There’s an annual $100 airline credit that works for effectively anything. That’s not going away, but soon you’ll be paying $95 for that $100 credit which sounds like a bad deal to me.
  2. CardPointers alerted the community that American Express Offers has finally implemented BEGIN; INSERT ...; COMMIT; in their code base, and as a result you’re no longer able to add the same offer to multiple cards.

    If you’re a CardPointers user, I’d look over those settings.
  3. The American Express Bonvoy Brilliant had another, mostly popup-free link surface. The heightened offer of 150,000 Bonvoy points and a $250 statement credit after $6,000 in spend in six months remains.
  4. Staples in store has fee-free $200 Mastercard gift cards through Saturday, limit nine per transaction. A good way to clock these is reader Ryan’s http://officesupplygiftcards.com/.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  5. American Express Offers has an offer for a $250 statement credit with $2,000+ spend on Delta Airlines booked through AmEx Travel by August 31.
  6. Aeroplan has an award sale for “up to 25%” off of points bookings on Air Canada metal for travel booked by tomorrow and flown between September 8 and June 30, 2027.
  7. Cathay Pacific has a promotion for 800 miles back on every 5,000 Asia Miles spend on award flights in economy and premium economy, booked by August 27, and flown between September 10 and December 10. Registration is required.

Happy Monday friends!

AmEx puts their new SQL skills to use against churners.

The Thing

US Bank launched transfer partners on its Altitude Reserve and FlexPerks Travel Rewards Visa cards (my hidden gem FlexPerks American Express card sunsetted and became an Altitude Connect Mastercard earlier this year or it’d probably be there too). Initial partners are:

– AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue at 1:1
– Qantas Frequent Flyer at 1:1
– Ethiopian Sheba Rewards at 1:1
– Accor ALL at 2:1

They’re using a landing page at points.com for transfers, which means they’ll likely have access to many more transfer partners in the future.

The Impact

Because this is U.S. Bank where mediocrity is a way of life, this launch turns out to be … mediocre. Here’s some two-day-late Monday morning quarterbacking:

  • Accor ALL points are worth a fixed two eurocents each so that partner is relatively lame at 2:1. With current exchange rates, that’s effectively a fixed 1.15 cents per point
  • Ethiopian Sheba Rewards isn’t common, so let’s chat about it:

    – Ethiopian is part of Star Alliance
    – The Sheba Star Alliance Award chart is decidedly mediocre (to match U.S. Bank)
    – Redemptions on Ethiopian metal are zone based:
    Same zone: 15,000 miles in economy and 45,000 in business
    Two zone: 30,000 miles in economy and 60,000 in business
    Three zone: 🤷‍♀️
    – Ethiopian has 22 fifth-freedom routes (routes between two countries that aren’t Ethiopia). Pricing on these routes can be good
  • Because transfers are handled by points.com, I expect we’ll see more added rapidly after U.S. Bank figures itself out, but I really mean rapidly in U.S. Bank terms which means slowly in regular terms
  • Seats.aero already tracks Ethiopian miles, so the best redemptions are probably going to be rare thanks to the Tragedy of the Commons
  • Oh yeah, they have Qantas and FlyingBlue transfers too. Welcome to every other bank and FinTech on the planet I guess

The tl;dr: Some partners are better than none, but in this case not that much.

Happy Wednesday!

U.S. Bank transfer partner launch celebration swag.

  1. The Barclay’s Lufthansa Miles & More credit card has an increased sign-up bonus of 70,000 miles after $4,000 spend and paying the $89 annual fee within 90 days.

    The card is basically 1x everywhere on the earn side generally speaking, but it’s one of the best way to earn Lufthansa miles so I guess you win some and lose some? Did anyone notice that lose rhymes with floosies?
  2. The Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select World Elite MasterCard has an increased sign-up bonus of 80,000 miles after $3,500 spend in four months. The card’s $99 annual fee is waived the first year.
  3. Office Depot / OfficeMax Stores have $15 off of $300+ in Visa gift cards through Saturday. Practically speaking you should be buying these in even multiples of $300. Remember even and odd numbers friends? #MathIsHard

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  4. Wyndham has a weird partnership with Costco that’s I guess tailored to the intersection of manufactured spend and award travel: Get 4,000 Wyndham points and a $40 shop card with a new Executive Membership using promo code WYNDHAM26 through September 16; you’ll provide your Wyndham Rewards number during the sign-up process.

    There’s also an offer for the Gold Star Membership, but you’d be making TeddyH cry if you chose that option. Of course Groupon may still be better because reasons. (Thanks to FM)

Happy Tuesday!

Leaving half eaten bars of chocolate ice cream in the fridge also makes TeddyH sad, reportedly.

  1. Two American Express Marriott cards have increased sign-up bonuses:

    – Bonvoy Bevy: 125,000 points and $150 statement credit, $250 annual fee
    – Bonvoy Brilliant: 150,000 points and $250 statement credit after $6,000 spend in six months, $650 annual fee

    As of this writing, both links appear to be popup-free. Marriott is going to devalue soon though (see their earnings transcript and search for Bonvoy), so … that’s great.
  2. The Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Visa has an increased sign-up bonus of four 50,000 point free-night certificates after $3,000 spend in three months, and is also available via referral links so use one of those from a friend or from P2.

    This one also has a must-activate-before-spend offer for two semi-annual $50 airline credits after $250 in airline spend, which is unfortunately is a big enough flexible rebate that you should pay attention to it.
  3.  The Chase IHG Premier card has an increased sign-up bonus of 160,000 bonus points after $3,000 spend in three months, 5x$20 in IHG food and beverage vouchers which is just as annoying as it sounds. If you get an error on the application page, check the Chase mobile app instead because #tech. The card’s $99 annual fee is not waived.

    You’ll also get 10,000 extra points for adding an authorized user and putting a charge on that card; but don’t get too excited, 10,000 points is worth about $50. This should be available for referrals in the next couple of days.
  4. The Synchrony Virgin Red Mastercard has an increased sign-up bonus of 60,000+20,000 points. The card’s $99 annual fee is not waived for the first year. Breaking down the spend:

    – 60,000 points with $4,000 spend in three months
    – 20,000 points with $6,000 total spend in six months

    You can also add up to four authorized user accounts for 2,500 bonus points each, though it’ll hit their credit report so use caution. (Thanks to DDG)
  5. Frontier Airlines has a discounted GoWild unlimited travel pass for $199, valid for travel through the end of February 27. This pairs well with matched Frontier elite status, but there are blackout periods around holidays.
  6. AA’s elite upgrade policy is changing to allow for only one class of service upgrade on three class aircraft starting on August 25.

Happy Friday!

More from the Marriott earnings call.