Category: Credit Cards

I’ve received nearly a half dozen reports of clawbacks of American Express Membership Rewards regular spend, +5x referral bonus, and sign-up bonus on Tuesday and Wednesday, and I’ve seen corroborating data-points publicly and privately too. This isn’t happening silently, but rather those affected are notified by email with the message:

After careful review, we noticed activity that indicated these points may have been earned or used in a way that doesn’t meet the terms and conditions of the Membership Rewards program or of the promotional offer under which you earned the points.

Based on conversations with AmEx customer service reps, American Express has tagged certain purchases as gift card purchases and reversed the points earned and the some of the bonuses awarded based on that spend, since the AmEx terms and conditions exclude “cash equivalents” from earning. We’ve seen clawbacks on the following types of purchases:

  • Some Speedway purchases that are a near multiples of $505.95, but not all
  • Some Walmart purchases that are a near multiple of $504.90, but not all
  • Some giftcards.com purchases, but not all
  • Some grocery in-person gift card purchases (various chains), but not all

Clawbacks have happened on (at least) Business Gold cards, Business Platinum cards, Blue Business Plus cards, and Personal Gold cards. Other than earning Membership Rewards, bonus categories and card types probably don’t play a factor in whatever’s happening.

There’s some less-bad news too though:

  • It seems that clawbacks have only happened on some cards, even if multiple cards could have been affected
  • It seems that clawbacks are happening specifically on cards in the sign-up bonus period or in a +5x referral period
  • All clawbacks seem to be for late-May or June spend
  • So far it looks like American Express is only targeted cardholders that closed a card in the last month or so (even if it wasn’t the same card)

If you’re working on a sign-up bonus in the near future, I’d try an avoid spending in suspiciously obvious amounts at big-named retailers which seems to help, and be careful about when you close any AmEx card. Good luck!

(Thanks to Tyler, D73, SideShowBob233, Brooke, and Brandon for collaborating with me on this post)

Pictured: AmEx.

  1. Citi ThankYou points has a 15% transfer bonus to Cathay Pacific AsiaMiles through July 22. Sweet spots:

    – JAL award flight availability before most partners can see the award space
    – Trips with up to five (!) stopovers and 2 open-jaws
    – Qatar Q-Suites for 75,000 miles each way
    – East coast to Europe in business class for 50,000 miles each way
  2. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards Card has been sending targeted offers for online spend through July 14. In my experience online spend is the same as a “card not present” transaction, so it’s easy to hit. Offers:

    -$50 statement credit with $750 spend
    – $30 statement credit with $500 spend
    – 150,000 Shop Your Way Rewards Points with $500 spend
    – 225,000 Shop Your Way Rewards Points with $750 spend

    These stack with other grocery, gas, and restaurant offers that are running concurrently. Also, yes it’s possible to knock some or all of those out online.
  3. Data points have been piling up for months that it’s possible to get unbanned from Citi. The key? Clean up that credit report.

Happy Monday!

Citi’s new “Citi Bits” cereal looks and tastes exactly as bad as you’d expect.

  1. The American Express Delta personal and business cards both have increased offers, but the business ones are the juicier versions and don’t affect 5/24:

    – Business Gold: 70,000 SkyMiles after $3,000 spend in three months
    – Business Platinum: 90,000 SkyMiles after $4,000 spend in three months
    – Business Reserve: 100,000 SkyMiles after $6,000 spend in three months

    Yes, Delta SkyMiles can suck, and yes, they can be great too. Don’t use them for business class out of the US and you’ll probably get decent value, and worst case co-brand cardholders can use pay with miles for a floor of 1 cent per mile.
  2. Staples continues the endless stream of office supply store gift card deals with fee-free $200 Mastercard gift cards starting Sunday and running through Saturday of next week, limit eight per transaction.

    Call me a rebel but I prefer the Mastercards, even if they’re issued by Pathward like these.
  3. There’s a 20% Ultimate Rewards transfer bonus to Air Canada Aeroplan through July 31. Aeroplan is now arguably the best Chase airline transfer partner for international trips even without the bonus, so the 20% is icing on the cake.

    I wouldn’t transfer speculatively though: you’ve got a month and a half to transfer and book trips, and if that doesn’t work out another bonus will show up soon enough.
  4. The Chase IHG Business card has a sign-up bonus of 165,000 points after spending $3,000 in the first three months. I know some of y’all like the recently increased Chase Marriott bonus offers, but I’d take this $99 annual fee card and bonus over those any day. Now we just need to lobby to bring back IHG PointBreaks.

Office supply stores reflecting on gift card sales this year.

  1. Do this now: Register for Q3 5x promos with the major banks.

    – Chase Freedom: 5x up to $1,500 in spend at gas stations, EV charging, and “live entertainment”. For manufactured spend, speed your way over to a gas station that’s open between at least seven and eleven
    – Discover IT: 5x up to $1,500 in spend at gas stations and with digital wallets. You can tackle this one like above, but digital wallets open other possibilities if you’re scared of being shot at your local neighborhood Sketchway Speedway
    – Citi Dividend: 5x up to $1,500 in spend at gas stations and home improvement stores. At this point, even if you’re worried about being shot, I’d just bring my Freedom, IT, and Dividend to the gas station at once, bullets be damned
    – US Bank Cash+: 5x up to $2,000 in spend at in two categories of your choice (I go with utilities and electronics stores, and there are typically games to play with your local utilities)

    Also, kudos to Citi for releasing their dividend registration and categories at the same time as the competition for the first time in <checks notes> ever.
  2. BlackHawk Network seems to have introduced another roadblock for manufactured spenders: Autodrain for amounts more than a couple dozen dollars is no longer working at major retailers. Unfortunately, the $480 aggregate per store per six minutes BHN rule is still ever present.
  3. H-E-B stores have a promotion for a $15 H-E-B gift card with the purchase of a $100 Home Depot gift card, which has a resale value around 90%. This one is limit one per H-E-B account, so scale with multiple accounts. (Thanks to GCG)
  4. Meijer stores have $10 off of $100 or more in Visa gift cards, limit one per MPerks account through Saturday. The good news? You can use the same email addresses to scale H-E-B and Meijer.

    Meijer stores sell both Pathward and Sunrise bank gift cards, and one of these things is not like the other (duh).

What could possibly go wrong at this upstanding community gas station that sells Visa gift cards and totally doesn’t have an insect infestation?

Evidently June 14, 2023 was officially declared promotion Wednesday by a secret cabal of companies in the League of Manufactured Spend and Travel Hacker Enablement, and my inbox is overflowing with promotions mixed with 4 parts lame to 1 part good. Here’s the good:

  1. Giftcards.com made last week’s Visa e-gift card sale even better, jumping from 5% back to 10% back on $100 gift cards with promo code SUMMER23 or YAYSUMMER. The Capital One Shopping mobile app has 4% cash-back which I believe is the current best offer.

    Limits are $600 per order, $2,000 per rolling 48 hours per email address. I can’t get the promo code to work when logged in, but it works fine with guest checkout at $600 or less.
  2. Southwest has 40% off of travel booked by tomorrow night for travel between August 15 and December 14 with promo code 40OFF for flights other than the two weeks around Thanksgiving.

    If you have any existing bookings between those dates, double check pricing and refund or rebook as necessary.
  3. Do this now if you hold a Chase Southwest credit card: Register for 10 points per dollar on up to $500 in spend at southwest.com. visit a grocery store by Sunday, buy a single $500 gift card, liquidate it, and move on with life. (Thanks to Brian M)
  4. Alaska Airlines has a fare sale for travel to and from Hawaii booked by tomorrow night for flights between August 14 and October 31. This one’s got more teeth than the normal run-of-the-mill airline sale.

Happy Wednesday!

A random sampling of the “4 parts lame” part of the recipe.

Editors note: I’ve been traveling over the weekend through today – I’ll be caught up in day or so. If you reached out over just about any channel and haven’t heard back: it’s not you, it’s me.

  1. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 per more in Visa gift card purchases through Saturday. For best results:

    – Try for multiple transactions back to back
    – Link your cards to Dosh
    – Experiment with different transaction sizes

    Note that the Everywhere variety of cards have lower fees than the regular variety, but unlike the past they don’t necessarily make liquidation easier and may in fact make it more difficult unless you really know what you’re doing.
  2. Meijer stores have $10 off of $100 in Visa gift cards through Saturday, limit one per MPerks account. In unrelated news, did you know you could have more than one email address, and sometimes grocery rewards programs only need an email address to sign up?

    Meijer sells both Sunrise and Pathward cards. Choose wisely my friends.
  3. The United Airlines shopping portal has 1,000 bonus miles for spending $400 or more cumulative through June 18, or an extra 2.5x points on exactly $400 spend on top of existing earnings. Sadly, Giftcards.com is still absent from the portal.
  4. Rumors of the demise of drugstores coding uniquely when paying with third party digital wallets have been debunked. Always be probing.

Happy Tuesday!

Some of those old Metabank gift cards collecting dust at Office Depot may have an extra surprise.

  1. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercards in-store running today through June 20, a full two weeks.

    While the fuel points and third party gift card resale markets have been hovering around a local maxima, I expect that by June 20th rates will have fallen. As usual if your fuel points broker isn’t assuming liability quickly after purchase then you should probably look for another broker.
  2. Southwest has a 20% off fare sale to and from DEN and COS for travel though November 1 (with a few date caveats) with promo code SCORE20.

    DEN is a Southwest hub, so you could also consider booking a connection through DEN on two separate tickets which might price out better with the promo code than a single booking without. Of course having two separate tickets could be its own set of headaches. (Thanks to Brian M)
  3. While it’s always possible to forcibly bypass an American Express pop-up with shady tactics, or almost always possible to bypass one with co-branded spend, sometimes it’s nice to play it straight. To that end, there are Hilton links that apparently bypass the pop-up for everyone who’s tried at hilton.com/SeekingSummer.

    Which is my favorite offer, asked no one? The business card for its gas station bonus category, low annual fee, ability to earn three free-night certificates in the first year, churnability, and 150,000 point sign-up bonus.
  4. AA has updated their upgrade policy: Starting June 9, all elites are eligible for upgrades on award tickets including a single companion. Priority is changing slightly too, with tier status first and rolling average of the last year’s earned Loyalty Points second as the main factors for upgrade order; this of course means that you can manufacture-spend your way to a higher position on the upgrade list.
  5. Smart and Final stores have $20 off of a grocery purchase when buying any third party gift card except Tracphone or NET10 cards, limit one per transaction. I’ve linked to their digital weekly ad, but even there the print is so small that I’ll be surprised if you can read it even with movie-grade CIA photo enhancement technology.

A preview of next week’s Smart and Final ad. They solved the small print problem, but, uh — keep working on it guys.

Bank of America has increased the Premium Rewards card’s sign up bonus to 75,000 points after $5,000 in spend in 90 days. This $550 annual fee card is normally a sleeper in the community but should be on your radar for the right use cases, especially if you have Preferred Rewards because:

  • You get an easily gameable $300 travel credit every calendar year, for $600 total per card member year
  • You get a $150 statement credit per calendar year for various retailers including those with a legacy dating back to Han’s Deli, for a total of $300 per card member year
  • With top tier preferred rewards, this is a 2.625x everywhere Visa
  • You can probably downgrade this card within the first year for a prorated annual fee refund without repercussion, but don’t do it until you’ve gotten your 2024 credits
  • If you book paid airfare (lol, I know) with points, you get a 20% uplift pushing their value from 1.0 to 1.2 cents per point

If you don’t have Preferred Rewards, getting it in conjunction with a $750 sign up bonus brokerage transfer to Merrill May make sense too. Caveat emptor: Occasionally Merrill accounts won’t properly link to Preferred Rewards status and will require manual intervention with Merrill.

If you’re going to apply for this card, maybe grab a bunch of other BoA cards too. Between the Merrill Bonus and this one, you’re looking at $750+750+600+300-550 = $1,850 in value, and even more with Bank of America application shenanigans, uplift, or downgrades.

Good luck!

Being sad after you have to call Merrill to get your accounts linked.