Major US Airlines are all targeting Southwest elites with extremely generous “twist-the-knife while they’re dying” style status matches, and that means you’ve got a unique opportunity for manufacturing a ton of airline status with a single swing. Let’s start with earning A-List Preferred using a Chase Southwest credit card:
$5,000 spent = 1,500 tier points
35,000 tier points = A-List
70,000 tier points = A-List Preferred
In post-mathematics words, $230,000 in real or manufactured spend takes you from zero to A-List Preferred, or if you’re an underachiever $115,000 spend takes you from zero to A-List. Now, once you’ve got that status, combine with:
So, for $230,000 in manufactured spend you can hold status with all of the top five US airlines and also status in every major airline alliance in the world, MEAB style.
As you can imagine, this development means that the number of articles about the card shot up exponentially. Let’s sample a few headlines from the 12 hour period starting yesterday at 10AM Eastern and ending at 10PM Eastern:
“Is the Chase Sapphire Preferred worth the annual fee?”
“Who’s eligible for the Chase Sapphire Preferred’s 100,000 point bonus?”
“Record-high Bonus: Earn 100,000 points with the popular Chase Sapphire Preferred for a limited time”
“Chase Sapphire Preferred benefits: Everything you need to know”
“The best Chase credit cards to add to your wallet”
“10 best ways to use 100k Ultimate Rewards points: From first-class flights to all-inclusive getaways”
Affiliate bloggers can be insatiable. Now, can you guess how many different blogs it took to generate that many articles in 12 hours? The sad punchline is that it took exactly one blog. There were dozens of other articles from other blogs that could have made the list; but there was literally zero need. We got 1/3rd of a page of headlines from just a single blog.
The Motivation
Obviously the main goal for an affiliate blogger is to maximize revenue. There are two ways that they do this:
Maximize revenue in the short term by dumping articles incessantly to reach as wide of an audience as possible
Maximize revenue in the long term by being a “good neighbor” affiliate blogger that always [usually] gives you the best link, so you’ll trust them and keep coming back to use those links for months or years
The former strategy relies almost exclusively on creating urgency, and while it’s not directly required for the latter strategy, urgency still boosts revenue so the strategy is still a core tenet and at minimum a subtle part of the game.
The Defense
Urgency breaks our best plans, and a false sense of urgency leads directly to mistakes in the hobby, like:
Not waiting another week a referral offer to come up with the same bonus (it probably will)
Accidentally blowing through 5/24, 3/4/5, 2/90, or some other credit card rule because we’re worried about missing out
Forgetting to have your credit report in a clean state before applying
Being annoyed about the contents of your RSS feeds and writing an article about the deteriorating state of churning blogs
Look, affiliate bloggers aren’t inherently evil and you should use an affiliate link for someone that you appreciate and want to support when it’s the right card, the right time, they haven’t steered you astray, and no referral option is available. But until you’ve made that analysis consider whether you should avoid the noid noise. Also, ain’t no affiliate links ’round MEAB so that option isn’t ever real.
Taking time to consider problems before acting works.
Tickets booked before May 28 still get free checked bags and no change fees, and a small bright spot is that the variable Rapid Rewards redemption rates are more favorable on the flights eligible for the promo code too. For some bad analysis redemption values, compare the pre-sale cash price to the post-sale award price and marvel at how your math approaches TPG valuations.
Chase’s Q2 2025 Pay Yourself Back categories for Sapphire cards are: gas, grocery (but not Walmart or Target, and probably not Han’s Deli either), pet supply and vets, charities, and annual membership fees. Charities pay a +25% bigger boost, and redemptions continue to be uncapped.
They have co-brand card Pay Yourself Back on Marriott Bold, United, Southwest, and Aeroplan with relatively small limits, but the cashout typically only makes sense on Marriott Bold or Aeroplan.
– Set a reminder to disable Pay over Time after 121 days to be eligible to be retargeted – If multiple cards are targeted, activate quick on all of them
What happens if you turn off Pay over Time before then? To the penalty box! (Maybe)
The offers available to the referred haven’t changed, but referring to a business card that you close quickly without hitting a sign-up bonus is one way to play the game. (Thanks to mra101485)
Kroger has fee-free virtual Visa and Mastercard $100 gift cards online with promo code NOFEEMADNESS through tonight, and these will earn Kroger fuel points too. This also marks the first time that I’ve seen Mastercards sold at Kroger.com since they transitioned from US Bank to BlackHawk Network for gift card fulfillment.
This is your last weekend to figure out what to do with your Q1 American Express Business Platinum and Surpass Hilton credits. There are often local angles, but if you can’t find them or don’t want to deal with them, brunch at a corporate Hilton or Hilton Resort will almost always work in a pinch.
And let’s end today with a timely bit of weekend wisdom: In churning and manufactured spend the main goal is usually to take advantage of the spread between profit and loss, generally with very little risk, and turn that into a machine. Well, occasionally there’s a time where you know the spread is going to change for the worse at some point in the near future. When that happens, consider swinging for the fences taking to the extent that your risk tolerance allows.
Have a nice weekend friends!
Hilton Garden Inn breakfasts can be paid with AmEx credits (delicious breakfast not pictured).
Do this now:Make any Hyatt award bookings today that fit your schedule before the award chart is retooled tomorrow and lots of hotels go up in redemption cost. Most award bookings have great cancelation policies, so even speculative bookings probably make sense.
Turkish Airlines and Hilton have a promotion (registration required) for 1,000 bonus Turkish miles for stays through June 30, provided you set Turkish as your preferred travel partner in your Hilton profile. For new Hilton accounts, you earn 1,000 Turkish miles for each stay, but for existing Hilton accounts can you only earn the bonus once.
The best ongoing use case for this card used to be converting it to an AAdvantage Silver after a year, but because Citi will be the exclusive card issuer in 2026, that ship has probably sailed for new applicants. Instead, the best use beyond the sign-up bonus is probably to get a higher (or initial) credit line at Citi after the takeover.
Since it’s launch in 2021, I’ve thought the Chase United Quest Card was stupid, but it just keeps getting stupider and I’m convinced the product development team for the card lives in an alternate plane of existence. The annual fee has increased to $350, and there are new stupid credits to, uh, justify (?) the stupid increase:
– $5 monthly Instacart credit, plus $10 one time Instacart credit – $150 in credits at stupid Renowned Hotels and Resorts – $8 in monthly rideshare credits, except in December when it’s $12 – $150 in stupid JSX purchases – Small TravelBank credits for your first two rentals with Avis or Budget, but only using the United AWD which has generally inflated prices
This is probably a good change for exactly three cardholders on the planet, and bravo to you if you’re one of them.
An amusement park in the United Quest Card team’s alternate plane of existence.
The churning community has a number of wanna-be-but-not-quite-seedy underbellies, and since early this week all of them circulated a hacked Chase Sapphire Preferred 100,000 point sign-up bonus link repeatedly. The hacked link beats the current public offer and is therefore somewhat enticing, but the public offer will be the same as the hacked link starting Monday. Its imminent irrelevance didn’t stop the link from finding its way in the last couple of days out of the underbellies and into the mainstream community via forums, reddit, and several blogs though (I’ve purposely not linked to any of them).
Hacked and Modified Links
Churning has a storied history with hacked links, and most of that history is buried in lore and old discussion forums that are partially or totally obscured from the public eye and google’s crawlers. We can pick a couple examples for the sake of discussion that are well known though:
We could also pick dozens of cases in which hacked or modified links shared in churning circles paid the bonuses as expected, never lead to shutdowns, and generally worked really well for plenty of people.
On Safety
Strictly speaking, nearly all hacked or modified links don’t lead to a shutdown; you’re probably safe to use them when you encounter them as long as you can stomach the remote probability of a bank adverse action.
But, what makes the difference between a hacked or modified link that will get you the axe and any other hacked or modified link? My guess is that a critical mass of applications, bonuses, or specific marketing campaigns showing up on a bank’s KPI dashboard when it’s not expected is often the trigger. Again, leaning on the two cases from above:
In 2016, the 100,000 point Platinum card sign-up bonus was one of the most pervasive events in the churning community, largely because a six figure Membership Rewards sign-up bonus hadn’t been available to the public ever prior to the leak. Blogs talked about it, forums talked about it, meetups talked about it; it was like a Woodstock event in the churning community.
In 2020, The unlisted Ink links had been used successfully by a small group of churners for nearly a year. When the link became public via reddit and major blogs though, the number of applications and applicants exploded and the bank took notice. (In a note of irony, the small group of churners made the link public to try and hide themselves in a mass of applications.)
So, I’d wager that the safety of a hacked or modified link is inversely proportional to the number of applications approved using those links as a general guideline.
Finding Bad Links
How can you tell if a link has been modified or hacked? It can be hard, but there are a few telltale signs that often are good indicators:
For American Express: The landing page doesn’t have a login request and the application doesn’t have a “Next” button, everything is on one page
For Chase: You can’t find the same bonus or offer on any public landing page, via advertisement, or co-brand website
Also for Chase: APRs are listed as fixed and no mailers with the same offer have been seen
A blogger says something like “this is a hacked link”
What about other banks? So far, they haven’t cared in a meaningful way, so I guess it’s fine?
Good luck friends, and have a nice weekend!
* Black car seems to have originated from a bad translation from Chinese churning forums, but somehow is now part of our vernacular. (The correct translation was probably “unlisted”.)
– Sapphire Preferred: 100,000 Ultimate Rewards after $5,000 spend in three months – United Explorer: 80,000 MileagePlus after $3,000 spend in three months, increased $150 annual fee – United Business: 150,000 MileagePlus miles, increased $150 annual fee, increased coupon-book credits
Will the $95 Sapphire Preferred annual fee remain? It feels unlikely. Will the no annual fee ink card see an increased bonus of 90,000 Ultimate Rewards? It feels possible. What makes me say that? Chase’s tooling tends to work in groups. Do I understand that it’s annoying when someone writes repeated questions and then answers them? Yes. #sorrynotsorry
These points are worth 2-3 cents each for travel on Amtrak. If you’re lucky maybe they’ll combine a hard pull for this card with a hard pull for a JAL card, useful especially because FBNO doesn’t mind a lot of spend on its cards. (Thanks to kingmaine)
There’s no credit pull for the debit or reloadable flavors of the card.
Wyndham launched a new rewards debit card a few days ago that earns 0.5 points per dollar on general transactions, has a $6 monthly fee, a 2,500 point sign-up bonus with hurdles that make it not worth worrying about, and 7,500 bonus points annually. Wyndham points are worth more than Hilton or Marriott, but they’re still not usually worth much more than a penny each. I initially didn’t write about the card because this site’s goal isn’t to be an anthology of everything that happens in churning (there are other sites for that), and so I didn’t think it was worth my time or yours.
But a few days of percolating have changed my opinion. The card is issued by Sunrise bank which is usually happy to give anyone an account, and it has a different BIN than other debit card BINs that have been blocked at some banks, credit unions, and bill pay services. I’ll be getting one to toy around with, but just because I’m doing something doesn’t mean you should do it too.
