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.
There’s a great sign-up bonus for $1,000 statement credit after $5,000 in spend on one of the lamer named credit cards on the market, the AmaZing Business Credit Card. It’s available for residents of Arizona, California, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, or Texas.
The card is a no-annual fee business Visa that earns 3x at office supplies, telecom, and networking, 2x in categories better served by other cards, and 1x everywhere else. The application process for the card looks streamlined but is actually archaic; that can be a good thing though, amirite?
– $75 back on $250+ at Curio, Canopy, Tapestry, Motto, Tempo, and Graduate Hilton properties in North America through May 15 – $70 back on $350+ at Hertz within the US through April 30 – $50 back on $200+ at Lowes online or in-store through March 31 – $50 back on $250+ at Dell through August 15
– ANA First to and from Japan – Lufthansa First to and from Europe – Mixed cabin shenanigans – Taking advantage of loose definitions of regions – Travel between Asia and Oceana
There’s decent economy short-haul value too, I guess. But that’s definitely not funsies.
Do this now: Register for your 5x bonus on rotating category cards:
– Chase Freedom and Freedom Flex: Amazon (and “select streaming services” I guess) – Discover IT: Grocery stores and wholesale clubs, but Walmart and Target don’t count – Citi Dividend: Who knows, because it’s giving an error right now #citigonnaciti – US Bank Cash+: I choose utilities and electronics, cause #meabgonnameab
Given Pepper’s explosion all over the gift card market, you should be getting a much bigger discount than 5x on Amazon purchases, either by using Pepper if you dare, or by buying Amazon gift cards from Pepper users at 12%+ off. I guess if you’re masochist there’s Raise/GCX at 7.60% off too.
– 325,000 Shop Your Way Rewards after $1,000+ online spend – 250,000 Shop Your Way Rewards after $750+ in online spend – $100 statement credit after $1,000+ in online spend – $75 statement credit after $750+ in online spend
(Thanks to uppereastsider, irieriley, Matt, and David 99)
This is the kind of low profile deal that can be so valuable that it’s worth it to travel from out of state if you don’t live by a Meijer, provided you have a good liquidation channel for Visas.
The American Express Marriott Bonvoy personal cards have increased sign-up bonuses through May 14, available head-on, or via referral (and if you know anyone with a referral, please use theirs instead of applying head-on):
– Brilliant: 185,000 Bonvoy points after $6,000 spend in six months, $650 annual fee – Bevy: 155,000 Bonvoy points after $5,000 spend in six months, $250 annual fee
A couple of notes: (1) I prefer points offers like these to certificate offers, and (2) if you’re going to get a personal Bonvoy card, the Chase one at least has an upgrade path to the Ritz card.
Make sure you set a reminder to turn off Pay Over Time in 121 days, and if you get the bonus offer on multiple charge cards, consider activating them in separate tabs as close together as possible. All of this is obviously because reasons.
– $50 back on $250+ at Grand Hyatt through April 15 – $300 back on $2,000+ at Qatar through April 30 – $150 back on $1,000+ at Emirates through April 30 – $100 back on $500+ at Mandarin Oriental through May 6 – $100 back on $400+ at SLS hotels through May 14 – $200 back on $900+ at Four Seasons in the Americans and Europe through May 21 – $40 back on $200+ at Ceasars though June 30
In normal times there are plenty of brands that are well suited to this promotion, but in the current Pepper-pocolptic market, the workable brands are basically Apple and Lululemon.
