Category: Credit Cards

Saying American Express’s IT is quirky is like saying Lady Gaga’s outfits are slightly outside of normal; it’s basically the understatement of the year. The quirks are great for us because they open up opportunities, or quirkitunities if you prefer, for all sorts of shenanigans. Today we’ll focus on a single quirkitunity: American Express Offers.

American Express Offers come in a couple of different varieties. You’ll see great ones that are only presented to you if the stars align and American Express likes you, like “50% off of up to $1,000 in spend at FedEx”. You’ll also see, err, stupid ones that are available to anyone with a pulse like “3% back on up to $250 in purchases at Urban Outfitters” (sorry to all my BDG jeans fans). If American Express’s systems see you as a gamer, you won’t get the good ones but you can have 3% off of BDG jeans to your heart’s content, provided that your heart’s content doesn’t exceed $250.

Fortunately for us, there’s a way to bypass the “stars align an American Express likes you” algorithm: Confirm your card again. That is, one of the quirks of American Express’s system is that you can confirm a card as many times as you like, and the best offers will show up during card confirmation. So, it’s a good idea to visit americanexpress.com/confirmcard periodically and look for offers, that’s where the good stuff hides.

The “stars align and American Express likes you” server rack crashing when you (re)confirm your cards.

First, a rhetorical question and micro-rant about travel bloggers: I get that United updating their policies to allow you to buy two drinks at a time could be considered news, and I get that you’ve always got to feed the content monster, but do we really need 16 different articles about it in a single weekend? Is this really what we’re here to do? Don’t answer (remember, rhetorical).

Now, a few items that probably won’t have 16 redundant articles, or if they do they’ll lack a key bit of detail:

  1. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card, an Unsung Hero and the 1987-1988 Larry Bird of credit cards, is sending out new offers for August, September, and October. So far we’ve seen 10% back on Utilities up to $50 or $70 back once per month, but I expect other offers are floating around too. For me, this came both via email and USPS.

    Yes, this will stack with outstanding online spend offers on the card provided you pay your utility online as card not present. (Thanks to Fish and birt via MEAB slack)
  2. Meijer MPerks has 50,000 points with $500 in third party gift card purchases excluding Amazon, limit one per account and you must clip the coupon. This is effectively 10% off of third party gift cards, or more if you can use it all for fuel rewards. (Thanks to GCG, Fish, and RabbMD)

    This deal isn’t quite Memorial Day weekend 2022 when we saw 10% off at the register though, but we’re still approaching the point that traveling to Meijer land could be in the cards (sorry, bad pun).
  3. Office Depot/OfficeMax, also known as the retailer with second stupidest name next to I Love Ugly clothing, has $15 off of $300 or more in Mastercard gift cards through Saturday. As usual:

    – Try for multiple transactions
    – Link your cards to Dosh

    These are Pathward gift cards so have a liquidation plan in place.
  4. Sam’s Club online has $500 airbnb e-gift cards for $459.98, limit two per account. Occasionally you can find airbnb gift cards at 15%-18% off, but only for small, annoying denominations so I consider this a win.

Happy Monday!

MEAB shirt of the day.

  1. American Express has new offers for 20,000 Membership Rewards after $4,000 in spend in six months for new employee cards, limit five per account for Business Golds and Business Platinums at last year’s generic links:

    – Business Gold
    – Business Platinum

    The POID on these is K4IY:9976, and the offer has been alive for several weeks (first discovered by reader Jon via MEAB slack), but just hit mainstream yesterday. It’s also been out long enough that American Express customer service confirmed that the offers are properly attached.
  2. Southwest has an airfare sale for flights to, from, and within California through the end of day today using promo code 29OFF. The sale:

    – $29 fares one-way with requisite asterisks within California
    – 29% off of fares on flights to or from California, also with asterisks

    Travel is valid between August 15 and February 14, 2024 for the continental US, and there’s some availability early next year for Hawaii too. For bonus points, do some schedule research and parlay this sale into Thanksgiving travel.
  3. JetBlue has $25 off of one-way flights and $50 off of round-trip flights using promo code FALLTRAVEL booked by this evening for travel between September 6 and November 15. Of course this one has a few asterisks too, because capitalism.
  4. Yes, earlier this week we reported that Kroger would have a 4x fuel points promotion on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. That wasn’t incorrect, but Kroger is laughing up at us from hell by having an overlapping 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards between today and August 8.

    If you’re playing this game with AmExes, just watch out for certain purchases to avoid points clawbacks; remember it’s them, hi, they’re they problem it’s them.

The cable industry learned their asterisk game from the airlines.

  1. Staples has a fee-free promotion on $200 Visa gift cards running through Saturday, limit eight per transaction. On a related note, there have been rumblings that Staples has been rolling out $500 variable load gift cards for the last month or two, and it seems like they may have finished that rollout. Those aren’t fee-free, but they are another option.

    These are Metabank Pathward gift cards so have a liquidation plan in place before you buy too many.
  2. Kroger will have a (probably) final summer weekend 4x fuel points promotion Friday, Saturday, and Sunday on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards.
  3. Costco is selling $500 Alaska Airlines gift cards for $449.99, limit five per member. (Thanks to GCG)
  4. Airfrance and KLM’s FlyingBlue program now allows stopovers on award tickets for no additional charge, either one-way or round-trip, which is an amazing opportunity for travel hackers, especially if you’re able to talk your way into multiple stopovers on a single itinerary, which may or may not be permitted. The quick overview:

    – The length of the stop-over can be between 24 hours and 365 days
    – Different airlines can be combined on a single itinerary

    You currently can’t book these online, so you’ve got to call FlyingBlue directly. In my experience FlyingBlue representatives are some of the most competent out there despite their reputation, the main downside is a typical 10-30 minute wait to talk to one, even as an elite. (Thanks to FM)
  5. PSA: American Express’s sign-up bonus system has been having teething issues for a little over a month. Previously sign-up bonuses on most cards would post within two business days of hitting minimum spend, but recently it’s taken between 7 and 10 days. When it does post, it’ll be back-dated to the day after hitting spend, so it can be hard to track if you’re not watching carefully.

    With AmEx, it’s like a middle-school breakup – it’s not you, it’s them.

Happy Monday!

A text message exchange extracted from American Express’s phone in 7th grade.

We’ve got a doozy today, and I’ll let you guess which one:

  1. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card is sending out new mid-July offers which stack with offers sent previously, like those from last week. These offers focus on online purchases for total spend through August 14. We’ve seen:

    – $30 statement credit after $500 or more
    – $50 statement credit after $750 or more
    – $70 statement credit after $1,000 or more
    – 225,000 Shop Your Way Rewards after $750 or more
    – 7,500 ThankYou Points after $750 or more

    I’ve been goaded into referencing a retired NBA star for the next couple of months of Shop Your Way offers, so let’s call this set of offers the “Mark Eaton all-star center” round. (Thanks to MS Ninja, birt, Brooke, irieriley, and flypiggy)
  2. The United Shopping Portal has a tiered spend bonus with 2,500 miles after $600 spend in the top tier. Call me crazy, but it feels like this one pairs well with the Shop Your Way Rewards card.

    Unfortunately Giftcards.com is still absent and it seems like it’s never coming back, also I guess like Mark Eaton. (Thanks to DoC)
  3. The Alaska Airlines shopping portal and the Rakuten shopping portal both have card linked in-store offers for Gamestop. The offers are (in theory) unlimited use, but you have to re-add them to your account after each purchase.

    Last I checked, Gamestop has quite a few uses other than for buying weird Star Wars merch or used, scratched PS4 games. Always be probing.

Happy Monday!

Pictured: NBA all-star center Mark Eaton’s bird form celebrates the SYWR card’s latest deal.

  1. Staples stores have fee free $200 Mastercard gift cards Sunday through the following Saturday, limit eight per transaction. If you get an experienced cashier at Staples (lol), you can probably talk them in to multiple transactions back to back.

    BravoPay is a relatively bullet-proof but expensive liquidation option for these, just try and keep your daily transaction volume small. Of course other options exist too.
  2. For approximately the last year, we’ve seen reports that Chase Ink Preferred cards can be approved past 5/24 about every month. Well, this month’s report has arrived. I hesitate to write about these because I truly believe nothing is different than it has been all year, but since it keeps coming up, here’s my understanding of the rules:

    – Ink Preferred mailers sent via USPS with a promotion code bypass 5/24 consistently
    – Ink Preferred online applications with offers of 90,000 points or more bypass 5/24 if you’ve got a good relationship with Chase but aren’t above 8/24
    – Ink Preferred in-branch applications bypass 5/24 if you’ve got a good relationship with Chase

    I don’t believe Chase has different rules for different people, unlike American Express.
  3. Mileage rates for AA have dropped significantly at Rocketmiles, but higher rates are still available at AdvantageHotels by Rocketmiles, because corporate America 🙄. AA boosted hotel stays are typically most interesting if you play the Loyalty Points game, and even more so if you currently have elite status and an AAdvantage card because the offers are 5-6x higher. (Thanks to Gary at VFTW)

What an experienced cashier at Staples looks like.

  1. Hyatt’s partnership with MGM is ending on September 30. Why might you care?

    – If you don’t go to Vegas: It’s been a really cheap way to manufacture Hyatt Globalist status (but there are still other opportunities)
    – If you go to Vegas: Look into Caesar’s status leveraged with the Wyndham Business card

    You still have until Thursday to status match Hyatt to MGM or vice-versa for status through early 2024.
  2. Do this now (if you hold a Hyatt credit card): Register for Hyatt’s newest Q3 promotion, 20% back on award stays at hotels in the Independent Collection between July 11 and September 17.
  3. The Southwest Premier Business card has an increased sign-up bonus through August 28 for:

    – 60,000 points after $3,000 spend in three months
    – 60,000 points after another $12,000 spend in nine months
    – A companion pass after $15,000 total spend

    For the math challenged, $15,000 spend will earn 120,000 bonus points. This card won’t affect 5/24. Incidentally, if you apply for this card on the last day and call Chase to push your statement close date back, you’ve got a good shot at stretching the companion pass out through February 2025.
  4. Dell is now 15x at Rakuten and 5x at AA, so you can try again if your Monday orders were cancelled.

Math challenged just means you find different loopholes.

I’ve learned of a super-secret, not-at-all-publicized, private sale called “Prime Day” that’s happening tomorrow and Wednesday at Amazon. If you’re a buyer’s group gamer, this is potentially the World Series of sending stuff to some place in another state that you’ve never heard of, so make sure you’re ready. In the mean time:

  1. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 or more in Visa gift cards through Saturday. To scale:

    – Try for multiple transactions
    – Link your cards to Dosh
    – Buy the “Everywhere” variety for lower fees if you can liquidate them

    It’s still relatively easy to liquidate the $200 variety of cards in store, and there’s always BravoPay to liquidate from home.
  2. Dell is currently 10x at Rakuten and 4x at the AA shopping portal, so get your Business Platinum cancelations in at higher rates.
  3. The Chase Aeroplan Visa card’s sign-up bonus is back to 100,000 Aeroplan points. The bonus is:

    – 60,000 points after $4,000 spend in three months
    – 40,000 additional points after $20,000 spend in the first year

    You can turn this into a $1,250 statement credit via Chase Pay Yourself Back. Just don’t use Pay Yourself Back on points earned outside of the Aeroplan card or you may find your Chase accounts shutdown.
  4. Meijer stores have to good promotions through Saturday. Both are limit one per account:

    – 10,000 MPerks Points with $100 or more in Happy, Choice, or One4All gift cards
    – $10 off of $150 or more in Mastercard gift cards

    Meijer stocks both Pathward and Sunrise gift cards. Now if only it was possible to have more than one email address so you could have more than one MPerks account.
  5. The American Express random number generator is back in full force with a new 170,000 Membership Rewards sign-up bonus on the Business Platinum card at the normal card landing page. To get the offer to appear, you’ve got to have the random number generator roll a 4 on its internal dice, which really means to keep trying with:

    – Incognito or regular browser sessions
    – Clicking the link or pasting it into the browser address bar
    – Different browsers
    – Hitting the application through a search engine
    – While being connected to a VPN

    I consider this application and link to be completely safe. This application has lifetime language, but that doesn’t matter for most purposes; instead just stop if you get a popup telling you that you’re not eligible for a sign-up bonus before submitting the application.

Happy Wednesday!

Pictured: “We Buy MyPFS Deal Buyer Retail Maker” buyer’s group HQ. Totally not sus.