Category: Credit Cards

Barclays has heightened sign-up bonuses on several of their cards rolling out this week:

  1. The Barclays AAdvantage World Elite Business Mastercard (editors note: just typing that card name made my eyes glaze over, and its 15 trademarks almost made me ditch this post entirely) has an interesting new sign-up bonus:

    – 80,000 AA miles and a $95 statement credit after spending $2,000 in 90 days

    This is effectively a free 80,000 miles for $2,000 in spend in the first year after the $95 annual fee is offset by the statement credit, and it might be interesting beyond the sign-up bonus if you’re playing the AA LoyaltyPoints game. If you’re not, sock drawer it after hitting $2,000 in spend and close it in after a year.

  2. The Barclays Wyndham Business Visa card (editors note: I’m not typing the whole credit card name after the above fiasco) also has an interesting sign-up bonus:

    – 65,000 Wyndham points after spending $1,000 in 90 days
    – 10,000 additional points for making a single purchase on an employee card

    This one doesn’t have a statement credit to offset the $95 annual fee unfortunately, but if you can manufacture spend at gas stations it’s probably worth holding long term even with the fee.

Now, because we’re gamers, let’s talk about gaming:

  • Barclays will combine hard credit card pulls for applications made on the same business day, and you can be approved for up to three cards a day
  • If you have an existing Barclays credit card, spend a lot, pay off your balance, and then apply to boost your approval odds.
  • You can churn Barclays cards, but you typically need to wait six months between churns
  • Barclays has a 6/24 rule that’s usually enforced (you’ll probably be denied for a card if you’ve had 6 new accounts on your credit report in the last 24 months), but big spend on existing Barclays cards can bypass the rule

Just redeem those AA miles on partner airlines if you can. Unless you’re in to the whole “regulated garbage” things that is.

Mother’s Day deals have started, and as a result non-Mother’s Day things have to try harder to stand-out. To wit:

  1. Do this now: Register for Hilton’s new promotion. You’ll earn double points on one or two night stays and triple on three night or longer stays between today and September 5.
  2. There’s a 25% transfer bonus from Citi ThankYou Points to AirFrance/KLM FlyingBlue through May 20. The best use of FlyingBlue is either economy or business class between North America and Europe. A few FlyingBlue notes:

    – You can find business class flights at a price-point of about 52,000 miles each way regularly
    – They run monthly promo awards which make certain city pairs even cheaper
    – Check for onward connections to other cities to lower the cost of an award ticket (e.x., ORD-AMS-BRU)
    – Check for train connections to other cities to lower the cost of an award ticket (e.x., LAX-CDG-ZYR)
    – It used to be hard to reset the expiration of transferred miles, but that’s no longer the case

  3. US Bank has an interesting new checking account sign-up bonus for existing business credit card holders. You’ll earn $500 for opening a new business checking account, depositing $5,000, keeping the funds in-place for 90 days, and making 5 qualifying transactions in the same timeframe (so, five $0.50 Amazon balance reloads) with promo code CKEUM8Z. The effective APR here is 40% over 90 days.

    The offer doesn’t seem to have any language about only being available to new business checking account customers, but it does have language saying it’s only available to the addressee and is non-transferrable. Because it’s on a public web-page with a normal URL and a public promotion code on the same page, I’d guess it’ll work for anyone. (Thanks to Astheworldchurnd)

    UPDATE: The language was updated to mention that it’s only available for new business checking account customers, thanks to Jay for letting me know.

  4. Capital One 360 has a $450 sign-up bonus for opening a new “360 Performance Savings” account with promo code SAVE22, depositing $50,000 or more in funds during funding, and keeping the funds in-place for 90 days. I calculated the effective savings rate of the bonus and it came out to 3.60% APR or 360 basis points, I see what you did there Capital One and I guess I’m mildly amused?

    In today’s environment this deal is only mediocre, but having the account is likely to increase your approval odds for a Capital One credit card which is why it bubbled up. (Thanks to DDG)

Happy Monday!

The mixed eligibility requirements language in the US Bank Business Checking bonus, as cookies.

Since American Express has effectively consumed the majority of this month’s posts with their ludicrous, new-Subaru-MSRP-valued offers, it seemed fitting to send the month off with discussion about scaling and financial reviews based on chatter in and around the community.

Scaling

American Express is more tolerant of massively scaled spending than any other big bank, but keep the following in mind:

  1. AmEx doesn’t care about cycling your credit lines. You can spend up to your credit limit, pay it down before the statement closes, and then spend a bunch more.
  2. AmEx does care about an explosion in spending. If you typically spend $5,000 per month and then spend $300,000 in two weeks, you could end up with a financial review. For rough numbers lets say:

    – A quick ramp of 3x to 5x of your normal spending is probably OK
    – A quick ramp of 20x+ of your normal spending is probably not OK
    – A slow, multi-month ramp to 20x+ of your normal spending is probably OK

  3. AmEx doesn’t care if you spend multiple times your annual business revenue on business cards.
  4. AmEx often cares if you spend multiple times your annual income on personal cards.
  5. AmEx doesn’t care about round numbers — 30 to 50 repeated $1,000.00 transactions won’t cause any problem, provided you’re playing by the above rules.
  6. AmEx won’t typically shut you down immediately if you violate the above rules, instead you’ll end up with a financial review. (Shutdowns at AmEx are more like being in the wrong place at the wrong time unfortunately.)

Financial Reviews

When American Express finds behavior it doesn’t like you’ll get a call asking for a financial review. When you get a financial review, American Express will usually ask:

  • “Why are you spending so much at TurboGiftCardsNow.com?” (Answer: to separate my expenses of course)
  • “Why did you start spending so much more this month than normal?” (Answer: big business contract)
  • “What’s the source of your income?” (Answer: my job and the big business contract)
  • “Can we see your tax returns for the last two years?” (Answer: of course, here’s a signed 4506-T form)

AmEx usually suspends your charging privileges during a financial review and they typically take two to four weeks to complete their investigation. Assuming the income reported on your tax return meets or exceeds the income you put on your card applications, you’re almost certainly in the clear and you’ve essentially got a green light to keep the shenanigans rocketing toward the moon. Then you can go inception and use all those Membership Rewards to buy yourself a Subaru with your American Express to earn even more Membership Rewards to earn another Subaru.

Have a nice weekend!

Recharging your new 99 employee-card funded electric Subaru for another MS run.

Introduction

There are several different “penalty boxes” with American Express, but they all share one thing in common: You get a pop-up telling you that you’re not eligible for some bonus due to your past relationship with American Express.

Getting In

There are multiple ways to get put into the penalty box, but all of them involve a single principle — you’ve done something that AmEx didn’t like. Known routes in:

  • Closing or downgrading a card within the first 12 months of having the card
  • Closing or downgrading a card within the first 12 months of a retention offer
  • Closing or downgrading a card within the first 12 months of earning an upgrade bonus
  • Too many card referrals to the same person

There are probably other ways in too, but data-points are sparse so it’s hard to find more patterns.

Getting Out

There are two known vectors out of the penalty box:

  • Spend ($20,000 per month for a month or two, especially on a co-branded card)
  • Time (1-2 years)

Spending on Membership Rewards earning cards seem to be less likely to get you out, while co-brand cards like the Delta or Hilton cards are more likely to get you out. The likely reason that AmEx purchased a bunch of co-brand rewards points and gets to remove some of them off of their books, improving their overall balance sheet.

Hangin’ in the AmEx penalty box.

First, let’s look forward to the weekend with a few deals:

  1. Lowe’s has a free $15 gift card with each $200 Visa gift card purchased deal running now through Wednesday, April 27. If you get a friendly store there’s effectively no limit on these purchases, and the “Everywhere” variety of gift cards with a lower purchase fee work too.

    With the current spot rate for Lowe’s $15 gift cards hovering around 87%, you’ll effectively get a $200 Visa gift card for $191. (Thanks to GC Galore)

  2. Staples has fee free $200 Mastercard gift cards starting on Sunday and running through Saturday, April 30, limit five per transaction. I wouldn’t bother though, because waves hands at the previous deal.
  3. Vinh reports that Safeway rewards coupons no longer apply to Visa gift cards. Points earning on Visa gift card purchases isn’t what it used to be either.
  4. If you’re a high level elite at AA and have a bunch of (mostly worthless and soon to be eliminated) 500 mile upgrade certificates in your account, consider trying to get them converted into miles with a little bit of back-and-forth: There’s a report on Flyertalk of an Executive Platinum member being able to exchange each certificate for 5,000 AA miles but the road wasn’t exactly painless.
  5. Bank of America has an offer for targeted double cash back on its credit and debit cards for purchases made today and tomorrow. Check the obviously-named-by-a-committee “BankAmeriDeals” here, save the offer if you see it, and then pair it with any other BankAmeriDeal to double it. Yay coupon books!

And second, have you gone zombie hunting this week? Not all dead deals are still dead. Happy weekend friends!

Deals don’t die when this is what companies use to kill them.

Before we start, don’t forget that the death of PayPal Key is upon us. Hopefully PayPal forgot to schedule the shutdown you’ve still got a few more hours, and if we’re really lucky you’ve got until tomorrow morning too. Finish strong!

With that out of the way, there are currently two variants of American Express employee card offers floating around, and many of them have morphed over the last several weeks so it’s time to update the current state of the union.

First, the more lucrative version is a bonus for adding up to 99 employee cards. We’ve seen this one recently on:

  • Business Platinum (20,000 Membership Rewards per card, $4,000 in spend, six months)
  • Business Gold (20,000 Membership Rewards per card, $4,000 in spend, six months)
  • Business Delta Reserve (5,000 SkyMiles per card, $1,000 in spend, two months)
  • Business Delta Platinum (5,000 SkyMiles per card, $1,000 in spend, two months)

The less lucrative version involves a bonus for adding up to 5 employee cards, and we’ve seen it on:

  • Blue Business Plus (20,000 Membership Rewards per card, $2,000 in spend, six months)
  • Bonvoy Business Card ($200 statement credit per card, $2,000 in spend, six months)
  • Hilton Business Card ($200 statement credit per card, $2,000 in spend, six months)

The 5 employee card version can be repeated after a few days and the phone representatives seem to believe the bonus will apply again on the new batch, though the jury is still out as to whether that’s actually true. If you want to roll the dice, I’d get another 5 every day until you hit the limit on the assumption that the representatives know what they’re talking about.

And finally, a few final notes about these deals:

  • The 99 employee card variant seems to be a shotgun, all-at-once version. If you add 60 employees one day and call back later to add another 39, the deal will almost certainly be gone and you’ll be stuck with the first 60
  • We’ve seen deals on cards that were just opened and on cards that have been around for years
  • The offer seems to appear within a few weeks of opening a new card
  • Almost everyone is targeted. If you’re not, the answer is probably more spend
  • To check to see if you’re targeted for an offer, call the number on the back of your card, speak to a representative, and say “Are there any offers for adding employee cards to this account?”

Thanks to Boxy, nutella, DC Domer, SideshowBob233, Jim, and an anonymous contributor for datapoints on this offer. Now, let’s pour one out for our dying (dead) compadre, PPK.

(Update: Corrected the name of the Blue Business Plus card, thanks to Justmeha)

Celebrating the life of PPK a little too much.

We’re already off to a great start for the week:

  1. The original MEAB Unsung Hero, the Rakuten Visa card, sent out targeted spend offers to cardholders over the weekend. The offers require activation so be sure to double check your email inbox. Some of these offers are approaching “deal of the quarter” territory, especially if you have the Membership Rewards earning version of the Rakuten Visa — we’ve seen:

    – An extra 5% or 5x on all spend through May 15, provided you have at least 5 transactions over $10 (effectively a 6x everywhere card, or 8x+ through the shopping portal)
    – An extra 2% or 2x on all spend, provided you spend at least $500 through May 15 (effectively a 3x everywhere card, or 5x+ through the shopping portal)
    – $50 off of $2,000 in spend
    – $20 off of $500 in spend

    I got the +2x offer, giving me a 3x everywhere Membership Rewards earning Visa. You can bet that I’ll be scaling that one.

  2. Meijer MPerks has $10 back as a Meijer gift card when you buy $100 in Happy cards running through April 23, limit one per account. While this isn’t an amazing deal by itself, multiple accounts can help turn it into a nice windfall. I’d buy a few thousand in Happy cards that can be converted to Home Depot for resale if you can find them, and if I were anywhere near a Meijer this week. (Thanks to Larry for helping clarify this deal)
  3. The Chase Sapphire Preferred reportedly has a targeted 100,000 Ultimate Rewards sign-up bonus through their Chase Credit Journey site. On the other-hand, the Ink Preferred card always has a 100,000 Ultimate Rewards sign-up bonus and is churnable, so no need to try and game the Journey site.

Happy Monday!

A screenshot from the Chase Credit Journey (before it gets weird).

I hope you’re able to rest for the deluge of batches of 99 American Express employee cards headed your way. I know I’ll be ramping up the spend on my prior batch of 99 cards to try and finish them off before the next batch arrives in the mail in a week or so.

There are a few noteworthy items before you jump:

  1. Parts_Unknown put together a nice list of no-lifetime language (NLL) American Express cards including a new offer for the Blue Business Plus. They’re currently all at relative highs:

    – Blue Business Plus: 30,000 Membership Rewards for $5,000 spend plus another 10,000 for $1,000 spend on an employee card
    – Business Gold: 90,000 Membership Rewards for $10,000 spend plus another 10,000 for $1,000 spend on an employee card
    – Business Platinum: 150,000 Membership Rewards for $15,000 spend plus another 10,000 for $1,000 spend on an employee card

    To answer a question you didn’t ask: As long as you can meet the spend, the best time to apply for a no-lifetime language American Express Business card is when you still have fewer than 10 AmEx charge cards or fewer than 5 AmEx credit cards. There almost certainly won’t be a pull on your credit report as long as you’ve already got an AmEx, and it won’t show up on your report when you’re approved either. (Note that those limits are 11 and 6, respectively for some people. What makes them special? 🤷‍♀️)

  2. Do this now: Register for a bonus 5,000 points per stay at Raddison Hotels Americas.
  3. The Chase Sapphire Preferred is one of the most overrated credit cards in the churning space in my opinion. That said, it is a good beginner card and it may be worth churning in other certain, limited scenarios. In case you find yourself looking for one, note that the public sign-up bonus has increased to 80,000 Ultimate Rewards. The 80,000 bonus is also showing via referral links and the referrer gets 15,000 Ultimate Rewards on successful application. Hello P2!
  4. If you work for a big company you may be eligible for a Hyatt Globalist status challenge with a reduced 20 nights in 90 day requirement, just enter your email address and see if you’re eligible. Status lasts through February 2024. (Thanks to Kyle)

Have a nice weekend!

One of the limited scenarios in which the Chase Sapphire Preferred is worth your time.