Citi ThankYou Points has a 50% transfer bonus to Turkish Miles&Smiles through June 15. The best use of this program since the Spring devaluation has been for travel on Turkish metal, but there’s still plenty of other opportunity with a 50% bonus, like flying to Hawaii or Alaska on United in coach for 10,000 miles in coach, or 15,000 miles.
What’s the catch this time? Finding partner award space on United metal is currently a bit like finding a $100 bill on a street – it’s not like it’s never happened, but I don’t like your odds. (Thanks to OK-Anywhere6998)
– One 10x bonus per account number – Referral links saved before Wednesday will have the 10x bonus attached even if the referred applies for the card after Wednesday This didn’t work – If the referred is denied on first application but later approved after reconsideration, the 10x bonus will activate for the referrer, even after the expiration
Combine several of the above to extend 10x even further, and remember you can always chat with American Express to confirm that a referral bonus is attached after three days.
These codes don’t appear on major shopping portals so probably won’t payout, but you miss all the shots you don’t take. If you’re having tracking issues with this site, see this post and also note that all Safari desktop transactions may also currently not track with giftcards.com.
These are Pathward cards. Several online liquidation channels for these dried up in the last couple of weeks, but there’s always a play and there’s always Kiva as a last resort if you don’t have other options.
– 200,000 Shop Your Way Rewards points for $750+ in online shopping – 250,000 Shop Your Way Rewards points for $1,000+ in online shopping – $70 statement credit for $1,000+ in online shopping – $50 statement credit for $750+ in online shopping – 10,000 ThankYou Points with $1,000+ in online shopping
(Thanks to MVC, Brandon F, irieriley, and Brooke)
Giant, Stop & Shop, and Martins stores have 10x points on Uber and airbnb gift cards through Thursday, limit $2,000 per account. Of course with Pepper Rewards you can get effectively the same deal from home, but probably only for a couple more weeks.
American Express offers has $300 back on $750 or more at Holland America through August 31. (Thanks to FM)
Of course, you could look at Frontier’s earnings or Spirit’s earnings for Q1 2024 earnings and see it in number form. [Spoiler alert] They’re both great at losing money, and they’re both good at using accounting tricks to make the losses look less grave.
Staples purportedly has fee free $200 Mastercard gift cards starting Sunday and running through the following Saturday, limit five per transaction. I can’t actually find this offer in the weekly ad so double check before buying, but they did run the promotion last year for the same week so it’s likely real. (Thanks to GCG)
– It’s historically been more churnable than other Platinums – It offers an authorized user Platinum card with no additional fee, including lounge access
You need a Morgan Stanley account to be eligible. Current accounts that should qualify include Platinum Cash+, AAA, Access Investing, or a company retirement account.
Have a nice weekend friends!
Good news on two fronts for Lubbock Holiday Inn guests: (1) It’s not the worst Holiday Inn, and (2) you’ll earn 3x United miles.
These are Pathward gift cards too. (Thanks to SPX)
Bank of America has a small business checking account bonus of $1,000 for bringing $30,000 in new funds within 30 days of opening the account and keeping an average balance of $30,000 or more between days 31 and 90. Depending on how well you play timing, it’s an effective APR of between 13.5% and 20.3%. The account must by open by July 31.
You can also register for a fast track to Preferred Rewards through the same funds and promotion, which frankly is a better deal than it probably sounds. (Thanks to DoC)
The Citi Strata Premier card has a meaningful update: It now includes travel insurance for luggage, delays, and common carrier cancellations and interruptions. Just like everything Strata related, Citi botched the rollout though. This time, they posted the terms and conditions and a FAQ, but then pulled them a bit later. I did read through them while they were up, and the summary for trip delay insurance is (was?): UPDATE: Benefits guide here
– Trips must be paid in full with the card for revenue tickets for coverage – Taxes and fees must be paid in full with the card for award tickets for coverage – Round-trips required, one-way bookings may not count [needs to be re-verified] – Trip delay insurance requires a 6 hour delay – Maximum $500 per incident
The Sapphire Reserve and US bank Altitude Reserve have better travel insurance than the Strata Premier, especially because you only need a partial payment with those cards for eligible coverage, and one-way trips are covered too as long as you’re away from your home city.
We’ll see at least three dozen articles in the next couple of weeks about the Citi Strata Premier, and they’ll all boil down to a few salient points:
– The old Premier goes away today for new applications – Strata Premier applications start on May 16 with a 75,000 ThankYou Point bonus – The bonus won’t be available if you had a Premier bonus in the last four years, and yes, you can still double dip – The new card is almost exactly the same as the old card, except for the addition of 3x at EV charging and 10x earning on hotels, cars, and entertainment booked through the slightly inflated price CitiTravel.com portal
If anything else important comes up, you’ll see it here. Otherwise, skip all the upcoming articles and go probing instead.
– Delta: $40 back on $180+ booked through AmEx travel through July 5 – JetBlue: $50 back on $200+ through August 6 – Hilton: $40 back on $180+ through July 31 – Hertz: $40 back on $150+ through June 30 – Dell: $50 back on $250+ through September 30 – Oceana Cruises: 10x on up to $4,000 spend through July 8
The Delta one is gameable using the same methods for airline incidental credits and that’s only somewhat interesting, but JetBlue and Hilton are more easily played. I have no direct experience with Oceania Crusies, but there’s an angle with most.
Warning: This may be someone’s affiliate link. I’ve found it in multiple places that have affiliate relationships, I can’t get it to appear without leaving all of the URL parameters in place, and I can’t find it via Google search, Citi’s page, or AA’s page, so there may be a hidden commission paid to someone with this link. I can say for certain that I’ll earn exactly as much with this link as with every other link on the blog: $0.
Preparing for the upcoming deluge of Citi Strata blog posts.
Finally our long-lasting struggle as a species is over: It’s not raining tacos anymore, but instead it’s raining Avios, or at least drizzling them.
New Cards
Two new cards issued by Cardless entered the market yesterday. Taken at face value they barely qualify for /r/mildlyinteresting content, but since when do we take anything at face value around here?
Remember, Chase Ultimate Rewards, Citi ThankYou Points, American Express Membership Rewards, and Capital One miles all transfer to at least one Avios partner, and Avios miles can mostly be transferred freely between all partners at Avios.com. That means that each of the sign-up bonuses mentioned above should be compared with an average sign-up bonus for flexible currency cards, like the Ink Preferred or Venture X Business card. That generally makes the Avios cards a bad deal.
There is a specific use case that changes everything though, especially if you have a way to manufacture “restaurant spends” with the Cardless Infinite card. Qatar’s status Qpoints are earned based on non-promotional Avios earning, not based on total spend. So, $500 in “restaurant spends” on the Infinite card will earn you 1,500 Avios and 2 QP, which means you can earn Gold status with 450 QP from spend and 150 QP from the sign-up bonus, all for only $112,500 in restaurant spends.UPDATE: I’m not sure how I missed it, but the Infinite card gives you Gold status in the first year without any need for restaurant spends. Thanks to Eric for letting me know.
Qatar Gold status will earn you oneworld Sapphire, which will get you access to AA lounges including Flagship lounges even on domestic flights, and it’ll get you into much nicer oneworld alliance member lounges too. You can also retain status with 270 QP in subsequent years, so you’ll only need $67,500 in restaurant spends to renew.
Unfortunately, just like its little brother American Express’s applications, Chase might make you jump through a few hoops to get the offer to show; the easiest consistent way for me was to visit https://creditcards.chase.com/ in an incognito browser.
Incomm sites have fee free gift card promotions running for orders over $50:
Meijer sells both Pathward and Sunrise gift cards.
Several airline shopping portals have Mother’s Day promotions:
– AA: 2,000 bonus miles after $800+ in spend – Alaska: 1,000 bonus miles after $400+ in spend – Southwest: 1,000 bonus miles after $200+ in spend – United: 2,500 bonus miles after $400+ in spend
The Chase Sapphire Preferred and Reserve 75,000 Ultimate Rewards after $4,000 spend in three months bonus offers are now, as we predicted twice last week, available with referral links. It’s finally time to do a MEAB double dip for those who celebrate.
As usual, use the referral link for P2 or from a churning friend to make their day. (Thanks to DoC)
MEAB double dip day demands MEAB quality referral gift wrapping.
– $250 back on $1,200 or more in home improvement purchases once a month through July – 5% back on up to $2,000 spend per month on travel and entertainment through the December
I used to consider this card an Unsung Hero, but it’s time to call it just a Sung Hero, I guess? (Thanks to Grayo and birt)
As I said last week, at this point it basically never makes sense to earn a United mile directly because AmEx’s 35% points rebate and Chase’s 1.5 cents per point travel will often beat the award redemption cost on United, and you’ll earn miles for those flights too because they’re technically not award tickets. Most of the time you should probably focus your spend elsewhere and transfer in flexible currencies only if it makes immediate sense.
Giftcards.com is present on both, though as of April 12 tracking for that store has been the shopping portal equivalent of mail order furniture: Sometimes more intervention than you’d hope for is required.
