A new set of bonus offers for American Express Personal and Business Platinum cards started floating around on June 16, via email and regular mail. The best versions of these offers are for 20,000 Membership Rewards points for adding an authorized user or employee card and spending $2,000 with the authorized user’s card. For both the personal and business platinum, there are no-fee versions of the extra cards, so don’t think you need to pay $175 to get an employee Platinum card or something. This weekend, there were some new developments that are worth mentioning:
It’s been reported on Reddit and confirmed by several people (including me) that you can call in and probably get the Business Platinum version of the offer even if you didn’t get email or snail mail about it. If you call, just be nice and say something like: “I’m wondering if there are any bonus offers for adding employee cards to my business charge cards.” Remember, employee cards at American Express are special — you can activate them without a social security number and they’ll stay open for 60 days.
If you go for either of these deals (I would and did). Perhaps ask yourself “How can I scale this?“
What a weekend eh? There was a lot that happened on the underground MS scene that honestly made me feel like I was watching a train-wreck happening in slow motion. I don’t have any direct information to share from that, but the action item for you is to remember that blogs are always going to be a good source of semi-public information and hints for bigger bonanzas, but the best information will be found in small, private groups. I’d suggest looking for a few of them to up your game if you’re craving more.
On that happy note, let’s follow up on a few items and talk about the Schwab devaluation, and maybe offer a bonanza hint along the way:
1. A lot of you had your Brex 100,000 points offer post on Friday or Saturday. Personally, I had the bonus post on one company’s account but not the other. In case yours didn’t post either, give it a few more days. If that doesn’t work, forward the emails that the PayPal sales rep you spoke with to [email protected] from your email address on file with Brex. It may be a (small) battle, but it’s one you’ll almost certainly win.
2. In case you haven’t read my affiliate link free post on cashing Membership Rewards yet (spoiler alert, none of you have because it’s still being written, slowly, over the course of the last several months), the Schwab Platinum card is the easiest reliable high-value Membership Rewards conversion to cash that currently exists. The redemption value is 1.25 cents per point which is great, but it’s even better because it’s a tax-free way to generate income, or in theory a way to increase your Roth IRA contributions beyond the normal limit without paying taxes or penalties. (I’m not a financial advisor, never take my advice, maybe about anything.)
We’re in a good news/bad news situation with the card now: As of September 1, the cash-out will drop from 1.25 cents per point to 1.1 cents per point; but the good news is: 1) if you have the card you’ve got time to cash out, and 2) if you don’t, it’s another sign-up bonus for you (60,000 Membership Rewards). When I first signed up for the card I cashed out 1 million Membership Rewards points the day it arrived in the mail, so there’s no real waiting period to speak of. To be eligible to open it, you have to be a Schwab customer but all that takes is a free brokerage account and $10 so the bar is quite low, almost as low as AA closing accounts and canceling tickets on the day of travel for churners.
FYI – there are other loopholes for cash-out that will pay at a higher rate with the Business Platinum card, but they’re either slightly sketch or not completely reliable.
3. Staples has fee free $200 Mastercards between now and Saturday evening, limit 5 per person (or, probably limit 5 per transaction.) There are absolutely still ways to liquidate these Metabank Mastercards for a low cost, but they are slowly being zapped like mosquitos in front of a bug zapper (sorry, it’s Monday, my metaphors are weak and you can see them coming from a mile away, like my alma mater calling me to “see how it’s going” which really means “give us a donation”.)
I bet you thought you wouldn’t have to read about another Prime Day post here for a long time. Guess what? You’re right. Instead, these three items made the cut:
2. Plastiq is a shenanigan rich target, though they’ve closed most of the really lucrative holes. That said, opportunities do exist and I’d suggest you experiment and see what happens. Now Visa Savings Edge is offering an incentive for you to play: 1% off of Plastiq fees for your first $2,500 in spend. You don’t need to use a Visa Savings Edge card with Plastiq, just sign up through their link.
How many email addresses do you have by the way? No reason, just curious.
3. Here’s a nifty hack that may save you some real money on insurance, or maybe it just earns you 500 Membership Rewards points while wasting your time. Apparently at Rakuten you can get 500 Membership Rewards (or $5 cash back) for getting an insurance quote, and it’s repeatable once per quarter. This doesn’t pass my threshold for something worthy of spending my time on, but I like it in principle and some of you might want to do it it practice. Thanks to stillwaters23 for the tip.
You get a free Platinum authorized user card, which gives the AU access to lounges and Priority Pass just like the primary card holder gets (other American Express Platinums charge $175)
It’s a different product than other American Express Platinum cards, so you can get it regardless of what other flavors of the Platinum you have or have had, so it’s potentially a new sign-up bonus
It typically offers 50,000 Membership Rewards as a retention bonus after the annual fee hits
You can get a $550 annual fee offset credit from Morgan Stanley with a bit of legwork, making the card effectively fee free even before retention bonuses
To get the card, you need to be a Morgan Stanley client, which normally requires quite a bit of capital, but a few years ago Windbag Miles discovered that a $5,000 Morgan Stanley Access account is enough to be eligible. Agile.Travel’s discovery is that some of what’s documented about getting the $550 annual fee credit is wrong (in some places you’ll read that you can only get the credit once, and in other places you’ll read that you have to jump through some of the hoops before opening the card, both of which are incorrect.)
You can get the annual fee waiver every year, and you don’t have to do it before getting the Morgan Stanley Platinum. To get the waiver:
Open a Morgan Stanley Cash Plus Platinum account
Hold $25,000 in the Cash Plus account
“Direct Deposit” $5,000 a month into the account (more likely, set up a monthly recurring ACH transfer of $5,000 from another account, then a day later back out to an external account)
The annual fee credit of $550 is effectively a 2.2% APR on $25,000. Assuming you maximize the Platinum credits, lounge access, and get a retention bonus, you’ve got a compelling argument to hold on to the card long-term which honestly is really rare for a Platinum. Note also that the card will cash out Membership Rewards at 1 cent each, but if cashing out is your game look for the Schwab Platinum which will get you 1.25 cents per point.
Wow, talk about brevity challenged today, eh? I guess that means I’m witless.
So, I started out with a Weekend Wisdom post but then got excited by item #1 when I found it on FlyerTalk, then I got excited that I found a useful piece of info on FlyerTalk for the first time in years, and then finally I felt like I had to throw a few other things along with it to fill out your weekend. Here’s my disconnected result:
1. Did you pound the Discover Q2 5% bonus at Warehouse Clubs? Yeah, neither did I. But, there’s a reason to step foot in a Sam’s Club again: $500 Vanilla Visa and Mastercard gift cards are coming back to Sam’s brick and mortar stores. The fee on these is $4.95, so an all around good deal. In case you’re not a Sam’s Club member, you can join for $45 and get a $45 Sam’s Club gift card either online or in store. If you do it online, go through a shopping portal — it may work.
2. Now let’s talk about easy minimum spend from home for a moment, especially given all this week’s American Express offers. Good options are: Plastiq, Bravo, and Fluz. With Bravo, you can do some archeology on older APK files and find a way to get the fee down to 2%, but it’s not for the feint of heart. With the right options on Fluz, you can approach 0%. On Plastiq, you’ll pay 2.85%, but you can be really creative with your targets to get your money right back in your pockets. There are other payment processors too; if/when you find one, try small charges on Visa, Mastercard, and American Express because often you’ll get different results with each.
Of course these aren’t the only at-home options. There are others that you’re no doubt passingly familiar with like gift card reselling, buyer’s clubs, Kiva, and online arbitrage (that last one is a ton of work though, but you can do really well if you’ve got the stomach for it).
3.Starter Bros locations in California are offering $10 off when you buy a $50 gift card and $10 in groceries. This might seem like a sleeper but you can scale it. Side note: Until very recently I just assumed Starter Bros was like AutoZone, O’Reilly Auto, or Pep Boys. Spoiler alert: it’s not.
There are a couple of easily American Express authorized user bonuses that surfaced this week. These are a piece of cake to knock out, so it’s worth seeing if the links work for you. They both worked for me:
2. There’s also a targeted 7,500 SkyMiles offer on the Delta Platinum card for adding an authorized user and spending $500 within six months. See the above note about personal card authorized users.
In case you need something light for Thursday, see this thread at Reddit for the answers (and hidden questions) seen on Jeopardy! this week in a “Credit Card” category. My performance was actually not great, so there’s that. I guess that means there’s still a lot for me to learn about credit cards.
Computer simulation of my performance on the Jeopardy! “Credit Card” category.
Did you know that American Express cards with lifetime language aren’t always really lifetime language cards, and vice-versa? As of the last several months, true. Let’s enter the crazy world of American Express together: it’s not the card terms and conditions that seem to dictate whether or not you get a bonus in 2021, but rather if you get a popup window telling you that you won’t get the bonus during the application process then you won’t, and if you don’t get the popup you will. Of course, you won’t have a great case for getting the sign-up bonus if it doesn’t post and you were relying on this trick, so caveat emptor, which I’m pretty sure is Latin for “American Express can be played, but sometimes the player becomes the played”.
Given the above, and given some crazy offers around right now, if you have any capacity for another American Express charge card (supposedly the limit is ten, but I have eleven) then perhaps consider both of these:
Business Platinum card: 150,000 Membership Rewards sign-up bonus + 10,000 Membership Rewards bonus for adding an employee card. There is a $15,000 minimum spend in three months requirement for the bonus.
Business Gold card: 90,000 Membership Rewards sign-up bonus + 10,000 Membership Rewards bonus for adding an employee card. This one has a $10,000 minimum spend in three months for the bonus. (Thanks to dannydealguru on Reddit for this link)
The Business Platinum card in particular pairs well with a new American Express offer for 10% back on purchases at Dell, up to $150 total cash back for up to $1,500 in spend before December 15. With that offer, you can combine a periodic Xbox Gift Card promo code with your $100 twice-annual credit, and for any amount you go over earn 10% back. If you don’t have a Business Platinum though, check for the offer on your other American Express cards, it’s just not as exciting.
One final hint, employee cards are different than authorized user cards with American Express, they’re much easier to get and the bar is much lower.
Pictured: How high you have to jump to cross the employee card bar with American Express.
1. Danny from the Milenomics Alchemy Podcast sent me a link for viewing all of your past American Express card applications, both successful and denied. It’s definitely worth squirreling away for when you’re trying to figure out which cards you’ve applied for. Note that while it looks like a web page designed in the era of Windows 95, it is a real American Express site and it does work:
3. If you signed up for the Brex 100,000 points PayPal integration, you should hopefully be getting the bonus in your Brex account shortly. There’s been a lot of sausage making shared from behind the PayPal and Brex scene in various places, but the summary is basically “integrating technology between two companies is hard”. An update shared by Travel With a Point yesterday from Brex support makes it look like we’re nearing the finish line:
We just got confirmation from our team that we are waiting for an update from PayPal in regards to the customers who signed up correctly for that points bonus. Unfortunately, there has been some miscommunication from PayPal in regards to this. Our team will post those points to your account shortly.
We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, and will certainly provide you any additional information as PayPal gets that to us.
As always, feel free to let us know if you have any additional questions.
So I guess that means stay tuned from Brex. Like American Express, their Windows 95 computers need some help.
4.Southwest seems to be having a fare sale for 50% off of all points bookings today. As of this writing not much is known, but do take a look today at existing bookings to see if you can get them cheaper, or for any new holiday bookings you’ve got tentatively planned. Remember the Southwest free change window hasn’t hit late fall or winter travel yet, so consider booking the cheapest flight within two weeks of your actual desired travel in anticipation of the change window. Use code SAVE50 at checkout, book by Thursday for travel between September 15 and November 3.
American Express advertisement from 1996 (deep cut).
