Category: Credit Cards

1. It’s time to buy BestBuy gift cards for resale at Amazon (or to buy regular merchandise if that’s how you roll). Check for the following offers:

  • Discover 40% off up to $40 back when using at least one point
  • American Express 30% off up to $30 back when using at least one Membership Rewards point
  • Chase 50% off up to $15 back when using at least one Ultimate Rewards point

With all of these you should use only one point because the redemption value isn’t great. Also combine with any bonus offers linked to your cards if you have them (AmEx currently has a 5x offer at Amazon for example). If the offers aren’t showing for you on Amazon’s site: unlink the relevant cards, wait a couple hours, add the cards back, wait a couple of hours, then try again. That’ll usually do the trick to get you eligible.

2. Check your email for a targeted spending offer on the no annual-fee Citi Shop Your Way Rewards Mastercard (a still future Miles Earn and Burn Unsung Hero card). The current offer is 10x at home improvement and electronics stores up to $12,500 in spend, and it of course works in tandem with another offer for 10% back on utility payments up to $500 in spend per month until January. Look for emails with the following subject (but prolly replace Matthew with your name, because duh):

  • “Matthew, your limited-time offer is here. Activate now.”
  • “Matthew, activate your bonus rewards offer!”

3. Check for the following American Express coupons offers:

  • 5x at Amazon
  • $25 back on $250 at BestBuy
  • $40 back on $200 at Hertz
  • $200 back on $1,000 at Delta Vacations (hint: You can book Disney with Delta Vacations)

There are other good ones too, just clip those coupons save them to your account.

The feel that American Express is evidently shooting for with their ultra-premium Platinum and Centurion cards.

Q4 is a great time to be in the game, and there are a few MS opportunities that cropped up over the weekend to kick it up a notch:

1. CashApp has an interesting boost for 10% back on online purchases at Sam’s Club up to $20, once per day between now and November 23. GC Galore also just broke news that Sam’s Club is officially recognizing gift cards for rebates with shopping portals. As of this writing, JetBlue has 3x at Sam’s and TopCashBack has 2% back, so between the two you’re looking at a 12% discount or better on $200 in gift cards every day for the next three weeks or so.

Best options: Vanilla Visa, Vanilla Mastercard, and Disney (thanks to Kyle for the Disney tip.) If you’re not currently a Sam’s Club member, spin up a new email address that you haven’t used before and you can get a new membership for $45 with a $45 Sam’s gift card included.

2. I’m getting bored with office supply store deals and getting really sick of $200 Metabank gift cards. In case you’re not like me, Staples has your back with another fee free $200 Visa gift card for up to five cards per transaction. The deal runs between now and Saturday. I’ll be sitting this one out because it’s too distracting with all the other Q4 shenanigans and the deluge of crazy FinTechs launching new products.

3. The Point debit card has double earning between whenever you get your updated card in the mail and the end of the year. That makes it effectively a 2% cash back debit card, or more if you spend in bonus categories (currently 10x on subscriptions for streaming, 6x on rideshare and delivery, 30x at Nike, 40x at HBO Max, 10x at Whole Foods, 10x at Amazon, 10x at Costco, 10x at Trader Joes, and 10x at coffee shops after doubling).

If you don’t currently have a Point debit card, sign up through a referral because you’ll get a $100 sign-up bonus rather than the public $10 bonus. Unfortunately though, they raised the annual fee to $99 for the card, but at least opening one doesn’t do a credit pull or affect Chase 5/24. If you want a card, find a friend for a referral and make their day, but if you can’t find a friend reach out to me and I’ll hook you up.

I don’t think I understood going up a notch until now, but I guess it means going from “bail” to “cabin”. Go cabin everyone!

The Elephant (s) in the Room

Surely you’ve read about the AA elite changes, Marriott point and certificate changes, and Hyatt peak/off-peak changes in a thousand different places so I’m not going to add another “me too” type post, but here are a few concise summaries without all the fluff for your future reference:

  • AA changes (to elite status only, award changes not expected for a long time)
  • Hyatt changes (hotels cost more during peak, less during off-peak, and the same in “normal” times)
  • Marriott changes (#bonvoyed)

What I Really Wanted to Post

With that out of the way, let’s talk about how crazy American Express can be right now, and I hope you can replicate what I did. Background: I opened a Personal Gold card 364 days ago. The annual fee will hit when the statement closes in a few days, so it was a great time to check on a retention offer over chat. I did that, and then a few more shenanigans because reasons:

  • Accepted a retention offer of 30,000 Membership Rewards after $3,000 spend in 90 days
  • Followed this link for an upgrade offer to a Platinum with 25,000 Membership Rewards after spending $10,000 in 90 days, and a bonus 10x on spend at grocery for up to $15,000 in spend from the same card
  • Referred a Player 2 for a new American Express card for a bonus +4x for up to $25,000 in spend for 90 days from the same card

American Express offers stack, and that means that at grocery stores, this card will earn:

  • 24x for the first $3,000 in spend
  • 14x for the next $12,000 in spend
  • 5x for the last $10,000 in spend

You can do this too as long as you’ve got a Personal Gold or Green card that’s been open for at least a year. It’s a good thing that BestBuy gift card resale rates are high right now, amirite?

Basking in the Membership Rewards downpour (with a bonus Easter Egg for Garth)

1. If you have a Chase Freedom Flex (and really you should, 3x at drugstores like CVS is one of the best ways to earn to Ultimate Rewards), I’d suggest that you take advantage of the new offer for $1,500 in spend at 5x in the category you spend the most on, out of: travel, dining, home improvement stores, grocery stores (except Target and Walmart), drugstores, gas stations, select live entertainment (lol), select streaming services, and fitness clubs. You’re automatically registered as long as you activated your Q4 5x categories.

If any of these overlap with your Freedom Flex’s Q4 bonus categories (PayPal and Walmart), you’ll earn 9x instead of 5x. My current churning life regret is that I only have one Freedom Flex card.

2.There’s a relatively new targeted spend offer on the landing page on the Ultimate Rewards portal for Ink Preferred cards. The offer is 50,000 bonus points for each $50,000 in spend up to $250,000. You can find the terms here. If you can MS in advertising or shipping categories, you’ll end up at 4x with this offer. (Thanks to Danny)

3. The Chase Sapphire Preferred 100,000 Ultimate Rewards points offer with first year’s annual fee waived and a $50 credit at grocery stores is still alive in-branch. My business banker said that they haven’t heard that it’ll be pulled yet, so it could stick around for at least a couple of more weeks. I still prefer the churnable Chase Ink cards to the Sapphire Preferred for almost everyone though.

Ok, but where are Chase’s Tuesday Tacos? Here, duh.

1. Staples has $200 fee free Mastercards up to five per transaction this week, and this time it’s for real — they pinky-promised and said no take-backs, so I think we’re good. The promotion runs between yesterday and Saturday. Note: There are recent reports that Payce has paid 5% on gift card purchases at Staples, though it can be spotty and it’s definitely not supposed to work that way so don’t write Payce support if it didn’t track for you.

These cards are Metabanks and they’re becoming more difficult to directly cash out, but it’s still possible. Some of the low hanging fruit is at regional grocery stores, but from home options also exist.

2. Office Depot / OfficeMax has $15 off of $300 in Visa gift cards back through Saturday. Remember to link your cards with Dosh for extra cash back, which will make this deal about a $14 money maker each time with the everywhere cards which, despite their name, do not work everywhere that Visa is taken (they do work in many places which matter for us though).

3. Meijer Mperks is has a current offer for $5 off of a future purchase when buying $50 in gift cards, up to 10 times per Mperks account between now and October 23. In case you’re not mathematically inclined, a single $500 gift card will earn you $50, or 10% back.

This one excludes some Visas and Mastercards, but you can buy BestBuy, Home Depot, or Apple gift cards which all have a high resale rate.

4. The personal JetBlue card has an offer for Mosaic status lasting until the end of 2022 after spending $15,000 (Svetlana wrote in to correct the spend, I had incorrectly written $10,000 before). If you fly JetBlue a lot, Mosaic status may be worth getting. If you’re flying it only two or three times a year, then this isn’t worth your time — the real benefit to Mosaic is free “upgrades” to Even More Space and I guess a mini-bottle of awful wine.

If JetBlue Mosaic status got you wine from Valais, we’d be in a totally different ballgame and spending $10,000 for status might be worth it. Alas, it doesn’t. Enjoy your swill wine and blue corn chips instead, cause that’s what you’ll get.

Today, let’s start with a bit of followup and then jump into a few points to keep your eyes on.

On Monday we talked about how Chase might be blocking PayPal Key+Freedom transactions for certain MS channels. Plenty of data points have come in since then, and there’s also been a material change in a particular MS channel too. As of now, it seems that PayPal is actually the culprit for blocking transactions and it’s very targeted and specific. Louses!

Onto the normal post:

1. Login to American Express, then check this link for an authorized user offer for American Express Business Platinum cards. This offer is for 20,000 points when adding an employee card and spending $4,000, up to five times. This is different than the 1.9 Million point offer for 99 users that you can get from calling in; and because it’s a different offer you can be taking advantage of both (though remember you’re limited to 99 employee cards total).

Remember, employee cards don’t need a date of birth or SSN when creating them, they come already activated, and they stay that way for 60 days without providing additional information. (Thanks to Parts_Unknown for the link)

2. Simon Volume has a gift card promotion code GO50SEP21 for half of of fees through October 8. These are great for boosting balances on your Citi cards, especially the Double Cash.

3. If you hold any variety of the American Express Bonvoy card, register this link for a targeted 10x spend on PayPal purchases up to 50,000 points for $5,000 in spend. I was targeted, and believe it or not I will be taking advantage of this because 50,000 points is good for a night or two at an airport hotel when I need a place to stay while transiting.

I hear your head snapping: “Wait, MEAB? You have a Marriott Bonvoy Amex?”

Yes, I famously hate Marriott and yes, I do have the card. It’s the weird $95 annual fee personal card that was converted from the Starwood SPG card when Marriott bought Starwood, and is currently only available by converting another higher annual-fee Marriott. I’ve kept this card despite my hatred of Marriott because:

  • I’ve gotten a 60,000 Bonvoy points retention offer on the card each year that I’ve had it
  • It’s currently giving me $10 in dining credits every month, easily cashed out at Amazon Meals on Fluz
  • It gives me a 35,000 point annual free night certificate every year

If they would stop giving me retention offers on the card I’d get rid of it — but, here we are. AmEx is feeding me exactly what I hate and I apparently keep asking for more.

The American Express Bonvoy $95 annual fee card if it were a meal.

Brevity is back baby!

1. Citi does everything in a uniquely Citi way (wait for it). After they watched American Express and Chase knock Card linked offers out of the park, they finally decided to implement their own version in late 2020. For the most part those offers have been lame, but that’s changing. Login at this link, and check your Citi offers for the following:

  • $50 off of $200 at Best Buy
  • 30% off of Uber, up to four times at $10 back per use
  • 1.5% back at GiftCards.com (Citi excludes “gift card” purchases from GiftCards.com in the T&C, but I’m almost certain that won’t be enforced — what else are you going to buy there? Go ahead and look, I’ll wait)
  • $50 off of $200 at various IHG brands (I see Holiday Inn, Even Hotels, and Hotel Indigo on my Premier)

2. Reader K wrote in to let me know that PayPal Key and their Freedom Flex were working splendidly together at Costco.com this weekend, which means yesterday’s post is partially incorrect. I’ve had more data points pouring in and that’s led to mixed results; some reporting success in various manufactured spend channels and others failing. I think this is a YMMV situation, and hopefully you’re lucky and PPK+Freedom (Flex) just works for you. It didn’t for me unfortunately.

3. Meijer has $10 back for purchasing $150 or more in Mastercard gift cards this week. You can also get $10 back for $50 in Happy gift cards at the same link. Spin up those Mperks accounts, and don’t forget to clip those offers!

Card linked offers with the big three credit card issuers.

Which one of you thought American Express couldn’t get any crazier? Well, they can and they’re getting crazier just to spite you. Ok, that may not really be why — their primary goal seems to be to increase the value of their stock by rocketing the number of new cards to the moon at any cost.

What’s the latest craziness? Reports started appearing yesterday morning that many AmEx cards have a new referral bonus (for the referrer) of an additional +4x or +4% on top of the card’s existing earning structure. The offers has been seen on Blue Business cards, Personal and Business Platinum cards, Personal and Business Gold cards, and probably others. You can find them at the top of the offers section on the card’s summary page. Here’s the offer on one of my Personal Gold cards:

Refer A Friend Limited Time Offer
Offer ends 12/01/21

You can earn: +4 Membership Rewards points per dollar spent on eligible purchases for 3 months, on up to $25k when you refer a friend to apply by 12/1 and they are approved. Terms apply.

Here’s the thing, this stacks with existing bonus and existing earnings. A few examples:

  • If you have 15x, 10x, or 5x MR for a shop small card, you’ll earn 19x, 14x, or 9x MR when shopping at a small business after referring someone
  • If you have a 10x grocery bonus from recent upgrade shenanigans, you’ll earn 14x at grocery after referring someone
  • If you have 4x grocery capacity left on a Personal Gold, you’ll earn 8x at grocery after referring someone

It’s not too late to get any of the above deals by the way. In theory this will stick around until December 1, so you’ve got time to get a new card with a nice bonus and refer from that card to make it even better.

If I were you, I’d find a way to take advantage of this, it’s a great deal. A few things to keep in mind:

  • Never refer yourself
  • It’s ok to refer your P2 or other family
  • You can send a referral to one of your secondary email addresses and save the link to give to someone else in the future, it should keep working up through 12/1 and possibly beyond
  • If the person being referred gets a denial, you can call AmEx reconsideration for up to 60 days and probably still keep the offer for the referrer
  • AmEx will usually issue 1099s if you earn enough in referral bonuses — because this is a rebate on spend though, you may not get a 1099 for this one and it may not be taxed as a bank bonus (as usual though, I’m not an accountant and I’m definitely not your accountant. Also you should probably never take my advice about anything, ever)
  • Referral offers stack with retention offers, just sayin’

Now, go have a crazy weekend, but not AmEx crazy, just normal crazy.

Pictured: Hair as long as AmEx is crazy.