Category: Credit Cards

Talk about a whirlwind day for credit card stuff:

1. A new American Express Platinum authorized user 20,000 Membership Rewards bonus link came into my inbox yesterday. It’s worth a shot to see if it works for you too. Login to your American Express account first, then click this link to see if you’re targeted. The bonus requires the authorized user card to spend $2,000 in six months. Of course I’d recommend adding the no annual-fee gold authorized user card instead of the platinum version.

Note: American Express authorized user cards arrive already activated and remain that way for 60 days, so you can spend the $2,000 without ever attaching a social security number.

2. My Citi Custom Cash card coded as a grocery store for certain manufactured spend techniques even though the same charges haven’t coded as grocery on my Citi Premier. So, if you’ve got a Custom Cash, forget what you know about Citi merchant coding and try again.

3. You’ve no doubt heard about yesterday’s announced Chase United Club Infinite card changes elsewhere. Don’t buy into the sales hype, but the changes make the card a good one in a few very specific instances. It might be a good card for you if you:

  • Fly United a lot*, and you value United Club access for all-you-can-eat cheese cubes (or for a less worthy reason)
  • Redeem United miles for domestic coach saver space a lot* (I’m unclear as to whether this applies to X award space only, or also to XN which is extra availability for elites and card holders)

Should that describe you*, the card’s United Club access and 10% rebate on domestic coach saver tickets can really add up to be worth more than the annual fee. If that doesn’t describe you though, skip this one.

4. Amazingly, the offer for American Express Business Platinum employee cards is still alive and kicking. As a reminder, you can get a 20,000 Membership Rewards bonus per employee for adding up to 99 employee authorized user cards and spending $4,000 on each. That’s a total of about 1.9 million Membership Rewards.

The downside? You have to talk to a human for this one. Call American Express’s Business Platinum phone number and ask “Are there any bonus offers for adding employee cards to my Business Platinum card?”

Pictured: An employee credit-card whirl wind.

* I’m terribly sorry

We’re all over the map with today’s post, sorry friends. It’s just going to be a hot-mess and there’s nothing any of us can do about it.

1. Are you ready for a bunch of fee free $200 Visa Gift Cards again? Well, Staples has got your back. Between Sunday and the following Saturday they’re fee free, limit five per transaction. Make sure you have a plan for liquidation before buying a bunch. EDIT 9/26/2021: Katie let me know that the ad is wrong, it’s actually Mastercard Gift Cards in this sale.

Related followup: Safeway, like Walmart and Kroger, does indeed have a $99 per transaction debit card limit on these cards. So if worst comes to worst, I guess you could buy a couple of money orders to get rid of a card, but ewww David.

2. Yun wrote in to let me know that by chatting with Point debit card support, he was able to get the $99 annual fee refunded on multiple accounts and keep the card open after their walk-back of an offer for a $0 annual fee. I’d suggest that if you signed up for the rewards card with the first year fee free and were still charged $99, you chat with their support online and try and get it refunded. I’d try a few times if it doesn’t work out the first time.

Related followup: I opened a spite Point debit card and I think you should also. Talk about burying the lead on this one too — Point has a new streak for $30 back after using the card once per day for five days, as long as the total works out to at least $200 in spend before October 3. It’s a debit card so getting your spend going is easier than in quite a few other cases, and now that I have a spite card I can get the streak an extra time.

3. I had a several people send questions, notes, and clarifications about American Express upgrade offers. To sum it up:

  • On the personal card side (like the business card side), opening a new card or upgrading an existing card will almost never result in a hard credit pull. However on the personal side a new card will always result in a new account on your credit card which matters if you’re trying to be under 5/24.
  • The “almost” in the above statement comes from what American Express sees when they do a periodic soft credit card pull (which doesn’t show up on your credit report). If something on that soft pull looks very different than before, they may do a hard inquiry for a new application.
  • On business card upgrades you don’t need to wait 12 months before getting an upgrade; the reason you have to wait that long on the personal side is due to legislation in the CARD act.
  • The downgrade/upgrade game is alive and well for some of you, don’t discount the play.
  • There are multiple reports that upgrades have been seen on more than one business card, check them all, and just because you’ve upgraded one doesn’t mean there’s not another offer right behind it.
  • You almost certainly don’t need worry about the presence of lifetime language restrictions in an upgrade offer. I’m not aware of any reports of that condition being enforced, and I’ve seen hundreds data-points that say the conditions don’t matter (including my own).
  • If you get a popup during application for a new card or during upgrade that says your’e not eligible for a sign-up bonus, believe it. There was a brief period where that wasn’t true, but unfortunately that period has passed.

4. Check here for a spend offer on your United credit card. I got 500 bonus miles for spending $500 on my card, which is worth about $7.50 best case, gee thanks. I guess I could use that $7.50 to buy myself a gourmet, marine-life shaped croissant.

5. I finally decided to start using Venmo for in-store payments this week, and my first purchase was a large one at CVS in a different state than where I live. That resulted in my Venmo account being locked and a few annoying email threads with Venmo support. Don’t be like me, try a little harder.

It’s been a long winded week on this site, hmm 🤔.

My prize from the grab-bag? A croissant croisshark. You knew this picture was coming even before you saw it, right?

Let’s catch up from a few things over the last week or so:

1. Reader Jacob wrote in to let me know that Thursday’s offer for $0 annual-fee for the first year with the Point debit card didn’t pan out. He signed up using the trick in the post and was still charged $99. Point support said the offer was a mistake and they wouldn’t honor it despite his supporting documentation. Stefan also let me know that he couldn’t sign up using anyone’s referral code using Thursday’s trick, so they’ve patched the website too.

When I wrote about the offer I guessed it would work, but that if it somehow failed it would be that you wouldn’t get the $100 sign up bonus. Obviously this was completely backward. You’ll almost certainly get the bonus but not the waived annual fee. I’m ready to call Point a louse and to encourage you to spin up more accounts for your P2, P3, etc the next time there’s a nice boost offer purely out of spite. A “spite account”, if you will.

2. The targeted link I shared for a no-lifetime language American Express Platinum with 150,000 Membership Rewards after $15,000 in spend in three months worked despite it pushing me above American Express’s 10 charge card limit and despite already having two other Business Platinums for the same sole proprietorship. The card arrived today which was the last hurdle, and it took American Express longer than normal to send it to me so I was starting to get dubious about whether it’d appear. I’ll knock out the spend this week and I fully expect the bonus to post without issue.

Remember, AmEx won’t pull your credit for a new business card application as long as you already have an account in good standing with them. Lob in an app or two, there’s literally no consequence to a denial (except maybe your pride?) so give it a shot.

3. I wrote about American Express upgrade shenanigans on Friday — I upgraded a business gold card last week and knocked the spend out in a day (I cheated with prepaid taxes on that one, had it done within 10 minutes of activating the card). The bonus posted two days later exactly as expected. Look for upgrade offers offers, they’re real and they’re wonderful.

Thanks to Latte Larry’s for the inspiration for opening a Point.app spite card.

Background

If you set your way-back machine to March 18, you’ll find a post about taking an upgrade offer from an American Express Personal Gold or Green card for 25,000 or 75,000 Membership Rewards after $2,000 in spend and another 10x at gas and grocery stores for up to $15,000 in spend, good for 183 days. I know a few of you took the upgrade offer like me, and I got two notes in April and May to let me know that the points from this deal never posted for you, also like me.

Now fast forward to September 2 when the first report came in that the bonuses and 10x rewards started posting. A few days after that, messages started coming from all over the place confirming both the bonus and 10x. I checked my account and with zero surprise, the points had posted. It took a while, but the offer eventually came in like it was supposed to. If you opened yours after March 18, you may still have a day or two left to squeeze that juice by the way.

Working It

It’s of course great news that bonuses started posting, but there’s more to the story: a couple of weeks ago, upgrade offers for another 25,000 Membership Rewards and another $15,000 on 10x spend started raining from the sky on Personal Green and Gold cards in the offers section of the dashboard. As far as I’ve been able to tell, almost all Personal Green and Gold cards have the offer provided the card account has been open for at least 12 months.

Can you see where I’m going with this? If you have a Platinum card that’s been open for at least 12 months, call American Express and downgrade it to a Gold or a Green card, wait about an hour, then check for an upgrade offer. You’ve got an excellent chance that one will appear and you’ll get another 25,000 Membership Rewards and another $15,000 in 10x capacity. Bananas, right? There’s a similar play on the Business side too. Just don’t do this on a Platinum that had a retention offer in the last 12 months to avoid angering AmEx. Also, it may only work once on the Personal side and once on then Business side per person.

Oh, the spend bonuses and 10x are posting in a few days on these offers — you won’t have to wait five and a half months to see them. Save that way-back machine for looking at the old Schwab 1.25 cent cash-out.

Looking through the American Express Platinum way-back machine.

1. Reader Yun let me know that there’s a neat hack for new Point.app debit card accounts. If you use someone’s referral code at this link, the annual fee drops to $0 for the first year and $49 for the second year. What’s currently unclear is whether you’ll get the $100 sign-up bonus after spending $1,000 when you use the link. My guess is yes, but that’s just a guess.

If you need a referral code, ask a friend and make their day because they’ll likely get a referral bonus. If that’s not a good option for you, feel free to reach out to me and I’ll share Yun’s (he’s given me permission).

2. I got a no lifetime language (NLL) offer via email for the Business Platinum card from American Express, with 150,000 Membership Rewards after $15,000 in spend within the first three months. The link in my inbox seems to skirt the 10 charge card limit — hopefully the link works for you too. To check, login to American Express and then click here.

I’m back up to 11 charge cards with American Express now with 9 of them being Platinums, huzzah I guess?

3. Marriott Bonvoy has enlisted American Express’s help to #bonvoy you. How? I’m glad you asked. They’re sending around targeted offers for card holders that give you a pitiful 1,000 points if you add an authorized user to your Bonvoy Card and spend $1,000 on the authorized user card in six months. You can see if you’re targeted at this link.

This is a terrible offer by the way; 1,000 Bonvoy points are worth at best $5, which is approximately the price of a cookie at a Marriott Courtyard.

The cookies on this plate are literally worth more than 1,000 #bonvoy points. Given the deliberately ominous arrangement, I calculate a 41.4% chance that this #bonvoy elite welcome gift will make you sick.
(Thanks to D C Domer for the picture from his recent trip)

Target runs a deal like $50 off of $50 when opening a new Target Redcard every few months. The latest of these deals started Saturday and runs through October 1. The promotion applies to opening either a debit Redcard or for a credit card Redcard, both of which have merit (and not just because they’ll both give you 5% off of everything at Target).

Debit

Why sign up for the debit card?

  • There’s no hard pull on your credit
  • You can close it as soon as you get the $50 off coupon
  • After closing the card, wait 48 hours and you can sign up for another one with the same info to get another coupon

Over the period of this promotion, you’ll almost certainly be able to open/close twice, and perhaps three times. So, think of this as $100-$150 in Target stuff every few months with no credit pull.

Credit

What about the credit card? Well, $50 is a really crappy bonus for signing up for a credit card for sure, especially one that only works at Target. But, this card has a great feature: You may be able to pay off your balance in store. (Target is pretty accepting of different payment methods — remember the American Express for Target prepaid card before it was discontinued? I do)

There’s another reason to get the credit version of the Target RedCard: It’s a prerequisite for getting the Target Mastercard which, unlike the RedCard, works at stores other than Target.

Good luck, and a special thanks to Larry for consulting with me on this post.

An image of the old American Express For Target prepaid debit card.
This card still lives today (in spirit).

Well friends, the day is unfortunately here: As of tonight at 11:59PM Eastern (or perhaps even earlier), you can no longer cash-out American Express Membership Rewards at 1.25 cents each with the Schwab Platinum card. That makes it a great time to remind you about the often forgotten no-annual fee Morgan Stanley Card from American Express which I first learned about from the mostly defunct Windbag Miles, and then forgot about completely until the Schwab cash-out changes were confirmed. As of today now, it’s officially a member of the Miles Earn and Burn Unsung Heroes club.

Let’s talk about this card:

  • It earns Membership Rewards
  • It bonuses at 2x on department stores, restaurants, car rentals, and airfare
  • It has no annual fee
  • You can transfer to airline partners
  • You can cash out Membership Rewards to your Morgan Stanley account at one cent per point

The last bullet is the kicker, though the others are noteworthy too. This card may now be the best option for converting Membership Rewards to cash in an above-the-board sort of way. Yes, the Schwab Platinum gives you an extra 10% uplift on cash-out, but you also have to have a Schwab Platinum card and pay its $695 annual fee, which I guess you can offset slightly with Clear and a stupid gym membership.

Running the numbers quickly by moving the decimal, you’d have to cash-out more than 695,000 points with the Schwab Platinum at 1.1 cents per point to offset the annual fee of the Platinum card versus just cashing out at 1.0 cents per per point with the no fee Morgan Stanley Card; if you’re cashing out any number less than that over the period of a year, you should really be using the Morgan Stanley card and not the Schwab Platinum. As a really, really small incentive for getting the card, you’ll get 10,000 Membership Rewards as a sign up bonus after spending $1,000 within three months, and I’m guessing you’ve never gotten that signup bonus before. Right? It’s not exactly been high on my list.

As promised, the Morgan Stanley Card is no where to be found on my top credit cards list, but it will be in my wallet soon anyway.

1. Register here for a $50 promo code off of any AA flight booking when booking with a Mastercard for travel before March 15, 2022. There’s a catch though, the code comes six to eight weeks after your first booking for a second booking. So, it’s really a buy-one, get-one for $50 off offer. I bet you can game it with a refundable fare, but at this point no one has been able to try.

2. Check here for a targeted offer for 135,000 points for upgrading from an American Express Gold or Green card to a Platinum card. Yes, this may even work with the NLL Business Gold card that you may have opened on Thursday. (Thanks to DDG)

3. An interesting promotion has come from Avis, which has happened in the past (checks notes) approximately zero times. Register at that link, then rent an intermediate car from Avis twice for at least two days and you’ll earn a free rental day. Also, don’t forget to register for Avis Preferred status if you have an American Express Platinum card. It’s an even stronger flex if your Platinum card was from item 2.

William Banks Jr doing the Tuesday Triple (jump).