Category: Credit Cards

Note: I’ll be on a mostly disconnected vacation next week, and while I’m still planning on posting M-F, expect slower than normal responses from me. If you do write a note though I will get back to you.

1. Check here for a targeted MilePlay offer from United. I was targeted for nothing on this round, but several offers have been seen for between 5,000 and 20,000 miles for taking one or more trips, sometimes in a premium cabin, sometimes one-way, and sometimes round-trip.

Of course there’s always the United offer for a complimentary delay out of SFO, no registration required, available to everyone.

2. In case you missed it like I did, last week Robert at Milenomics wrote that JetBlue now has a public policy for extending Travel Bank credits that expire between February 2020 and September 29, 2022. The extension will last through October 1, 2022. A Twitter direct message is likely the easiest way on this one.

3. Bank of America has an increased sign-up bonus of 60,000 miles on the Virgin Atlantic Mastercard after spending $2,000 in three months, and another 20,000 miles for jumping through some modest hoops. The annual fee is $90 and is not waived for the first year.

Of course because this is Bank of America, you can play a few games and end up with two or three of these cards with just a single hard pull if you’ve got a BoA checking account and you’re at or below 7/12. Two of these bonuses are enough for a round-trip to Japan in ANA First Class (110,000-120,000 points). UPDATE: Reader @nutella noted that the BoA Virgin Atlantic card is 7/12, not 5/24.

Happy weekend!

A churner preparing to navigate Bank of America card approval standards.

I guess I should expect this because rare things happen closely together more often than not, but everything today is targeted. I blame Poisson.

1. Check your account dashboard for your American Express Green and Gold cards for a pop up offering either a new Business Platinum card with a 150,000 Membership Rewards sign-up bonus, or for a new Business Gold card with a 90,000 point sign up bonus. These are no-lifetime language (NLL) cards so you should be eligible for the sign-up bonus regardless of your current or past card portfolio. (Although they won’t bypass the 2 Platinum cards in 90 days rule, or the 3 credit cards in 30 days rule either. Thanks to Jim for the note.)

2. Check your Chase offers for 10% back at BestBuy online or in-store up to $250 in spend. Of course I’d buy a BestBuy gift card online through an obscure portal and sell the card, but I wasn’t targeted so here we are.

3. Reader @nutella shared a targeted upgrade link for 5,000 Rapid Rewards for upgrading a personal Southwest Plus Visa card to the Southwest Priority Visa card and making a single purchase by April 30. This is the first I’ve ever seen of a Chase upgrade offer like this. Now, we just need them to push the upgrade offers into the six figure points range like AmEx.

4. Reader Matthias shared that there’s a highly targeted discount at Simon for 50% off of Visa and Mastercard purchase fees with promotional code 22HAPPY50. There’s also a targeted code for 100% off of American Express gift card purchase fees with code FEB22AMEX100. Now, we just need a 22LOL150 to surface I guess.

5. Reader SideshowBob233 shared a landing page for targeted no-lifetime language American Express Delta cards. You can check eligibility here with your SkyMiles number and last name.

Targeted.

Vinh at Miles Per Day is probably most notoriously known for being shutdown from just about every service out there, and if he avoids a shutdown there’s probably some restriction on his account in place instead.

The latest version in the saga of Vinh’s trek to shutdown with American Express involves clawed back upgrade bonuses, and that post mixed with a request from reader Rich for American Express upgrade and downgrade strategies leads to a discussion about a few American Express rules to live by, in order to avoid having your bonuses clawed back from the Rewards Abuse Team (RAT):

  • When you open a card and get a bonus, keep it open for at least 12 months
  • When you upgrade a card and get a bonus, keep it open for at least 12 months
  • When you accept a retention offer, keep it open for at least 12 months
  • Upgrading a card to a higher annual fee card is ok at any time, even within the first 12 months
  • It’s ok to accept an upgrade offer right after downgrading, but keep it open for at least 12 months
  • Downgrading a card is only ok after 12 months from one of the above events

See a pattern there? American Express doesn’t clawback bonuses provided you do the above. There is one well known clawback case, but it is singular in nature, was tied to a promotional uncapped grocery spend bonus, and had nothing to do with sign-up bonuses, retention bonuses, or upgrading and downgrading.

Now with that out of the way, let’s briefly discuss manufactured spend: American Express rarely shuts people down for manufactured spend, rather they give you a financial review if it’s excessive or just stop awarding points at a particular retailer, like Simon Mall gift cards. You can be more blatant with manufactured spend at American Express than most banks, so probe away.

Happy Wednesday friends!

AmEx only pulls these (checks notes) clawback tools out if the meat is less than a year old.

1. Hyatt announced their category changes and they’re not pretty for many flagship properties. Take a look here, and book before March 22 to lock in the current rates.

2. Office Depot/OfficeMax has $15 off of $300 in Mastercard gift cards. It’s not as nice as the Visa deal because the “Everywhere” cards don’t exist with Mastercards as far as I know, but still a useful sale. As usual:

  • Try to repeat the deal with multiple transactions in a single trip
  • Link your cards to Dosh for an extra $10 back
  • For advanced readers, have each card linked to a different Dosh burner account

3. Do this now: Register for Radisson’s newest promotion that gives a 30,000 point bonus for every three nights stayed through April 30, 2022, up to 90,000 total bonus points. I’m surprised to say it, but Radisson has been ahead of the pack on Hotel promotions recently. Let’s hope they keep it up.

4. Frequent Miler points out that the Nearside debit card has a sign-up bonus of $40 after depositing $200 in the bank account, and you get a normal $50 when using a referral link. The card is interesting because it’s a 2.2% cash back debit card in 2022 without a hard pull on your credit report. Of course it can be quite lucrative with the right plays, so if cash-back is your bag you may want to take a look.

5. The Point debit card was great in 2021 for quite a few reasons (including $10,000 per month in free credit card loads), and it’s been decidedly meh in 2022. The annual fee also used to be $49, but now it’s higher at $99 and the spending offers have been lamer than they used to be, which could be a function of Q1 2022 being slow, or it could be that the company has dialed back its budget.

Nonetheless, for “this week only” (lol), the card has a $100 sign-up bonus when using a referral link and another $100 for the referrer. I’d suggest getting one for your P2 if you already have one for a net $100 win. Just like with Nearside, there’s no hard pull on your credit.

Point was able to lose half their money without even touching crypto.

How about that sportsball team in the big match yesterday? Time to move on yet? Ok, let’s go:

1. There’s an increased bonus on the Bank of America AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue Mastercard: 55,000 points and a $100 statement credit after spending $2,000 within 90 days. The annual fee is $89 and is not waived for the first year.

To see the offer, make a dummy award booking with KLM and when you make it to the payment page you’ll see a banner with the increased bonus. (The public offer lacks the $100 statement credit). If you’re going to go for this, go for more than one and see this post, and this post for tips on how to get approved for multiple cards with a single credit pull.

2. J.T. sent me a copy of his US Bank Altitude Reserve statement and there’s some bad news: Starting on May 1, there will be a 3% foreign transaction fee on foreign purchases made either in US Dollars or in another currency.

I guess they had to make up for some of their expenses in the all-you-can-eat $4,000 US Bank Olympics special.

3. Watch your postal mail for a targeted offer Bank of America Business Cash Rewards for double cash back for up to $150 in rewards, registration required. I think I got this earlier in the week, thought it was spam, and tossed it. Reportedly I’m not the only one and the envelope looks like the worst kind of spam. Oh well.

(I first heard about this deal from Robert Dwyer on the excellent Milenomics podcast, but the first public article I’ve seen was at DoC.)

Pictured: US Bank retooling their money making strategies with foreign transaction fees on their most “premium” card.

1. Yet another no lifetime language (NLL) American Express Business Gold link has surfaced, and this one doesn’t have an offer code attached to it which likely means it’s more broadly available than the two from Friday. The sign up bonus is 90,000 Membership Rewards after spending $10,000 in three months.

As always, as long as you have an existing American Express credit card AmEx almost certainly won’t pull your credit, and because it’s a business account it won’t show on your credit report once opened either. In other words, lobbing in an application shouldn’t affect anything whether you’re approved or not. (Thanks to Frequent Miler for the link)

2. There’s an American Express debit card and checking account that just about everyone is talking about, and as far as I can tell most of the talk is purely for novelty sake. Here’s my quick take:

  • Almost nothing is likely to recognize the card as a debit card
  • The earn rate is 0.5 Membership Rewards per dollar (just use a Double Cash instead to earn 2 cents per dollar)
  • If debit cards are really your bag, consider Nearside with 2.2% cash back rewards, or one of the other players

If a play does somehow emerge, I’ll write about it so no need to rush out and get it unless you want to be Don Quixote tilting at windmills FinTechs.

3. JetBlue is running some halfway lame deals this week. As of this writing I’m not sure what today’s is, but it’s supposed to involve JetBlue vacations which could mean a cheap way to get Disney tickets or a cruise.

Happy Wednesday!

Your favorite FinTech in the face of an American Express debit card.

Thankfully it’s time to sail into the weekend with a few positive notes after a strange week:

1. Two new no-lifetime language (NLL) links for the American Express Business Gold have surfaced, if you’ve had the card before it’s worth checking to see if you’re targeted. The limit on American Express charge cards is currently 10 or 11 per person, depending on the person. Why depending on the person? #noidea

These offers are for 90,000 Membership Rewards after spending $10,000 in three months. The secondary play here is to watch for an upgrade offer to the Business Platinum for another 100,000 or more Membership Rewards, which could come as early as one statement after opening. (Thanks to tehflip499)

2. Are you a Hyatt person? Me too, but generally Hilton is a good program for churners and big redemptions as well, especially because churning American Express cards is as easy as pie (because apparently pie is easy). It’s almost certainly worth your while to learn a bit about it.

To that end, American Express has increased offers on its Hilton cards:

  • 70,000 points on its no annual fee card (think of this as about 30,000 Hyatt points)
  • 130,000 points on its $95 annual fee Surpass card, which is great for manufactured spend (think of this as about 60,000 Hyatt points and a bonus free night certificate for spend)

As with item (1), the secondary play here is to watch for an upgrade offer to a Hilton Aspire card, but those are rarer than Business Platinum upgrades, and they may require calling in or chatting to discover that there’s an offer on your account.

3. Sigh, Staples has a fee-free Mastercard gift card sale starting on Sunday and running through Saturday, February 12. As usual, the limit is five per customer, but in practice that really means five per transaction. Always try and run at least two transactions back-to-back to minimize the time you have to spend at a store that focuses on selling recycled printer toner to the elderly and repeatedly tries to turn the office supply retail space into a monopoly.

4. The gift card resale market has gone pear-shaped in the last several days with BestBuy resale rates dipping to below 93% and Kroger fuel points spot prices jumping to above $19.50 per 1,000 points. As usual if the rates you’re seeing aren’t at least $19.00 per 1,000 fuel points, look for another use or another buyer. Don’t settle for less.

Have a nice weekend friends!

Staples’ high quality aftermarket toner strikes again.

Let’s start today with a friendly warning: If you see headlines about thousands or millions of PayPal account shutdowns, don’t stress, you almost certainly weren’t involved and don’t need to follow the click-bait. The shutdowns were focused on accounts that generated thousands or tens of thousands of referral bonuses using bot-farms.

Here are a few things that are worth focusing on:

1. Hot on the heals of yesterday’s devaluation, we have, err, another devaluation. This time it’s ANA, which doubled its fuel surcharges for award tickets.

The ANA fuel surcharge is actually tied to the price of oil which turns out to be a novel concept in the airline world, and with oil prices jumping, the surcharge had a corresponding jump. So in addition to setting award alerts with ExpertFlyer, now apparently we should set crude oil price alerts with Yahoo finance.

2. American Express has a new targeted link for a 30,000 Membership Rewards bonus when turning on Pay Over Time. As always, consider shutting off Pay Over time on all of your charge cards to be targeted in the future. (Thanks to Matthew via DoC)

3. Check for a targeted spend offer on your Chase United cards at this link. This offer is very Citi Shop Your Way-esque in its detail: You earn 250 bonus miles for making three purchases over $50 each per month, for February, March, and April, and another 750 miles if you make all three months. (Thanks to DDG)

4. The offer for 70,000 SkyMiles, $200 statement credit, and first year’s annual fee waived for both the personal and business American Express Delta Gold cards is back. To trigger it, make a dummy booking for a cash domestic ticket in incognito mode and you’ll see it on the payment page. (Thanks to geauxcali)

Four fingers for the Thursday Quad.