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)
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.
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.
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?”
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.
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.
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?
