Category: Credit Cards

It’s time to jump into the pre-Halloween weekend, but before you turn into a pumpkin:

  1. Southwest has extended its schedule through August 4th, which includes most of summer’s travel season. As a general rule, booking summer travel in autumn often means there will be schedule changes, and with Southwest schedule changes often mean a free change to any other flight between the same city pairs ±2 weeks.
  2. Chase Southwest cards have increased sign-up bonuses of 75,000 Rapid Rewards points on the personal cards, or 80,000 points on the Rapid Rewards Business card. These offers aren’t all-time highs, but they are interesting getting two of them and hitting the spend threshold for the bonuses after January 1, 2024 will earn you a Companion Pass through 2025.

    No one out there seems to remember the downside of the Companion Pass though: you’re still on Southwest.
  3. Office Depot/OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 in Visa gift cards starting Sunday and running through the following Saturday. To maximize:

    – Consider that maybe multiples of $300 might behave strangly
    – Link your credit cards to Dosh
    – Try for multiple transactions back-to-back
    – Don’t forget about the American Express Business Gold $20 credit, which you can use twice during the promotional period

    These are Pathward gift cards, and often only work with PIN transactions for a total of $480 every six minutes per store. (Thanks to DoC)
  4. Do this now: Register for double Avios on up to 10 flights booked by November 21 for travel by January 14, 2024. Surprisingly this works with AA, Iberia, and Finnair paid flights credited to BA too.
  5. Sebastian notes that Bank of America’s Business Unlimited Cash Rewards Mastercard still has a $500 sign-up bonus available with $5,000 spend in 90 days. This card is useful because:

    – In conjunction with Bank of America Preferred Rewards Platinum Honors status, this is a 2.625% everywhere card
    – You probably still have time to get it before More Rewards Day on November 9

    Don’t forget that with Bank of America, one card is nice, but more is better. (Vague much, MEAB?)

Have a nice weekend!

Pictured: Your 23 year old companion after the fourth leg on Southwest between Eugene, OR and Greenville, SC.

  1. American Express Offers has two big offers:

    – 25,000 Membership Rewards with $1,500 spend with Royal Caribbean through December 31
    – $100 statement credit with $500 spend at Hiltons in Nevada through March 15, 2024

    American Express does clawback offer bonuses that are refunded, but in a rather simplistic way. (Thanks to Conner)
  2. United TravelBank funds can now be gifted to friends and family, and in related news TravelBank loads still work for the American Express Platinum’s airline incidental credit. This is great news at first blush, but the addition of “friends” probably means this isn’t going to end well for anyone.
  3. Plastiq, the once plucky upstart bill pay service that failed to IPO, went bankrupt, and was then acquired by its (loose) competition, has taken a page from the airline frequent flyer playbook: A silent devaluation. They’re now charging $0.99 for ACH delivery and $1.49 for paper check delivery in addition to other fees.

    16 days ago they announced that they’d accept American Express payments in a “couple of weeks”. They don’t currently accept AmEx, so I guess by “accept American Express payments” they really meant “charge new fees when sending to American Express, but also everyone else” which frankly is the most Plastiq thing that could have happened.
  4. Vacasa redemptions through Wyndham also took a note from the frequent flyer playbook with a silent devaluation. Vacasa redemptions were 15,000 points per bedroom and worked on properties that cost up to about $500 per bedroom before fees, but now the limit is somewhere around $350 per bedroom.

    We’ve been #bonvoyed by a non-Marriott hotel chain.
  5. The Gift Card Shop has 50% off of purchase fees on orders over $150 using promo code 2023HOLIDAY through October 29.

    Visas and Mastercards are issued by InComm. (Thanks to SideShowBob233)

The airline frequent flyer playbook in action.

  1. Chase “green star” offers have returned with targeted increased sign-up bonuses for Ink cards:

    – Ink Business Premier: 150,000 Ultimate Rewards after $15,000 spend in three months
    – Ink Business Unlimited: $1,200 after $6,000 spend in three months

    To see the offers, click the hamburger menu (≡) in app or online, then click “Just for you”.
  2. Check your email for a targeted offer from Bilt for 1,000 bonus points on any charge at AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, Comcast, Xfinit®, Spectrum, Spotify, Netflix, and Hulu using your Bilt Mastercard.

    The bonus caps out at 5,000 points, or *checks notes and runs a massive program on a super-computer* five merchants. (Thanks to DDG)
  3. Do this now (if you hold an AA credit card): Register for +1 miles and +1 Loyalty Points for AA charges made in the month of November.

    Can you game this? I don’t know, but I like your odds on this one.
  4. Safeway, Albertsons, Vons, and other Just4U stores have a coupon for 10x points on various gift cards, and even though they’re not explictly named, all of the Choose Your Card variety are currently earning the bonus.

    The best option that I know of is to convert to Lowes which has a resale rate of approximately 90%.

The MEAB supercomputer.

  1. Office Depot/OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 or more in Mastercard gift cards through Saturday. To maximize:

    – Link your cards to Dosh
    – Cash-out your American Express Business Gold credits for October
    – See what happens when you try and scale a transaction
    – Try for multiple transactions back-to-back

    These are Pathward gift cards so have a liquidation plan in place.
  2. Giant PA stores, (maybe) Stop & Shop, and (maybe) Martins stores have 10x rewards points on Lowes gift cards and 5x on GreenDot debit cards starting Friday. There’s definitely a Lowes gift card resale liquidation channel that supports high volume. For GreenDots, the landscape is tougher.
  3. The American Express Hilton Surpass and Aspire cards were retooled last week, on the whole they’re slightly worse but still a good value. To make up for it I guess, American Express increased the sign-up bonuses for both cards to the highest we’ve seen:

    – Hilton Aspire: 180,000 Hilton Honors points after $6,000 spend in six months
    – Hilton Surpass: 170,000 Hilton Honors points after $3,000 spend in three monts

    The bonus is also available via referrals with most referrers getting 20,000 Hilton points, so go that route if you’re in two-player mode or if you’ve got a friend who can generate a link for you.

Happy Monday!

Taco Bell statistically has the fastest, uh, food to go with your Monday Quickies.. The bad news is this is the food.

Sometimes regular posts
start to feel repetitive
so we “go haiku”

  1. Capital One Shopping has targeted increased cash-back for Giftcards.com of up to 12%. MEAB’s haiku review:

    Twelve percent beats fees
    you won’t earn Loyalty Points
    cashing out is key

    Note that you’ll probably have a different cash back offer for the mobile app, the desktop, and a targeted email, so check all three.
  2. American Express Offers has $150 back on $1,000 or more in airfare at Air Canada for flights originating in the US and ticketed with US Dollars booked by December 31. Now, let’s haiku:

    AmEx offers abound
    breaking correlation helps
    never play it straight

    You can game it, but just don’t game it in Canadian currency. (Thanks to TeddyH)
  3. A quick recap of Delta’s “devaluation rebiggening”:

    – You need slightly fewer MQDs to attain status, but still more than before
    – If you have a Delta Platinum or Reserve card, you get an annual $2,500 MQD credit
    – Million Milers bump up in lifetime status levels
    – You can spend rolled-over MQMs on status extensions, 100,000 MQD per year
    – Better exchange rates on existing MQMs in 2024

    But MEAB, can you let us know how you feel in the form of a haiku?

    Changes beat stick in eye
    SkyMiles are still the worst miles
    too little, too late
  4. American Express has retooled the Hilton Aspire and Surpass cards with:

    – Bigger annual fees (+$100 on Aspire and +$65 on Surpass)
    – Bigger Hilton credits ($200 x 2 at resorts on Aspire, $50 x 4 on Surpass)
    – Loss of Priority Pass
    – $200 annual airline incidental credits switch to $50 quarterly airfare credits

    “Haiku me”, I hear you say:

    Aspire was O.P.,
    was future Unsung Hero,
    now I’m not so sure
  5. Kroger online has $10 off of $150 or more in Visa and Mastercards with promo code OCT2023 through October 25. Let’s jump to the chase:

    U.S. Bank issued,
    won’t code as grocery so
    useful for fuel points

Have a nice weekend friends!

Can someone please rewrite this banger as a haiku, or do I have to do everything myself?

You’ve probably figured out by now that I typically do two types of posts: First a deal and shenanigan recap post, and second, a philosophy and wisdom type of post. Sometimes it can be a bit slow for the first type when there’s not much is going on, but that’s definitely not the case today though. Buckle up!

  1. Do this now: Check for a targeted 5,000 – 7,000 Ultimate Rewards bonus for booking a hotel and flight of over $105 through the Ultimate Rewards travel portal. In theory this is limited to Ultimate Rewards earning or transferrable cards. (Thanks to DansDeals)
  2. Southwest has retooled its elite status program to be more generous, following in JetBlue’s footsteps, and running squarely against Delta’s footsteps (Side note, with airlines is footsteps the wrong analogy? Maybe it should be skid marks, contrails, jetways, speed-tape, or gremlins?) The changes:

    – You can book with a combination of cash and points
    – Credit card Tier Qualifying Points (TQP) bonus spend requirements are cut in half
    – A-List Preferred status members will get two free drunks drinks per flight segment starting November 6
    – Segment requirements for A-List and A-List Preferred statuses have dropped to 20, and 40, respectively)

    They still haven’t brought back the lounge seats though. (Thanks to Southwest king-pin Brian M)
  3. The Citi AA Advantage Business Select card has a 75,000 mile sign-up bonus for $6,000 spend in six months, and the annual fee is waived for the first year. This is effectively the best deal we’ve ever seen for this card, and it’s been years since we’ve heard from Toby.

    Note that there’s also a $100 targeted referral bonus from Citi. (Thanks to DDG)
  4. Citi ThankYou Points has a 25% transfer bonus to Avianca LifeMiles through November 4. A few sweet spots:

    – US to and from Africa in economy
    – United short haul US economy and business class
    – Mispriced awards to and from Europe from multiple Eastern US cities

    There are other great values in this program too, always be probing.
  5. American Express has new card linked offers:

    – $15 off of $150 at Home Depot (they sell gift cards)
    – 5x on Amazon purchases
    – $40 off of $200 or more with Frontier Airlines
    – $75 off of $300 or more with Delta Air Lines
    – $150 off of $750 or more at Four Seasons resorts
    – $150 off of $750 or more at Hiltons in Mexico

    Gamers gonna game. (Thanks to Rich)
  6. Citi has added “Leading Hotels of the World” as a transfer partner for ThankYou Points. The transfer ratio is 1:5 but redemptions require a relatively low number of points, so for back-of-the-envelope math just assume that you’re going to get 1.6 cents per ThankYou point.

    You can find a list of properties here.

Have a nice Tuesday friends!

Today’s post as a Disney attraction. Just like the Disney version, you end up in hell.

  1. Do this now: Register for IHG’s Q4 promotion for 2,000 bonus points every two nights through the end of the year.
  2. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards Mastercard, the SLS of credit cards and an original Unsung Hero, seemingly has made the 15th of every month its online spend targeted offer day. And given that [checks notes] the 15th was yesterday, we have new offers for cumulative online spend through November 14:

    – 250,000 Shop Your Way Rewards points on $800
    – 200,000 Shop Your Way Rewards points on $800
    – $80 statement credit on $800
    – $50 statement credit on $750
    – $30 statement credit $400

    These offers stack with existing offers. Also, fun fact: This card used to be the Sears credit card and I’m eternally jealous of anyone that has one that still carries Sears branding. Instead, I just have to be happy with having the second most ridiculously branded card, Buick. (Thanks to Gasongasoff, David 99, birt, and Brandon)
  3. Meijer has a promotion for 50,000 Meijer points with $500 spend, limit one per account. Amazon gift cards are excluded, but other popular bulk brands like BestBuy, Home Depot, and Apple aren’t.

    Gift card resale rates for most of these brands is currently hovering around 93%.
  4. Chase has a 25% transfer bonus from Ultimate Rewards to AirFrace/KLM FlyingBlue miles through November 30. Sweet spots:

    – Delta domestic short haul in economy
    – US to and from Europe in business class
    – Europe short haul in any class
    – Promo awards

    You can also book international first class on China Eastern, but that puts you closer to the cockpit where there’s still a decent chance that you’ll smell cigarette smoke cause China Eastern., but it’s less prevalent than pre-COVID. (Thanks to DoC)
  5. Safeway’s Just4U rewards program lets Alaska residents redeem for Alaska Airlines miles under the right conditions, and through tomorrow those redemptions are at triple their regular redemption rate.

Happy Monday!

Just like the Citi Sears card, the Sears branded rocket is the best branded rocket. It’s science.

  1. The American Express’s Business Gold card has had an extremely rare public 150,000 Membership Rewards sign-up bonus for several days. I haven’t mentioned it before today because people have wasted literally hours trying to get it to appear with very limited success, and I think your time is worth something. But we now have a new efficient method make it appear:

    – Visit this link in a private or incognito window
    – Verify that you see an offer for a Business Platinum card at 170,000 Membership Rewards (and reload if you don’t)
    – Click the Hamburger Menu (☰) icon
    – Click “Most Popular Cards”
    – Click “American Express Business Gold Card”

    This link has lifetime language, but that doesn’t matter. Instead remember that if you don’t get a pop-up during application telling you that you’re ineligible for a bonus, you’ll get the sign-up bonus regardless of the language. (Thanks to irieriley via MEAB slack and C-MontgomeryChurns)
  2. PayPal has an offer for 1.5% cash back at giftcards.com. This stacks with existing shopping portals and card linked programs too. (Thanks to Zp via MEAB slack)
  3. Clear has a promotion for a $75 Uber voucher with a new membership using promo code CLAIMUBER75 through October 24, and it may surprise you to learn that American Express Platinum and Business Platinum cards have an annual Clear credit. If only there were someway to have multiple email addresses 🤔.

    This promotion requires that you don’t opt out of Clear’s promotional emails until your Uber voucher is delivered, and lately Uber has (sometimes) blocked multiple Clear vouchers on the same account. Just make sure to turn off auto-renew after creating your account. (Thanks to MsTuffy)
  4. While we’re talking about being surprised, it may also surprise you to learn that Staples has a promotion starting Sunday and running through the following Saturday for fee-free $200 Visa gift cards, limit eight per transaction.

    Don’t forget that the American Express Business Gold card now has a monthly $20 credit at office supply stores. (Thanks to DoC)
  5. The Chase Freedom Unlimited has a Discover-esque sign-up bonus for 3x Ultimate Rewards everywhere within the first 12 months of holding the card. The card has no-annual fee, and unfortunately isn’t a Freedom Flex Mastercard for extra shenanigans, but that’ll do donkey, that’ll do. This bonus isn’t available by referral but could be in a few weeks, so if you’re in two-player mode I’d wait to see how that pans out.
  6. American Express Offers has a new offer for $40 back on $200 or more in airfare at JetBlue. Now if only there were a way to book a non-basic economy flight and refund it to a travel bank, or maybe even something more sinister. Alas, here we are.

Because you haven’t had enough surprises today, apparently “surprise burgers” are a thing. 2023, amirite?