Category: Gift Cards

  1. The Imprint Shell Mastercard card launched with a $50 after $500 spend sign-up bonus, which whatever, but its earning structure and other soft aspects are pretty great:

    – 3% cash back on restaurants and groceries, uncapped
    – 2% cash back everywhere else

    And on the plus side, if you get shutdown by Imprint the only real consequence is that you’re shutdown by Imprint.
  2. The Chase United Business card has an offer for:

    – 100,000 MileagePlus miles after $5,000 spend in three months
    – 10,000 MileagePlus miles for adding an employee card in three months
    – 5,000 MileagePlus miles for entering a United Agent’s promo code
    – 2,000 Premier Qualifying Points (PQP)

    That’s 115,000 total miles, double check offers before you apply. To get an agent code, either call United or chat on their website and ask the agent for one. If you chat, you may get the code directly or may get a URL that has it at the end.
  3. Meijer stores have 10,000 bonus points on $50 in third party gift cards excluding Amazon, Apple, and betting cards. The promotion is tomorrow and Sunday only, and limited to one per mperks account. (Thanks to Nathan)
  4. Stop & Shop, Giant, and Martins  have 10x points on Zift Zillions cards through Thursday. Some of these cards are convertible to high value brands like Amazon and Home Depot. The current variant is limited to $500 per loyalty account.

    Wanna know what a Zillion is? A big number. A Zift? No idea.
  5. Giant Food has 2x points on Mastercard gift cards through Thursday, limit $1,500 per loyalty account.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  6. Rakuten In Store’s card linked program has 5% back on CVS purchases, seemingly unlimited.

Have a nice holiday weekend friends!

More explainable than Zift.

  1. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 in Visa gift cards through Saturday. For best results:

    – Buy in even multiples of $300
    – Buy the lower fee “Everywhere” cards if you have a liquidation route
    – Try for multiple transactions back-to-back

    This week will probably see a lot more competition than you’re used to, because community service first reasons.
  2. The semi-defunct-like-AT&T-unlimited-data-plans Citi ThankYou Mastercard sent new targeted mid-month offers for:

    – $50 statement credit with $750+ in online spend
    – $75 statement credit with $1,000+ in online spend

    These offers stack with other offers on the card. Now we just need a website that somehow codes as both home improvement and gasoline. (Thanks to birt and Matt M)
  3. Chase launched two new transfer bonuses:

    – 55% to Marriott Bonvoy through June 30 (after 65% last week)
    – 30% to Southwest Rapid Rewards through June 5

    Both of these are mildly interesting. Let’s list the upsides and downsides. Upsides: Bonvoy is a back door to lots of hard to earn currencies, and Southwest award bookings are fully refundable even on basic fares. Downsides: *cough* Southwest and *cough* $55 parking and destination fees at run-down airport hotels on award nights.
  4. PayPal Offers has an offer for 5% back at Giftcards.com with a maximum of $20 back through May 24.
  5. The Marketing machine at Chase offers checking account bonuses approximately 370 out of 365 days a year, and as a result coverage on them is basically continuous. There’s a new targeted business checking bonus for $1,500 with modest funding requirements that’s caused that background noise to jump and coverage is all over. So, let’s discuss a couple of things:

    – If you’re more than just a very casual churner or manufactured spender, avoid Chase deposit accounts, seriously
    – If you’ve got no credit history and you’re just starting out, Chase deposit accounts are useful for a few months before you close them

    You do you though.

Happy Monday!

Upside: The Marriott airport hotel destination fee ensures that hamster wheels are always working.

  1. Accor has two promotions for properties in the Americas that stack:

    – 2x rewards points on stays booked by August 8 and stayed by September 8
    – 30% off stays booked by May 19 and stayed by December 17

    Accor options in the Americas aren’t as diverse as in Asia or Europe, but there are great properties on the high end like Fairmont hotels, and reasonable properties on the low end like Ibis Styles Laguardia. Also I checked and this is the first time that “reasonable” and “Laguardia” were ever used together in a serious sentence.
  2. Choice Hotels has a promotion for 8,000 bonus points after two stays booked by July 6 and stayed by July 7, registration required.
  3. American Express updated its business cards’ coupon books a bit:

    – Business Gold loses its FedEx as a Flexible Business Credit redemption in October
    – Business Gold and Platinum get $300 ChatGPT credit per calendar year, enrollment required

    ChatGPT’s Business plan requires a minimum of two users and costs $50 per month (or $40 with a discount code) or $600 per year. Going monthly and switching cards after six months is likely the best option.
  4. Two Incomm gift card sites have fee-free gift card promotions through the end of May:

    – MasterCardGiftCard.com: Fee-free $50+ gift cards with promo GRAD26
    – VanillaGift.com: Fee-free non-charity $50+ gift cards with promo VGGRAD26

    My best advice for Incomm gift cards as graduation gifts for non-manufactured spenders: Only give them to grads that you dislike.

Happy Wednesday friends!

The other known instance of Laguardia and reasonable.

  1. AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue has a new leader, and the most surprising part is that the leader is a relatively well-known travel hacker, Tiffany Funk. Tiffany co-founded point.me, ran a paid award booking service, and oversaw parts of the business operations at One Mile at a Time.

    My crystal ball is famously nothing more than a ball made of crystal; but it tells me that this is bad news for serious travel hackers and good news for the median regular family putting all their spend on Delta credit cards and booking economy awards with SkyMiles to Rome. I do think we’ll see more business class availability on the worst routes at the worst times, but less availability when and where you want to fly in premium cabins. I sure hope I’m wrong. Today’s action Well, remember that the site’s name ends in “and Burn”.
  2. SoFi has a 2% ACATS transfer bonus on both new and existing pre-tax or post-tax accounts, limit $5 Million in transferred funds.

    To keep the bonus, you’ve got to hold the funds for 5 years otherwise you may pay out more in penalties than the original bonus.
  3. American Express has more targeted offers for upgrading a Business Gold or Business Green card to a Business Platinum. You’ll earn 120,000 Membership Rewards after $10,000 spend in three months, and you’ll be effectively locked into the card for a year unless you like pop-up jail.
  4. Meijer mPerks has 50,000 bonus points with the purchase of a $500 third party gift card other than Amazon and phone cards through today, limit 50,000 points per mPerks account.

    This is what economists call a great value, which is defined as when capitalism accidentally does something nice. (Thanks to GCA)
  5. OfficeDepot / Office Max has $15 off of $300+ in Mastercards through Saturday. As usual, buy in even multiples of $300 for the best oomph.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  6. If you’re a Frontier flyer, register for a bonus 5,000 miles per round-trip flight through August 31 with a maximum of 20,000 bonus miles earned.

    You’ll need to rebook existing travel to qualify for the promotion, otherwise known as when capitalism does what it’s supposed to.

Happy Tuesday friends!

The fine print matters.

  1. Do this now: Register for IHG’s promotion for 2,000 or 8,000 bonus points for two or four night stays, respectively through August 31. There’s also an offer for 2x points for IHG Business Rewards members through December 31.
  2. Do this now: Register for I Prefer’s promotion for a $50 reward certificate for a 2+ night stay at each of their properties, as long “each” means five or fewer.
  3. Raley’s, Nob Hill, and Bel Air stars have 15x points on Lowes and One4All gift cards, some of which convert to Home Depot, through Tuesday.

    This is an outstanding deal.
  4. American Express offers has new offers for:

    – Expedia: 10% back on prepaid Hotels through August 4
    – Cambria Hotels: $100 off of $300+ through September 1
    – Choice Ascend Hotels: $50 off of $200+ through September 1

    Gamers gonna game.
  5. Capital One checking has a $400 new account bonus with promo code FLASH400, provided that you receive at least two direct deposits within 75 days of account opening. A few notes:

    – Don’t do this if you play games with Capital One, the banking side might cause you to lose your credit cards
    – If you have Discover checking or savings, consider closing those accounts quickly so you can either avoid those banking shutdowns, or get this sign-up bonus in the future
    – Business account ACH pushes often look like direct deposits
    – Please close these accounts after you get the bonus

    For more on holding checking accounts at Citi, Chase, and Capital One especially, see SideShowBob233’s opus.

Happy Thursday!

Since we shared SideShowBob233’s opus, we might as well share his award winning art.

You’ve no doubt heard it in 1,000 other places so I won’t belabor the point, but Spirit shutdown over the weekend. I’m sure any of you that had Spirit plans had a backup, and I’m sure you already know to do a chargeback for outstanding fares if you don’t already have an automatic refund. For those keeping score at home, my prediction was wrong: I’d guessed in January that we’d lose them by April, but they held out until May 2.

  1. The Citi AA Platinum Select personal Mastercard has an offer for 80,000 AA miles after $1,000 spend in three months, and the annual fee is waived for the first year. Any random six digit number will work on the application, but I’m partial to 311437 for reasons.
  2. The Chase IHG personal cards have a targeted bonus of 3,000 bonus points on $1,000 spend through June 25.
  3. Staples has two Visa gift card promotions:

    – $200 Visas for $199.05 online
    – $200 Visas fee-free in-store through Saturday

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  4. Chase Ultimate Rewards has two transfer bonuses:

    – 65% to Marriott Bonvoy through May 15
    – 20% to AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue through May 27

    The 65% transfer bonus to Bonvoy brings it into the realm of an ok deal, but still not in the range of a speculative transfer.
  5. Capital One has a 20% transfer bonus to Qantas Frequent Flyer through May 31. This one has great utility for Emirates First redemptions specifically.
  6. Major US airlines have airfare deals for stranded Spirit passengers for travel in the next week or two. Most of these work whether or not you’re actually a stranded Spirit passenger, and some of them are actually sort-of a good deal.

Happy Monday!

The MEAB prediction machine.

  1. Do this now: Check for targeted offers from Hilton. I got 2,000 bonus points per stay, but various offers exist including stacking stays for up to 15,000 points.
  2. Kroger stores have a 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards excluding Amazon and flexible fuel gift cards, and on fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards running through Tuesday, May 12.
  3. The Chase Sapphire Reserve personal card has an increased sign-up bonus of 150,000 Ultimate Rewards after $6,000 spend in three months. This bonus is available via referrals, so use someone’s referral and make their day. If you don’t use a referral, you’re probably using someone else’s affiliate link so be intentional.

    Also, yes this is a good card offer, and no, it’s not the bee’s knees, the cat’s meow, or the chicken’s foot. Yes, I made that last saying up.
  4. The personal Chase IHG cards have increased sign-up bonuses:

    – IHG Premier: 150,000+35,000 points after $3000 spend in three months and $6,000 spend in six months, respectively
    – IHG Traveler: 90,000 points after $2,000 in three months and $4,000 spend in six months, respectively

    These aren’t currently available via referrals but my tea leaves suggest they might be on Monday. Of course, I’m really bad at tea leaves.
  5. H-E-B stores have a $20 H-E-B gift card free with the purchase of a $100 airbnb gift card. Airbnb lets you pool gift cards in a single account.

    Say what you will about H-E-B vs Meijer, but 2026 seems biased toward the former.

And some small news items:

  1. Citi is ending ThankYou Points sharing between different cardholders on May 17. This was previously limited to 100,000 a year times n, where n = (1 + shenanigans).
  2. AirFrance/KLM FlyingBlue has released its May promo awards for travel through October. US cities include almost all of the airline’s international routes, which should tell you something about demand, especially on the lower leg on the K-shaped economy.
  3. American Express has a 20% transfer bonus to Hilton Honors through May, bringing the ratio to 1,000:2,400. It’s not the worst redemption in the world, but that’s like saying that American cheese isn’t the worst cheese in the world: Objectively correct but missing the point.
  4. American Express’s Gold card benefits changed slightly, but it probably doesn’t matter for most of you.

Have a nice weekend friends!

The worst cheese, you ask? American cheese with ketchup.

  1. The Capital One Quicksilver Mastercard is changing:

    – Moving cardholders from Mastercard to Discover (possibly targeted)
    – Adding 3x categories at grocery stores and gas stations

    There’s been a lot of hate about the change, but for a manufactured spender’s perspective this is great because: You’ll have 3x unlimited gas and grocery transferrable miles when paired with another Capital One card, and if you don’t like the Discover transition, you can opt out by May 4th, just as the Star Wars gods foretold.
  2. According to the Wall Street Journal, Spirit and the government are negotiating a $500 Million rescue package.
  3. Kroger has 4x fuel points on third party gift cards other than Amazon and flexible fuel gift cards, since the preceding two weeks’s promotion for the same thing wasn’t enough.

    It turns out that when fuel prices soar, fuel points are worth more. Wild right? Oh wait, no it’s not.
  4. AirFrance and KLM’s FlyingBlue program has a promotion for 10,000 bonus miles for paid economy flights from the US to Amsterdam or Paris and beyond on AirFrance or KLM metal. Book by May 3 for travel through September 30 and credit to your US FlyingBlue account.
  5. JetBlue has a promotion for double elite tile earning (yes, it’s silly to even write “that in a sentence “double elite tile”). Book $1,000+ before taxes and fees by tomorrow and stay by August 31.
  6. Meijer MPerks has 7,500 points with the purchase of $100+ in Visa gift cards, but the promotion is limited to one per MPerks account, also known as 🤏.

Have a nice Thursday friends!

Sample Star Wars god.