Category: Gift Cards

Often the weekend recap on Monday is quieter, but that’s definitely not the case today.

  1. It was only a few short days ago that I said I would speculatively transfer Membership Rewards to Etihad Guest if I was targeted. Capital One obviously heard me and said “let me help you out MEAB” with a tiered transfer bonus:

    – Transfer 1,000 – 10,000 miles: 20% bonus
    – Transfer 11,000 – 50,000 miles: 30% bonus
    – Transfer 51,000 or more miles: 40% bonus

    The bonus is per transaction and not cumulative, and runs through the end of the month. (Thanks to justmeha)
  2. The Motley Fool again has an increased 7,400 AA miles for $99+ spent through the AAdvantage eShopping portal. We care this time because like our hopes and aspirations, the AA loyalty points spending calendar reset on March 1.
  3. The Citi AA Platinum Select personal card has an increased 75,000 AA mileage bonus after $3,500 spend in four months, and the annual fee is waived for the first year. The sign-up bonus doesn’t earn loyalty points, but all spend on the card does.
  4. On Wednesday, MEAB briefly hinted about American Express shutdowns. The total number of shutdowns was small, there’s plenty we still don’t know, the dust still hasn’t settled, and we don’t know if it’s done. Even so, we do know a few things that are easily summarized as:

    – Some shutdowns involved a particular type of spend gaming
    – Some shutdowns involved a few rather heavy hitters that weren’t doing that gaming

    Most of the rampant speculation on public facing sites that I’ve seen is either partially or totally refuted by the datapoints that we do have, so I guess, just don’t believe everything you read on the internet, even if you believe you have 99 reasons to do so.
  5. Office Depot/OfficeMax stores have a promotion for $15 off of $300 or more in Mastercard gift cards running through Saturday, limit ten. (Thanks to DoC)
  6. The American Express Hilton Aspire card has an increased sign-up bonus of 175,000 points and a free night certificate after $6,000 in spend in six months. This offer is also available by referral, so make sure to grab one from P2 or a friend and make their day. Yes, the other Hilton personal cards also have an increased bonus, but without the free-night certificate they’re a big yawn.
  7. The Bank of America AirFrance KLM FlyingBlue Mastercard has a heightened sign-up bonus of 70,000 bonus points, $100 statement credit, and 100 XP after $3,000 spend in 90 days. The offer is presented during the checkout flow when you make a dummy booking on the US AirFrance or KLM website, and the $89 annual fee is not waived for the first year. (Thanks to Don)
  8. Some Wyndham news:

    – The business card has a new 100,000 point sign-up bonus after $15,000 spend in one year, and this one is a keeper for gas station spend
    – The personal earner plus card also has a 100,000 point sign-up bonus after $2,000 spend in six months, and is probably only worth keeping for the first year
    – Vacasa redemptions will have a new pricing structure at 15,000 points or 30,000 points per night per bedroom starting on March 26, and the cash price determines the point price ($250 / bedroom / night or less is 15,000 points, $500 / bedroom / night or less is 30,000 points)
  9. There’s a 250,000 Membership Rewards American Express Business Platinum link with lifetime language available through the AmEx random number generator, and it seems extra pop-upie too. To see it, try some combination of:

    – Connecting to a VPN in Dallas or Denver
    – Trying incognito mode
    – Searching for “American Express Business Platinum” in various search engines
    – Waiting for a 190,000 points offer to expire and automatically reload

    The bonus requires $15,000 spend in three months.

Phew!

Our hopes and aspirations on March 1, 2024.

Foreword: There were a few high profile AmEx shutdowns yesterday, but it’s too early to know much about what happened other than most of them probably involved a big volume of online MS. Stay tuned for future updates when we know more, and don’t forget the Sneak Attack Strike Back if you’re concerned you might be next. If you haven’t heard about these before now, you probably don’t need to be concerned. I’ll do a writeup with lessons if and when we learn more.

Airlines have become overly concerned with what day it is this week, as we’ll soon see:

  1. Clear.me has a new promotion for a $75 Uber voucher with a new clear account with promo code SAVETIME75. These are great for cashing out American Express Clear credits as Uber vouchers, but you’ve got to be creative on the redemption side because there’s a limit of one $75 Uber voucher per account. (Thanks to jnjustice)
  2. Southwest has a “Business Spring Loyalty Bonus” Rapid Rewards points after registering for the offer, booking a flight through a business channel, and flying before May 10. The bonus is tiered:

    – two one-ways: 5,000 total bonus points
    – six one-ways: 15,000 total bonus points
    – eight one-ways: 30,000 total bonus points

    I believe based on on the terms and conditions an American Express Travel phone booking would qualify, but I can’t be certain. Alternatively you can book through an SWABIZ account. (Thanks to sctrader)
  3. JetBlue has $25 off of a one way flight, or $50 off of round trip flights booked by tonight for travel between March 19 and June 12 with promo code SPRINGTRAVEL.

    Because it’s JetBlue and because JetBlue hates giving meaningful discounts, these only work for travel on Monday through Thursday and don’t work for international flights or Mint cabins.
  4. American has an economy award sale for flights that depart on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Saturday in April or May. There are some good deals here, including 5,000 miles for short-haul and medium-haul international flights.
  5. Southwest has a fare sale for travel between March 26 and May 22 and booked by March 14, but only for flights on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

    My existing bookings had no discounts, because like I diva I don’t have travel booked on Tuesdays or Wednesdays.
  6. The Gift Card Shop has fee-free $500 Visa gift cards through Friday night using promo code NEWLOOK. The code worked for both physical and egift cards in my experiments. Note that:

    – Purchase limits at InComm sites like this one are typically $10,000
    – InComm has been silently throttling the number of cards that can be used at the same merchant within a given time since Christmas.

    The throttle started out with certain BINs on certain products, then moved to other BINs on other products, and they’ve now hit a major, high volume product with the same limit. If one of your plays involves high volume InComm cards, maybe run a few tests before your next big order.

    For everyone else, assume that most InComm products now have a three card limit per liquidation trip.

Have a nice Wednesday!

New elite status award for Southwest A-List members.

  1. American Express Offers has a gamable offer for $200 back on $1,000 or more in Icelandair flights booked by April 1. (Thanks to TeddyH)
  2. Do this now: Register for Cathay Pacific’s AsiaMiles 10% incoming mileage transfer bonus from both Citi ThankYou Points and American Express Membership Rewards through March 31.
  3. In a move that should surprise only someone who can’t remember their name when waking up, Staples has fee free $200 Visa gift cards starting Sunday and running through the following Saturday, limit eight per transaction. (Staples Visa gift card promotions always follow the week after a Mastercard gift promotion.)

    These are Pathward gift cards so have a liquidation plan in place. Also, marvel at how Pathward, formerly Metabank, earned $60 million by changing their name to appease Mark Zuckerberg. (Thanks to GCG)
  4. I believe everyone around here knows how I feel about Marriott in general. Nonetheless, there are two Marriott cards worth having:

    – First, the Chase Ritz-Carlton which is only available via product change
    – Second, the AmEx Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant card in year one, because the credits on the card wipe out $300 in annual fees, and you’ll get an 85,000 point free night certificate if you time things right which is arguably (barely) worth the rest of the annual fee.

    There’s now a highest ever offer on the Brilliant card through May 1 for 185,000 Bonvoy points after $6,000 spend in six months. Use a referral though, not a public link.

Have a nice weekend friends!

The Marriott Courtyard Lubbock is a nice metaphor for the Marriott Bonvoy program.

  1. Do this now: Register for Wyndham’s new promo, 7,500 bonus points for two nights stayed through May 13. You can earn the bonus up to a whopping two times, for a total of *checks supercomputer* 15,000 bonus points. (Thanks to FM)
  2. Putting a nice bow on one of the worst Februaries on record for devaluations, shutdowns, and general #bonvoyness, ANA is devaluing its award chart for tickets booked on or after April 18.

    For better or worse, this is inevitable as the paid price of tickets increases with inflation and with spend based mileage earning, so eventually the mileage program will necessarily bow to inflation too. You can plan for that though.
  3. Bilt has a new benefit: FlyingBlue Gold status for Bilt Platinum members who activate a status match, which requires 10,000 points transferred to FlyingBlue during the activation. This will be a recurring Bilt yearly benefit, at least until they decide that its not.

    The main benefits of FlyingBlue Gold are lounge access on international SkyTeam airline tickets like Delta, and for free checked bags on the same airlines. You no longer get access to book La Premier awards with Gold status though, so the value is marginal at best.
  4. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion on sports betting gift cards through March 19, which as far as I’m aware is a new type of fuel points promotion.

    Sports books provide a good outlet for manufactured spend volume in states that allow it, but it comes with a big set of gotchas too. Typical plays involve mainline arbitrage across multiple sites and playing through all funds at least once. (Thanks to GCG)

MEAB running super-computer simulations for maximizing point earning.

Today features a few base hits followed by a bean ball in the noggin:

  1. Meijer has $10 off of $150 or more in Mastercard gift card purchases through Sunday, limit one per coupon. Meijer sells both Pathward and Sunrise gift cards.
  2. Meijer has 50,000 MPerks points on a $500 third party gift card purchase through March 9, limit one per account. Amazon gift cards are excluded, but most other bulk brands aren’t. (Thanks to GCG)
  3. Yes, JetBlue, AA, and United increased their checked baggage fees and it’s an easy article for every travel reporter or travel blogger to write so we see it everywhere. Even worse, it’s also probably the kind of article that’ll get a disproportionally high number of clicks because airline fees rile people up.

    Should you care? I dunno, but it does change the calculus slightly for the enduring value of an airline’s cobranded card if you check bags regularly.

Happy Monday!

Airlines pitching their new luggage fee idea.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The feedback I’ve gotten for guest post Saturday has been resoundingly positive. I’ve got a few posts left to publish, but I’m running low. If you’re interested in a guest post, please reach out!

One of the most consistently inconsistent methods in manufactured spend is earning sign-up bonuses by paying yourself as an OnlyFans model bulk gift card resale, roughly because the basic version involves selling to third parties that ultimately use the card and that makes you beholden to their whims. Their whims are really more about demand though, and that demand is cyclical for slightly different reasons:

Gift Cards

The bulk gift card resale market for cards like BestBuy, Apple, Target generally varies by quarter:

  • Q1: Starts out depressed, but rates and demand increase slowly, especially around holidays
  • Q2: Rates hold steady, demand is lumpy but persistent
  • Q3: Rates increase slightly, demand gets more-or-less steady
  • Q4: Rates reach local maxima, demand is typically the biggest for the year

Grocery Loyalty Points

The profitability of bulk gift card resale markets for manufactured spenders centers around grocery loyalty points, which make up the difference between cost and resale rate for most bulk brands. If you’re cashing those out by selling to a third party, demand looks like:

  • Q1, Q2: Lumpy
  • Q3: Strong
  • Q4: Starts strong, ends weak

The main reason for the difference in loyalty points demand is that they’re often redeemed for discounted fuel by industry and agriculture that sees peak use in Q3.

Smoothing Out Demand

How do you make demand relatively consistent? I’m going to offer two primary ways:

First, it’s easy on paper but relatively hard in practice: Be the end-user. That means do what the end-users do, which is:

  • Buy goods on sale and sell them at Amazon, ebay, craigslist, or internationally
  • Buy Apple products and sell them internationally in places like Brazil
  • Use loyalty points to buy things like Airpods and sell them
  • Use loyalty points for discount gas, either for yourself or as a fueling service

I’ve dabbled in every single one of these, and while they were all successful to an extent (and in one case wildly successful), they’re all a ton of work to scale. Ultimately, I wasn’t fulfilled by any of it and I didn’t enjoy it in the way that I enjoy manufactured spend, so I don’t do those things any more.

That brings us to the second method of smoothing demand, acting as a gift card reserve banker and holding your cards until demand is high, then unleashing fury on the market whenever buyers return.

Finally, let’s talk a bonus method for smoothing out demand Paying yourself as an OnlyFans model which is really a cheater method: Shift the demand elsewhere. For me, that means I’m focusing on other manufactured spend techniques when demand in bulk card resale isn’t solid. There’s plenty of other opportunity out there.

Happy Tuesday!

A different kind of OnlyFans play, courtesy of SideShowBob233.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The feedback I’ve gotten for guest post Saturday has been resoundingly positive. I’ve got a few posts left to publish, but I’m running low. If you’re interested in a guest post, please reach out!

  1. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 or more in Visa gift cards through Saturday, and this one has a limit of 10. As usual:

    – Link your credit cards to Dosh
    – Try for multiple transactions, back-to-back
    – Try for scale in a single transaction, it usually works out
    – Don’t forget about your monthly American Express Business Gold credits

    These are Pathward gift cards which often have a $480 per five minute transaction limit for liquidation at popular in-person liquidation spots.
  2. Citi ThankYou Points has a 30% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic through March 16. These miles are generally best used on Delta or ANA metal.
  3. The new American Express Delta card Resy credits turn out to be relatively easy to game in most big cities: buying anything at a restaurant listed on Resy whether or not your make a reservation, including gift cards, will trigger the monthly credit according to dozens of data points.

    More good news too: Some hotels eligible for Delta Stays credits now offer sanitized rooms!

Happy Monday!

It’s technically even possible to find a hotel that’s completely covered by the Delta Stay credit and includes a sanitized room.

We’re going to go short form, followed by long form, followed by short form today because that’s how the wind is blowing. Let’s just call it the churning burger.

  1. Staples has fee free $200 Visa gift cards starting Sunday and running through the following Saturday, limit eight per transaction.

    These are Pathward gift cards so have a liquidation plan in place.
  2. American Express’s COO said they’d be refreshing 40 global cards in the next year late last week, and we’ve just seen the first set of updates, all on Delta cards. The changes:

    Personal Gold (annual fee: $150, up from $99)
    – $200 flight credit after $10,000 spend
    – $100 Delta Vacations credit for hotel stays

    Personal Platinum (annual fee: $350, up from $250)
    – $10 monthly Resy credit
    – $10 monthly rideshare credit
    – $150 Delta Vacations credit for hotel stays
    – Companion certificate now valid for first class and for international trips

    Personal Reserve (annual fee: $650, up from $550)
    – $20 monthly Resy credit
    – $10 monthly rideshare credit
    – $200 Delta Vacations credit for hotel stays
    – Companion certificate now valid for international trips

    Business Gold (annual fee: $150, up from $99)
    – $200 flight credit after $10,000 spend
    – $150 Delta Vacations credit for hotel stays

    Business Platinum (annual fee: $350, up from $250)
    – $10 monthly Resy credit
    – $10 monthly rideshare credit
    – $200 Delta Vacations credit for hotel stays
    – Companion certificate now valid for first class and for international trips

    Business Reserve (annual fee: $650, up from $550)
    – $20 monthly Resy credit
    – $10 monthly rideshare credit
    – $200 Delta Vacations credit for hotel stays
    – Companion certificate now valid for international trips

    The annual fee increase starts on May 1. There’s a path to Delta status just by holding a set of these cards too, the Platinums and Reserves each have a $2,500 MQD “head-start”, and according to the terms and conditions each card type is eligible (up to $10,000 MQD per card holder per year), which means you’ve got a path to Gold status just by holding the right set of credit cards.

    For those keeping track at home, this leaves 36 refreshes left on the AmEx refresh-o-meter, and I think the Resy credits and annual fee increases are a telling sign of what’s to come.
  3. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card, the original MEAB’s Unsung Hero credit card, has a targeted spending bonus for February, March, and April for 15% back on up to $1,200 spend at home improvement stores, once per month. This one arrives either by USPS, email, or both. (Thanks to FlashStash)

Have a nice weekend!

The limited edition churning hamburger gift card; yes, it works on PayPal Bill Pay.