Category: Gift Cards

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?

  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?

Let’s start with a few reminders based on the current talk of the churning town, and why it might be all noise:

  1. American Express keeps adding restrictions and changing its language about sign-up bonuses on various cards, and it makes people stress out. Yes we’re all language lawyers, but when it comes to sign-up bonuses with American Express, ignore the terms and conditions about eligibility and instead pray to the pop-up gods.
  2. Chase keeps having big checking and savings account sign-up bonuses, but it continues to be a very risky play for a churner. The MEAB way: Just ignore Chase banking bonuses and move on unless you don’t care about the Chase credit card portfolio.
  3. The Chase United Business MileagePlus card has a 75,000 mile sign-up bonus with $5,000 in spend in three months. The $99 annual fee is waived the first year, which is I guess why people are excited. On the other hand, the Chase Ink Cash has a 90,000 Ultimate Rewards sign-up bonus and 40,000 point referral bonus with no-annual fee ever, and in conjunction with a a Sapphire or Ink Preferred card you can transfer those 90,000/130,000 Ultimate Rewards to United.

    I guess if you value two United Club passes for crackers and cheese cubes along with a free checked bag over 55,000 Ultimate Rewards, maybe it makes sense? I don’t get it but here we are.

And now for a couple of news items:

  1. Staples.com sells gift cards and while some of them are processed by BlackHawk, some of them are not, like this one. Those that aren’t do work for the American Express Business Gold card $20 monthly offiice supply credit.
  2. The Capital One Venture X card has a 90,000 point sign-up bonus after $4,000 in spend in three months, which is 10,000 points below the all-time high. It now has a 40,000 point referral bonus on many accounts though, so in two-player mode you can turn this into 130,000 points.

    This card has a $395 annual-fee and a less-gamable-than-it-used-to-be $300 credit for booking through the Capital One travel portal.
  3. The Chase Freedom Flex Mastercard has an increased sign-up bonus of $200 after $500 spend in three months and an additional 5x at gas and grocery on up to $12,000 spend in 12 months. (If you maximize both, this is effectively an 80,000 Ultimate Rewards sign-up bonus on a card that also awards 3x at pharmacies.)

    The $0 annual-fee either is or isn’t waived the first year, your choice.

Happy Monday!

Another “talk of the town” that I’m not meant to understand.

  1. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion Happy, Choice, dining, digital content, and digital subscription gift cards. The interesting ones for a manufactured spender are the Happy and Choice cards, which can be converted to popular bulk-resale brands like BestBuy and Home Depot. Currently the resale markets are seeing:

    – Bulk gift card volume slowing
    – Fuel point demand that feels insatiable

    This promotion runs through October 17. (Thanks to GCG)
  2. WeBull has a tiered sign-up bonus for opening a new account and transferring stocks or cash through October 30. They’ll pay transfer fees of up to $100 and a bonus based on the incoming asset values. The interesting tiers:

    – $100,000 account value: $1,200 bonus
    – $500,000 account value: $3,000 bonus
    – $1,000,000 account value: $5,000 bonus

    I like these a lot because you can typically ACATS transfer an existing retirement or brokerage account over without actually selling or buying stocks, which your money can continue to be invested as-is without a tax impact, but with a cash-bonus kick. This one excludes IRA transfers though. (Thanks to Welcome Offer)
  3. Office Depot/OfficeMax has a promotion for $15 back on $300 or more in Visa gift cards in-store running through Saturday, limit 10. As usual:

    – Try for multiple transactions back-to-back
    – Look at the Everywhere cards for lower fees if you can liquidate them
    – Link your credit cards to Dosh
    – Look for a Chase Offer for 8-10% back at Office Depot
    – Multiple sets in a single transaction may work out nicely

    And new for this promotion, make sure you’ve enrolled any American Express Business Gold cards for their new monthly $20 office supply store statement credit. (Thanks to DoC)

This A-CAT’S asset transfer won’t count for the sign-up bonus. Trust me.

  1. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card, a MEAB Unsung Hero, sent out targeted spending offers for Q4. Each of these offers is good once per month for October, November, and December:

    – $70 after $600 or more in gas, grocery, and restaurant spend
    – 10% back on between $600 and $700 or more in gas, grocery, and restaurant spend
    – 10% back on between $700 and $800 or more in gas, grocery, and restaurant spend
    – 15x ThankYou Points on $1,200 or more in gas, grocery, and restaurant spend
    – $200 after $1,200 or more in gas, grocery, and restaurant spend
    – $200 after $2,000 or mroe in gas, grocery, and restaurant spend

    For those who suck at math, the best of these offers is $600 over three months or 48,000 ThankYou Points over three months. This spend will stack with any other Shop Your Way offers linked to the card, because sometimes Citi’s IT isn’t completely broken and does something right. (Thanks to DC Domer, Ben, BB_Pcola, birt, FlashStash, and Adam)
  2. There are two deals conspiring to make Virgin Atlantic booking really cheap, and a Delta or ANA award slightly cheaper:

    – Chase Ultimate Rewards has 30% transfer bonus from to Virgin Atlantic through November 15
    – Virgin Atlantic has 25% off of award flights on their metal for travel through the end of the year booked by tomorrow

    Virgin Atlantic has high fuel surcharges on their own flights to London-Heathrow, so I think of these as cash with a mileage surcharge tickets (“pay regular premium economy ticket prices, use a few miles, and get business upper class”) as opposed to the traditional milage with a cash surcharge ticket.
  3. The United MileagePlus shopping portal has a 500 bonus miles promotion after $150 or more in spend through October 8. Yes, giftcards.com is on the United MileagePlus portal, why would you ask?
  4. Chase’s Pay Yourself Back categories have been extended through December 31. If you’re not sure why anyone would ever do this, then perhaps you have more runway to earn points than you’ve previously considered. Yes, transferring to some programs or booking travel through the Chase portal can net you a higher return, but also there are only 365 hotel nights a year and a few dozen or so business class flights that you can reasonably fit into the same time period.
  5. The Barclays AAdvantage Aviator Red card has a 75,000 AA miles sign-up bonus split into two parts:

    – 60,000 points for making a single purchase in 90 days
    – 15,000 additional points for adding and authorized user and making a single purchase in 90 days

    The $99 annual fee is not waived the first year. This card is also interesting because after you’ve put some decent spend on it, Barclays will typically let you product change to the AAdvantage Aviator Silver card which offers a credit for $25 per day in AA in-flight purchases and a companion pass that’s good for two companions.
  6. Meijer has $10 off of $150 or more in Mastercard gift cards purchased in-store through Saturday. As usual, scale with multiple MPerks accounts, and consider travel to Meijer land if you’ve got the liquidation bandwidth to scale this deal.

The manufactured spend points earning runway is long, but not infinite.

  1. Albertsons, Safeway, and Vons stores have a promotion for $10 off of a future purchase good for seven days with a $50 purchase in several third party gift card brands through October 10. Lowe’s is the best one for resale rates, currently averaging somewhere around 89%.

    It’s possible that this is a regional only deal so double check your ads, though I suspect it’ll work everywhere. (Thanks to GCG)
  2. Shoprite stores have $10 in grocery credits $150 or more in Mastercards through Saturday, limit one per account. The credit is valid starting Saturday and running for a week, and recent reports suggest Shoprite stores putting $7.95 fee cards on the rack, because of course they are. (Thanks to DoC)
  3. Do this now: Sign-up for the waitlist for the future TAP Portugal American Express card. Getting on the waitlist means you’ll get a bigger bonus if you decide to apply for it when it launches, but doesn’t obligate you to anything.
  4. Do this now: Check chase.com/mybonus for targeted offer of 5x-10x on spend on grocery, utilities, fitness, internet, and/or phone services on your personal co-branded cards.
  5. In a move that should surprise no-one, Delta devalued partner awards to and from Mexico, the Caribbean, Central, and South America. Award prices for business class have risen by approximately 40%, and economy prices have risen more modestly by approximately 15%. When asked to comment on this change, Delta again used a single word response: “Budgeting”, but this time they played the wah-wah trombones while speaking.

    As of this devaluation, the rule of thumb for non-expert travel hackers is that Delta SkyMiles are mostly only good for US economy awards. There is slight value to be had outside of that paradigm, but it diminishes regularly.

Delta’s PR team discussing the most recent award ticket redemptions.

I had a different post planned for today, but a late night news item worth your time made me switch it up. As a result, we’re missing lots of the normal MEAB color, so sorry not sorry I guess. Let’s go:

  1. I’ve got it on good authority that Southwest’s Tuesday promotion for its Week of Wow is almost certainly a sale of ~50% off of bases fares on both paid and award travel, and it’s the kind of sale where you can use the website to change to your existing flight to capture the discount. Update: It’s out. Use promo code WOW50.

    This will likely have restrictions around the holidays and to certain destinations, but it’s worth double checking anyway. (Thanks to the WN Maestro, Brian M)
  2. Office Depot and OfficeMax stores have $15 back on $300 or more in Mastercard gift cards through Saturday in stores. You may find even better results by stacking more in a single transaction. Always be probing. (Thanks to FM)
  3. American Express has a gamable offer for $200 off of $1,000 or more at Waldorf Astoria, Conrad, and LXR hotels in Mexico, the US, Anguilla, and French Polynesia. (Thanks to DoC)
  4. Breeze airways has a bonus $50 in points and 25% off of of base fares over $150 for travel through January 31, 2024 booked by Thursday using promo code SOEXTRA.

    I don’t see any specific blackout dates called out in the terms, so you may get lucky with this one on Holiday or Christmas travel. Remember though that Breeze flys almost exclusively strange routes, like today’s dartboard line from Hartford, CT to Bradenton, FL.

Happy Tuesday!

Life reaching out to MEAB right before bed. Yes, it was creepy thanks for asking.

  1. Alaska Airlines has a status challenge running through October 31 for Delta elites, or a status match for Delta elites that also hold a Bank of America Alaska card. Successful status challenges and matches last through the end of the 2024.

    Alaska has 100k MVP top-tier status matching for for Delta elites that have already earned Platinum or Diamond status for next year, something not normally available by match. Matched 100k MVPs won’t get AA SWUs though.
  2. Meijer MPerks has $10 off of $150 or more in Visa gift cards through Saturday, limit one per account and you must clip the digital coupon. Fortunately, it’s still possible to [checks notes] have multiple email addresses in order to [checks notes] create more MPerks accounts.

    Meijer sells both Pathward and Sunrise Visa gift cards. (Thanks to GCG)
  3. There was a no-notice devaluation of short and medium haul flights on Cathay Pacific and Japan Airways booked with Avios, followed (probably) by a mocking of Avios members by senior management. The updated award chart:

Flight distanceEconomy (Old)Economy (New)Business (Old)Business (New)
1 – 650 miles7,5009,750 (+2,250)16,00020,800 (+4,800)
651 – 1150 miles10,00012,000 (+2,000)25,00030,000 (+5,000)
1,151 – 2000 miles11,00014,300 (+2,300)25,00032,500 (+7,500)
2001 – 3000 miles13,00015,600 (+2,600)38,75046,500 (+7,750)
#bonvoyed, Avois style

Pictured: Avios management mocking accountholders after devaluation.