If you want one of these cards, I’d apply for it ASAP (obviously not via referral), unless the referral is worth more to you than the annual fee increase and lack of a $75 Southwest credit.
Pepper at this point is probably dead forever, and the gift card resale market seems to have fully healed across all brands. Yes, there is a Pepper post-mortem post coming. When? Post this post, when they’re confirmed dead forever.
– 4x through the portal up to 28,000 miles – 2x at grocery and restaurants – 1x elsewhere
The commentary about this card is negative, but you can link it to your Membership Rewards account and it has plenty of utility as an uncapped RAT-free grocery 2x earner and as a third party American Express. (Thanks to David)
The more “modestly appointed” US airlines are running fare sales, ordered by fewest blackout dates to most:
– JetBlue: 25% off base fares with promo SAVE25 booked by Thursday for travel August 12 through November 20 – Breeze: 35% off base fares with promo LETSROLL booked by Friday for travel August 8 through January 31 – Southwest: $39+ fares booked by Friday for travel between August 12 and January 26
It ended yesterday, but even Avelo ran a base fare sale this week. Taken in sum I think this tells you a lot about the low-end airline industry’s economic outlook.
Southwest’s seat assignments take affect on January 27, 2026, and you’ll be able to book those assignments starting on Tuesday. In a move surprising no-one, bookings for travel between January 27, 2026 and March 4, 2026 also become available on Tuesday.
Post-change, the major Southwest seating challenge will be trying to convince a stranger in your seat that in fact “A” and “F”, not “C” or “D”, are the window seats. (Thanks to Brain M)
These sites won’t earn points on first party American Express cards, and they can be a pain to liquidate online. These are Sutton gift cards, but not the good kind.
Coming soon to Cleveland passengers: “No, C21 is the gate, not your seat.”
Yesterday, an old bill payment service finally realized it’s been doubling down on payments inadvertently and started reversing deposits in waves. I know you didn’t ask for my advice, but I’m going to share it anyway: To avoid problems with both the payment service and your banks, make sure the reversal goes smoothly.
Happy Thursday!
Moldly Interesting fact: Old Sriracha gets moldy, sorry SYWR fans.
If you’re not in US Bank’s footprint, opening a brokerage account first will get your foot in the door for other products.
BiltBlit is losing their relationship with Wells Fargo in favor of Cardless with three tiers of cards in (probably) June 2026. After the transition, it’ll probably switch from the Mastercard network to the American Express network. Is that a net positive or negative? Depends on your game I suppose, but at least Cardless dropped its one card per lifetime rule.
For those keeping track at home: Kroger had more days with 4x fuel points earning in the last two months than days without. In a turn everyone could have predicted, that’s flooded the fuel points market pushing points rates way down.
Gamers can often find regular links with 250,000 Membership Rewards and manage to get approved despite lifetime language, but there’s utility in the easy game too. (Thanks to DDG)
Each promotion is limited to $10 cash back or 1,000 Membership Rewards per transaction, and each must be re-activated an hour after first use. Both stores sell gift cards.
– 1099-K reporting limits increased to $20,000 for 2025 and beyond – 1099-MISC reporting limits increased to $2,000 for 2026 and beyond
Manufactured spenders sending money to themselves should be particularly excited about the former. Bank bonus chasers may be happy about the latter, but you’re still required to report bank bonus income even in the absence of a 1099-MISC. As always, I’m not a tax professional and I’m definitely not your tax professional. Don’t take my advice about anything, ever. (Thanks to DoC)
– Book non-basic economy, cancel to your wallet after 24 hours – Book non-basic economy, cancel to an emailed wallet code after 24 hours, which is separately useful
EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s post is the second in a series of three Friday guest posts. Today’s post was written by fuzzy, a former Pepper aficionado.
So much of this game involves jumping on opportunities which, due to accident, miscalculation or unwarranted benevolence, are far more advantageous than the normal everyday spoils. Think: mistake fares, unlimited 4% cashback cards, and warehouse store cashiers taking happy pills. A few months ago, a wormhole in the universe opened up called PerfectGift, and for a brief moment enterprising churners were able to print money, in the form of Visa gift cards at 20% off. The Telegram channels blew up when the anomaly was discovered. I personally found out an hour or two after it became public, at which point, my inner voice of failure (like everyone has right? Ok just me then?) told me I’d missed my chance, and I moved on. Only to find out later, they were passing out Paddy’s Dollars for several hours, which could easily have paid for my poor Aunt Sally’s last dying wish. (“Fuzzy”, she whispered, “promise me before I’m gone you’ll put me up in the Park Hyatt Shanghai and upgrade me to a junior suite.”)
Which brings to mind (as everything does) Pepper – the app that achieved a fair bit of notoriety last year selling a changing panel of major gift card brands like Amazon and Target at 10% off. Those discounts took the form of “coins” redeemable for more gift cards. The jeopardy to purchasers was that most of those coins weren’t awarded until 2-3 weeks later. Business folk in the gift card reselling community were comfortable with that minimal risk, however, because they were churning a decent amounts of credit card points.
The engine feeding this obviously unsustainable business model was venture capital. Savvy VC investors were keenly attracted to Pepper’s 100% share of the selling-gift-cards-at-a-steep-loss market. And then earlier this year Pepper – facing intense competition from literally no one – kicked it into high gear, and began offering 20%, then 25%, then 30% off. Meanwhile, individual purchase limits exploded from $5000, to $9000, to $17,000 per day.
If this had happened in any other context over the course of ONE SINGLE AFTERNOON, Telegram would’ve flat out melted, and the smarties who scored a couple hundred of Sam’s Club at -30% would be laughing like hyenas at the rest of us, and my inner voice of failure would be laughing right there with them. And yet – the height of Pepper madness continued. For. Two. Months.
Pepper enthusiasts with the foresight and bravado to completely drop the throttle exactly when things went bonkers – amateurs even, who took quite nicely to six figure statements, Amex financial reviews, and suddenly having to manage a business with 99 employees – were minting literally millions of credit card points, becoming top tier airline elites, and gaining enough free hotel nights to park themselves for the season in a junior suite at the Park Hyatt Shanghai. I, on the other hand (sorry Aunt Sally!), followed my inner voice, LOUDLY stomped out of the Pepper Telegram chat, and spent the next several weeks drowning my sorrows in 24 ounce cans of grape strawberry FOMO.The Pepper frenzy has ended. The last stalwarts were left holding the bag (or they may yet recover their stranded coins lol). However – except for perhaps a few unfortunates who got on at the very end – everyone who still has money coming to them has already recovered the value of that money several times over.
What is the takeaway here? First, the conventional wisdom remains intact: If something appears too good to be true, it probably is. The emphasis however is on “probably”, because as we know, a thing can be too good to be true, and also exist. The mass and timespan of the ostensibly too-good-to-be-true play will be dictated by various factors, such as the number of people who are onto the deal, or who have access to it, and especially, the motivation (if any) of the person (or algorithm) who made that too-good thing available in the first place. When the too-good thing owes its existence to venture capital, don’t trouble yourself with the fact that it’s a too-good thing, just thank your VC benefactors and book your junior suites.
– fuzzy
Pepper’s VC’s other investment: No competition door installation.
