Category: Gift Cards

  1. I usually avoid predicting anything other than general trends, but I made the mistake on Tuesday of predicting that Kroger wouldn’t have another 4x fuel points promotion until late October. Well, the Kroger overloads pointed at me and laughed because of course they did. So:

    Kroger is having 4x fuel points promotion on Happy and Choice gift cards through October 3, and these cards can be converted to other brands like BestBuy or Home Depot. (Thanks to GCG)
  2. Office Depot / OfficeMax has $15 off of $100 Uber gift cards in-store through Saturday, limit two per transaction. As usual, link your cards with Dosh and look for Chase offers before buying. (Thanks to DoC)
  3. Bank of America has a $1,000 business checking bonus through December 31 with promo code SSPCIS. To qualify, you’ll need to deposit $30,000 in new funds within 30 days and keep at least that balance until 91 days after opening. This is in theory a targeted offer, but it’s available online and that’s been good enough for past variants.

    If you keep $30,000 in funds tied up for 90 days, you’re earning an effective APR of 13.3%. If you’re not part of the Bank of America Preferred Rewards, this is a nice jumpstart into the program too, which can turn a card like the Business Advantage Unlimited Rewards card into a 2.625% everywhere card after you get Platinum Honors status.
  4. In the wake of yesterday’s post about compromised online accounts leading to gift card losses, multiple readers suggested getting a hardware key like a Yubikey or Titan Security Key to further lock down your accounts.

    I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve had one of these sitting on my desk for over a year but never set it up. That changed yesterday though #betterlatethannever.

The unofficial MEAB shirt of the day.

Introduction

I’ve been slowly collecting images of compromised gift cards found at stores for over a year for a future gift card scam spotting post, and while those attacks vary, they’re all basically some form of tampering with a physical gift card, its package, or its barcode. You’ll find them in the wild as compromised Visas, Mastercards, Apple cards, BestBuy cards, or just about anything else. (Side note: If you have example pictures of that type of scam and wouldn’t mind if I include them in the post whenever I write it, I’d appreciate an email. I promise I’ll write it before the heat death of the universe or you’ll get double your money back.)

The New Scam

Over the weekend there was a new type of gift card scam (albeit an old type of network security scam) to hit the community: a hacked email inbox. This matters for two reasons:

  • Many gift card buyers and resellers keep all their card numbers in a shared Google Sheet, accessible with your Google account
  • Physical Happy gift cards are redeemed online and a link for later retrieval is sent to your email

If a hacker gets control of your email, they’ve probably got access to your gift cards too.

Staying Safe

Not to sound like a network security prognosticon (yes, I made that term up), but there are steps you can take to help protect yourself from a similar attack:

  • Always use two-factor authentication on your network accounts
  • Get rid of any dormant accounts that may have access to sensitive information
  • Double check your sharing settings on sheets or documents with sensitive information
  • Prefer Google Authenticator instead of SMS messages for two-factor authentication
  • Archive and remove old information from your documents and sheets

Finally, if you find yourself in a similar situation, do a few things immediately:

  • Change your passwords
  • Call the card issuers and report fraud (the good news is you still probably have all the card numbers too)
  • Reach out to others in the community who can offer level headed advice after the dust settles

If this happened to you, or happens to you in the future, I’m sorry, that sucks. If it hasn’t happened to you yet, consider making the above steps part of your regular housekeeping.

Good luck!

Prognostico: The network security prognosticon.

Let’s keep it short and sweet for Labor Day.

  1. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 back on $300 or more in Visa gift card purchases through Saturday. As usual, link your cards to Dosh, check for Chase Offers at Office Depot and then try and scale this slightly differently than normal.

    These are Metabank Pathward gift cards so have a liquidation plan in place.
  2. American Express has a 25% Membership Rewards transfer bonus to AirFrance/KLM FlyingBlue running through September 25. I don’t currently have an Unusng Heroes series for mileage programs, but frankly this one at least deserves an article in the future. In the mean time, a few sweet spots:

    – Delta short haul Economy and First
    – Business class to and from Europe (assuming date flexibility)
    – Europe short haul Business and Economy

    KLM is also an underappreciated airline in Business class. Fortunately, in a move that will surprise only someone with Alzheimers, it turns out that it’s possible to book KLM flights with the AirFrance/KLM FlyingBlue program.
  3. American Express has an offer for $50 back after $200 in airfare at JetBlue. As usual, gamers can game.
  4. Do this now: Register for Discover IT’s 5x merchants for October through December for up to $1,500 in spend. Amazon.com and Target are the, err, targets this year.
  5. Dell is 15x at Rakuten for the Labor Day holiday which means that now is a great time to place several orders that will be cancelled later this week.

Have a nice holiday!

The Dell Verification team cheerfully works the Labor Day holiday.

By accident this is the fourth Quad in a row. Inception? Irony? Incompetence? I’m not sure.

  1. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards Mastercard, an Unsung Hero, has started sending its next round of targeted offers. As of this writing we’ve seen:

    – 5% back on all spend up to $100 back per month for September, October, November and December (a total of $400 back)
    – $60 back after four $75 or larger purchases per month for September, October, and November (a total of $180 back)

    I expect that we’ll see a few other variants over the weekend too. (Thanks to BB_Pcola and Jacob M)
  2. DDG reports that the American Express Business Platinum 190,000 Membership Rewards sign up bonus after $15,000 in spend in three months is available by phone, and also includes a bonus 10,000 Membership Rewards for adding an employee card and spending $1,000 in the same timeframe.

    To check, dial American Express’s Small Business team at (855) 531-3491 and ask about different offers available, and note that they may not give you the best offer on the first try so keep asking if there are other offers available until you’ve exhausted the list.
  3. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion running over Labor Day weekend on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercards.

    Secondary markets continue to be running overdrive partially due to the time of year, but also partially due to new end-users entering the market. If you’re working with one, make sure they’re assuming liability for closed accounts within a business day.
  4. Safeway, Albertsons, and Vons family Just4U stores have 6x points on Google Play gift cards through Tuesday. The travel angle is that Just4U rewards can be exchanged for Alaska Airlines miles with some trickery.

    The best redemption is 7 rewards for 1,200 MilagePlan miles, which works out to $116.66 in Google Play cards. You can scale this to an extent, but as a friendly reminder of how strange, weird, and purposefully obtuse this program can be, you’re limited to 22 rewards (2,200 Just4U points) converted to 3,500 MileagePlan miles per week.

The Just4U program workflow, illustrated.

  1. Do this now: Register for Best Western’s fall promotion for 5,000 bonus points per stay through November 20. Unfortunately it seems like you’ve got to book by September 4th though, which is the second most Bonvoy thing Best Western has ever done.
  2. Do this now: Register for Marriott’s fall promotion for 1,500 bonus points per stay through November 22. You’ll also earn 3,000 extra points for each three Marriott brands you stay at over the same period, but that’s clearly just for masochists.
  3. Simon mall in store has $2 off of purchase fees on the Appreciation Series of cards through September 10. These are the best variety of the Simon lot. (Thanks to Derthsidious via MEAB slack)
  4. A little birdie with big hair told me about some churnable Hilton links:

    – Hilton Personal 80,000 Honors points after $1,000 spend in three months (NLL)
    – Hilton Surpass 130,000 Honors points after $2,000 spend in three months (NLL)
    – Hilton Business 130,000 Honors points after $3,000 spend in three months (churnable)

    These typically still fall under the American Express five or six credit card per accountholder limit though.

Happy Wednesday!

Best Western hotels only average a fire about once a month, so that’s a low probability downside for a 5,000 point upside.

In no particular order:

  1. Office Depot/OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 or more in Mastercard gift card purchases. Sometimes these scale differently than you’d expect. Don’t forget to link your cards to Dosh while you’re at it and check for Chase Offers too.

    These are Metabank Pathward gift cards.
  2. Capital One has increased sign-up bonuses on two of its no-annual fee business cards:

    – $750: Spark Cash Select after $6,000 in spend in three months
    – 50,000 miles: Spark Miles Select after $4,500 in spend in three months

    Both are weak earners for ongoing spend with 1.5% cash back or 1.5 miles per dollar respectively, and both will be reported to your personal credit report even though they’re business cards. (Thanks to HelpMeBuildCredit)
  3. American Express has been showing offers on your Account Dashboard to upgrade Business Gold and Business Green cards to a Business Platinum. So far we’ve seen:

    – 180,000 Membership Rewards after $10,000 spend in six months
    – 140,000 Membership Rewards after $10,000 spend in six months

    DDG dug up a generic link for the 140,000 variant that’s worth a shot, but we haven’t seen a 180,000 generic link yet. If the link doesn’t work and you’ve got multiple cards under the same login, you may want to move that card to its own login and try again.
  4. Do this now: Register for 3x Hyatt points at Hyatt Vacation Club stays through November 21.

Happy Monday!

Sorry guys, I checked and there isn’t a Hyatt Vacation Club in Lubbock, even post “clap back”. Also, commas, am I right?

  1. Giftcards.com has a sale for 10% off of $100 Visa egift cards using one of the promo codes EOSSUMMER, EOS10OFF, EOSSAVE, or VISA10OFF. The limit per order was six based on my experiments, but you can place multiple orders provided you stay under Giftcards.com’s $2,000 in electronic gift cards per rolling 48 hours.

    Reader irieriley shared related good news: Giftcards.com has returned to airline shopping portals. While it’s not currently showing on cashbackmonitor.com, you can find it directly at AA (3x), United (2x), Alaska (2x), Southwest (2x), and Delta’s (2x) portals.
  2. Barclays is sending targeted spending bonuses on the personal AAdvantage Aviator cards, with 1,000 bonus miles per month for $2,000 spend per month, for both August and September. The promo was actually weirder than that, but the rest of it requires time travel back to July to complete, so we’ll just ignore that. (Thanks to Justmeha)
  3. Breeze Airways has 30% off of fares booked by tomorrow evening with promo code YOUDOYOU for travel from September 5 through December 19, excluding two weeks around Thanksgiving.

    Breeze is Dave Neeleman’s latest airline which attempts to answer the question: “What if you started an airline with service from Vero Beach, FL to Providence, RI and tried to make money doing it?”
  4. Southwest is having a fare sale through tomorrow evening for flights that are at least 30 days away, with two black-out dates around Thanksgiving and two black-out weeks around Christmas.

    I repriced all of my already booked award travel and without exception, all of the fares were cheaper with the current sale and averaged about 25% off of my previous points cost, so double check existing bookings.

Happy Wednesday!

Pictured: The festivities surrounding the return of giftcards.com to airline shopping portals.

  1. American Express changed quite a few things yesterday for Platinum cards:

    Personal Platinum Family:
    – Some partner cards that were churnable are now giving pop-ups
    – The monthly Audible credit is going away in October (Wall Street Journal replaces it)
    – The minimum spend for sign-up bonuses is now $8,000
    – Platinum authorized user cards now have a higher fee of $195 each, and you no longer get three for a single fee
    – Gold authorized user cards are now called Companion Platinum Cards and have no fee
    – New language about churning restrictions in most applications (but language doesn’t matter in this case)

    Business Platinum Family:
    – Platinum employee card’s annual fee remains at $350 each
    – Gold employee cards are no longer available
    – Green employee cards are now called Employee Business Expense cards

    Fortunately employee card bonuses are still around under the new regime. There’s also wide speculation that these moves will reduce lounge crowding, and to that I say “hah, fat chance”.
  2. Kroger.com has $10 off of $150 or more in Visa and Mastercard gift cards using promo code DEALDAYS2023 for purchases through August 30.

    These are US Bank gift cards, and you will earn 4x fuel points too. Incidentally, The Daily Churn Podcast released a Kroger Fuel Points 101 explainer episode on Tuesday and it’s a great listen if you’re not familiar with the Kroger Fuel Points program.
  3. Staples has fee-free $200 Visa gift cards Sunday through the following Saturday, limit eight per transaction (or maybe five like last week? It’s unclear.) Don’t forget that they also sell $500 cards now with a fee, and depending on your liquidation channels and your value for your own time, that may be a better deal.

    These are Metabank Pathward gift cards.

Pictured: Tuesday afternoon line for the SFO Centurion Lounge bar.
The heightened AU fees will remove two of these people, at most.