Category: Gift Cards

  1. Several shopping portals have Father’s Day spend promotions, most of which are new:

    – Alaska MileagePlan: 500 bonus miles after $200+ spend through June 14
    – United MileagePlus: 1,000 bonus miles after $400+ spend through June 16
    – AA AAdvantage: 500 bonus miles after $200+ spend through June 17
    – Southwest Rapid Rewards: 1,000 bonus miles after $100+ spend through June 18

    You can hit them all with giftcards.com, but be careful with back-to-back orders for the same product type because they’ll require a urine sample for order verification, then deny you anyway; instead space them out by 24 hours.
  2. Southwest has two promotions:

    – Discounted fares on some flights booked by Wednesday for travel between August 6 and December 18 using promo code BDAY, but on the mobile app only. In my searches, discounted fares were found on most days, but often only on early morning or late night flights
    – A daily sweepstakes through Sunday for bonus miles, it’s probably barely worth your time because there are about 129,000 total winners over the week so the probability of winning is measurable without too many decimal points

    Side note: Southwest is going to try and make noise on major blogs for the entire week; if you’re looking for a drinking game, throw one back each time you find a Southwest article with more than 1,000 words that doesn’t really manage to say anything new.

Happy Tuesday!

A portion of the Giftcards.com fraud team’s checklist.

  1. US Bank Double Cash Back days runs Wednesday through Friday on both its cash back portal and card linked offers. You can get to both on most personal cards by:

    – Logging in to US Bank
    – Clicking on your credit card from the dashboard
    – Clicking “Go to rewards & benefits”
    – Clicking “Rewards center”, which may be hidden behind “…”
    – Click “Shop now” for the portal or “See my cash-back deals” for card linked offers

    You can also try this link, but it’s very ymmv. Also because it’s US Bank and the computer is a mainframe operated by a drinking bird, the card linked offers may lead to a blank page especially for Altitude Reserve cards.
  2. American Express Offers has a card linked offer for $100 off of $400 or more in front desk gift card purchases purchases at the Unbound Collection by September 15. Gamers that can’t get to a front desk for a gift card purchase often find ways to make this work anyway.

    There’s also an offer for $75 off of $350 or more at Avis or Budget.
  3. The Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, and other grocery chains’ Just4U rewards program had a great stack this weekend, and most of it is still working for a very good stack for another week and change:

    – $15 off of $75 in select gift cards including PlayStation Store through June 18
    – 10x points on PlayStation Store through June 18
    – 4x points on all gift card purchases Saturday and Sunday

    These deals all conspired to award 12x points plus $15 in groceries with a purchase $75 or more in PlayStation Store gift cards, because the weekend promotion is over the same deal will now will earn 10x points + $15 in groceries. PlayStation cards should fetch at least 81% in resale value for bulk buyers, so if your buyer is paying less, look for another one.

    Why is this on MEAB, a site whose mission silently includes never talking about discount groceries or electronics? Well: (1) manufactured spend, (2) this is a backdoor to buying Alaska miles.

US Bank’s rewards portal technical operator in action.

  1. Kroger in store has a 4x fuel points on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercards promotion starting today and running until Tuesday, June 18. Fuel points demand remains high, and will likely push higher and higher until the end of September.

    Pepper Rewards is still expected to grind its promotional rates to a halt before the end of this promotion, which means gift card resale rates will likely go up before June 18 because economics 101.
  2. Two Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards credit cards have increased sign-up bonuses:

    – Plus: 85,000 Rapid Rewards after $3,000 spend
    – Priority: 85,000 Rapid Rewards after $3,000 spend

    I purposefully didn’t link to either because the same offer is available via referral, so use a P2 or a friend’s referral and make someone’s day with 20,000 extra Rapid Rewards points.
  3. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 or more in Mastercard gift cards running through Saturday. Buying even multiples of $300 in a single transaction often gives you a better bang for your buck.

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  4. American Express offers has a new offer for a $150 statement credit with $750 or more at Omni Hotels by September 30. (Thanks to DDG)

Happy Wednesday!

The moment before Pepper rewards grinds to a halt, allegedly.

First some churning news:

  1. Kroger’s online gift card store seems to have changed its gift card supplier to Pathward. Up until a couple of weeks ago you could buy both physical and virtual Mastercards and Visas issued by US Bank at Kroger’s online store, and as of at least yesterday, they sell only Pathward virtual Visas. The fee is $5.95 per card and they still earn fuel points.

    I didn’t expect May to end with a #bonvoyed from Kroger, but here we are.
  2. Holding Chase deposit accounts has a complex relationship with churning:

    – They help unlock cards when you’re brand new
    – They can lead to credit card bans quickly and unexpectedly

    Given the first bullet point, new churners may be interested in a $750 business checking bonus with Chase that requires funding $30,000 within 30 days, holding for another 60, and completing five transactions (five back-to-back Amazon debit card loads will do). The $30,000 deposit will help with card approvals too, just be sure to close the account before you dive in too deep.
  3. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards other than Amazon on Friday only. The third party gift card resale market is still soft from Pepper Rewards, but it’s already starting to recover and we expect Pepper to send the gravy train crashing into a mountain next week.

And some airline news:

  1. AA tried to eliminate mileage earning and Loyalty Points earning on tickets booked through non-preferred travel agencies, and that was most recently supposed to start with tickets booked in July. CEO Robert Isom, fresh from bingeing to the Tortured Poets Department, said “So Long London” to that plan and to the Vasu Raja, the executive that spearheaded many recent AA changes that haven’t, uhh, paid off.

    They’ve also lowered 2024 revenue guidance due to weakened domestic demand, (cough I wonder why).
  2. Southwest quietly raised the price of EarlyBird check-in to between $15 and $99, and the price of at-airport upgraded boarding to between $30 and $149. This begs the question, why ever fly Southwest without elite status when there’s another option? (Thanks to DDG)
  3. Breeze Airways expanded its route network with flights from seven Eastern US destinations to San Diego, CA. Apparently this launched a week ago but I missed it, so when news is late to me, I guess it’s late to you too. Sorry not sorry.

Happy Thursday friends!

Kroger also silently replaced their ground pork. Does this count as #bonvoyed too?

  1. American Express Hilton co-brand cards have new heightened offers, some of which include a free night certificate:

    – Hilton Honors NLL: 70,000 points + Free Night Certificate after $2,000 spend in six months
    – Hilton Surpass NLL: 130,000 points + Free Night Certificate after $3,000 spend in six months
    – Hilton Aspire: 175,000 points after $6,000 spend in six months (all time high is 180,000)
    – Hilton Business: 175,000 points after $8,000 spend in six months (all time high is 180,000)

    The no-lifetime language (NLL) variants of these cards with free night certificates are great offers, especially the Surpass provided you can maximize its credits. Note that applying through Hilton’s site gives different pop-up behavior for me with the lifetime language links.
  2. 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.
  3. H-E-B stores have a $15 H-E-B gift card with a $100 Lowes or Home Depot gift card (or Dairy Queen if you’re not into the whole eating actual food thing), limit one per brand through Tuesday.

    If only there were a way to have multiple email addresses for multiple H-E-B accounts, but alas, science hasn’t worked that one out yet. (Thanks to GCG)
  4. The American Express Marriott Business card has a heightened sign-up bonus of five free night certificates for up to 50,000 points each after $8,000 spend in six months. This offer has lifetime language.

    I’d also consider this a great offer for this product but a mid offer at best when you consider bonuses available on non-Marriott cards. Just take a look at what some of your favorite Marriott hotel award redemptions cost on a given night to see what I mean (you’ll need need to check the ‘Use Points/Awards’ box). Spoiler alert: the Courtyard Lubbock Downtown’s lowest rate in June is 91,000 points, during one of the hottest months of the year. #bonvoyed (Thanks to TaifaStars)
  5. Martin’s and Giant Foods have 12x points on Gift of Choice gift cards through Thursday, some of which can be converted to Home Depot gift cards for bulk resale. Stop & Shop has an 8x deal for the same cards too. (Thanks to GCG)

Have a nice weekend friends!

Marriott Courtyard Lubbock’s elite welcome card.

  1. American Express’s promotion for 10x on dining for up to $25,000 in three months for the referrer after referring someone else to AmEx ends on Wednesday. To make this last a little longer, remember AmEx referral hacks:

    – One 10x bonus per account number
    – Referral links saved before Wednesday will have the 10x bonus attached even if the referred applies for the card after Wednesday This didn’t work
    – If the referred is denied on first application but later approved after reconsideration, the 10x bonus will activate for the referrer, even after the expiration

    Combine several of the above to extend 10x even further, and remember you can always chat with American Express to confirm that a referral bonus is attached after three days.
  2. Giftcards.com has new codes for 10% off of $100 Visa egift cards. Codes to try:

    – VISASUMMER10
    – SUMMERVISA10
    – SUMMER10

    These codes don’t appear on major shopping portals so probably won’t payout, but you miss all the shots you don’t take. If you’re having tracking issues with this site, see this post and also note that all Safari desktop transactions may also currently not track with giftcards.com.

    These are Pathward cards. Several online liquidation channels for these dried up in the last couple of weeks, but there’s always a play and there’s always Kiva as a last resort if you don’t have other options.
  3. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards Mastercard sent out mid-month offers late last week, we’ve seen:

    – 200,000 Shop Your Way Rewards points for $750+ in online shopping
    – 250,000 Shop Your Way Rewards points for $1,000+ in online shopping
    – $70 statement credit for $1,000+ in online shopping
    – $50 statement credit for $750+ in online shopping
    – 10,000 ThankYou Points with $1,000+ in online shopping

    (Thanks to MVC, Brandon F, irieriley, and Brooke)
  4. Giant, Stop & Shop, and Martins stores have 10x points on Uber and airbnb gift cards through Thursday, limit $2,000 per account. Of course with Pepper Rewards you can get effectively the same deal from home, but probably only for a couple more weeks.
  5. American Express offers has $300 back on $750 or more at Holland America through August 31. (Thanks to FM)
  6. In case you’re wondering how bad the Ultra Low Cost Carrier (ULCC) airlines are doing at meeting the current traveling public’s needs, two pieces of news will tell you: (1) On Friday Frontier eliminated change fees on non-basic economy tickets and added Euro-Business style blocked middle seats on some tickets. Then this weekend, (2) Spirit eliminated both change fees and cancellation fees on all tickets.

    Of course, you could look at Frontier’s earnings or Spirit’s earnings for Q1 2024 earnings and see it in number form. [Spoiler alert] They’re both great at losing money, and they’re both good at using accounting tricks to make the losses look less grave.

ULCC post-COVID economic models in a nutshell.

  1. Wyndham points can now be redeemed for all-inclusive resorts in the Caribbean, Central-America, and Mexico. Resort prices are either 15,000 or 30,000 points per night for two guests.

    Don’t forget that the Wyndham Business Earner Barclays card earns 8x and gives a 10% rebate on points bookings, which makes this a very solid deal. (Thanks to DoC)
  2. TheGiftCardShop.com has fee-free Visa gift cards with promo code GRAD2024, though you’ll still pay for shipping, and it seems to work for up to $10,000 in purchases per order too.

    These are Incomm gift cards. Incomm cards have sporadic liquidation issues in recent history which can largely be summed as: (1) sometimes full value transactions are blocked, and (2) usually you can’t do more than three back-to-back transactions with the same type of card.

Have a nice Wednesday!

This week’s blog posts.

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

    – Try for multiple transactions back-to-back
    – Try and get even multiples of $300 for better discount stacking
    – Link your cards to Dosh

    In theory these are limit 10 per transaction. These are Pathward gift cards.
  2. Giftcards.com has 10% off of $100 virtual Visa gift cards using promo code SUMMER10. The code only applies to three per order, but multiple orders work fine because rules only matter sometimes.

    These are Pathward gift cards too. (Thanks to SPX)
  3. Bank of America has a small business checking account bonus of $1,000 for bringing $30,000 in new funds within 30 days of opening the account and keeping an average balance of $30,000 or more between days 31 and 90. Depending on how well you play timing, it’s an effective APR of between 13.5% and 20.3%. The account must by open by July 31.

    You can also register for a fast track to Preferred Rewards through the same funds and promotion, which frankly is a better deal than it probably sounds. (Thanks to DoC)
  4. The Citi Strata Premier card has a meaningful update: It now includes travel insurance for luggage, delays, and common carrier cancellations and interruptions. Just like everything Strata related, Citi botched the rollout though. This time, they posted the terms and conditions and a FAQ, but then pulled them a bit later. I did read through them while they were up, and the summary for trip delay insurance is (was?): UPDATE: Benefits guide here

    – Trips must be paid in full with the card for revenue tickets for coverage
    – Taxes and fees must be paid in full with the card for award tickets for coverage
    – Round-trips required, one-way bookings may not count [needs to be re-verified]
    – Trip delay insurance requires a 6 hour delay
    – Maximum $500 per incident

    The Sapphire Reserve and US bank Altitude Reserve have better travel insurance than the Strata Premier, especially because you only need a partial payment with those cards for eligible coverage, and one-way trips are covered too as long as you’re away from your home city.
  5. Finally, personal American Express Platinum cards have changed the criteria for at least some authorized user bonuses, requiring that the authorized user card be a Platinum version which has an additional annual fee. That is, the free version of the authorized user cards don’t count for a bonus.

    We haven’t seen this on other cards or business cards yet. (Thanks to Xero Clarity)

Happy Tuesday!

Another rule that only matters sometimes.