Category: Gift Cards

  1. Do this now: Register for Best Western’s Q1 promotion for a $50 gift card after each two nights stayed, up to a whopping 2x$50.

    In what might be the lamest churn known to the community: You can book the Best Western Hollywood Plaza Inn for $76.80 with AAA or similar discounts, and 2*$76.80 =$153.60. That means you can churn $50 Best Western gift cards for only $153.60, and get two nights in a hotel that probably won’t kill you and two elite night credits too.
  2. Kroger stores have a 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards other than Amazon, and on fixed value Visa and Mastercards through February 18.

    Pepper: (1) is still alive, (2) maybe got a bridge loan, and (3) continues to kill the bulk resale market for everything but BestBuy and lululemon.
  3. Meijer MPerks has 50,000 MPerks Points with the purchase of most $500 third party gift cards including BestBuy and Apple through February 15, limit 50,000 points per account.

    Marrying MPerks and buyer’s groups are an occasionally profitable way to cash out mPerks Points on something other than paper towels. (Thanks to GCA)
  4. Southwest will extend their schedule tomorrow morning for flights between October 2 and November 1. Southwest expert Brian M predicts that flights around this window are highly likely to have substantial schedule changes, so gamers will game (but only starting tomorrow).
  5. Turkish Airlines has two February promotions:

    – 50% rebate on mileage bookings in all cabins for two passengers traveling by February 23
    – 15% off of paid flights for card holders with code USCARD15 booked this month for travel by the end of April

    If you don’t already have the credit card, it’s probably not worth your time, just get a Citi Double Cash and Strata Premier instead for much better earning, especially when paired with a Rewards+ for its 10% redemption rebate.
  6. FlyingBlue’s February promo rewards include the following US cities for travel through July 31:

    – New York
    – Denver
    – Houston
    – Raleigh/Durham
    – Boston

    Prices are 18,500 miles in economy with good availability, or 60,000 miles in business with better than normal (but still not good) availability.

Happy Wednesday!

Best Western Hollywood Plaza warning: The Front desk doesn’t know random facts about an airport over 15 miles from the property. Imagine!

  1. The Chase Southwest Plus, Priority, and Premier cards currently have a bonus only available via referrals through March 25 for:

    – 30,000 Rapid Rewards Points
    – A Companion Pass good through February 2026

    As usual for any offer, use another player’s referral or one from a friend and make their day.
  2. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards Mastercard sent its beginning of the month bonus offers. We’ve seen:

    – Spend $800+ at home improvement, get 10% back up to $100 monthly for three months
    – Spend $1,000+ at home improvement, get 15% back up to $175 back monthly for three months
    – Spend $1,000+ at home improvement, get 175,000 Shop Your Way Rewards points monthly for three months
    – Spend $1,000+ anywhere, get 100,000 Shop Your Way Rewards points through March 31

    (Thanks to Dave, Matt, and Cashback Cowgirl)
  3. Staples stores have fee-free gift $200 Visa gift cards through Saturday, limit nine per transaction. Why nine? I don’t know, but at least they’ve held that line for all of 2025 (as opposed to 2024 when the limit seemed to have been the result of a random dice roll).

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  4. Chase Ultimate Rewards has a 30% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic through February 17. Virgin Atlantic’s own metal awards recently have great availability, but they also have variable pricing. Finding space isn’t typically the issue; rather the issue is finding space that’s cheap enough for your taste.
  5. Avianca LifeMiles has a 15% transfer bonus from American Express Membership Rewards through the end of the month, the bonus will be awarded by Avianca within 24 hours of the transfer, making it a somewhat speculative play.
  6. If you travel in paid premium cabins from BOS, LAX, SNA, BUR, ONT, LGB, JFK, LGA, EWR, or HPN (lol), check this link for a targeted offer for Delta ecredits. (Thanks to Ok-Anywhere6998)

Happy Tuesday!

Pictured: Delta plane holding on the runway at HPN.

  1. American Express has a targeted link for 20,000 bonus points for turning on Pay Over Time. After enrolling, set a reminder in your phone to turn it back off in 121 days to be ready for the next round.

    If you get the bonus offer on multiple charge cards, consider activating them in separate tabs as close together as possible because reasons.
  2. The Chase United Business cards have increased bonuses:

    – Business: 100,000 points after $5,000 spend in three months
    – Club Business: 75,000 points + 1,000 PQP after $5,000 spend in three months

    I’d choose an Ink Preferred card over these unless you’re chasing status or want United Club access, because where else can you get unlimited cheap cheese cubes under a sneeze guard?
  3. Wyndham has a points sale running through February 16 for 0.8125 cents per point after bonus. You’re still unfortunately limited to buying 100,000 points per calendar year on these, but if you have the right booking it can be effectively 50%+ off of the cash rate, especially with hidden value in the Vacasa program. (Thanks to lenin1991)
  4. American Express offers has an offer for $150 off of $1,000+ at Emirates through April 30. In theory, the flights have to originate in the US too.

    Yes gamers gonna game, but Emirates First award fees for US originating flights tend to be slightly over $1,000 so luxers gonna luxe too.
  5. Pepper had sales for gift cards yesterday with 25x at Southwest, 22x at Delta, 22x at Sam’s Club or Walmart, 18x at Home Depot, and 20x at Amazon.

    If you’re not already neck deep in the Pepper in the game I think now is a terrible time to jump in, but if you want to take advantage of those deals at small scale, I’d suggest reaching out to the other churners in the community to buy some inventory at a couple of percentage points above those rates. You’ll probably find plenty of sellers and won’t need to worry about Pepper risk.

Have a nice weekend!

More luxing it up, shut-in weekend style.

Last minute update: The AA5342 collision with a helicopter hits hard, condolences to all and forgive today’s jovial tone, it was written before the accident.

  1. Do this now: Register for IHG’s Q1 targeted promotion for a bonus elite night for all nights stayed, up to 10 bonus elite nights through April 28. If the site asks, the promotion code is 63666.
  2. Do this now: Register for Best Western Q1 promotion for 2,000 bonus points per night, up to a total of 20,000 points through May 11.
  3. Kroger has a promotion for 4x fuel points on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards excluding Amazon on Friday only.

    Thanks to Pepper, the brands that work for a reseller are largely limited to BestBuy and Lululemon.
  4. Rakuten in-store’s card linked program has two new promotions:

    – 1% bonus or 1x Membership Rewards at Food Lion stores
    – 1% bonus or 1x Membership Rewards at Stop & Stop stores

    Both are good through March 31, both require re-adding the offer an hour after its first use to continue using, and both have a bonus cap of $10 or 1,000 Membership Rewards per transaction. Fortunately, we’ve developed the technology to run transactions back-to-back though.

Happy Thursday!

What is this, and is it good? I’m not sure, but it’s slightly more interesting than the new JetBlue card.

  1. Simon Malls will stop selling gift cards in-store on Friday. The glory days of Simon gift cards have passed, but because we like to study the past to learn for the future, there was a time when:

    – They carried $1,000 GCs in-store
    – Some malls coded as restaurants with some issuers
    – The cards could be easily liquidated at Safeway, Kroger, or Walmart

    None of those things are true any more.
  2. Regarding the elephant in the room: I think Pepper manufactured spenders are largely informed about the current risks involved with the platform. If and when it fails, I think the probable outcome is:

    – Gift cards issued more than a week prior are probably safe
    – Gift cards issued in the last days of the platform may be zeroed by BlackHawk
    – Floated coins will be lost

    Why bring this up today? Yesterday Pepper offered effectively unlimited quantities of Amazon gift cards at 22% cash back. Most of that 22% won’t post for a few weeks. So, I guess I’m reading the room which I’m good at about 50% of the time. I still have floated coins with Pepper, but I’ve been scaling way back. I actively chose not to buy yesterday.
  3. In a move surprising only the ghost of Spiro Agnew, Marriott devalued its award chart for higher end properties. A few notes:

    – High end property redemptions increased by as much as 80%
    – Don’t trust a blogger’s valuation of points, use your own redemptions as a guide
    – My valuation of Marriott points was already low at ~ 0.5 cents each, this doesn’t help

    New valuation? Still 0.5 cents, but a low 0.5 cents.
  4. Bilt’s rent day promotion for Saturday is a 20%-100% transfer bonus to Avianca LifeMiles, depending on your status in the program. You’ve still got time to earn points that’ll post by Saturday. I’m certain there’s going to be a limit on the bonus, but I can’t find it published and I’m of course not part of Bilt’s marketing campaigns because reasons.

    Avianca has strange loopholes that lead to great redemptions, but availability often isn’t great.
  5. Staples stores have $200 fee-free Mastercards in store through Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward gift cards.

More Bonvoy math.

  1. The Chase IHG Premier Visa has an increased sign-up bonus of five free night certificates, each good for 40,000 points a night, with $4,000 spend in three months. The $99 annual fee is not waived for the first year.

    40,000 points in the IHG program is good for average, mid-tier hotels, and if you stack the free night certificates with fourth night free, you can make this effectively a six night free sign-up bonus.
  2. Qantas will devalue its points program on August 5, raising redemption costs between 5% and 20%. Redemption fees will increase too, because duh. (Yes, some short haul Qantas metal redemptions will decrease in cost; no, that doesn’t make it any better.)
  3. H-E-B stores have a digital coupon for a $20 H-E-B with every $100 Visa, Mastercard, or AmEx gift card purchased in-store through Tuesday, limit one per H-E-B account.

    If only it were possible to have multiple H-E-B accounts through some miracle of modern technology called multiple email addresses.
  4. Southwest has a fare sale for paid and award bookings made by tonight for travel between February 11 and May 22.

    No blackout dates are listed unless you’re traveling to Hawaii or Puerto Rico, then black out days are longer than an entire month.
  5. Breeze Airways has 50% off of base fares with promo code GONOW for travel through May 22, sort of. They took a page from Southwest’s book and added a blackout periods of over an entire month, but decided it’d be funner to apply it to all destinations and not just non-continental US destinations.

Techno-lord mug of the day.

  1. Do this now: Check for targeted Chase MyBonus offers for spend through March 31. We’ve seen:

    – +7x on gas, grocery, and dining (IHG)
    – +5x on gas, grocery, and dining (Hyatt, Aeroplan, United, Southwest, and Marriott co-brands)
    – +2%-5% bonus cash back for physical card transactions (Instacart)
    – +5% back on gas, grocery, and dining (Amazon)

    The caps on these are historically $1,500 in spend, but this round it’s been reduced to $1,000. If you get an error while checking, open an incognito browser tab.
  2. Do this now: Check for your targeted United Mile Play bonus offer. I wasn’t targeted this round, but there are offers as high as 40,000-50,000 miles for things like taking three trips of $500+ or flying in a premium seat four times.
  3. Truist Bank has a $400 checking account bonus after receiving two direct deposits totaling at least $1,000 within four months with promo code AFL2425TR1400.

    In theory this works in only a limited set of states. In practice, many brokerage account ACHs and business account ACHs count too. (Thanks to David)
  4. Citi Merchant Offers has $50 back on $250+ at JetBlue.

    These are more like Chase and BankAmeriDeals, not like American Express Offers.
  5. Office Depot/OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300+ in Visa Giftcards through Saturday. For best results:

    – Buy in even multiples of $200
    – Link your cards to Dosh 🪦
    – Try for multiple transactions back-to-back

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  6. Safeway, Albertsons, Vons, and Just4U stores have a digital coupon for 10x points on Zillions Zift gift cards through Saturday, and on Saturday it may be 12x with the right coupons.

    Zillions Zift convert to eBay and Lowes, amongst other brands.
  7. Giant Food, Stop & Shop, and Giant/Martins stores have 8x points on Zillions Zift through Thursday, limit $2,000 per household.

Happy Monday!

Monday’s hair product, apparently.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Saturday’s emailed newsletter missed picking up Sam’s guest post, please take a look here if you missed it!

  1. Citi has a heightened offer on the AAdvantage Business Mastercard for 75,000 AA miles after $5,000 spend in five months, and the $95 annual fee is waived for the first year. The current enforced language requires that you won’t receive the bonus if you’ve had a Citi Business AA sign-up bonus in the last 48 months.

    You can double dip by separating two applications by eight days with one business AA card and one personal, just don’t hit the spend target on either card until you have both cards in hand. UPDATE: Corrected double dip language
  2. There’s are two generic, targeted no lifetime language (NLL) American Express no-annual fee card offers:

    – Blue Business Plus 75,000 Membership Rewards after $6,000 spend in four months
    – Blue Business Cash $750 statement credit after $6,000 spend in four months

    These cards usually have offers for additional points or statement credits for adding employee cards and spending on those cards too. (Thanks to EarthlingMardiDraw)
  3. Chase Offers has an offer for 10% back on Southwest airfare, up to $40 cash back, through February 15.

    Buying discounted Southwest gift cards is always 10% off at Sam’s, but occasionally 20% off too so gamers will likely find this offer more interesting than non-gamers.
  4. The Dosh app, famous for awarding extra cash back at Korger, Office Depot, and OfficeMax (and sometimes paying it out too), is shutting down on February 28. They’re allowing redemptions through that date in theory, but there’s no bonus prize for waiting until the last minute and there’s no guarantee that they won’t prematurely fold so cash-out early, cash-often.

    Now it’s time to queue the song: Ding-dong the Dosh is dead! Which old Dosh?
  5. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300+ in Mastercard gift cards through Saturday. For best results:

    – Link your cards to Dosh
    – Buy in even multiples of $300
    – Try for multiple transactions back-to-back

    These are Pathward gift cards.

Happy Monday!

The Dosh executive staff delivers the news.