Category: Louse

  1. Do this now: Register for Wyndham’s promotion for bonus points on 2+ night stays booked by September 3 for stays through September 30. You’ll earn between 7,500 – 15,000 bonus points per stay and you’re limited to 15,000 total bonus points with the promotion.
  2. American Express Membership Rewards has a 25% transfer bonus to AirFrance / KLM’s FlyingBlue through June 30.
  3. AirFrance / KLM’s FlyingBlue released its June promo awards. US Cities include Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, New York, Seattle, San Jose, and Washington DC. Economy flights are 18,750 miles each way, and business class flights …. exist at absurdly priced levels.

    Summer to Europe via SkyTeam in business looks bleak.
  4. Alaska Atmos will raise its partner redemption fee to $20 on July 1.
  5. Giant Eagle Grocery stores have a promotion for 550 perks points with a $100 One4All Ultimate or Favorites gift card, both in-store and online, seemingly unlimited.

    The resale market for Giant Eagle points is tiny, but with the right finesse this is effectively a 10% rebate plus grocery store credit card spend.
  6. Best Western has promotion for 2,500 bonus points per night between July 1 and 7 at US and Canadian properties, registration required, limit 10,000 points. If you need a sales pitch to entice you to book: I’ve only heard of one opaque Best Western swimming pool this year.

Happy Wednesday!

“Opaque blue” beats almost any other opaque color in a pool at least.

  1. New travel related credit card offers are out:

    – American Express: Delta Air Lines $200 off of $1,000+ by April 30
    – Chase: Marriott TownPlace Suites 15% back up to $57 by March 12

    Chase is usually easier to deal with than American Express when it comes to most things, but also this.
  2. The Barclays JetBlue Plus Mastercard has a better offer of 75,000 TrueBlue points after $1,000 spend in 90 days that surfaced after Monday’s news. This one comes from an in-flight mailer and requires a promotional code. Most any six digit number will work including 000000.
  3. Bilt is rejecting some mortgage payments from a major mortgage servicer, and I’m guessing that servicer isn’t the only one not working well. It might make sense to wait a month or two for everything to settle before you put your mortgage or

    (Sorry guys, I’ve been doing my best to not write about the nearly daily Bilt snafu for a couple of weeks because we all just know that it’s a clusterhug at this point, but this one affects people where they live.)

Have a nice Thursday!

A preview of Bilt’s latest offerings, Homes by Bilt, shows they put the same care into cutting corners in everything they do.

MEABNOTE: I’ll be going on a blogging vacation at the end of the year and there won’t be any daily posts between December 15 and December 31, at least none from me. We may have guest posts during that period, but that depends on you sending me some. On January 1(ish), we’ll celebrate with the 2025 version of Travel Hacking as Told by GIFs.

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Travel Tuesday were all good to manufactured spenders, but companies collectively decided that the next day should be called “Woeful Wednesday”. The punches kept coming with devaluations:

Surely there was some good news out there yesterday too, right? Well, Meijer tried to cheer us up with 50,000 MPerks points with a $500 third party gift card through December 16, but they limited it to one to MPerks account so here we are.

United tried to devalue business class meals with this, but it didn’t work because literally anything other than the old meal is an improvement.

Introduction

The Bilt credit card program has had a few missteps over the years, they’ve cut the earning structure on the card, and they’ve told us about a couple more negative enhancements coming soon:

(Side note: On October 7, I wrote “Hopefully the ratio of Rakuten points to Bilt Rewards will be 1:1, but given Richard Kerr’s involvement I wouldn’t call that a foregone conclusion. Go ahead Richard, prove me wrong.” Oops.)

Bilt is practicing death by a thousand cuts, and we may have reached the “one cut too many” threshold.

The Good and Bad

Let’s talk about the good of the Bilt credit card and Bilt Rewards program, both of which are made better together:

  • Hyatt, Alaska, and JAL are valuable transfer partners
  • Periodic 50-100% transfer bonuses
  • A “kewl helicopter ride” after major spend
  • Rewards on rent payments (though the card isn’t required for that, it’s just better with the card)

But, there’s plenty of negativity go with that, moreso when Cardless takes over the program on February 7, 2026:

  • Earning multipliers are relatively poor
  • Cardless isn’t friendly to churners, and is sometimes actively hostile and vindictive
  • Bilt+Rakuten (see above)
  • New account on your credit report (see above)
  • Unknown earning and annual fee structure going forward
  • Customer service is objectively bad

Personally, I can handle two or even three of these negatives, but taken as a whole, I’m over the edge, this thing no longer makes sense. Stick a fork in it, it’s done.

The Exceptions

Your situation isn’t the same as mine, and you’re all adults so obviously you can make your own assessment. But, there are a few cases where Bilt might still make sense:

  • You’re shutdown by Chase and you want Hyatt points or United miles
  • You don’t care about a new account showing on your credit report
  • Maybe the unknown Cardless Bilt card family’s earning structure is better
  • You want to earn Bilt points on rent payments without other games
  • You have a Kerr-resistant loophole

Of course, you do you, and remember it’s good advice to not blindly listen to a rando on the internet, even on a Tuesday.

Happy Tuesday!

Bilt credit card: Current status.

  1. Do this now (if you hold a grandfathered Chase Sapphire Reserve card): Enroll in new Sapphire Reserve coupons, the most valuable being $150 at Chase Exclusive Tables, $250 at hotel bookings through The Edit, $150 at Stub Hub, and free Apple TV+ and Apple Music membership.
  2. Safeway, Albertsons, Vons, and other Just4U stores have 10x points earning on Zift Zillions cards through Saturday (and if you clip the right offers, it’ll probably be 10x+4x=12x on Saturday because #just4umath).
  3. Chase has officially acknowledged the floosies in multiple places just in time for Halloween week, though reports are that it may have appeared last month. What does Chase acknowledging the floosie bandwagon mean? I don’t know, but I can’t imagine it’s good news.
  4. For now let’s call this unconfirmed but actionable: US Bank may have switched credit balance reporting from the first business day of the month to statement close date. (Thanks to best-quality-catfood)

Happy Monday!

Old Navy clothes may not be the best disguise any more.

  1. Do this now (if you have a pre-refresh Chase Sapphire Reserve card): Transfer all Ultimate Rewards from other accounts to your Sapphire Reserve account before Monday to make sure they’re eligible for 1.5 cents per point value on the Chase Travel portal. Points that show up after Monday aren’t eligible. UPDATE: Chase already started converting accounts as of October 25. In theory they’ll still work if earned or converted tomorrow, but I wouldn’t wait on it.
  2. On Tuesday we discussed mass shutdowns with Synchrony bank for those hitting dining promotions especially hard. Yesterday, Synchrony’s shutdown wave cast a much wider net and nearly all shutdown reports had seen floosie activity in the last six months. You do you, but if I were you and I’d been on the floosie bandwagon recently, I’d self-shutdown any remaining Synchrony cards.

    If you were shutdown by Synchrony, I’d also suggest applying again immediately for the same cards that were shutdown because #citigonnaciti (since I don’t have a synchrony hash tag) I guess.
  3. In April, American Express shut down quite a few churners for what turned out to be mostly related to third party payments routed through sketchy buyer’s groups. Yesterday, there was another mass wave for seemingly the same thing. If “miracle doctors and nurses” doesn’t mean anything special to you, you’re probably safe. If it does and you were involved, well, I hope you’ve self shutdown by the time you finish reading this post.
  4. Chase Ultimate Rewards has a 25% transfer bonus to Southwest Rapid Rewards, bringing your redemption value in the 1.4 cents per point through November 6.

    The major utility in Rapid Rewards bookings vs Chase Travel portal bookings is cancelability with refunds on all booking classes.
  5. JetBlue TrueBlue points can now be used to book United metal flights. Pricing is decidedly “sub-mean but within tolerance”.
  6. I hesitate to mention this because it’s gotten so much undue press, most of it written to feed the content monster, but if you’re always probing you should know there’s a new thing to probe: American Express Business Gold cards now have a $150 credit at Squarespace, a website builder platform and hosting provider, registration required.

    I guess this is a free way to own some variation of sideshowbob233wasrightallalong.com on American Express’s dime (which is really your non-incremental dime).

Have a nice weekend friends!

A sub-mean but still within tolerance bomb can still send a message.

In the last week there have been consistent datapoints of two types of shutdowns:

  • Citi AT&T Access More card holders having that card and all other ThankYou linked cards axed
  • Synchrony cards with lots of dining activity, especially if using targeted a dining promotion axed

In both cases there was no early warning from a know your customer (KYC) call, so the once reliable Citi indicator isn’t as reliable right now.

If you still have an AT&T Access More card and have any creative charges in recent history, or if you’ve been hitting the Synchrony portfolio with dining promotions, it might be wise to close those accounts before you end up with the issuer closing them for you and potentially banning you in the process. In other words, it might be time for the sneak attack strike back. Live to fight another day!

Live footage of Citi, post sneak attack strike back.

  1. Citi ThankYou has a 20% transfer bonus to Qantas Frequent Flyer through November 8.

    Qantas’s highest and best use is typically for Emirates or Qantas F redemptions.
  2. Citi launched a new “mid-tier” (lulz) AA credit card yesterday. Vitals of the “AAdvantage Globe Mastercard”:

    – $350 annual fee, 4x single use AA lounge passes
    – 90,000 AA miles after $5,000 spend in four months
    – 2x earning at restaurants, taxis, and rideshare
    – 3x earning with AA, 6x with AA Hotels (also lulz)
    – 1x everywhere else
    – 1x Loyalty Points regardless of mileage earning
    – $100 inflight purchase rebate, which practically means inflight booze because AA doesn’t really cater buy-on-board food as a general rule
    – Companion certificate, but not until your second year

    This card gives United Quest vibes, a card which I (in)famously hate. I guess the sign-up bonus is moderately acceptable, but let’s just say I disagree with anyone who says this card belongs with other “best sign-up bonus” list cards.
  3. The idea of #citigonnaciti went mainstream last week when the WSJ made their Strata Elite 4506-C shenanigans public. Their make-good to say sorry about the press getting wind of their incompetence is to refund the annual-fee and award the sign-up bonus whether or not you hit minimum spend.

    If you fell into the 4506-C hole and didn’t get the make-good offer from Citi, perhaps a phone call to customer service is in order.
  4. Staples in-store has fee free $200 Visa gift cards through Saturday, limit nine per transaction. Predicting that Staples fee-free gift cards are coming the week after a Mastercard scale is about a sure as a bet as putting it all on Joey Chestnut.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  5. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 in Mastercard gift cards through Saturday. Buy these in even multiples of $300 for a bigger per-card discount.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards too.
  6. Southwest Rapid Rewards shopping has an offer for 1,000 bonus Rapid Rewards points with $100+ in spend through today.

Happy Monday!

The Citi Strata Elite situation.