Category: Meta

Since March-ish (Smarch), both American Express and Chase have been shutting down some of the biggest gamers in the sport. They’re looking different than past shutdowns, so let’s document some new behaviors starting today with Chase.

Shutdown: What of the Ultimate Rewards?

In recent years when you’ve been shutdown by Chase, they’ve given you 30 days (or 90 in New York) to cash out your points. That’s all changed though; we’ve seen two new recent behaviors with points, neither of which matches what used to happen:

  • Some accounts have points forfeited immediately (and a few of those will have a line-item that says “courtesy adjustment” to add insult to injury)
  • Some accounts have points cashed out at 1.0 cents immediately

The old 30 day point rule isn’t around like it used to be, at least for the big guns. There’s also varying behavior on what happens with pending points that post after you’ve been shutdown. Again, you’ve got two possibilities, and what happened with your stash of points seems to have no bearing on what happens with your pending points. Your pending points will either:

  • Be transferrable when they post
  • Forfeited

If you’re shutdown, a random number generator seems to choose which action Chase will take with your posted points, and a different random number generator seems to choose which action Chase will take with your pending points. What’s the random number generator? I think a team of humans is handling these cases, and they’re not completely consistent with one another.

The Deposit Accounts

Avoiding Chase deposit accounts is manufactured spend 101, but not everyone follows that advice. For recent shutdowns of cardholders with deposit accounts we’ve seen a bit of random behavior there too:

  • Some shutdown cardholders have their deposit accounts stick around
  • Some shutdown cardholders have all of their deposit accounts closed
  • Some shutdown cardholders see some of their deposit accounts closed

I think the varied behavior here is a further indication that we’re dealing with a team of humans that isn’t completely consistent.

The Causes

The cause for most of the shutdowns is probably pretty obvious if you spend a few minutes thinking about how one might scale, then spend a few minutes thinking about how you might scale your scale, but let’s just say it boils down to one or both of:

  • Earning lots and lots of points in a way that’s not sustainable for Chase
  • Redeeming lots and lots of points in a way that’s not sustainable for Chase

If that’s not enough and you like bad translations, there’s public info on some of these recent Chase shutdowns at UCSF.

Avoiding The Shutdowns

If you’re a heavy-hitting whale that’s not yet shutdown at Chase, you probably know that what you’re doing is moving toward a brick wall, and you’re probably doing your best to earn as much as you can before the wall wants its dues. A common sentiment amongst most affected by the shutdowns seems to be “it was worth it”.

If you’re not a heavy-hitting whale, this probably isn’t something you need to be super concerned about.

The Permanence

If you were shutdown, what does getting back in look like? Well, you might be surprised to learn that it seems random:

  • Some people get back (seemingly-permanently) after waiting a month or two
  • Some people get back after waiting, only to have the cards cancelled shortly after activation
  • Some people are instantly denied or have approvals rescinded before cards can be activated

Again, the same process governing the other aspects of recent shutdowns is probably governing these too.

Mini-Analysis

I’ve avoided mentioning something because I largely don’t agree with it, but, let’s mention it anyway: there’s rampant speculation that the rise of AI has given Chase an easy way to find the gamers. The only evidence I can see for this is the inconsistency because AI is currently great at that, but I genuinely think that’s just humans doing human things.

I think what’s new and why we’re seeing new waves and behaviors is that we recently got:

  • Uncapped 8x earning
  • Lots of 2 cents per point redemptions

Taken together at volume, those things probably caused a big enough blip on someone’s radar to have a team look into what was going on. But what do I know?

Have a nice weekend friends!

Chase’s equipment shows why it was hard to see the blip before we arrived at “8x*2cpp = bad”.

A Thanksgiving churning blogger tradition seems to involve writing about all the things you’re thankful for (I suppose if you’re going to be cliché in a conformist-rebel sort of way, that’s a home-run post). But we do things a bit differently around here, so instead of a regular “things I’m thankful for” post, I wanted to call out some of the churning blogger phrases that I’m, uhh – thankful isn’t the right word, deluged by:

  • “It’s mind boggling that”
  • “An ok deal”
  • “Nevertheless, it represents value”
  • “Nothing groundbreaking here”
  • “… and it may be for some folks”
  • “it should be worth it”
  • “SMOKING HOT!”
  • “Alive Again!”
  • “Final hours!”
  • “worth keeping your eye out”
  • “[company] is once again back with their lucrative offer”
  • “I am happy to report that”
  • “More easy rewards”

Anyhoodles, have a nice holiday friends!

Me too kid.

In the Ten Commandments of Churning, of which I’ve yet to discover nine of the commandments, we discover an auspicious writing that’s particularly relevant in the last couple of weeks:

Terms and Conditions are only advisory unless you’re in legal mediation or in a court of law.

– The 10 commandments of churning, unpublished

Just because a particular bank tells you that they won’t award a sign-up bonus to prior customers doesn’t mean that they actually behave as written. Just because a credit card company says that they won’t award points if you buy a gift card doesn’t mean that you won’t see points when you buy a gift card.

Conversely, just because a crypto company says that you’re eligible for a sign-up bonus doesn’t mean they’ll pay it out unless you force their hand.

Happy Tuesday, and always be probing.

Wednesday Weather forecasts are advisory too.

Endorphins hit differently when you get a big sign-up bonus, make a great redemption, or get a great deal. Each of these can be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars, and everyone likes to see a hockey-stick chart on their points balance right?

Sometimes though, you can “find churning money or points” by dealing with the sludge of churning. In just the last couple of months, I’ve had to:

  • Figure out how to get my Flexperks points back after an airline cancelled booking
  • Get refunded for stolen in shipping items for reselling
  • Find every hidden unsubscribe from the Motley Fool (after kicking myself for going for the portal bonus again)
  • Work with giftcards.com for e-gift cards that showed the CVV as “Error retrieving CVV”
  • Bug Alaska for missing travel credits

None of those things are fun, none of them give me the same endorphin hit of an initial churn. They’re all worth real, sizable money though. And if I didn’t do them, I’d negate plenty of the endorphin-laden kind of churning. So, the lesson:

Earning $1,000 from housekeeping is as good as $1,000 from a bank bonus. Also taxes something something.

– MEAB

Have a nice weekend friends!

Sometimes the hockey stick goes in the wrong direction.

Summer travel makes up the bulk of airline profits outside of a few weeks around the holidays, and Summer demand means that award availability and sales are scarced between Memorial and Labor Day, at least usually. Enter Summer 2025 travel bookings, in which:

  1. Frontier swipes at Southwest with free seat selection, free cary-ons, and free flight changes through August 18, and you can get free checked bags with promo code FREEBAG on flights between May 28 and August 18 too. You’ve got book by March 24, unless they extend it like they suggest in their hints.

    There are two ways to read into this: (1) Frontier sees a hole in the market left by Southwest, is shrewd, and wants to take Southwest’s traditional customer base; or (2) the low cost carrier summer booking demand-o-meter is flashing red, and management has decided that some revenue is better than no revenue. I tend to think it’s the latter disguised as the former, but what do I know?
  2. Breeze Airways has a 50% off base fare sale for bookings by tomorrow night and travel between March 25 and June 18 with promo code SCENIC. This, for those keeping score at home, is the second 50% off sale in the last 10 days.

    Breeze historically was an investor garbage fire for capital, but turned things around for profitability last year. Just like Frontier though, I think Breeze’s summer demand-o-meter is blinking red too.
  3. Yesterday, Avelo Airlines had $30 off of round-trip bookings for travel between March 26 and August 28 with a few small blackout windows (the promo was SOAR30). There’s a good chance they replace it for something else today, and while the discount wasn’t big enough to talk about in a normal post while the sale was still running, but it is telling that the sale ran right over the whole Summer season.

What about the big three US airlines? Well, they’ve already told us Summer looks bleak, especially for non-premium cabin traffic.

Ok, so what’s the action item on today’s post if you’re a first class diva don’t fly any of those “lesser” airlines? Well, if you’re an active investor, evaluate your positions on airlines. I’m not an investment advisor and I’m definitely not your investment advisor, but I’d say being long airline stocks through Q3 reporting is a bold strategy, Cotton. On the other hand if you’re looking for award bookings for Summer travel, watch for more inventory to open up.

Happy Wednesday!

Another bold strategy.

The biggest volume gift card reselling platform Raise’s GCX, which incidentally via a broker is where most manufactured spender’s gift cards end up, recently made moves that seem to effectively push all but the top three or four sellers into insolvency unless they have a stable of private buyers or a mostly non-existent big alternative. Based on discussions with several anonymous brokers, the new normal is:

  • New tiers (that sound like Delta status levels) based on quarterly sales volume:
    • <= $19,999 for Bronze
    • $20,000+ for Silver
    • $100,000+ for Gold
    • $500,000+ for Platinum
    • $1,000,000+ for Diamond
    • $10,000,000+ for Delta 360 Diamond Plus
  • Platform selling fees ranging based on tier level from 15% to 6%-ish (that means if you sell BestBuy at 98.50% of face, you’ll take-home 83.5% after fees as a Bronze member, maybe up to 45 days later)
  • Penalties for cards that don’t sell quickly enough
  • Increased penalties for debited transactions (when a buyer says the card doesn’t work)
  • No more grace period for bad quarters, immediate tier demotion
  • Longer holding times before payout for many gift cards

If you want to sell on Raise / GCX and compete with the big three current sellers that are paying approximately 6-7% in fees, you’re going to have pay around $40,000 in extra commissions on your way to that tier too. That means:

  • Raise’s changes are forming an oligopoly of gift card resellers
  • Smaller resellers are going to drop out (I’ve heard of three already)
  • The bar to entry to be an effective bulk competitor is higher than ever
  • Competition for manufactured spenders selling gift cards to brokers will fall
  • Manufactured spenders will see decreased profits as competition falls
  • The existing oligopoly will see increased profits as competition falls

Raise is likely to have a simpler business and a smaller support staff with these changes, but they’re also leaving themselves vulnerable to a new marketplace competitor with lower fees and a penchant for marketing that could take over as the new de-facto gift card resale platform. Watch for turbulent times in the short term, and (hopefully) a new reseller focused marketplace in the medium term.

Oh, and since we haven’t talked about Pepper for a while, let’s take a tangent from the main topic to mention Pepper’s weekend: they were offering 20% back in Pepper Coins for Best Buy purchases, and 25% back for Target purchases. Completely auspicious right?

Happy Monday!

GCX/Raise’s totally original status program elite bag tag.

The Pepper gift card reselling platform, the current mass market frontrunner in the race to move funds from venture capitalist bank accounts to your wallet, has a few newsworthy updates:

  • They got a loan last week, and they did the most Pepper thing possible when filing: The CEO’s name is spelled wrong. (This is probably a bridge loan, VC funding definitely doesn’t look like this)
  • Yesterday, they offered (with most of the cash back coming in a couple of weeks):
    • Unlimited Amazon gift cards at 25% off
    • Walmart gift cards at 24% off, up to $1,500 per account
    • HomeDepot gift cards at 22% off, up to $3,000 per account

I think it’s clear that Pepper is eating most of the cost on these offerings, which could lead you to a few conclusions:

  • They might be trying to pump sales in anticipation of funding hurdles and are fiscally fine
  • They might be trying to make payroll and are fiscally almost dead
  • They’re just benevolent and like giving away money, but they have plenty of it

One of those three is probably right. Make your risk/reward calculations accordingly. Since no one asked: I’ve been bringing down my Pepper float to smaller numbers gradually over the last couple of months, and I’m approaching zero but not there yet.

Finally, I want to add something to a common argument I hear about Pepper, which is “Who cares if I lose the $20,000 I have floated to Pepper right now? I made way more than that.” It’s a good point, but I’d like to offer that if you can catch the falling knife, you can make “way more than that” and still not lose $20,000.

Happy Thursday!

Live view of Pepper manufactured spenders.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m on an annual blogging vacation for the last two weeks of the year. To make sure you still have content, some of the smartest members of the community have stepped up with guest posts in my absence. Special thanks to today’s author, MEAB’s P2, for writing this followup to last year’s diary while I’m on vacation. I’ll see you tomorrow on January 1!

I’m a simple girl with simple needs. Like many of us, I like coffee in the morning, yoga in the evenings, and since I teach middle school, I always hope that a day will go by without hearing the words ‘skibbidi toilet’ or ‘hawk-tuah’. It’s not a lot to ask for, and most days two of those three things are usually accomplished. I’ll let you wonder which two. Anyway, as I said, simple.

At least I thought I was simple. Then my husband took me to Europe over the summer. 

It was not my first trip to Europe, in fact not even my first trip to Europe this year. And, since I’m married to MEAB, it probably won’t be my last. However, traveling with him has slowly chipped away at my “simple girl” aesthetic, and now I’ve surpassed the scale of “simple girl” to “passenger princess” and I fear I’ve landed firmly at “Bougie Bitch.” Because, my friends, this was the summer I flew Lufthansa First Class. 

I’d like you to imagine for a moment, if you will, this school teacher wearing thrifted pants and a Taylor Swift Eras Tour t-shirt arriving to Munich Airport with MEAB. We check in, and the ticketing agent at the counter said “You’ll go to the lounge this way. They’ll take care of you there, and you won’t have to board with all the other people.” I look at MEAB with my eyebrows shooting off my face as I mouth “other people”? He chuckles, because he knows what’s in store. 

We are two of four in the entire first class lounge. I’m brought a specialty margarita and given delicious food to eat. There are no babies crying, no jostling for space, none of the hundreds of minor inconveniences that might plague other people when flying. Just simple relaxation.

When the time comes for us to board, we are taken down a secret elevator and passage to our gate (though I’m told in Frankfurt it could have been a ride in a Porsche), where we board our A380. I’ve got my carry on luggage and pink backpack on and looking very much like a thrifty swifty. But no. This girlie goes UPSTAIRS (you guys, planes have stairs!) and I find my seat. A wildly comfortable window seat in first class. 

Immediately I’m given the best sparkling wine I’ve ever had. I’d like to call it champagne, but I think it was a sparkling Rosé. Either way, delectable. For the next ten hours I’m feted like a MFing princess. Caviar – check. Alcohol – check. Some of the best food (that’s also gluten free because life) – check. Lay flat bed – check. Pajamas – check. 

I’d be remiss if I didn’t discuss the bathroom. It’s literally larger than our main bathroom in our house. Not only that, but stocked with goodies. Mouthwash, facewash, toothpaste, Evian facial mist…I opened all the drawers, took all the pictures. You get the gist. All in all, it was life changing. Exceptional. Luxe. Bougie. 

Now, I won’t lie. It wasn’t my first time in international first class. However, the time before had been on American Airlines with a grumpy stewardess who thought gluten free meant I couldn’t have ice cream and an airline meal that was the worst chicken I’ve ever had. It was a truly disappointing experience on AA…not so on Lufthansa. 

The Lufthansa flight was my Nexus event. If Loki hadn’t fixed the sacred timeline, it’s very possible that the timekeepers would have popped right out and culled me right there. Because, my friends, this is when I went from a simple girl with passenger princess tendencies to a Bougie Bitch with uppercase Bs. 

Don’t get me wrong. I’m still a nice person. I still teach 8th graders American History, I scrape gum off my carpets, learn all the new teen lingo, and yell MAKE ROOM FOR SANTA when two kids start the weird, slow hug that tweens do. I’ll still fly Southwest to get to Mexico, and EasyJet to get to Munich if I need to. But the fact is that I don’t want to. The process of becoming a Bougie Bitch has been slow. So slow that you may not have even noticed if you weren’t looking for it. But that all came to a head this past week. Let me lay the scene.

For Christmas, MEAB took me to Europe. Why? Because this Bougie Bitch loves Europe and I love Christmas and so he took me on a quick tour of Christmas Markets. We went to London, Munich, Salzburg, and Vienna. It was a wonderful trip that culminated in a stay at the Park Hyatt Vienna and some of the most amazing coffee I’ve ever had in my life. We flew Air France home, and had a three hour layover in CDG. Easy right? Should have been. Except…our gate was in the K concourse in 2E. 

There’s nothing wrong with the K concourse. It’s perfectly fine by airport standards. Pretty, brightly lit, easy to access. No problems there. Except when we went to the lounge. The first sign of trouble was when we had to go downstairs to access the lounge. But, it’s fine, no worries. Our legs work, so we checked in and got a seat. That’s where it went off the rails. 

There was a family entirely spread out in one section. Parents, grandparents, small children. Food everywhere, on the floor, on the kids’ faces. They were very loud, and I’m not talking about the children. The grandparents were practically yelling a conversation. The Dad was walking around the lounge with no shoes…it’s a mess. Then, a very drunk guy sits next to us and is just…smelling of alcohol. There’s people milling about coughing over the food, people talking on Facetime without headphones. If the boarding area for Southwest Airlines was turned into a lounge…that’s what this was. 

And that’s when I knew. I didn’t want to be with the other people, I wanted to be in a first class lounge, sipping champagne. Because I’m no longer a simple girl. I’m a Bougie Bitch. 

*disclaimer: Please don’t think less of me, dear reader, I know that what I experience is exceptional and I’m grateful every day to MEAB for providing me with such elegant experiences. I run a silly little blog about historical postcards at myhipstory.com, I’m a history nerd who wears mostly thrifted clothes and still pays out of pocket to buy pencils for my classroom. I just also really like caviar and champagne.* 

Evolution of a P2: Post Bougie Bitch transformation.