Let’s start with a correction from Friday’s post: There’s still a phone-in offer for up to 495,000 SkyMiles on existing business Delta American Express cards. I can only assume this is because something happened to the IT person in charge of turning this off when the other versions of the offer were discontinued. I’d guess this week is very much the last shot at this offer, so if you’re going take advantage of it make time to call today.
With that out of the way, here’s your Monday update:
Exchanging a possibly redundant $179 AmEx credit for 15,000 miles isn’t the worst idea in the world.
Marriott’s has a promotion running for 100,000 Bonvoy points and a free Westin Heavily Bed. To enter, open the Bonvoy app, scroll down to “Featured Offers”, then click “Win with Westin”. It’s worth entering just for for the fact that you can say “I #bonvoyed Bonvoy” to win friends and influence people. EDIT: Reader Justmeha sent a direct link for entering the contest.
A site update: I’ve moved to a different email service for the daily newsletter that’s a little less janky and is also easier to customize. Please let me know if you see anything weird with the service over the next week.
Happy Monday!
This crash was spotted just outside the American Express IT campus last week. Perhaps that’s why the Delta business offers are still around?
Theexistingarticlesabout what resets the expiration of miles in AirFrance/KLM’s FlyingBlue mileage program are all over the board, and they conflict with one another at the surface level. There’s only one thing that’s been certain to this point: crediting an actual SkyTeam revenue flight to your FlyingBlue account will reset expiration and kick the can down the road for another two years.
What about points transferred from partners and from the FlyingBlue shopping portal? You’ll find different information in different articles and they’re all correct at some level. It’s taken several months of experimentation and now with the help of Gary and Connor, I now have a proper test and validation set to explain what’s going on:
Some partners reset expiration of transferred miles, and some don’t.
No partners reset the expiration of miles earned through flying
Miles earned through a FlyingBlue credit card reset the expiration of all miles
Ok, but most of us don’t have a FlyingBlue credit card and don’t want to credit a flight to the FlyingBlue program, so we rely on transferred miles to reset the clock (and transferred miles is probably how we got them in the first place). Here’s the scoop:
Partner
Resets Transferred Mileage Expiration
Brex
Yes
Capital One
Yes
Chase
Yes
Citi
Yes
FlyingBlue shopping portal
Yes
American Express
No
See the stick in the mud there? Our best friend and aspirational colleague American Express is different than the rest. When you transfer miles from American Express to FlyingBlue, it doesn’t reset the expiration on other transferred miles, and that’s why we’ve had mixed data-points about this topic for years.
Now that we’ve tested and validated this, can we collectively move on to something else?
Happy Tuesday!
The “something else” that we’ve apparently moved to collectively. Why did we catalog this, exactly? Perhaps there’s some golden ratio of crust to nugget meat that I don’t understand.
Over the weekend I was in Minneapolis at the first Milenomics meet-up. I saw a few long-time friends, shared war stories with travel hacking veterans, and traded a few insider tips. I was also asked quite a few questions about travel hacking and the blog, but the most common was some variation of “Why do you blog if you’re not trying to monetize it?” That happens to be the most common question that I get from readers lately too. The answer really has two sides:
First: Networks are Everything
Having a partner in crime with whom you can share candid data-points will magnify your earnings and prevent certain failures; you’re each probably looking at different things, you likely have a different set of credit cards, you definitely have a different set of biases in how you look at the world, and you can divide and conquer when you’re probing something new. As a pair you typically amplify each other’s strengths and cover-over many weaknesses.
Obviously if you have a few close, trusted friends the above effects will be even greater still. Have I found deals that no one else had ever mentioned or hinted at? Absolutely. Have I learned about great deals from others that I’d probably have never even thought to look at? Also, absolutely. In this game, trusted colleagues simply make each other better.
So let’s circle back to the blog. I started it to grow my network, which frankly has worked really well and also been a bunch of fun.
Second: I Don’t Hate Money, But I Value Trust More
Do I hate money? Of course not. I don’t put affiliate links or ads here though because I want to make sure that you can trust me; even more so if we start working together on something going forward. I want to make sure that there’s absolutely no question about ulterior motives. If I’m writing about a credit card, you can be sure it’s not because it pays me a commission, but rather because I think it’s genuinely valuable and that it may be worth your attention.
Where does that leave us? Well, I have someone ask me how they can support me or the blog in some way almost weekly. I very much appreciate the thought, and earlier this year I set up a Patreon for the site so people could do so (it’s the little present icon in the upper right of the toolbar). I don’t advertise it because it’s not the primary goal and I don’t want you to feel like you’re not going to get my honest opinion unless you send money my way. You’ll get it either way. If you want to give me money though, who am I to say no?
Bonus: Genuine Connections Mean Free Drinks
Just this weekend I had more than a dozen people offer to buy me a drink because they wanted to say thanks and have a nice discussion about travel hacking and the world in general. Thanks to each and every one of you! You don’t have to buy my a drink, I’ll be glad to talk anyway. Of course, a free beer never hurts anything.
PS: I hear you “Blah, blah, blah, where’s the normal newsletter poindexter?” Don’t worry, we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled content tomorrow and this blog isn’t going anywhere any-time soon, sorry haters (I’ve honestly never heard from a hater but I’m sure you exist, somewhere).
A bonus for running the blog: A new friend bought me this “cheap champagne” while I was waiting to catch my flight. Special thanks to D C Domer of Bonvoy cookie fame.
Let’s chat about bonus miles today with an eye toward gaming the airline mileage programs:
1. Public links are floating around for no lifetime language (NLL), high offer American Express Delta credit cards. You can probably get one to appear yourself by logging into your SkyMiles account and going through the process of booking a paid ticket; you’ll see on offer the last page before paying. In case that’s a lot of work for you, a public landing page has surfaced to check eligibility and skip the dummy booking: Click here and enter your SkyMiles number and last name to check for your account(s). These offers include a statement credit for spending on Delta too. (Thanks to DoC for the link)
Don’t forget that American Express currently has a five credit card limit (not to be confused with the ten charge card limit for cards like the Green, Gold, Platinum, or Centurion cards, they don’t count for this). People have played games to get around the credit card limit in the past, but I’m not one of them.
2. Another round of shopping portal bonuses has surfaced, and Alaska, United, and Southwest are all playing. In case you want to the play the game and win, Visa or Mastercards from Giftcards.com are usually the easiest way to knock these out without really buying stuff; of course the virtual variants work too but come with slightly higher fees.
To save you time, I’ve calculated how much it’ll cost in card fees and shipping to get each shopping portal bonus so you can decide if it’s worth it to you.
UPDATE: Miles (awesome name, right?) pointed out that these fees were calculated for physical gift cards, not virtual gift cards. So, shipping needs to be factored in, also some of math on physical gift cards requires taking a penny off in order to hit the lower fee amount, despite the posted schedule; but that doesn’t affect portal thresholds since the fee is included in the portal payout. Shipping fees are $1.99 per card, so updating is easy enough, the tables are now correct, and the article has been corrected. 🤦♀️🤦♀️
United
Bonus Threshold
Gift Cards Purchased
Fees
Miles
Cost Per Mile
$100
1 x $100
$5.94
100 + 500
0.990 cents per mile
$350
1 x $100 + 1 x $250
$12.88
350 + 1,500
0.696 cents per mile
$600
1 x $100 + 2 x $250
$19.82
600 + 2,500
0.639 cents per mile
corrected
Southwest
Bonus Threshold
Gift Cards Purchased
Fees
Miles
Cost Per Mile
$125
1 x $125
$5.94
125 + 250
1.584 cents per mile
$300
1 x $50 + 1 x $250
$12.88
300 + 900
1.073 cents per mile
$550
1 x $50 + 2 x $250
$19.82
550 + 2,000
0.777 cents per mile
corrected
Alaska
Bonus Threshold
Gift Cards Purchased
Fees
Miles
Cost Per Mile
$150
1 x $150
$5.94
150 + 300
1.237 cents per mile
$300
1 x $50 + 1 x $250
$10.88
300 + 600
1.208 cents per mile
$500
2 x $250
$13.88
500 + 1,200
0.816 cents per mile
corrected
There are two big caveats to remember: 1) I didn’t include any miles or cash back you’ll get from your credit card spend, and 2) I didn’t include potential liquidation fees that you may pay; hopefully that one is zero but YMMV.
At the highest threshold of each of those portal bonuses I’m a mileage buyer, even for United. But honestly, just barely for United.
Not the type of airline games I meant, but sure, why not?
I’m on vacation and have been since Friday afternoon, and I’m punch drunk on California beach vibes so I went experimental today. Without further ado, here’s my review of the new American Express Platinum card changes, in haiku form.
Huge annual fee is unjustifiable find another card
Clear reimbursement could save 55 minutes per year if you are lucky
Equinox credit useful in almost no cities use YouTube instead
One lifetime bonus? terms and conditions are lies bonus will come
New York Times is saved by entertainment credit otherwise no-one pays
Fine Hotels and Resorts credit does not earn you status better than nothing
Air incidentals credit was hard to abuse but was worth real cash
Lounge access is great until you realize that many cards grant it
Will not renew personal cards will be golds business cards will cease
1.Office Depot OfficeMax is offering 25% back in rewards on Happy Gift Cards, limit $25 back per account. In case you’re a Happy GC newb like I used to be, these cards are basically Visa debit cards that work only at certain stores, and there are multiple varieties that work at a different set of places. An example: Buy a $100 “Happy Treats” gift card which can be at GameStop and at a few other places, then go to GameStop and buy two $50 Steam cards with the Happy card. The Steam cards resell at 90-93%, so you can really come out ahead if you can make good use of OD/OM rewards and have more than one account. Often you can liquidate the Happy cards online too, no need to make an in-person trip in many cases.
If you don’t yet have a liquidation channel for manufactured spend gift cards, several good options include SCO GC and TheCardBay. Shane at SCO GC announced this weekend that they’re onboarding more gift card resellers focused on MS, so email him at [email protected] with the subject “JOIN” to sign up if you need another outlet.
2. Danny points out that there’s a really, really great $1,500 sign-up bonus for the no-annual fee “AmaZing Business” Visa Card, provided you live in Colorado or in California. Too bad the scope is so limited on this one. Side note: what name is worse than Office Depot OfficeMax? The answer is clearly AmaZing Business. Why the capital Z in the middle friends? WHY?
3. I had a request from reader Jeff for email subscriptions to daily blog posts, because for some reason it seems that a few of you think it’s a good idea to give me a direct line into your inbox. In case that description resembles you, you can sign up on the Email Subscriptions page.
This abomination is apparently the Sponge Bob embodiment of a triple. I can’t say I understand, but I can say definitively that it’s scary.
Valentine’s Day shopping portal bonuses have arrived just in time for, err, Valentine’s Day. The bonuses are actually at high multiples for this time of the year, but they’re also low total payout so overall bang for the buck doesn’t quite reach the “11” setting.
Southwest, 1,000 miles for spending $300, or 500 miles for spending $100
I would definitely hit the Southwest version of this first, or if you’re only going to do one, make it that one — you can buy a single Visa or Mastercard gift card at Giftcards.com for $100 and get effectively 5.5x plus the credit card spend, and the virtual Mastercard variety works really well in lots of “from home” techniques.
In another part of my online life that’s not travel hacking related, the community has a tradition of summarizing the year in GIFs. It’s glorious my friends, trust me. Here’s my attempt for the us. Maybe this will be a New Years Eve tradition? Without further ado, here is travel hacking in 2020 in GIF form:
AA Shuts Down Mailer Churners
The AA Playbook:
Suspend your account, but don’t tell you (whack)
Error when you try and book a ticket, with no reason given (whack)
Corporate didn’t tell CS agents what’s up, so they couldn’t help you (whack)
Finally, they kill your account right before you’re scheduled to fly (big whack)
PayPal Key
PPK runs as a debit card pretty much everywhere, works with AmEx backed card, and worked with Plastiq, Melio, and tax payments.
Rakuten Pays out 15x on GiftCards.com
The 15x deal that lasted for a few hours was clearly not intentional, but Rakuten paid at the end of Q1 2020.
US Mint WWII Gold Coins Resells for over $1,000 Profit
… and $1,000 is on the low end of the spectrum. The flip side of the coin (hah!) is you probably couldn’t buy them because their website was running on a Raspberry Pi 3 which was spec’d to handle approximately 12 requests per minute.
I was late to the game on this podcast for no good reason, but I’m still sad none-the-less. At least there are the archives.
BestBuy Gift Cards Reselling Magic, until Black Friday
You could sell BestBuy gift cards for most of the year at 98% or more of face value. That is, until the Black Friday hiccup smacked us in the face. The market was performing so perfectly until…
… at least now it’s going again, but we’ve all got a black eye and a bruised ego.
Cancelling a Dozen Trips due to COVID
Shoot ’em down, one right after the other.
Road Trips are the new Black
Corona meant more time on the road with the family, in makeshift RVs (or real RVs if you’re bougie).
I get my First PingBack to a Blog Post
Sorry, you’ll have to find it yourself. I guess if someone links to you on the internet it means you’ve arrived though, right?
Yo dawg, I heard you like AmEx, so I let you pay your AmEx with an Amex, so you could earn points while you get shutdown. Bad news though, the Rewards Abuse Team (RAT) didn’t like it.
I have to summarize 2020 travel hacking in about a dozen GIFs.
I didn’t plan on this until last minute, and I had no notes about what happened in 2020.
I’m sure I missed plenty of significant 2020 events, but hey, this was a last minute post that ended up taking a few hours to put together, so hard cheese if I missed your favorite. Next year I’ll take notes though.
