Category: Miles

  1. Citi ThankYou Points has two new transfer bonuses:

    – 20% to Wyndham Rewards through November 16
    – 30% to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club through November 16

    The Wyndham bonus is great for the right use cases; it’s pretty easy to get 1-2 cents per point on a Wyndham or Vacasa booking. The bonus to Virgin Atlantic is mid at best, and don’t forget that (1) Chase has a higher 40% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic, and (2) the Virgin Atlantic award chart is changing at the end of the month.
  2. Citi ThankYou Points also added Preferred Hotels as a transfer partner at 1:4 ratio. If that sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because you can also book some Preferred Hotels with Choice Points which is also a Citi transfer partner. The transfer ratio is great taken at extreme face value because those points are worth somewhere between 0.4 and 1.0 cents each, but in practice availability is:

    – Decent for cash+points bookings
    – Awful for points only bookings
    – Better through the Choice program

    To explore, start on the points booking landing page, and note that you’ll need to create an account and login to see many of the rates. Frankly this program is the most Citi-esque hotel program I’ve ever encountered, so I guess it makes sense that they’re now Citi partners. (Thanks to newg33b)
  3. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 or more in Mastercard gift cards through Saturday. For best results:

    – Buy in even multiples of $300
    – Try for multiple transactions back-to-back
    – Look for lower fee cards, not all fees are the same

    These are Pathward gift cards.

Citi’s prototype robo-taxi is as weird as everything else they do.

  1. Alaska MileagePlan has upcoming changes in 2025:

    – Earn elite qualifying miles (EQMs) on award travel redemptions based on distance and ticket class, a minimum of 1 EQM per mile flown including partner redemptions
    – Earn 1 EQM per $3 spent on a co-brand credit card, up to $90,000 spend
    – Earn EQMs for mileage partners, especially the MileagePlan shopping portal
    – Milestone rewards like AA
    – Multi-partner award redemptions are coming this “winter”

    It’ll be relatively easy to earn MileagePlan status via manufactured spend next year, which when coupled with AA status, could make you a double oneworld Sapphire, capable of viewing the Double Rainbow.
  2. The speculation that Barclays would buy the GM credit card portfolio from Marcus Goldman Sachs has been confirmed, and cards will switch issuers in 2025.

    If you’re banned from Barlcays, getting a GM card may be a back-door way back in, but historically Barclays is tough on bans so I wouldn’t count on it.
  3. Do this now: Register for your targeted United Mileage Play offer. My offer was “Book and take a trip in a premium seat 2 times to earn 21,000 bonus miles.” My fine print says travel by December 13 and each ticket has to cost $500 before taxes and fees, so best case this is a +2x miles on spend deal.
  4. United has an economy award sale for travel to and from Taipei, Tokyo, Osaka, and Hong Kong at 35,000 miles in each direction for travel through February 25, 2025 booked by tonight, but only for Chase co-brand card holders. The regular saver price is 55,000 miles in each direction. (Thanks to DDG)
  5. American Express Offers has three more offers for hotel stays:

    – $100 back on $300+ at Radisson Blu or Cambria hotels through November 30
    – $100 back on $300+ at Small Luxury Hotels through December 31
    – $150 back on $650+ at The Hotel Collection properties through December 7

    The top two are gameable, the bottom one, probably not so much. How do you game these? As always, buying a gift card is the simplest way, but not the only way.

Happy Thursday!

Another important headline from around the US.

  1. Staples has fee free $200 Visa gift cards starting Sunday and running for two weeks, limit nine per transaction. The two week promotional window is odd, normally when promotions are extended it’s because either (1) people pick up other profitable things when in store for the promotion, or (2) there’s not enough volume to exhaust the promotional budget in one week, so they extend. Neither feels like the right explanation though.

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  2. Giftcards.com has returned to major airline shopping portals. As of this writing, they’re all at 1x and cashbackmonitor.com hasn’t refreshed, but I expect both of these to change soon. Stack with Citi Merchant Offers for 4% back on spend on up to $750.
  3. Bilt Rewards has two new transfer partners, which solves the, err, mystery of why some travel bloggers were at a Bilt offsite earlier this week. I wonder who paid for the offsite? Anyhoodles:

    – Accor Hotels at a 3:2 ratio
    – TAP Air Portugal at a 1:1 ratio

    Accor Hotels partners with Citi and Capital One but with a worse 2:1 transfer ratio. Accor Hotel points are worth about 2.2 cents per point with fixed redemption values and are often a great deal in the European equivalents of Lubbock, TX. TAP Air Portugal is a Capital One transfer partner with the same ratio as Bilt.
  4. Giant, Giant Food Stores, Martin’s, Stop & Shop have 2x points on Visa gift cards through Thursday, limit $1,500 or $2,000 per account depending on store. (Thanks to his eminence, Stephen at GCG)
  5. American Express Membership Rewards has a 20% transfer bonus to AirFrance/KLM FlyingBlue through November 10. Sweet spots:

    – Promo awards, which are mostly economy
    – Business class to and from Europe
    – European short-haul
    – Delta domestic short-haul

    The sweet spots don’t mean transfer speculatively though, you can often find bonuses of up to 30% in multiple bank flexible currencies.

Europe’s versions of Lubbock, like Lübeck Germany, look slightly nicer than the American equivalent.

Forward: Does it ever feel like we as a collective have the memory of guppies? We talked about an American Express Personal Gold 2025 4x dining cap of $50,000 in July and it’s not news anymore, right? Or is this crazy town? Please don’t answer, I probably won’t like what I hear.

  1. Do this now: Put a charge or two on each of your Bank of America credit cards in anticipation of avoiding fraud alerts on November 7, when you’ll get +2x on all spend up to $2,500 on every card account. (Thanks to TeddyH)
  2. American Express Offers has new travel related, partially gameable offers:

    – 20,000 Membership Rewards or $200 statement credit after $1,200 spend on Virgin Atlantic through November 30
    – 20,000 Membership Rewards or $200 statement credit after $1,000 spend on AirFrance or KLM through December 31

    It’s too bad the Virgin Red Synchrony Mastercard isn’t somehow also involved but that’s probably because it hadn’t been invented yet when AmEx cooked up the offer, at least according to what I just made up. (Thanks to FM)

  3. Frontier Airlines has 10,000 bonus miles for booking a roundtrip flight by tonight and completing travel before the end of 2025.

    As we all know, what’s even worse than a Frontier flight? More Frontier flights, that is unless you want to fly Des Moines, Iowa direct to Guadalajara Mexico; Frontier is the only airline that has that flight in the bag.

Happy Tuesday!

Guppy food.

  1. Do this now: Register for a targeted promotion for 50 or 100 American Airlines Loyalty Points earned per 1,000 miles redeemed through the end of the year, but only on new flights booked by October 7.
  2. There’s been a 120,000 Membership Rewards after $10,000 spend in 90 days link for upgrading an American Express Business Green or Gold card to a Platinum card floating around in the darker corners of the internet, and it’s now public. A few notes:

    – If you have a Green or Gold to upgrade, get employee cards first (see item #3)
    – Do the upgrade
    – Order 5 more employee cards with the new POID

    Don’t forget that spend on employee cards counts toward upgrade bonus spend. Also note that this link is of dubious origin so calibrate the reward to your risk tolerance scale. I went for this, but just because I did something doesn’t mean you should too; it might mean that you shouldn’t.
  3. The American Express Hilton Aspire resort credit now only works at a specific set of listed properties, providing further evidence that it’s easier to game these credits than to use them as intended.
  4. MasterCardGiftCard.com has a promotion for 100% off of purchase fees with promo code 100MCGIFT. There’s currently no expiration listed, but the email promoting the code has a copyright date of 2023 which should tell you something about Incomm gift card brands.

    These are Vanilla gift cards.
  5. Some Bank of America payment systems were offline yesterday and may be today too. It’s not you, they’re the problem it’s them.
  6. Amtrak has a promotion for a mystery, per-account bonus multiplier on fall travel through October 31 with registration. I got 2x on my account which means I’ll probably earn 2*0=0 points between now and Halloween. (Thanks to frequentflyerbonuses)

Obligatory photo of Bank of America’s payment processing data center.

  1. Do this now: Activate Q4’s quarterly rotating credit card categories:

    – Chase Freedom: PayPal, McDonalds, pet shops, vets, and some charities
    – Discover IT: Amazon and Target
    – Citi Dividend: Currently the page errors out, cause #CitiGonnaCiti, but in theory it’s restaurants and Citi travel
    – US Bank Cash+: I choose utilities and electronics stores

    For gaming these in the absence of organic use: PayPal P2P works well, Amazon and Target both sell gift cards, utilities usually allow overpayments, and electronics stores like BestBuy sell gift cards. Amazon, Target, and electronics stores are also typically good targets for buying group activity.
  2. Do this now: Register for IHG’s Q4 promotion for 3,000 bonus points for every two nights stayed between this Thursday and December 31.
  3. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card, run by a team who seems to think that they’re a venture capitalist funding a FinTech that will make money “really soon now”™, sent mid-month offers for online spend. We’ve seen:

    – $30 statement credit after $500 spend
    – $50 statement credit after $750 spend
    – $75 statement credit after $1,000 spend
    – 200,000 Shop Your Way Rewards after $750 spend
    – 250,000 Shop Your Way Rewards after $1,000 spend

    (Thanks to Y, MS Ninja, BrandonV, and Jack)
  4. Citi ThankYou Points has two transfer bonuses running through October 19:

    – Leading Hotels of the World Leaders Club: 25% transfer bonus
    – Avianca LifeMiles: 25% transfer bonus

    Both are solid choices, and if you’ve never looked into Leaders Club redemptions, it’s probably worth your time to do it. (Thanks to yt-nthr-rddtr and Oofzies)
  5. The Chase Avios co-braneded cards have increased sign-up bonuses for 100,000 Avios after $7,500 spend in six months. You can choose between British Airways, Iberia, or Aer Lingus cards, and once you have Avios you can transfer them between programs. The $95 annual fee is not waived the first year. Note that smaller benefits, like economy companion certificates or flight statement credits after lots of spend aren’t the same on all three cards.

    Yes, it’s possible to collect all three, but maybe grab some Inks with a referral instead and transfer into Avios programs if you really need them?
  6. Meijer stores have 50,000 MPerks points for $500 in third party gift card purchases through September 28, limit one per MPerks account.

    We all know that you can only have one MPerks account per email address, and we all know that you can have only one email address, right?
  7. M&T Bank has a $350 bonus for opening a new checking account with promo code TN and direct depositing, or “direct depositing” $500 within 90 days. Some regions like California are excluded because reasons.

Who wouldn’t want $1,500 (times n cards) worth of this?

UPDATE: Corrected off by 10 math. 🤦‍♀️

I usually try and order these items based first on how interesting I think they are, and second to try and group like things together(-ish). That was harder than normal today.

  1. The Capital One Spark Cash Plus has one of the more whale friendly sign-up bonuses that I’ve ever seen. The card’s bonus:

    – $2,000 statement credit after $30,000 spending three months
    – $2,000 additional statement credit after every $500,000 spent during the first year
    – $150 statement credit to waive the annual fee after $150,000 spend

    The base card earning structure is 2% on everything. Ignoring the annual fee credit, the sign-up bonus effectively adds: 6.67% extra on your first $30,000 spend and 0.4% extra on exact $500,000 spend increments after. For the math challenged, that’s 8.67% back and then 2.4% back on all spend with proper optimization. The second level hack is to pair it with a miles earning Capital One card to transfer the outsized earning into mileage programs.
  2. The Capital One Venture X Business card has a heightened sign-up bonus:

    – 150,000 miles after $30,000 spend in three months

    Including the normal 2x earning, this card a 7x card for the first $30,000 spend. The $395 annual fee is not waived, but the card does include a somewhat gameable annual $300 travel credit.
  3. Avianca LifeMiles has devalued and retooled award redemption costs. The major changes:

    – US East to the United Kingdom is slightly cheaper in all cabins
    – The rest of US to Europe awards are up 17% for Y, 11% for J, and 50% for F
    – Continental US to Asia is up 33%

    The booking engine and pricing engine both remain quirky and the typical weirdness largely still persists. (Thanks to AwardWallet)
  4. The Citi BestBuy credit card, a future Unsung Hero (thanks to prodding by Derthsidious), has a few recent developments:

    – There’s an uncapped 15% back in rewards on your first day through September 13
    – You can redeem points for non-expiring BestBuy gift cards

    The card has no-annual fee and it earns 3x on gas, and 2x on grocery and dining. If the landing page for the card looks familiar to another weird card, that’s because it’s a cousin to another Unsung Hero.
  5. VanillaGift.com has fee free Visa gift cards through Saturday for back-to-school funzies with promo code VGBTS24. Purchase limits are $10,000 per account per rolling 24 hours, and note that American Express first party cards won’t earn rewards on this site. But that’s one of the many reasons we have non-first party AmExes, right?

    These are Vanilla / Incomm cards which have liquidation throttles at most major chains for in-person transactions.

Rejected design for the Capital One Spark Plus card (sadly).

Some new second and third tier credit cards have recently bounced, and often these are where the fun and real profit in the churning space lies. (Especially because payment services often work better with non-major cards.)

  1. The Bank of America Sonesta World Mastercard has a heightened sign-up bonus. This one’s vitals:

    – $0 annual fee for the first year, $75 annual fee afterward
    – 150,000 point sign-up bonus after $7,500 spend (tiered)
    – 2x earn on dining and other noise

    I’m guessing most of you aren’t familiar with Sonesta Hotels or their points program. They’ve got some rather nice properties, but they’ve also got a few infamous properties like Red Lion and America’s Best Value Inn. Their points are generally worth 1-2 cents each depending on the redemption, and redemptions vary between 10,000 points and 60,000 points with the vast majority of properties at or below 30,000 points.
  2. The Credit One Bank Wander American Express card launched. Its vitals:

    – $95 annual fee
    – No sign-up bonus
    – 5x on dining, gas, and other noise

    Points are worth a fixed 1.0 cents each, and can be redeemed in batches of 1,000.
  3. The Synchrony Virgin Red Rewards Mastercard waitlist opened yesterday. There’s no listed special bonus for signing up for the waitlist, but I don’t see how it could hurt to join (famous last words). The card’s vitals:

    – $99 annual fee
    – 40,000 point sign-up bonus with $3,000 spend in 90 days
    – 3x earn on Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Hotels, and Virgin Voyages
    – 2x on gas, grocery, EV charging, and other noise
    – $15,000 and $30,000 annual spend rewards (companion certificate, hotel night, and other noise)

    It earns Virgin Red points which can be freely transferred to Virgin Atlantic miles. You can also earn up to 50 Virgin Tier Points monthly allows you to reach Silver status on spend alone. (Thanks to DDG)
  4. In May, Wells Fargo launched the Signify Business Mastercard and I missed writing about it, but it’s a nice base hit with Wells Fargo becoming more relevant nearly every day. This one’s stats:

    – $0 annual fee
    – $500 sign-up bonus after $5,000 spend in three months
    – 2% cash back earning everywhere

Now, what’s Visa up to lately? There’s probably a lot at your local mid-sized credit union!

You’re supposed to have a portrait of someone who definitely knows what they’re talking about when you link to credit cards in a blog, right? MEAB FTW.