Category: Miles

There’s plenty to overwhelm you out there, this weekend more-so than normal. My quick advice is set a profit threshold for yourself and skip anything that doesn’t look like it’ll pass that amount as fast as you can. I promise there are other things around the corner that will. In the mean time:

  1. Rakuten has 5x or 5% cash back for in store purchases at Staples through December 24, but unlike past variants this one is limited to three redemptions per account and $15 cash back per transaction.

    Fortunately for us, we have the technology to combine Rakuten’s card linked program, American Express Business Gold or Chase Ink cards, and Staples fee-free gift card promotions to help make this a good use of time. (Thanks to Douglas)
  2. Avianca LifeMiles has a 15% transfer bonus for incoming transfers from American Express Membership Rewards accounts through December 10.
  3. The Bilt card has double points on 1x categories other than rent between today and Cyber Monday. They also have 16x through linked Visa and Mastercards on Bilt Restaurants, but uh, good luck finding one of those and wanting to eat there this weekend.

    Double points on general spend that can transfer to AA and Hyatt is worth a double take.
  4. Kroger online has $10 off of $150 or more in Visa or Mastercard gift cards using promo code THANKFUL23 through Wednesday of next week. These are US Bank issued cards.
  5. Breeze Airways has a tiered fare sale running with promo code CYBER for flights booked by Monday night. The discount is between 10% and 60% based on how far out the flights are, with the closest flights having the largest discount.

    As is custom at MEAB, a new promo code for Breeze means another drawing for “Breeze dartboard route map bingo”. Ladies and gentlemen, today’s dartboard route is: Cincinnati, OH to Providence, RI! If this completes your Bingo board, please collect your prize (spoiler alert, the prize involves the word CYBER).
  6. Virgin Atlantic has a 33% discount on flight award redemptions on Virgin Atlantic metal through Monday evening for flights through September 30, 2024. (Thanks to FM)
  7. It’s been dead for a minute,

Have a nice weekend!

A sage reader once told me that with hoarders, you really need to think in terms of three dimensions, not just floor space. Ditto for deals this weekend.

  1. Chase “green star” offers have returned with targeted increased sign-up bonuses for Ink cards:

    – Ink Business Premier: 150,000 Ultimate Rewards after $15,000 spend in three months
    – Ink Business Unlimited: $1,200 after $6,000 spend in three months

    To see the offers, click the hamburger menu (≡) in app or online, then click “Just for you”.
  2. Check your email for a targeted offer from Bilt for 1,000 bonus points on any charge at AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, Comcast, Xfinit®, Spectrum, Spotify, Netflix, and Hulu using your Bilt Mastercard.

    The bonus caps out at 5,000 points, or *checks notes and runs a massive program on a super-computer* five merchants. (Thanks to DDG)
  3. Do this now (if you hold an AA credit card): Register for +1 miles and +1 Loyalty Points for AA charges made in the month of November.

    Can you game this? I don’t know, but I like your odds on this one.
  4. Safeway, Albertsons, Vons, and other Just4U stores have a coupon for 10x points on various gift cards, and even though they’re not explictly named, all of the Choose Your Card variety are currently earning the bonus.

    The best option that I know of is to convert to Lowes which has a resale rate of approximately 90%.

The MEAB supercomputer.

Three out of the four items for today are weird, but I’ll let you decide which.

  1. Meijer has a promotion for 10,000 MPerks points with a $100 Happy or Choice gift card purchase through Saturday, limit 10,000 points per account.

    Convert these to BestBuy or Home Depot for the best return, and scale with multiple MPerks accounts.
  2. Wyndham has a transfer bonus to United MileagePlus for a single transaction through the end of the month. Assuming you’re normally earning at 8x with the Wyndham Business Rewards card, the conversion gives you an effective earn rate of 3.2x MileagePlus miles per dollar which is actually great. The tiers:

    – 6,000 Wyndham to 2,400 MileagePlus
    – 16,000 Wyndham to 6,400 MileagePlus
    – 30,000 Wyndham to 12,000 MileagePlus
    – 60,000 Wyndham to 24,000 MileagePlus (May be targeted, thanks to pluckyhere)

    Of course there’s a big asterisk here: you can only do this once and the promotion caps out at 12,000 24,000 MileagePlus miles. For the math challenged, that means $3,750 $7,500 in spend at a gas station with the Wyndham Business Card. (Thanks to FM)
  3. According to DoC, Capital One is sending targeted email offers for referring a new business to a Capital One credit card with a hefty $1,500 bonus up to three times for the referrer on top of the usual sign-up bonus for the referred.

    I’ve yet to independently confirm this bonus in the wild, but it’s big enough that I decided to deviate from my norm and call attention to it anyway. (It’s “scruples be damned” Monday, right?)
  4. Southwest has a sweepstakes for “learning about the benefits of Rapid Rewards Credit Cards”. It’s a memory match two card game, and you can enter once per day through the end of the month. The top prize is 25,000 Rapid Rewards points for the top of the leaderboard.

    I wouldn’t normally write about this because most of you will end up with nothing, but now that we’re living in a new world order let’s talk gaming to sharpen your skills for the future: To win, train some AI on a throw away Rapid Rewards account then let it rip on your actual account daily. It’s the new normal and almost certainly what the winners are going to do unless the game is vulnerable to a JSON/XHR attack. (Thanks to Brian M)

Have a nice Monday friends!

There are exactly three weird things in this picture too.

  1. United has a new round of targeted MileagePlay promotions, check yours and rebook any flights as necessary since pre-existing bookings won’t count. These typically range between awful and decent, with a moderate bias toward the former.

    I beat the Poisson distribution on this one though, and got a decent offer for 5x bonus miles for booking and flying a single trip through September 20, minimum $100. That one will actually move the needle on a booking for me, so bravo United.
  2. On Tuesday August 1 you’ll be able to transfer Bilt points to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club miles with rather sizable bonuses of between 75% and 150% depending on your status level with the program, which is based on the number of points earned in a calendar year.

    Normally I wouldn’t speculatively transfer miles to any airline that I wasn’t flying on a dozen times a year or more, but I could see my way into doing so with this permission given the high transfer bonuses. Things to keep in mind:

    – Virgin Atlantic is due for a devaluation after they tried and failed in 2021
    – Virgin Atlantic has fees for cancelling and redepositing award tickets ($41-$50)
    – Flying business class on ANA or Delta are the typical sweet spots
    – You’ve often got to call customer service to book award tickets

    So with those caveats, I’d look at what you might book in the next 2-3 months and transfer over enough miles to cover just those bookings, but you do you.
  3. Do this now (if you have a Marriott co-branded credit card): Register for 10,000 bonus points after $7,000 or more in spend through September 30.

Have a nice weekend!

Top: US Airline on-time performance distribution
Bottom: Spirit Airlines on-time performance distribution

  1. Meijer stores has a clickable coupon for $10 off of $150 or more in Visa gift cards through Saturday, limit one per MPerks account.

    Meijer stores sell both Metabank Pathward and Sunrise gift cards. I know which one I’d choose for several reasons, but especially out of principle. I’m currently outside of the Meijer footprint though so my choice instead is to stand outside in the cold rain, watching everyone else’s Meijer party inside the warm, comfy house.
  2. There’s a new link for the Barclay AA Aviator card’s 70,000 mile sign-up bonus requiring only a single purchase. For better approval odds, spend a lot on existing Barclays cards and then pay them off. (Thanks to DoC)
  3. There are four new transfer bonuses for July:

    – American Express has a 30% transfer bonus to British Airways Avois through August 31
    – American Express has a 30% transfer bonus to Iberia Avios through August 31
    – Capital One has a 20% transfer bonus to AirFrance/KLM Flying Blue through July 31
    – Chase has a 70% transfer bonus to IHG through July 31
  4. Chase Offers has an easy to game offer for 10% off of Southwest airfare, up to $40 back. The simplest play is to turn this into discount travel funds, but the more lucrative play is to turn this into a statement credit with no effective outstanding charge.
  5. Chase also has targeted offers for spend at gas, grocery, and restaurants on personal credit cards:

    – Hyatt, Southwest, United, Freedom and IHG: 5x up to $1,500 in spend
    – British Airways: 10x up to $1,500 in spend

    Sometimes the Chase website gets confused after a single form submission and incorrectly tells you it can’t find information or you’re not targeted on all subsequent submissions. To avoid that, open a new incognito browser window for each card you check.
  6. The Capital One Shopping portal has a mildly interesting $10 bonus for both the referrer and referred on new shopping portal accounts provided the new account installs the Capital One toolbar and spends $10 through the portal within a month. A few notes:

    – Giftcards.com is on the Capital One Shopping portal
    – Giftcards.com typically has negative cost deals around major holidays
    – In the US, July 4 was a major holiday last time I checked
    – You don’t need to hold a Capital One card to have an account on the portal
    – I recommend creating new Capital One shopping accounts periodically anyway to avoid clawbacks

    Why no, I can’t possibly see how this could go wrong for Capital One, why do you ask?

Pictured: 1. Capital One Shopping portal (road), and 2. manufactured spenders (mud slide)

  1. Do this now: Register for Hyatt promotion for 1,000 bonus points per night up to 10,000 bonus points at Dream Hotels in New York, Nashville, South Beach, and Los Angeles for stays between July 6 and September 15.

    This marks the first time that I’ve ever seen Nashville in the same city lineup as New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. Nice job Nashville marketing team I guesss?
  2. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card, now a MEAB Unsung Hero for nearly 2 1/2 years, has a new round of targeted promotions, so far seen only via USPS. This round is 15% back as a statement credit on up to $1,200 in spend at gas, grocery, and restaurants each month for the months of July, August, and September. I Expect that more of these offers will go out via email over the weekend. (Thanks to birt)
  3. The Apple Credit Card has a targeted promotion worth $200 per day in cash back through July 25. You get:

    – 10% back promotion on up to $1,000 in spend at Walgreens and Uber (and less interesting stores like Ace, Exxon Mobile, Nike, T-Mobile, and Panera)
    – 10% back on up to $1,000 in spend at other stores

    If you max this promotion you’ll get $200 * 26 days, or $5,200 for the math challenged. Level two players can earn even more on the payment side. (Thanks to DoC)
  4. GC Galore notes that BestBuy online now sells Amazon electronic gift cards which is useful for leveraging card linked offers from Chase, Bank of America, and American Express.

Why visit New York, Miami, or Los Angeles when Nashville has this tourist attraction?

  1. Barclays has a few increased co-brand sign-up bonuses:

    – The Barclays AAdvantage Aviator card has a bonus of 70,000 AA miles after making a purchase and paying the $99 annual fee within 90 days of card opening. This card is doubly interesting because on day 366, you can convert it to a Barclays Aviator Silver card which is only available by product change and offers two companion tickets and $25 per day in AA inflight food and beverage credits.

    – The Barclays Hawaiian Airlines card has 70,000 Hawaiian miles after spending $2,000 in 90 days. You don’t get a backdoor conversion to a cooler card after a year though so close it on the anniversary.

    If you apply for both of these on the same calendar day Barclays will combine the credit pull, though both will eventually appear on your credit report and affect 5/24 individually. Aren’t sure if you’re eligible for a bonus? Barclays makes it easy – if you’re approved you’ll get the bonus after hitting the minimum spend regardless of the language in the application; I can only assume it’s this way because Barclays backend tech is still catching up to Web 1.0 and they’ve just migrated to NCSA Mosaic.
  2. There’s a 30% transfer bonus from ThankYou Points to Qatar Avios through June 30, which is actually a great option for several travel hacks:

    – AA or Iberia business class to and from Europe for 70,000 Avios
    – Qatar business class to and from Doha, Qatar for 70,000 Avois
    – Royal Air Maroc business class to and from Morocco for 70,000 Avios
    – Transferring your Qatar Avios to British Airways Avios and booking AA short-haul domestic for as little as 7,500 Avios

    I don’t like pooling points in a particular program and wouldn’t pool much at any airline, but it’s not hard to beat the alternative 1 cent per point ThankYou Point cash-out with Qatar Avios. (Thanks to TheSultan1)
  3. IHG Hotels now allow confirmed suite upgrades on award stays. These are available as elite choice benefits and availability opens at 14 days prior to the stay.

Have a nice weekend!

Bet you didn’t know you could use Avios to book travel on AA to Lubbock, TX to see Prairie Dog Town. Yes, this is real and it actually exists.

[The normal post routine is taking a break today but will be back tomorrow]

I’ve had a few of you reach out to let me know that older content on the site isn’t displaying properly. I’ve done plenty of digging and it looks like all of the posts prior to March 29 have the same content in the WordPress database, which means that currently all of the content is lost on the MEAB server. A few notes:

  • Apparently it’s been gradually happening for a while and getting worse slowly
  • Apparently until recently if you reloaded the page the right content would show up (but no longer)

Like any good techie, I’ve got backups of the server and database, but unfortunately backups happen on Mondays and I only retain the most recent three so the backups don’t really help here. I have a hunch about what caused the issue (a plugin for content caching) and I’ve disabled it, but I can’t say for certain that the cause of the issue is fixed.

What does all of this mean for old MEAB content?

Well, it’s all still out there in Google’s cache or as emailed newsletters, so I think I can slowly put it back in place. In the mean time though, this site gets really boring before March 29 (or, it’s transformed from the site of just another blogger where every article sounds the same to the site of just another blogger where every article is the same).

If you have particular articles you’d like restored more quickly, email me a quick note and I’ll do my best. Have a nice Tuesday friends!

Pictured: MEAB trying to work on the site’s database.