Category: MS Hints

  1. I’m sure the rebooted Sapphire Reserve launch will be the noisiest in churning history, and I’m sure you can find a few dozen articles in literally less than a minute about why 200,000 points is the new black. The bonuses seem to be:

    – Personal: 100,000 Ultimate Rewards + $500 Chase Travel after $5,000 spend in three months
    – Business: 200,000 Ultimate Rewards after $30,000 spend in six months

    Let’s emphasize four points to help you wade through the impending onslaught of never-ending Sapphire Reserve crap:

    – Offers are probably available via referral from another player, no need to use a blog link
    – 100,000 Ultimate Rewards is nice, but 250,000 Membership Rewards is probably nicer
    – $30,000 spend for 200,000 in Ultimate Rewards isn’t actually a great return
    – Newly launched business cards often bypass 5/24

    Don’t let forced pseudo-urgency drive your decisions, be deliberate.
  2. Accor Live has registration open for double points on reservations booked by July 31 for stays through September 12, but only in the US, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Panama, and Brazil.
  3. Staples has fee-free Visa gift cards through Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  4. American Express offers has an offer for $100-$140 back on $350-$375+ spend at Marriott properties in North America through August 20.
  5. Gift of College cards are now sold at both Stop & Shop and Hannaford. Obviously this is useful if for college tuition expenses, but there are nuggets to be found in old school blogs too.

Have a nice Monday friends!

A 1920s vintage advertising blogger gets affiliate links.

  1. Do this now (if you hold a Chase Southwest card): Register for Southwest’s promotion for 10x points on up to $500 spend at Southwest through Sunday.

    In the post-Elliot Southwest universe, award ticket fees are your best gamer bet. (Thanks to Dave)
  2. Bank of America’s Spirit card has an increased sign-up bonus of 65,000 points and a $100 companion flight voucher after $1,000 spend in 90 days, and the annual fee is waived for the first year. Redemptions on Spirit are often in the 2,500 – 7,500 point range.

    Note that you’ll need a promo code, and reportedly 110662 works, though generally with these any six digit number starting with a ‘1’ also works. (Thanks to DoC)
  3. Kroger has a 4x fuel points sale on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercards running through Tuesday, June 17. Amazon gift cards continue to be excluded.
  4. The Incomm sites are playing their Incomm tricks:

    – MasterCardGiftCard: Fee-free cards with promo DAD2025
    – VanillaGift: Fee-free cards with promo VGDAD25
    – TheGiftCardShop: *crickets*

    Science is still trying to determine what the reason for this promotion is. We may never know. We do however know that these cards work better than others for certain big box retailers, in certain circumstances with certain velocity limits.
  5. Citi ThankYou has Apple gift card redemptions at 10% off, and with $100 Apple gift cards reselling at 90%+ you’ve got a slight edge over a one cent per point cash-out.
  6. Chase Offers has an offer for 10% back on $250+ at Southwest up to $400 through July 2. Obviously this pairs nicely with today’s lead.

Have a nice Thursday!

If gaming Southwest was a fridge, it’d be like a bachelor fridge.

  1. Bank of America’s increased bonuses for the Customized Cash Rewards and Unlimited Cash Rewards cards is scheduled to start on June 1, but applications are occasionally already showing the enhanced bonus because BofA’s IT department has yet to discover a futuristic technology called “the calendar”. Anyhoodles, we’ve now seen what bonus cash-back will look like with Platinum Honors uplift with these offers:

    – Unlimited Cash gets an extra 0.5% cash back in the first year regardless of status
    – Customized Cash’s rewards are boosted based on status

    You know what they say though: IT that hasn’t mastered calendars probably hasn’t mastered boosted rewards either.
  2. The Citi AA Executive card has an increased offer of 100,000 miles after $10,000 spend in three months.

    When this card was introduced, you could open eight of them at the same time, hit the minimum spend, and cancel all before the annual fees hit. Those days are long gone from Citi, but not every bank is Citi.
  3. The Citi Rewards+ card, notable for its 10% rebate on redeemed ThankYou Points, will be converted to the no-annual fee Citi Strata card on July 20. The 10% rebate will either go away in July 19, 2025, or July 19, 2026 if you’ve held your card for less than a year so it’s time to redeem while the redeeming is good. The Citi Strata’s interesting bonus categories are:

    – 3x at grocery, transit, gas, and EV charging
    – 3x on a selectable category which is largely lame

    If you want the Strata card, you’ll be able to apply on July 20.
  4. Bank of America’s Alaska card’s bonus often bounces between 60,000 and 70,000 miles, and whenever it bounces there’s discussion. But, alaska75k.com has been around for a long time and continues to work. Can we stop talking about the other ones yet? [end micro rant]
  5. United is removing the Excursionist Perk and elite YBM upgrades from its MileagePlus program on August 21, and removing its upgrade award chart on November 24. But don’t worry, award redemption rates continue to outpace inflation, so #winning?
  6. Kroger has fee-free Visa gift cards online through Tuesday with promo code CLASSOF2025. These will also earn fuel points.
  7. Stop & Shop, Giant Foods, and Martins earn 10x points on Zift Zillions cards through Thursday. Their little step brother Giant earns 4x over the same time. No, Giant Foods and Giant being the same company but different isn’t confusing, why would you think that?
  8. Blit Rewards added Qatar Airways as a transfer partner at a 1:1 ratio (Or according to their poor layout on the “Participating Loyalty Partners” page, it’s actually a -1:1 ratio).

MEAB factoid of the day: The Toyota Blit can transfer you to your Qatar flight, completing the circle of award life.

  1. Kroger has a 4x fuel points sale on third party gift cards other than Amazon starting tomorrow and running through Monday evening.

    And with Target resale rates recently returning to 91%+, I think it’s safe to say the major brand bulk gift card reselling market has healed from its Pepper burns.
  2. Blit Rewards* cut earnings on rent payments made with a credit card to 0.5x.
  3. Bluebird and Serve will be shutting down in June 2026, which gives you *checks notes* a full year to finish abusing them, ideally with five per social security number.
  4. Citi ThankYou’s reduced value cash-out for Strata Premier cardholders won’t affect those with linked Rewards+ or Double Cash cards in their ThankYou Points accounts. To link your Premier and another card to the same ThankYou Point pool, call 800-842-6596.

    Note that linked cards can be unlinked in the future, but it does weird things to points held in your account and may inadvertently cause points expiration depending on your card portfolio. To be safe if you ever unlink, make sure every card has earned at least one point in the last 18 months.

*The company gets too much undeserved press, so (1) I’m not linking them, and (2) quoting reader Jim’s sage advice “I don’t care what  the media says about me as long as they spell my name right.”

Blit Reward’s company kitchen shopping list.

  1. The Capital One Venture Visa card has an increased sign-up bonus of 100,000 miles and a $250 travel credit through Capital One Travel after $5,000 spend in three months, but only via referral. (Thanks to DDG)
  2. American Express has been somewhat quietly shutting down certain churners for a little over a week. Major blogs have started to post stories, but none seem to have any deeper info so I guess it’s up to me to assuage some fears and summarize. Based on 34 data points (so take this with a √34 grain of salt) there are probably three types of shutdowns:

    – Buyers group shenanigans, but not the kind of buyers group that you’re probably thinking
    – Multiple large payments made from an account with a completely different name, even going back as far as 2019
    – Having the same or nearly the same name as someone involved in the above (I have the least confidence in this reason, but it fits the data)

    Most of you won’t need to worry about this unless you were already aware of what’s going on. If you happen fall into the third type of shutdown because of random luck though, the good news is that American Express is only axing certain cards, not all of them.
  3. Southwest released details about its new tier benefits, fare bundles, and co-brand credit card benefits. The summary:

    – Flight credits are valid for between 6 and 12 months for voluntary cancelations
    – Cardholders and elites get free checked bags for themselves and up to eight companions
    – A-List Preferred gets free extra-legroom seats at booking, A-List at T-48
    – Companions inherit status and card benefits
    – Basic economy gets no advanced seating reservations and no changes

    My major complaint with flying Southwest in the past was the lack of assigned seating. They are addressing that issue, but are replacing it with a bunch of other issues so yay private equity. (Thanks to Brian M)
  4. Reader Vince had a guest post at Doctor of Credit about Franki, a card-linked rebate program for restaurants with discounts as high as 20% off. If you have a checklist of things to do when you get a new card, adding it to Franki could be another item.
  5. Kroger stores have a 4x fuel points promotion running on third party gift cards excluding Amazon and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards through May 13. (Thanks to GCA)
  6. Emirates Skywards miles are going through a mid-life crisis:

    – There’s an unannounced (maybe unintentional) 25% bonus from Capital One
    – At the end of next month, Chase and American Express transfers will be offline through summerish
    – Last week they transfers from non-premium Citi cards were devalued

    If you believe the rumor mill, transfers going offline are caused by Emirates switching its backend loyalty program to a new platform and rebuilding integrations, but I have no extra knowledge to help confirm or deny the rumor.
  7. Incomm gift card sites have fee free gift cards for Mother’s Day running now through May 11:

    – TheGiftCardShop fee-free $100+ Visa gift cards with promo MOM25
    – MasterCardGiftCard fee-free $50+ Mastercard gift cards with promo MOM2025
    – VanillaGift fee-fee $50+ gift cards with promo VGMOM25

    Each of these sites has relatively liberal purchase limits once you’ve got a good account, and none of them earn points or count toward sign-up bonuses on first party American Express cards.

Emirates mid-life crisis convertible.

  1. Do this now (if you hold a Chase Hyatt personal card): Register for Hyatt’s 20x bonus points promotion at Under Canvas hotels and at ULUM Moab for stays through June 10. The 20x promotion caps out at 100,000 points.

    You’ll also earn 5x points plus any base spend status boost you have, so I’m surprised they’re not marketing this as 25x, but what do I know? Either way I appreciate the honesty.
  2. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card has new mid-month spend offers. We’ve seen:

    – 250,000 Shop Your Way points after $750+ in online spend
    – 325,000 Shop Your Way points after $1,000+ in online spend
    – $100 statement credit after $1,000+ in online spend

    Online gas doesn’t usually work for a lot of reasons, but otherwise this category is fairly wide open. (Thanks to irieriley, Michael)
  3. The Capital One Venture X Business charge card has a new tiered sign-up bonus:

    – 150,000 miles after $30,000 spend in three months
    – 200,000 miles after $200,000 spend in six months

    If you’re in your “sign-up bonuses are a big part of my earn” churning era, this likely isn’t worth your time. If you’re in the “sign-up bonuses barely move the needle” churning era, earning 3.75x on $200,000 spend is hard to beat.
  4. The Synchrony Cathay Pacific Asia Miles Mastercard is now accepting applications. The most important vitals:

    – 38,000 bonus miles after $3,000 spend in three months
    – $99 annual fee
    – 2x earn on dining, 3x on Cathay Pacific, and 1x otherwise

    Synchrony cards are often more valuable than they appear, maybe read deeper than the almost uniform negativity around this card in the space.
  5. The Hilton American Express NLL offers shared in the past continue to work:

    Aspire: 175,000 Hilton points after $6,000 spend in six months
    Surpass:130,000 Hilton points and a Free Night Certificate after $3,000 spend in six months
    Honors: 70,000 Hilton points and a Free Night Certificate after $2,000 spend in six months

    Why share again? They’re making the rounds in the community as though they were new, sometimes with the disclaimer that they’re modified or hacked leaks. People are wrong though, these are neither. They’re links from a US hotel’s captive WiFi page.
  6. David let me know that the AA eShopping portal added the following language limiting earning for Apple purchases for apparently your entire account life:

    Your rewards are subject to lifetime rewards limits of: (a) six (6) units per model in each of the following product categories: iPhone, Mac, iPad, Watch, Vision, Apple TV, and HomePod; (b) thirty-two (32) units of each of the following: AirTag 1-pack and AirTag accessories; (c) eight (8) AirTag 4-pack; and (d) ten (10) units of each of the following: AirPods and other eligible accessories. The lifetime rewards limit applies to any purchase you make from the Apple Store website and app. Rewards will not be issued once you exceed the lifetime rewards limit for a product.

    This change has spread to the other airline portals too, including the weirder ones like FlyingBlue and Virgin Atlantic. Likely each portal has its own lifetime limit, but that remains to be tested.
  7. American Express offers has an offer for $100 off of $500+ in spend at Delta, but flights have to be booked through American Express Travel. Fortunately this trick works on Delta too with slight tweaks.
  8. Breeze Airways has a sale for 40% off of base fares booked by tomorrow night for travel between April 30 and January 6, 2026 with promo code SMILE.

    There are a few blackout dates around major holidays, but the fact that this promotion runs all the way through next year gives us a good indication of fall and winter domestic travel demand.

A dapper churner reads deeper.

The Game

One of the most easily explainable and most accessible manufactured spend techniques is to prepay your taxes with a rewards card and get a refund for your prepayments as a check or ACH deposit after filing your return. Since today is tax day, that means that today’s your last day to make that work easily for your 2024 return and have still have a short window until your overpayment refund posts.

A few easy ways to do that along with limits per return:

  • Pay1040: 1.75% cost for most cards [2x]
  • ACI Payments: 1.85% cost for most cards [2x]
  • Plastiq: 2.9% + $1.49 [∞x, depending on Kirkland and Brooklyn’s moods]
  • Melio: 2.9% [∞x, but only for business payments]

If you see a higher transaction fee on Pay1040 or ACI using a business card, use PayPal for a reduced fee structure. Note that Plastiq and Melio payments take a few days to post to your tax account.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Generally nothing goes wrong, but there have been rare reported instances in the past of the IRS holding funds for overpayment refunds. These seem to be related to big scale that triggers an internal fraud warning. In the worst case, a whale once needed to get an IRS Taxpayer Advocate to help shake funds loose.

There also seems to be a periodic bug with American Express instant card numbers and tax payments not counting toward minimum spend without opening a case with American Express support. But I wouldn’t let that stop me from getting a new card and knocking out the spend in a single day.

Legal Crap

Obviously, I’m not a tax professional and I’m definitely not your tax professional, so don’t trust anything I say about any topic, ever.

Good luck!

Last week’s edition of “What could possibly go wrong?”

From at least 2017 through 2021, the Walmart mobile app had functionality for making bill payments from your phone through CheckFreePay, much like their in-store money center bill pay option. With the right gyrations it was a great from-home liquidation channel, supported plenty of volume, and in some cases even served as a liquidation channel of last resort.

In Spring 2021 though, Walmart updated the user interface framework and the interface for its mobile apps, and in the process killed bill pay functionality. But, technical users could install an old version of the app and keep access to bill payments. Those payments continued to work for months, and even worked better than before, probably due to decreased transaction load and volume.

Why bring this up today? Is this a timely post? Two answers:

  • No, it’s not timely because there are always games to play with older apps
  • Yes, it’s timely because there are always games to play with older apps

Have a nice Monday friends!

Throwbacks gonna throwback.