Category: MS Hints

1. Reader Mark wrote in to let me know that the Target RedCard deal is back, this time worth $80 for each cycle (you get one coupon for $40 off of in-store purchases, and another coupon for $40 off of online purchases). Remember, you can churn this deal. I believe currently you have to wait 48-72 hours between closing a RedCard and opening a new one, which is different than how it worked over the summer.

2. The Point debit card currently has an offer for 15x at Nike.com (or 30x if you’ve gotten your new Point card in the mail), for up to $50 total in cash back. Nike is also currently 5x at the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal and 10% cash back at RebatesMe, and historically physical gift cards have always tracked with portals.

Nike resale rates are around 91% right now, so for buying a $340 card the deal will be worth:

  • With RebatesMe, $53.40
    • $50 back from Point
    • $34 back from RebatesMe
    • -$30.60 resale loss
  • With Chase UR, $19.40 + 1,700 Ultimate Rewards
    • $50 back from Point
    • -$30.60 resale loss
    • 1,700 Ultimate Rewards from Chase

Not bad for probably 4 minutes worth of your time. You can check the current shopping portal rates at cashbackmonitor, and as always, if you sign up for Point use a referral because the referral bonus is $100 while the public offer is $10. Get a referral from a friend, or reach out to me in a pinch.

MS Hint: These are just a couple of debit cards that could be part of your churning toolbelt. Get out there and find a few others, there are some crazy and valuable options.

I mistyped a search at Google with”churning curds” and got this. I call it serendipity.

1. It’s time to buy BestBuy gift cards for resale at Amazon (or to buy regular merchandise if that’s how you roll). Check for the following offers:

  • Discover 40% off up to $40 back when using at least one point
  • American Express 30% off up to $30 back when using at least one Membership Rewards point
  • Chase 50% off up to $15 back when using at least one Ultimate Rewards point

With all of these you should use only one point because the redemption value isn’t great. Also combine with any bonus offers linked to your cards if you have them (AmEx currently has a 5x offer at Amazon for example). If the offers aren’t showing for you on Amazon’s site: unlink the relevant cards, wait a couple hours, add the cards back, wait a couple of hours, then try again. That’ll usually do the trick to get you eligible.

2. Check your email for a targeted spending offer on the no annual-fee Citi Shop Your Way Rewards Mastercard (a still future Miles Earn and Burn Unsung Hero card). The current offer is 10x at home improvement and electronics stores up to $12,500 in spend, and it of course works in tandem with another offer for 10% back on utility payments up to $500 in spend per month until January. Look for emails with the following subject (but prolly replace Matthew with your name, because duh):

  • “Matthew, your limited-time offer is here. Activate now.”
  • “Matthew, activate your bonus rewards offer!”

3. Check for the following American Express coupons offers:

  • 5x at Amazon
  • $25 back on $250 at BestBuy
  • $40 back on $200 at Hertz
  • $200 back on $1,000 at Delta Vacations (hint: You can book Disney with Delta Vacations)

There are other good ones too, just clip those coupons save them to your account.

The feel that American Express is evidently shooting for with their ultra-premium Platinum and Centurion cards.

Q4 is a great time to be in the game, and there are a few MS opportunities that cropped up over the weekend to kick it up a notch:

1. CashApp has an interesting boost for 10% back on online purchases at Sam’s Club up to $20, once per day between now and November 23. GC Galore also just broke news that Sam’s Club is officially recognizing gift cards for rebates with shopping portals. As of this writing, JetBlue has 3x at Sam’s and TopCashBack has 2% back, so between the two you’re looking at a 12% discount or better on $200 in gift cards every day for the next three weeks or so.

Best options: Vanilla Visa, Vanilla Mastercard, and Disney (thanks to Kyle for the Disney tip.) If you’re not currently a Sam’s Club member, spin up a new email address that you haven’t used before and you can get a new membership for $45 with a $45 Sam’s gift card included.

2. I’m getting bored with office supply store deals and getting really sick of $200 Metabank gift cards. In case you’re not like me, Staples has your back with another fee free $200 Visa gift card for up to five cards per transaction. The deal runs between now and Saturday. I’ll be sitting this one out because it’s too distracting with all the other Q4 shenanigans and the deluge of crazy FinTechs launching new products.

3. The Point debit card has double earning between whenever you get your updated card in the mail and the end of the year. That makes it effectively a 2% cash back debit card, or more if you spend in bonus categories (currently 10x on subscriptions for streaming, 6x on rideshare and delivery, 30x at Nike, 40x at HBO Max, 10x at Whole Foods, 10x at Amazon, 10x at Costco, 10x at Trader Joes, and 10x at coffee shops after doubling).

If you don’t currently have a Point debit card, sign up through a referral because you’ll get a $100 sign-up bonus rather than the public $10 bonus. Unfortunately though, they raised the annual fee to $99 for the card, but at least opening one doesn’t do a credit pull or affect Chase 5/24. If you want a card, find a friend for a referral and make their day, but if you can’t find a friend reach out to me and I’ll hook you up.

I don’t think I understood going up a notch until now, but I guess it means going from “bail” to “cabin”. Go cabin everyone!

Background

Bravo is a great platform for sending person-to-person payments with both credit and debit cards. I first heard about Bravo in early 2019 from the now defunct Middle Age Miles blog. It’s never been the lowest fee liquidation option, but if you are earning 5-15x when buying gift cards and you’ve filled up other channels or run out of lower-fee liquidation, it can make sense.

The problem with Bravo though is that the fees started out relatively high and they’ve continued to creep higher, just like ancillaries on Frontier airlines. The evolution:

  • The fees started out at a flat 2%
  • They capped the flat 2% to payments of $499.99 or less
  • Around September 2020 they raised the fees for payments above $10 to be 2.9% + $0.31 per payment (or more)
  • Sometime in the last several weeks, they raised the fee to 3.6% + 0.31 per payment above $30.01

At this point, it’s really, really hard to justify the use of Bravo. That said, I suppose it could still make sense for some of you.

Forcing the Old Fee Structure

Here’s the kicker with the fees though: Until the last couple of weeks you could still send payments under the old 2% flat fee structure. How? By using an old version of the app and jumping through a few other (small) hoops.

Why did this happen? Well, I can tell you in general even though I don’t have any special inside information: a golden rule in mobile app and web development is that the server should validate everything, and the server should be responsible for “business logic” like the fees charged on a transaction. You can never trust a users device to be above board. Bravo’s team clearly didn’t follow this rule. The fees were hard coded into the application itself, so using an older application would give you an older fee structure. It took their team years to finally plug this hole.

Lessons Learned

  • Older apps can unlock functionality that’s been removed or changed, and that can even affect the way you’re charged for a service
  • Backing up your applications on iOS or having quick access to apkmirror on Android will often be useful for future tinkering
  • Sometimes you’ll need multiple versions of an application to accomplish a task

And of course the most important lesson for the software developers out there: Always validate on the server side. Always. (Unless you’re trying to help us out, in which case, thanks.)

Pictured: Bravo’s fix for the “2% in perpetuity” hole.

1. Office Depot / OfficeMax has $15 back on $300 or more in Visa gift cards running through Saturday. As usual, to maximize the deal:

  • Link your credit card with Dosh before buying
  • Check your Chase Offers for 5% back or 10% back at Office Depot (and activate the offer if you have it)
  • Buy the “Everywhere” variety of cards for lower fees
  • Make sure you have a liquidation channel, especially for the Everywhere variety
  • Try and get at least two transactions per trip to save you time and energy

(Thanks to GC Galore)

2. There’s a new American Express targeted 20,000 points bonus floating around the community for turning on “Pay Over Time”. Check your charge cards at this link. Note that for me it leads to an offer for 20,000 points for adding an Authorized User which obviously has nothing to do with Pay Over Time. Either way I’m happy to take 20,000 points. (Thanks to DDG)

3.A new link has surfaced for one of my favorite cards (for its churnability and upgradability), the “no lifetime language / NLL” American Express Business Gold card with a 90,000 Membership Rewards sign up bonus after spending $10,000 in three months. It has another 30,000 points for drawing from an American Express Kabbage line of credit within the same three months of opening. (Thanks to blackfishfilet)

The 90,000 for the Business Gold is a great bonus, especially because you can probably get a six figure Membership Rewards Platinum upgrade bonus on the card after holding it for a few months. As far as Kabbage goes? You can do it, but you’ll almost certainly have to fight to get the account opened and linked, and then fight again to get your 30,000 extra Membership Rewards. Personally, I’d just consider this a 90,000 point bonus rather than 120,000, but that’s just because I value my time and stuff.

Pictured: American Express Kabbage if it were a bedroom.

1. I’m seeing a 30% transfer bonus for both Marriott and Hilton on my American Express Membership Rewards travel partner page. There’s a report on reddit of a 20% transfer bonus for Cathay Pacific’s Asia Miles too, though I don’t have that one. It’s likely worth taking a look at your own profile’s page to see what might be there for you.

2. It’s still raining gift cards, this time from Simon. Use promo code OCT21SAVE45 for 45% off of fees on bulk Visa gift card purchases. You can buy $1,000 Visa gift cards at Simon with low fees, and it’s a decent way to get some spend on Citi cards. As always, remember that American Express doesn’t give you points for spend at Simon.

These continue to work at mid-tier grocery stores and at several online processors. If you don’t have a way to liquidate, keep looking — they do exist.

3. Multiple independent sources are confirming that Hyatt’s peak/off-peak pricing will be implemented on October 26. That gives you six days to book award stays for March 2022 and later at the current prices. Don’t slack too long!

The new redemption chart is here, and unlike most loyalty award changes this one has some good with the bad — if you’re staying in Lubbock Texas on a Wednesday night in July (also known as “as off-peak as it possibly gets”), you might be able to get a night at the Hyatt Place for 3,500 points instead of 5,000 points.

Pictured: Your window view during your off-peak award stay in Lubbock, TX.

1. If you have a Chase Freedom Flex (and really you should, 3x at drugstores like CVS is one of the best ways to earn to Ultimate Rewards), I’d suggest that you take advantage of the new offer for $1,500 in spend at 5x in the category you spend the most on, out of: travel, dining, home improvement stores, grocery stores (except Target and Walmart), drugstores, gas stations, select live entertainment (lol), select streaming services, and fitness clubs. You’re automatically registered as long as you activated your Q4 5x categories.

If any of these overlap with your Freedom Flex’s Q4 bonus categories (PayPal and Walmart), you’ll earn 9x instead of 5x. My current churning life regret is that I only have one Freedom Flex card.

2.There’s a relatively new targeted spend offer on the landing page on the Ultimate Rewards portal for Ink Preferred cards. The offer is 50,000 bonus points for each $50,000 in spend up to $250,000. You can find the terms here. If you can MS in advertising or shipping categories, you’ll end up at 4x with this offer. (Thanks to Danny)

3. The Chase Sapphire Preferred 100,000 Ultimate Rewards points offer with first year’s annual fee waived and a $50 credit at grocery stores is still alive in-branch. My business banker said that they haven’t heard that it’ll be pulled yet, so it could stick around for at least a couple of more weeks. I still prefer the churnable Chase Ink cards to the Sapphire Preferred for almost everyone though.

Ok, but where are Chase’s Tuesday Tacos? Here, duh.

1. Staples has $200 fee free Mastercards up to five per transaction this week, and this time it’s for real — they pinky-promised and said no take-backs, so I think we’re good. The promotion runs between yesterday and Saturday. Note: There are recent reports that Payce has paid 5% on gift card purchases at Staples, though it can be spotty and it’s definitely not supposed to work that way so don’t write Payce support if it didn’t track for you.

These cards are Metabanks and they’re becoming more difficult to directly cash out, but it’s still possible. Some of the low hanging fruit is at regional grocery stores, but from home options also exist.

2. Office Depot / OfficeMax has $15 off of $300 in Visa gift cards back through Saturday. Remember to link your cards with Dosh for extra cash back, which will make this deal about a $14 money maker each time with the everywhere cards which, despite their name, do not work everywhere that Visa is taken (they do work in many places which matter for us though).

3. Meijer Mperks is has a current offer for $5 off of a future purchase when buying $50 in gift cards, up to 10 times per Mperks account between now and October 23. In case you’re not mathematically inclined, a single $500 gift card will earn you $50, or 10% back.

This one excludes some Visas and Mastercards, but you can buy BestBuy, Home Depot, or Apple gift cards which all have a high resale rate.

4. The personal JetBlue card has an offer for Mosaic status lasting until the end of 2022 after spending $15,000 (Svetlana wrote in to correct the spend, I had incorrectly written $10,000 before). If you fly JetBlue a lot, Mosaic status may be worth getting. If you’re flying it only two or three times a year, then this isn’t worth your time — the real benefit to Mosaic is free “upgrades” to Even More Space and I guess a mini-bottle of awful wine.

If JetBlue Mosaic status got you wine from Valais, we’d be in a totally different ballgame and spending $10,000 for status might be worth it. Alas, it doesn’t. Enjoy your swill wine and blue corn chips instead, cause that’s what you’ll get.