If you’re in the third party gift card resale game, online/retail arbitrage game (reselling stuff), and the buyers’ group game (buying stuff for someone else and getting paid for it), this week is likely to be one of the best for the entire year and today’s post will be a garbage-post for you — sorry.
If you’re not fully in one or more of these worlds though, this post is for you. I’d consider onboarding with the following platforms today to take advantage of the myriad Black Friday and Cyber Monday opportunities. (Note: I’m not endorsing any of these platforms, but they all are considered reputable within the community as a whole, YMMV.)
Good luck this week, and don’t sleep on this. With a bit of scale and hard work you could be looking at tens-of-thousands of dollars in manufactured spend time over the next several days.
The impact of today’s post: Either you’re holding bags full of money, or you’re holding the post in a plastic bag. There’s no middle ground.
I had a “Weekend Wisdom” post scheduled for today, but late breaking news preempted it. I’ll let you guess which item caused the shake-up:
1.Meijer MPerks has 10% off on gift card purchases running today and tomorrow with a maximum of $50 back on a $500 purchase per account. Don’t sleep on this one, it isn’t the snooze fest you might think it is. I know of people that literally fly to Meijer territory from other parts of the country and hang out in stores, buying two $500 cards every 10 minutes for an entire day; then they wake up and do it again the next day.
Some gift cards are excluded, but BestBuy isn’t one of them (resale rates are currently in the 96-98% range, which makes this a 6-8% money maker even before your credit card spend).
2. Kroger has been running a 4x fuel point event for online gift card purchases since Monday. I haven’t written about it until this point because it’s been spotty and finicky with cancelled orders all over the place, but that seems to be mostly fixed. With fuel points selling at all-time highs you can come out ahead and never leave home. Your best options:
Apple gift cards: Resale rate of 94.5%+
Cheers-to-you Happy cards (swap to Home Depot): Resale rate of 94.5%+
The limits are $1,002 per transaction, and $1,002 per rolling 24-30 hour period. Buy the $500 cards for the best bang for your buck, and seasoned accounts work better. Don’t have any seasoned accounts? No time like the present to get ready for the next round, buddy!
3. The Staples fee-free $200 Visa gift card purchase promotion has been extended for another week, running through Saturday, November 13. As before, it’s still limit 5 per transaction. If you do this one, have a good liquidation channel and use a card that bonuses at office supply stores. (Thanks to GC Galore)
Did you guess which item messed things up? Hint, it wasn’t Staples.
Waiting for 10 minutes to pass at a Meijer grocery store.
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.”
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.
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!
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
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.
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.Multipleindependent 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.
