Category: Points

  1. As reported by some weirdo on the internet known for being apocryphal yet this time with a trustworthy source (DC Domer via MEAB slack), the glitch affecting Membership Rewards cash outs and partner transfers was resolved yesterday afternoon. 🎉 
  2. Southwest has run its first major schedule change for flights from early September through early November, though the number of impacted flights is smaller than is typical which could mean there will be another round of changes, or it could mean Southwest is changing the way it rolls out schedule updates.

    If you have flights booked in that window, now is a good time to see if you’re affected and rebook if the updates don’t work for you. Southwest allows you to change to any other flight between the same city pairs ± two weeks when a schedule change affects your itinerary. (Thanks to Brian M via MEAB slack)

  3. Do this now: Register for Q3 spending categories on major 5%/5x rotating category cards:

    – Chase Freedom and Freedom Flex: Gas, car rentals, movies, and some entertainment (Disney parks included)
    – Citi Dividend: Gas and home improvement
    – Discover IT: PayPal and Restaurants
    – US Bank Cash+: Utilities and electronic stores are probably best
    – Bank of America Cash Rewards: Gas and online shopping are probably best

    Expect ideas on manufactured spend for these categories soon.

  4. American Express has been sending out new Pay-over-Time 20,000 or 30,000 point offers every week for over a month. Not everyone that’s eligible receives an email or mailer because American Express, but fortunately it’s easy to check via these links:

    – Link 1
    – Link 2
    – Link 3
    – Link 4
    – Link 5
    – Link 6

    It doesn’t take a super-hacker to see the patterns in those links, so I suppose it’s really easy to look for alternate links that aren’t yet known. (Thanks to DoC, reddit, and my inbox for these links)

  5. Kroger has a 4x fuel points sale on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercards running from today through Sunday. Unfortunately the fuel points resale market prices continues to drop, and this sale won’t help it recover. I think we’ll see depressed fuel points and gift card prices through at least mid-July as a result

    There’s also widespread reporting that Kroger has started to shutdown accounts that were created with the anonaddy.com service, so I guess be careful and remember that only you can prevent wildfires.

It may seem like the US Forest Service is being literal, but in reality they’re referring to Kroger burner accounts.

American Express typically holds newly earned Membership Rewards points in pending status until a few days after a statement closes and payment posts. While those points are pending you can’t actually spend or redeem them, so effectively they’re futures. If you want to see the balance of those futures, you can navigate to your rewards dashboard and it’s shown right side. You can get even more granular by clicking ‘Pending Points Details’ if that’s your bag.

What happens if you’re being a good churner though and always cashing out or burning, but then you need a new bucket full of Membership Rewards quickly? Sure, you can go manufacture 100,000 Membership Rewards with gift cards, but they won’t post until after your statement, payment, and a few days. Then what?

Like so much in this hobby, the solution is just to ask. You can either:

Once you’re talking to a person, something as simple as: “Can you please accelerate the posting of my Membership Rewards for time-sensitive redemption?” is all it takes. Remember, “never call the bank” is good advice when shenanigans ensue, but don’t let that advice trickle out everywhere.

Biker Roy takes a break to demonstrate the “Membership Rewards pending to available” maneuver from a perch, because reasons.

  1. American Express has targeted even more people for 20,000 Membership Rewards for turning on Pay Over Time, and thus round included me. They’ve made a couple of other significant updates to these bonuses:

    – You’re now eligible for a new bonus every 120 days, just make sure you turn it back off to be targeted again in the future
    – You no longer need to switch the default card when searching for bonuses, just picking a new card is now enough to see if there’s a bonus available

    Check to see if you’re targeted at the Pay Over Time landing page.

  2. The Citi Shop Your Way Mastercard (the classic MEAB Unsung Hero) has another round of targeted spend bonuses through July 14. Offers have been reported for:

    – 150,000 points after $2,000 in spend
    – 12,500 ThankYou points for $2,000 in spend (Thanks to BB_Pcola)
    – $50 after $1,000 in spend (Thanks to birt)

    The subject for my offer was “Name, open now to unlock your special, limited-time offer! 🌟”.

  3. IHG is reportedly sending out targeted offers for 12,000 points for two stays within 60 days of registration, and the registration deadline is November 30.

    Check your inbox for the subject “Welcome back! Celebrate with 12,000 points”.

  4. Southwest is expected to release its next schedule extension today for travel between November 11 and January 4, so it covers all major winter holidays.

    Experts should look for inexpensive flights that are likely to be changed within two weeks of their actual desired travel too. (Thanks to Brian M via MEAB slack)

On second thought maybe everything should come in a grab bag, hmm.

There’s a lot going on with new speculative products that we’ll discuss soon, but for now let’s talk about some active offers:

  1. The PayPal Mastercard is now generally available for new applications. The current sign-up bonus is $100 after spending $500, but this isn’t a card you get for the sign-up bonus. Instead you get it because:

    – It’s 3% cash-back everywhere you pay with PayPal or Venmo (some MS-friendly stores take both)
    – It’s a Synchrony card
    – It’s a Mastercard

    The card gets 2% cash-back everywhere else, which is fine I guess.

  2. You can currently earn 1,500 points transferrable to either AA or Hyatt by downloading the Bilt Rewards app for ios or android and linking your frequent flyer accounts. You’ll earn:

    – 100 points for linking each of your non-Hyatt loyalty partners, ten in total, though you may want to wait for increased earnings on other programs before linking immediately
    – 500 points for linking your Hyatt account before May 27

    Note that the minimum to transfer is 2,000 points. I’d love to get the Bilt card to moon my account🚀 , but I’m sure I’d be shutdown for manufactured spend before the card even arrived in my mailbox, setting a new world record. Also, blah blah blah getting below 5/24 blah blah blah. (Thanks to VFTW)

  3. OfficeMax/Office Depot has $15 back on $300 or more in Mastercard gift card purchases, bringing your net cost below face-value even without rewards or other shenanigans. To maximize the deal:

    – Link each of your Ink or other office supply bonused cards to a Dosh account
    – Try and get multiple transactions in a single trip

    These are Metabank gift cards, so make sure you’ve got a liquidation channel. They do exist nationwide but you’ve got to look.

Happy Wednesday friends!

The world record setting rewards balance plot.

Kroger’s current 4x promotion on third party gift cards combined with the following gives you quite a bit of opportunity over the weekend:

  1. Lowe’s has a free $15 store gift card offer with each $200 Mastercard purchased through May 11. A few notes on this deal:

    – The resale rate on $15 Lowe’s gift cards is approximately 87%
    – The capacity on this is effectively unlimited if you get a friendly store
    – The deal terms say “limit 2 per email address”, but in the past that’s never been an actual limit. If it turns out to be an issue, use the gmail plus or dot syntax

    These cards are Metabank issued gift cards so make sure you have a way to liquidate those. (Thanks to GC Galore).

  2. Staples has fee free $200 Visa gift cards starting Sunday and running through Saturday of next week, limit five per customer (per transaction in practice). As usual, they’re Metabank issued gift cards so make sure you have a way to liquidate those.
  3. Simon has 55% off of all purchase fees through tomorrow evening with code 22CINCO55, including the $1,000 Visa variety. Blah, blah, Metabank, blah blah though.
  4. The Point debit card has 5x on up to $1,000 spend between now and Sunday at Walmart and up to $1,000 spend Whole Foods, both of which sell gift cards and potentially other interesting manufactured spend things.

    If you want the Point debit card, use a referral for a bigger sign-up bonus than the public offer. Note that referral bonuses currently vary from person to person, so ask around for one in the $100-$200 range; I wouldn’t consider one below $100 as the card now carries a $99 fee.

  5. American Express is targeting more accounts this week for 20,000 Membership Rewards after turning on pay-over-time. Unlike past iterations of this offer with a specific link and embedded offer code, this one is showing up on the regular pay-over-time landing page for your default (starred) card. If your default card isn’t showing an offer, switch another charge to be default and check the landing page again. (Thanks to Justmeha for helping me clarify the language)

Have a nice weekend!

Visiting the Lowe’s clearance section to find Mother’s Day gifts after buying Mastercards.

It’s time for a companion article to Wednesday Wisdom: Shutdowns Aren’t Always Shutdowns. But this time we’re focusing on deal limits. Specifically, deals often have language like:

  • Limit $200 per month
  • Limit one per customer
  • Limit $50 per transaction
  • Only valid once per month

Never take those limits at face value. For over a month there’s been a profitable play with language similar to the above and the stated limits are actually stated suggestions. Keep in mind that experimenting could net you a few thousand dollars and just take a couple of minutes of your time. Remember ABP: Always Be Probing.

Am I being intentionally obtuse? Unfortunately yes and I apologize for not sharing more on this one right now, but we’ll give a recap at some point in the future to help find similar deals. Good luck!

A store as empty as the direct information in this post.

It’s time to register for Q2 rotating category bonuses, and you should probably register now so you don’t forget to do it later:

Manufactured spend strategies for each:

  • Target:
  • Gas stations:
    • Buy Visa or Mastercard gift cards at Speedway, 7-11, or another friendly chain
    • Watch for bonus rewards points at Speedway and buy BestBuy gift cards for resale
  • Drug stores:
  • Grocery stores:
    • Buy Visa or Mastercard gift cards
    • Buy third party gift cards for resale when they’re earning good grocery rewards
  • Utilities:
    • Overpay your electricity, power, or gas bill and ask for a refund check
  • Electronics stores:
  • Amazon
    • Buy Visa or MasterCard gift cards
    • Buy items to ship to buyer’s clubs for reimbursement, especially Apple products at Amazon

Of course there’s always the boring way out, spending on things you need at stores you’d normally go to anyway. But that’s not very (as my daughter would say) #girlboss now is it?

Digging for gift card deals at Walgreens, otherwise known as Tuesday.

I guess I should expect this because rare things happen closely together more often than not, but everything today is targeted. I blame Poisson.

1. Check your account dashboard for your American Express Green and Gold cards for a pop up offering either a new Business Platinum card with a 150,000 Membership Rewards sign-up bonus, or for a new Business Gold card with a 90,000 point sign up bonus. These are no-lifetime language (NLL) cards so you should be eligible for the sign-up bonus regardless of your current or past card portfolio. (Although they won’t bypass the 2 Platinum cards in 90 days rule, or the 3 credit cards in 30 days rule either. Thanks to Jim for the note.)

2. Check your Chase offers for 10% back at BestBuy online or in-store up to $250 in spend. Of course I’d buy a BestBuy gift card online through an obscure portal and sell the card, but I wasn’t targeted so here we are.

3. Reader @nutella shared a targeted upgrade link for 5,000 Rapid Rewards for upgrading a personal Southwest Plus Visa card to the Southwest Priority Visa card and making a single purchase by April 30. This is the first I’ve ever seen of a Chase upgrade offer like this. Now, we just need them to push the upgrade offers into the six figure points range like AmEx.

4. Reader Matthias shared that there’s a highly targeted discount at Simon for 50% off of Visa and Mastercard purchase fees with promotional code 22HAPPY50. There’s also a targeted code for 100% off of American Express gift card purchase fees with code FEB22AMEX100. Now, we just need a 22LOL150 to surface I guess.

5. Reader SideshowBob233 shared a landing page for targeted no-lifetime language American Express Delta cards. You can check eligibility here with your SkyMiles number and last name.

Targeted.