Category: Points

July is apparently a good news and bad news sort of month. For example in the apparently not-a-joke competitive sphere of competition eating Joey Chestnut won a 16th hot dog eating contest on Tuesday, but to win he had to eat 62 hot dogs so there’s that.

In our world we’ve got a bit of bad news too:

But, there’s good news:

  • Rakuten will have 10x back at Dell (and probably Saks) on Monday, so you’ve got time to strategize your American Express credit liquidation
  • The IHG credit card’s sign-up bonus has bumped to 140,000 points and a $100 statement credit at IHG properties after $3,000 spend in three months
  • The Barclays Wyndham Business card has a targeted offer for 5,000 bonus points:

    – 1,000 bonus points per month for any purchase in June, July, and August
    – 2,000 additional points for $3,000 in spend or more over all three months

    Yes, we’re past June, so really this is a 4,000 bonus point offer going forward. Look for an email from [email protected] to see if you’re targeted. (Thanks to Welcome Offer)
  • American Express sign-up bonuses do eventually post

Have a nice weekend!

Another good news / bad news situation.

  1. Citi ThankYou points has a 15% transfer bonus to Cathay Pacific AsiaMiles through July 22. Sweet spots:

    – JAL award flight availability before most partners can see the award space
    – Trips with up to five (!) stopovers and 2 open-jaws
    – Qatar Q-Suites for 75,000 miles each way
    – East coast to Europe in business class for 50,000 miles each way
  2. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards Card has been sending targeted offers for online spend through July 14. In my experience online spend is the same as a “card not present” transaction, so it’s easy to hit. Offers:

    -$50 statement credit with $750 spend
    – $30 statement credit with $500 spend
    – 150,000 Shop Your Way Rewards Points with $500 spend
    – 225,000 Shop Your Way Rewards Points with $750 spend

    These stack with other grocery, gas, and restaurant offers that are running concurrently. Also, yes it’s possible to knock some or all of those out online.
  3. Data points have been piling up for months that it’s possible to get unbanned from Citi. The key? Clean up that credit report.

Happy Monday!

Citi’s new “Citi Bits” cereal looks and tastes exactly as bad as you’d expect.

  1. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercards in-store running today through June 20, a full two weeks.

    While the fuel points and third party gift card resale markets have been hovering around a local maxima, I expect that by June 20th rates will have fallen. As usual if your fuel points broker isn’t assuming liability quickly after purchase then you should probably look for another broker.
  2. Southwest has a 20% off fare sale to and from DEN and COS for travel though November 1 (with a few date caveats) with promo code SCORE20.

    DEN is a Southwest hub, so you could also consider booking a connection through DEN on two separate tickets which might price out better with the promo code than a single booking without. Of course having two separate tickets could be its own set of headaches. (Thanks to Brian M)
  3. While it’s always possible to forcibly bypass an American Express pop-up with shady tactics, or almost always possible to bypass one with co-branded spend, sometimes it’s nice to play it straight. To that end, there are Hilton links that apparently bypass the pop-up for everyone who’s tried at hilton.com/SeekingSummer.

    Which is my favorite offer, asked no one? The business card for its gas station bonus category, low annual fee, ability to earn three free-night certificates in the first year, churnability, and 150,000 point sign-up bonus.
  4. AA has updated their upgrade policy: Starting June 9, all elites are eligible for upgrades on award tickets including a single companion. Priority is changing slightly too, with tier status first and rolling average of the last year’s earned Loyalty Points second as the main factors for upgrade order; this of course means that you can manufacture-spend your way to a higher position on the upgrade list.
  5. Smart and Final stores have $20 off of a grocery purchase when buying any third party gift card except Tracphone or NET10 cards, limit one per transaction. I’ve linked to their digital weekly ad, but even there the print is so small that I’ll be surprised if you can read it even with movie-grade CIA photo enhancement technology.

A preview of next week’s Smart and Final ad. They solved the small print problem, but, uh — keep working on it guys.

Hopefully you’re recovering from any Friday afternoon RobinHood induced hangovers that may have found their way into your accounts (more to come later). To help, focus on the following:

  1. American Express has an offer for $200 back on $1,000 in spend or more with AirFrance/KLM. This one is an easy base-hit with correlation breaking, no phone calls needed; as usual you could instead just be basic and actually book airfare and fly as intended. (Thanks to hwplainview41)
  2. Giftcards.com has another promotion code for 5% off the total purchase price of Visa e-gift cards: YAYSUMMER.

    I’m still seeing 4% back on the Capital One Shopping mobile app and purchases are tracking each time for me. Limits are $2,000 per rolling 48 hours, and $600 per order, both per email address. Don’t log in for the promo code to apply.
  3. On Friday we discussed an increased sign-up bonus for a few Barclays cards, and on Saturday a link surfaced for an even better version of the Hawaiian card sign-up bonus: 70,000 miles with only a single purchase of any size. (Thanks to DoC)
  4. The Delta SkyMiles portal has a rare spend bonus: 500 miles on purchases summing to $100 or more through June 9.
  5. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have a gift card promotion for $15 or $10 off of $300 or more in Mastercard gift cards. Watch out: normally this is a negative cost deal with $15 back, but in some regions it may be $10; with the reduced payout and $6.95 purchase fees you’re looking at $403.90 for $400 in gift cards (or $303.90 for $300 in gift cards if you hate maximizing things).

    These are Pathward gift cards so make sure you can liquidate before you buy a bunch. There are still methods out there that work, always be probing.
  6. Meijer stores have $25 worth of points back on $250 or more in third party gift cards other than Amazon. Scale with multiple MPerks accounts. (Thanks to GCG)

Happy Monday!

The source of Friday afternoon’s sadness.

  1. Kroger is having another 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards Friday through Sunday.

    – Digital coupon for third party gift cards
    – Digital coupon for fixed value Visa and Mastercards

    The fuel points market isn’t as high as it was in the roaring 2021s, but it continues to adapt and recover nicely. Good fuel points brokers are assuming shutdown risk immediately or within 24 hours, so choose wisely my friends. (Thanks to GCG)
  2. I don’t cover things that I think aren’t worth your time, which is why you won’t see anything about $2,500 sign-up bonus for a bank account that requires $200,000 in new funds to be locked up for 90 days and pays 0.15% in interest; it just doesn’t make sense to waste time reading about something like that when you can easily earn 4-6% on those funds with existing savings or money market accounts.

    This philosophy means I almost never talk about Bilt, but I’m going to make an exception today because 2x everywhere for Hyatt points is definitely above the line: The first of every month is “rent day”, and you earn 2x on general spend on the Bilt Mastercard for up to $10,000 on rent day. Unfortunately today doesn’t coincide with the Kroger 4x promotion, but I guess you can’t win ’em all.
  3. Do this now: Register for Wyndham’s summer promotion for stays through September 5 booked by August 31:

    – 5,000 bonus points on two night stays
    – 10,000 bonus points on three night stays
    – 15,000 bonus points on four night stays (or longer)

    Wyndham cardholders can earn a bonus twice, non-card holders once.
  4. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card, once a Sears co-branded card, has a new targeted spending bonus:

    – 90,000 Shop Your Way points for $300 in travel spend, once per month for each month between June and December for a total of 630,000 points (!)

    Sears famously didn’t win them all either. (Thanks to birt)

Sears showing that you can’t win them all in the most Sears way possible. (Thanks to Kyle for the picture)

  1. Do this now: Register for Hyatt’s Journey Across Canada promotion for 2,000 bonus points per stay on up to 10 stays between June 1 and September 6. They really missed the mark on naming this one, I mean, “Maple Milestones”, “Poutine Points”, and “Loonie Lodgings” are all right there for the taking.
  2. Southwest has a 25% discount for paid and award holiday travel from July 3 through July 7, booked by the end of day today. Use promo code J4SAVE.

    The real question we should be asking is whether or not Southwest flys to Canada to combine the above promotion with this one? Alas, I guess we’ll never know because we’re not going to try after Hyatt’s stupid promotion name spoiled the whole thing.
  3. Citi ThankYou Points is running a 25% transfer bonus to AirFrance/KLM FlyingBlue through June 17. Use this program for:

    – Domestic economy on Delta
    – Business class to and from Europe
    – Short haul within Europe

    And, don’t forget about the program’s rotating promo awards.
  4. Check this link for a targeted upgrade to the business American Express Platinum card from the Gold or Green with 140,000 Membership Rewards after $10,000 in spend in three months. (Thanks to FM)

Hyatt’s Maple Milestones challenge coin (which doesn’t exist, but absolutely should).

  1. JetBlue has an award ticket sale of 20% off for bookings completed today for travel through June 21. It does exclude transatlantic and Mint redemptions though.
  2. Office Depot/OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 or more in Visa gift card purchases in store through Saturday. For best results:

    – Link your credit cards to Dosh
    – Try for multiple transactions back-to-back
    – Try for the lower fee Everywhere cards, assuming you can liquidate them
    – Experiment with bigger stacked bonuses

    These are Pathward gift cards and are throttled for PIN transactions at $480 in aggregate per store per six minutes generally.
  3. The Wyndham Business Earner card’s sign-up bonus has been increased to 75,000 bonus points total, 50,000 after $3,000 in spend in three months, and another 25,000 after $10,000 spend in the first year.

    This card is largely (in)famous for it’s (1) 10% rebate on award stays, and (2) 8x earning at gas stations, which are both reasons that this one’s probably an Unsung Hero candidate. (Thanks to Rob)
  4. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards Mastercard, already an Unsung Hero, has sent a new round of offers for online spend by June 14. Offers we’ve seen:

    – $30 statement credit after $500 in spend (MS Ninja)
    – $50 statement credit after $750 in spend (me)
    – $70 statement credit after $1,000 in spend (Jacob M)
    – 225,000 bonus Shop Your Way points after $570 in spend (Sollavec)
  5. Some Hy-Vee stores have $30 off of $500 Mastercard gift cards in store starting tomorrow and running through Tuesday (ok, technically it’s $10 off of $150 but it stacks). Check your local Hy-Vee ad to see if your store is participating, and if so go ham. (Thanks to jerseyguy195)
  6. American Express has an (apparently targeted) transfer bonus from Membership Rewards to Cathay Pacific Asia Miles running through the end of the month for between 10% and 20%. To see if you’re targeted, you’ll need to login and navigate to the transfer page.

    Asia miles have good access to alliance award tickets before other partners, but their cancellation policy isn’t as generous as US carriers. (Thanks to DoC)
  7. Citi added Accor Hotels as a ThankYou Point transfer partner at a 2:1 ratio, which matches Capital One’s transfer ratio.

A different kind of deluge.

  1. Check chase.com/mybonus for new targeted spend bonuses through July 31. We’ve seen:

    – Ink 5,000 bonus points for $5,000 in spend up to three times
    – Ink 15,000 bonus points for $15,000 in spend up to three times
    – Southwest Business: 5,000 points for every $5,000 in spend up to three times

    (Thanks to nutella and Chad)
  2. The Capital One VentureX Business card has been unavailable for most of 2023 while Capital One retooled aspects of the card (like renaming it from the Business Spark Elite Miles card), but it’s now available again through a small business banker. The sign up bonus is tiered:

    – 150,000 bonus miles after $30,000 in spend in three months
    – 150,000 additional bonus miles after $500,000 in spend in 12 months

    The card is effectively a 7x card for $30,000 in spend or a 2.6x card for $500,000 in spend which can absolutely make sense in the right circumstances. The card is also useful for its best in class Priority Pass program, has an annual fee of $395, and a very gamable annual travel credit of $300 making it an effective $95 annual fee card with mileage transfer to various airlines. (Thanks to The_Most_Hye and Shawshank for the typo fix on the early spend bonus)
  3. Citi is emailing targeted offers for spend bonuses through July 31 on many of its cards. Check for targeted email from Citi for one of the following:

    – 5x points on up to $500 in online purchases
    – 5x points on up to $500 in restaurant spend
    – 5x points on up to $500 at electronics stores

    These are slightly gamable if you like to live dangerously. (Thanks to Professor Horsey)
  4. There are a few transfer bonuses from American Express and Chase:

    – Membership Rewards 25% to FlyingBlue through May 22
    – Membership Rewards 15% bonus to LifeMiles through May 31
    – Ultimate Rewards 25% to FlyingBlue through May 15
    – Ultimate Rewards 30% to Virgin Atlantic through May 31
    – Ultimate Rewards 50% bonus to Marriott through May 15, for saps

Happy Wednesday!

Both “living dangerously” and “avoiding structuring” in one.