Category: Portals

  1. Do this now: Register for Hilton for Business’s offer for 5,000 bonus points after each stay, limit: a whopping three times.

    In case you’re bored and want to earn ~$50 worth of classic Hilton points, you can add five employees, or I guess five “employees”, to your Hilton for Business account for 10,000 bonus points.
  2. American Express Membership Rewards has a transfer bonus to British Airways, Iberia, and Aer Lingus through July 15. With Avios.com transfers, you can move these to FinnAir, Qatar, or Vueling.
  3. Several airline portals have a first half of June promotion for spend:

    – Southwest: 2,000 Rapid Rewards after $300 spend
    – AA: 500 bonus miles after $200 spend
    – Delta: 500 bonus miles after $100 spend

    Of course use portal classics like giftcards.com to manufacture the bonus, and also awe at a first in the modern era: Delta’s SkyMiles offers a better deal than AAdvantage miles at least until you consider the relative value of each mile.
  4. Meijer stores have 50,000 MPerks points with the purchase of $500 in third party gift cards including bulk resale classics like BestBuy and Target, but you’ll need multiple accounts to scale.
  5. Target has a $10 Target gift card free with a $100 One4All gift card through Saturday, and including the varieties that convert to bulk resale classics like Lowes and Home Depot.
  6. Chime has a $460 bonus through InboxDollars for creating a new Chime account and receiving two direct deposits of $201+ each with the first deposit in 30 days.

    Historically Chime has been surprisingly easy to churn, just don’t make their job dead simple, which is a classic mistake.
  7. The Barclays Hawaiian card, a cult classic when paired with the Bank of Hawaii Hawaiian Mastercard underwritten by Barclays but still separate, has a 70,000 mile sign-up bonus after $1,000 spend in 90 days.
  8. PayPal Bill Pay billers (a cryptic MEAB classic): 🪓🪦😭

Happy Tuesday!

Pictured: Repurposed classic MEAB image.

Giftcards.com

Giftcards.com has had a storied past with shopping portals, with rules that spanned the entire distance between “rewards on nothing” and “rewards on everything”, and plenty of stops in-between. Most recently, they’ve only awarded spend on a rolling $20,000 in purchases in a rolling 365 day period. Terms didn’t make it clear about whether that was per loyalty account, per shopping portal, per giftcards.com account, or something else. While science made progress in answering the question, the point is now moot because that weird language is gone. All the major airline shopping portals have reverted to the following terms:

Orders over $2,000.00 are not eligible. To qualify for rewards, you must complete your purchase within the same session you start the purchase without exiting your browser. Opening a new tab or returning later will result in rewards not tracking.

Changing it again is a bold strategy Cotton, we’ll have to see if it pays off for them.

Barclays+[Frontier,JetBlue,Arrival+]

Today, Barclays has both card linked and shopping portal offers for card holders under a program named “Barclays Simple Earn”. Maybe giftcards.com will show up here too? I’ve been able to find press releases about Frontier, JetBlue, and Arrival+ cards, but I’d be surprised if they don’t show up on AA and Hawaiian co-brand cards even though both will soon be leaving the Barclays portfolio.

Barlcays has had “Barclays Card Rewards Boost” for a long time, and from the outside it appears to be run by the exact same technology and backend provider as the US Bank shopping portal. My educated guess is that they’ll use the exact same thing for co-brand cards, so tricks that work at US Bank’s portal will probably work here too. (Thanks to David)

Southwest T-0

Today is the last day for the old Southwest way of doing things. Basically, you’ve got until midnight in who-knows-which timezone to do the following:

  • Book travel that includes free bags on all fares
  • Consolidate Ticketless Travel Funds (TTF) now, because they’ll have expirations if issued after today
  • Book Wanna Get Away or Wanna Get Away+ fares before they pumpkin
  • Convert LUV vouchers to flight credits which are transferrable and have no expiration
  • Add any companions to existing reservations to ensure they’ve got old-school benefits too

Thanks to Southwest guru Brian M for the comprehensive list!

Happy Tuesday!

Giftcards.com’s analysis team uses cutting edge technology to calculate its optimum rewards strategy.

  1. Three airline shopping portals have spend bonuses through May 12:

    – AA eShopping: 2,000 bonus miles with $800+
    – Alaska MileagePlan Shopping: 2,000 bonus miles with $400+
    – United MileagePlus Shopping: 2,500 bonus miles with $400+

    Each of these is probably worth burning through your $20,000 annual giftcards.com capacity. Now is that per portal or per giftcards.com account? If you’re not sure like me, vary both simultaneously.
  2. Southwest has a promotion for 30% off of base fares for both award and paid tickets with promo code SUNNY30, which is valid for travel booked by tomorrow night and flights between May 27 and November 19.

    The validity period for this promo is really long, suggesting all is not well at the airline presently being haunted by the ghost of Herb Kelleher past.
  3. Chase’s tool for viewing pre-qualified credit cards is back online. If you’re preapproved though, don’t apply through the tool. Instead use a referral link from another player or a friend, or use Rakuten.
  4. Citi Offers has a card linked offer for $50 off of $200+ in JetBlue flights through June 30. Also, Citi sucks at correlation, and you can often find the same offer on multiple cards.
  5. Chase Offers has a card linked offer for 10% off of Southwest fares with up to $40 cash back, and a card linked offer for $30 off of $150+ at Turo. Chase’s offer system is exactly like Citi’s offer system.

When you feel a knot in your stomach on a Southwest flight, don’t stress; it’s just the ghost of Herb haunting management.

  1. There have been spotty reports for a couple of weeks of increased American Express Delta offers but I could never personally verify them. That changed yesterday when I found them via this link, and was also able to find them by trying different browsers and search engines to get to an offer page. If that link doesn’t work and searches are fruitless, you can possibly find them in the Delta mobile app (More → Delta Amex Cards) or potentially at this link that’s been floating around elsewhere. The offers:

    – Personal Gold: 70,000 SkyMiles after $3,000 spend in six months, waived annual fee
    – Personal Platinum: 90,000 SkyMiles after $4,000 spend in six months
    – Personal Reserve: 100,000 SkyMiles after $6,000 spend in six months
    – Business Gold: 80,000 SkyMiles after $6,000 spend in six months, waived annual fee
    – Business Platinum: 100,000 SkyMiles after $8,000 spend in six months
    – Business Reserve : 110,000 SkyMiles after $12,000 spend in six months

    The Gold cards with their waived annual fee are the stand-out winners here.
  2. The American Express Blue Business Cash has a targeted, heightened sign-up bonus of $750 after $6,000 spend in four months, effectively matching the Blue Business Plus offer from Monday.
  3. Rakuten has a new referral bonus of $40 or 4,000 Membership Rewards for both the referrer and the referred. It’s probably not gameable, why would you say otherwise? Duh.
  4. American Express offers has an offer for $250 off of $2,500 in airfare booked directly through AmEx Travel through June 17. This is limited to USD transactions which is ever-so-slightly annoying, but there are always games to play. (UPDATE: the offer is valid “once converted to USD”, thanks to Churrently)
  5. Southwest has a fare sale for travel between May 13 and October 2, booked by tomorrow night, there are blackout dates though not as many as they usually have.

    Flights booked before May 28 still get free lost checked bags.

Southwest delivers a lost bag.

  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.

  1. A few quick Pepper updates:

    – Pepper has two processing backends, PayArc and Stripe
    – AmEx cards work if you have Pepper on PayArc, but not on Stripe
    – Merchant coding has changed from software to advertising on PayArc
    – Exceeding purchase limits is no longer obvious, and your account gets locked if you do
    – This isn’t new, but as a reminder, new Pepper accounts don’t see increased payout rates until (1) Pepper decides they should, or (2) they spend a lot of money in a short amount of time
    – Pervasive errors generating gift cards continue to be pervasive

    The company’s plan to drop bonus payout rates “toward sustainability” happened last week, but this week’s publicized step-down hasn’t occurred as of this writing.
  2. The Capital One Venture card has increased its bonus to 100,000 bonus miles after $5,000 spend in three months via referrals because it was jealous that Chase got six articles in 12 h at a prominent travel blog for its 100,000 point bonus. This referral offer was around in February too, but more are now targeted.

    The non-referral public offer is still 75,000 miles so ask around before applying. (Thanks to David)
  3. Alaska MileagePlan Shopping has a bonus of 500 miles after $100+ spent through the portal by April 18.

    Perhaps pair with this week’s rage, a Tory Burch American Express $50 off of $250 or $100 off of $500 offer?
  4. Apparently the RebatesMe has a $45 referral bonus after the referred spends $10, though I couldn’t find it on my accounts, possibly because I use them? (Thanks to MtM)

Happy Thursday!

In other news, water continues to be wet and the mountain on your water bottle is only for illustration.

  1. The American Express Business Platinum’s Dell and Adobe credits are changing starting on July 1:

    – The Dell credit will be $150 annually, plus another $1,000 after $5,000 in spend at Dell
    – The Adobe credit will be $250 off of $600 in Adobe products

    You can take advantage of the current credits before July 1 and still be eligible for the updated credits when they come. I’m personally disappointed that Dell isn’t gone so that I don’t have to think about it any more, but for people playing Dell buyer’s groups games, the new structure is probably better.
  2. Zift Zillions cards earn 12x points at Giant, Martins, and Stop & Shop through Wednesday Thursday (Thanks to Eugene for the correction). Note that Giant Food stores are owned by the same conglomerate but are only paying 4x.

    There’s a Citi Merchant offer for 5% back up to $30 at Stop & Shop too. (Thanks to GCA)
  3. The best and worst performing major US airlines as measured by the stock market have Q2 shopping portal bonuses:

    – AA eShopping: 500 miles after $200+ spend through April 14
    – United MileagePlus Shopping: 500 miles after $100+ spend through April 14

    An obvious choice is giftcards.com.
  4. Chase Offers has an offer for 5% back at giftcards.com, and it’s potentially available on multiple cards for the same cardholder too too. (Thanks to Carl)
  5. The Chase Sapphire Preferred 100,000 Ultimate Rewards bonus is now available via referrals.

  6. US Bank’s business checking bonus for Q2 is here using promo code Q2DIG25. For both tiers of bonus, you need to maintain a minimum balance and have five transactions within the first 60 days. Last time I knocked this out, I scheduled five $1 ACHs. The tiers:

    – $500 for bringing $5,000 and maintaining at least that between days 30 and 60
    – $900 for bringing $25,000 and maintaining at least that between days 30 and 60

    Both are interesting if you time it right, and holding $5,000 in a business checking account with US Bank is a great way to shake-loose credit card approvals. If you’re not in the US Bank footprint, opening a brokerage account or CD first will get you in the door.
  7. United has an economy award sale for co-brand card holders with travel booked by tomorrow night for flights to Latin America through September 30. One-way fares:

    – 9,000-11,000 for Mexico
    – 18,000 miles for Central America
    – 30,000 miles for South America

    If you choose your route correctly, lie-flat business class cash upgrades can actually be quite reasonable and there’s no cancelation fee so you don’t have to slum it in the back if the cheap upgrade doesn’t materialize.

Happy Tuesday!

Eight cardboard computers at Dell will soon earn a $1,000 statement credit.

  1. Yesterday’s post mentioned in fake-shakespeare obtuseness that Rapid Rewards points value shifts based on demand; based on questions and comments I got yesterday, that wasn’t clear to many. To speak in ye-new-modern-day-English: Southwest Rapid Rewards points will no longer have a fixed redemption value for each class of ticket, but rather the redemption value will vary based on demand.

    In other words, Rapid Rewards which already had dynamic pricing based on ticket value, will now have a dynamic redemption value per point too. To quote the quiet grandmaster churner RabbMD, “double secret dynamic” pricing.
  2. Harris Teeter stores have a coupon for fee-free variable load Mastercard and Visa gift cards when loaded with $150+ through Tuesday, limit one per Kroger account. (Thanks to GCA)
  3. Rakuten’s In-Store card linked program has offers for several grocery stores:

    – 1% or 1x at Giant
    – 1% or 1x at Giant Food (different than the above, duh)
    – 1% or 1x at Martins
    – 1% or 1x at Food Lion

    These are valid for 75 days after clipping the coupon. But after first use, the coupon is only valid for another hour, at which point you can reclip it as long as the promotion is still going. Why so complex? Well, remember that Rakuten is the company that bought Buy.com for $250 Million and decided that Buy.com was too hard for Americans to pronounce and remember, so just migrated it to Rakuten.com.
  4. Some discount airlines, sorted in order of recent annoyingness, are running promotions:

    – Breeze 50% off: Book by today, fly between March 18 and June 18 with promo GROW
    – Frontier award sale: Book by Monday, fly through August 18
    – Alaska international sale*: Book by April 11, fly through July 31
    – [this space left intentionally blank]
    – [this space left intentionally blank]
    – Southwest sale: Book by today, fly between April 1 and June 11

    *The Alaska sale includes Premium Economy, which is weird because Alaska doesn’t really support partner Premium Economy bookings for the partners you need to get to these destinations. #AlaskaGonnaAlaska
  5. The Wyndham shopping portal has a bonus of 2,000 points after a single purchase through April 9. (Thanks to FM)

Don’t blame Rakuten, after all, Rasputin was once named Bryce right? (Don’t check)