Category: Quick Hits

  1. Do this now: Register for Best Western’s fall promotion for 5,000 bonus points per stay through November 20. Unfortunately it seems like you’ve got to book by September 4th though, which is the second most Bonvoy thing Best Western has ever done.
  2. Do this now: Register for Marriott’s fall promotion for 1,500 bonus points per stay through November 22. You’ll also earn 3,000 extra points for each three Marriott brands you stay at over the same period, but that’s clearly just for masochists.
  3. Simon mall in store has $2 off of purchase fees on the Appreciation Series of cards through September 10. These are the best variety of the Simon lot. (Thanks to Derthsidious via MEAB slack)
  4. A little birdie with big hair told me about some churnable Hilton links:

    – Hilton Personal 80,000 Honors points after $1,000 spend in three months (NLL)
    – Hilton Surpass 130,000 Honors points after $2,000 spend in three months (NLL)
    – Hilton Business 130,000 Honors points after $3,000 spend in three months (churnable)

    These typically still fall under the American Express five or six credit card per accountholder limit though.

Happy Wednesday!

Best Western hotels only average a fire about once a month, so that’s a low probability downside for a 5,000 point upside.

  1. Southwest has a new Companion Pass promotion, registration required. To qualify, book a round-trip or two one-way flights by tomorrow night and travel by September 30. After flying, you’ll earn a companion pass valid between January 8 and March 8, 2024. It’s been a while since we’ve shared the obligatory bad news: Your reward for flying Southwest is more Southwest.

    (Thanks to Brian M for breaking the news and for the direct link)
  2. American Express offers has an offer for $300 back on $2,000 or more in airfare at British Airways for flights originating in the US through November 11. Gamable? Yes. (Thanks to FM)
  3. Chase Ultimate Rewards has a 30% transfer bonus to British Airways, Iberia, and Aer Lingus Avios through September 22.

    Now that Qatar is part of the Avios program, this effectively means a 30% transfer bonus there too by transfering through one of the other airlines first. Presumably you’ll be able to do the same in early 2024 with Finnair too. (Thanks to TheGreatCollie)
  4. United is targeting Chase co-brand cardholders for 2,500 bonus MileagePlus miles for adding an authorized user card. As far as I can tell it’s only applicable to personal cards, but it’s easy to check business cards too. You can check to see if you’re targeted here. (Thanks to hic2482w)

The inflight entertainment on your Southwest flight with your companion: Differently sized overhead storage bins.

Today is officially #HurriQuake hangover day, so we’ll keep it short and sweet.

  1. Do this now: Register for Hilton’s Q4 promotion for double points in most cities (and triple points in a dozen or so small cities you’ve probably never heard of like “Los Angeles”, “London”, and “Tokyo”) from September 6 through December 31.
  2. The Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card has a new offer for five free night certificates valid for one year, each for a stay of up to 50,000 points. The sign-up bonus requires $5,000 in spend in three months, and the annual fee on this card is $95.

    This is an outstanding deal for Marriott if you’re able to use all five certificates in the next year, but you will probably end up paying for parking and resort fees, so remember that free isn’t free when you’re Bonvoyed. (Thanks to FM)

Happy Tuesday!

Helpful advice for #HurriQuake recovery.

  1. Staples has fee free $200 Mastercard gift cards starting Sunday and running through the following Saturday, limit five per transaction.

    These are Metabank Pathward gift cards, so have a liquidation plan in place.
  2. The Barclays Lufthansa Miles & More Mastercard credit card has an 80,000 mile sign-up bonus after $3,000 in spend in 90 days. The card sucks for ongoing spend at 1x and isn’t worth your time unless you want easy access to Swiss Air First Class. For that, you’ll need 182,000 miles each way for the US and Europe and Miles & More status, either via match or direct earn. So, it’s actually quite useful for aspirational travel but otherwise skip it.

    Don’t forget that it’s possible to clown around with Barclays to an extent. (Thanks to DoC)
  3. Barclays has two other increased sign-up bonuses which have more general applicability:

    – JetBlue Plus 75,000 bonus miles after $1,000 spend in 90 days
    – Hawaiian 70,000 bonus miles after $2,000 spend in 90 days

    If you have existing Barclays cards, it’s best to ramp up spending for a few months on them in anticipation of applying for new cards.
  4. The Target Redcard $40 online plus $40 in-store churnable sign-up bonus has died. The new iterations are for $50 off either online or in-store but not both, and churning restrictions have increased to between 60 and 90 days.

    There’s one of the new, $50 promotions going through August 19 for both the credit and the debit card, and there might be utility in a $50 RedCard credit card sign-up bonus.
  5. Do this now: Sign-in to your Marriott account and then check your promotions page for targeted Q3 promotions. We’ve seen:

    – 6,000 bonus points after two stays, 7,500 more points after three, and 9,000 more points after four stays
    – 7,500 bonus points after a single stay and 15,000 more points after a second stay
    – 3,000 bonus points for your fist stay, 2,000 more for your second, and 5,000 more for your third
    – 2,000 bonus points after a single stay that includes a Friday or Saturday night, and 3,000 more points after another

    These are for stays through November 15. (Thanks to SideshowBob233 and DDG)

The spending ramp for easy Barlcays card approvals.

  1. United has a new round of targeted MileagePlay promotions, check yours and rebook any flights as necessary since pre-existing bookings won’t count. These typically range between awful and decent, with a moderate bias toward the former.

    I beat the Poisson distribution on this one though, and got a decent offer for 5x bonus miles for booking and flying a single trip through September 20, minimum $100. That one will actually move the needle on a booking for me, so bravo United.
  2. On Tuesday August 1 you’ll be able to transfer Bilt points to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club miles with rather sizable bonuses of between 75% and 150% depending on your status level with the program, which is based on the number of points earned in a calendar year.

    Normally I wouldn’t speculatively transfer miles to any airline that I wasn’t flying on a dozen times a year or more, but I could see my way into doing so with this permission given the high transfer bonuses. Things to keep in mind:

    – Virgin Atlantic is due for a devaluation after they tried and failed in 2021
    – Virgin Atlantic has fees for cancelling and redepositing award tickets ($41-$50)
    – Flying business class on ANA or Delta are the typical sweet spots
    – You’ve often got to call customer service to book award tickets

    So with those caveats, I’d look at what you might book in the next 2-3 months and transfer over enough miles to cover just those bookings, but you do you.
  3. Do this now (if you have a Marriott co-branded credit card): Register for 10,000 bonus points after $7,000 or more in spend through September 30.

Have a nice weekend!

Top: US Airline on-time performance distribution
Bottom: Spirit Airlines on-time performance distribution

  1. American Express has new offers for 20,000 Membership Rewards after $4,000 in spend in six months for new employee cards, limit five per account for Business Golds and Business Platinums at last year’s generic links:

    – Business Gold
    – Business Platinum

    The POID on these is K4IY:9976, and the offer has been alive for several weeks (first discovered by reader Jon via MEAB slack), but just hit mainstream yesterday. It’s also been out long enough that American Express customer service confirmed that the offers are properly attached.
  2. Southwest has an airfare sale for flights to, from, and within California through the end of day today using promo code 29OFF. The sale:

    – $29 fares one-way with requisite asterisks within California
    – 29% off of fares on flights to or from California, also with asterisks

    Travel is valid between August 15 and February 14, 2024 for the continental US, and there’s some availability early next year for Hawaii too. For bonus points, do some schedule research and parlay this sale into Thanksgiving travel.
  3. JetBlue has $25 off of one-way flights and $50 off of round-trip flights using promo code FALLTRAVEL booked by this evening for travel between September 6 and November 15. Of course this one has a few asterisks too, because capitalism.
  4. Yes, earlier this week we reported that Kroger would have a 4x fuel points promotion on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. That wasn’t incorrect, but Kroger is laughing up at us from hell by having an overlapping 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards between today and August 8.

    If you’re playing this game with AmExes, just watch out for certain purchases to avoid points clawbacks; remember it’s them, hi, they’re they problem it’s them.

The cable industry learned their asterisk game from the airlines.

  1. Alaska and American’s shopping portals now have spending bonuses to match United and Southwest’s:

    – Alaska: 1,200 bonus miles for $600 or more in spend through August 14
    – AA: 2,000 bonus miles for $700 in or more in spend through August 13

    For AA Loyalty Point hunters, remember that portal bonuses don’t become Loyalty Points but regular spend does, often even when it shouldn’t.
  2. Alaska Airlines has a great promotion for flights between Kona, Hawaii and the continental US with promo code KONABOGO: Buy one, get one free tickets booked by this evening for travel between August 13 and October 31. There are day-of-week requirements but they’re not too onerous. Given Alaska’s route map, this should be extra exciting for best coasters west coasters.

    Word on the street is that the BOGO isn’t actually coding properly in the buyer’s favor, don’t be afraid to experiment.
  3. Alaska also has a 10% off flights to and from other Hawaiian cities using the same promo code, KONABOGO.
  4. American Express Offers has new Delta airfare statement credits:

    – $75 off of $250 or more
    – $150 off of $500 or more

    The absolute simplest way to game these is to book a non-basic economy flight, wait more than 24 hours, then cancel it. You’ll have a flight credit valid for a year, effectively locking the offer in for later. That concludes offer gaming 101. Now, study for 201 and 202.
  5. Everyone seems to be really excited that American Express Fine Hotels and Resorts bookings can now be changed. I guess it’s not unexciting, but personally I think that the true hack this could unlock won’t actually work. Go ahead AmEx, prove me wrong.
  6. In theory American Express has targeted more people at last year’s link for the Personal Gold card with 100,000 Membership Rewards after $4,000 in spend in three months; I haven’t been able to independently confirm this one though. (Thanks to DoC)

Happy Tuesday!

American Express is out there playing 1D chess to outwit our puny 2D chess playing, FHR booking brains.

Editor’s note: Oopsie on yesterday’s grammar 🤦‍♀️. The good news is that I’ve fixed it and now there’s no google-indexable evidence. Take that robot overlords!

Today’s quick hits:

  1. Kroger is running an in-store 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercards for the second weekend in a row, valid Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

    Fuel points and gift card resale markets continue to climb with more supply bringing new demand from the sidelines back into the game. (Thanks to GCG)
  2. Chase Offers has an offer for 10% back on up to either $500 or $750 spend at Marriott Hotels through July 31. Yes, it’s easily gameable.
  3. American Express offers has two airfare offers:

    – 17,500 Membership Rewards after $1,000 or more in spend at ITA Airways
    – $250 back with $1,250 or more in spend at Qantas Airways

    Both are gameable, but might be a little bit of work.

Happy Thursday!

MEAB switches from blogging to street painting with stupendous results.