1. People that know me well know that I like to mentally explore bad ideas even if I wouldn’t do them, and this item definitely falls into that category. So I don’t recommend you do this, but if you have both a Chase Sapphire Reserve and a Chase Freedom Visa you can come out ahead with $600 in travel credits on the $550 annual fee every year. To do so:
Spend your Sapphire Reserve $300 travel credit
Downgrade your Sapphire Reserve to a Freedom Visa for a prorated annual fee refund
Upgrade your other Freedom Visa to a Sapphire Reserve, pay a prorated annual fee
Spend your new Sapphire Reserve $300 travel credit
I think that there’s a distinct possibility that shenanigans like this will get you axed by Chase and I wouldn’t do it, but it’s worth illustrating because the same thing will probably work at other banks with other products that you care a lot less about, and learning the trick could come in handy in the future. (Thanks to discussion over at reddit for pushing me in the right direction)
It’s great to vibe with the flow after the slow week between Christmas and New Years. Here are five interesting things that came up over the weekend:
1. Seth from wandr.me and the Dots, Lines, and Destinations podcast has released a tool that I’ll be using a lot: Where the Widebodies Are. This tool lets you search through airline schedules for where widebody (two-aisle) aircraft are flying domestically. I prefer widebody aircraft because:
They often have lie-flat business class seats and quite a few of them for upgrades
They often have large premium economy cabins (like domestic first class seats)
Typically the outsides of the aircraft are two seats wide in economy, so no middle seats
They’re smoother than lighter single-aisle aircraft
2. I’ve had multiple readers tell me that they can’t get PayPal Key, and the old tricks for getting it on your account stopped working over the summer. Fortunately, there’s a new trick for getting PPK:
3. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards Mastercard (a MEAB Unsung Hero) has a targeted great offer to ring in the new year: 15% back on gas, grocery, and restaurants each month for January, February, and March. The minimum spend each month to trigger the offer is $500, and the maximum spend for 15% back is $600. Over three months, that’s $270 back in statement credits. Talk about a nice hit for a no-annual fee card.
Look for the targeted link in your inbox, the subject for mine was “Matthew, your new offer is here. But only for a limited time. Activate now.“
5. The Target RedCard $80 back ($40 online and $40 in-store) for opening a new RedCard debit or RedCard credit card deal is back through January 15. Both cards definitely have their uses, and notably can be churned. Just make sure you wait at least three business days between closing and reopening to avoid any speed bumps. You can read more about why this is useful with Target Redcard Hacks.
I’m focusing my efforts on tomorrow’s Travel Hacking in 2021 as Told By GIFs post and this is the slowest time of the year for our hobby, so let’s have two quickies to get us through Thursday:
2. MS hint: Many MS techniques will live and die by the expiration date of the card you’re trying to liquidate — cards that expire in 2028 or earlier may sail through, while 2029 or later expiration dates fail. When the calendar turns, usually you’ve got a whole new year of valid expiration dates. Huzzah for Saturday I guess.
As a corollary of the above, if got a failure when probing a particular liquidation method, you may be getting an expiration date related failure rather than a blanket failure, so that’s another dimension to consider.
The excitement for 2022 in this room full of LAN party gift card gamers is palpable.
At the end of the year, banks can be wonky with when they apply charges and statement credits. This is especially true if the bank name rhymes with Beermerican Supress. So, if you haven’t finished working through your year-end housekeeping for statement credits and bonus spend, I’d consider today a soft deadline for 2021 spending. Don’t forget:
Wireless credits
Saks credits
Dell credits
Clear credits
Global Entry credits
Spend bonuses
Card linked offers
And another word of caution: Dell doesn’t charge a credit card until they ship, so if it’s not digital, your chances aren’t good for 2021.
Stay classy out there.
American Express’s algorithm for determining in which year a charge made on December 30th should post
Hyatt got drunk on holiday eggnog (with bourbon of course) and we’re all benefiting. They’ve been:
Giving bonus points for Club Access Awards that expire on December 31, 2021
Extending the validity by six months of Suite Upgrade Awards that expire on December 31, 2021
I saw this first in private forums and later on Flyertalk and Reddit, and the number of successful datapoints is staggering. All you need to do is call Hyatt and ask for points in exchange for the expiring certificates, or ask for an extension on expiring Suite Upgrade Awards. In case calling someone is below the line, you can also chat via the website or mobile app. The number of points for Club Access Awards you’ll get depends on your status:
Globalists get 500 points each (presumably because Globalists always get club access anyway but Hyatt didn’t want to alienate their top tier members)
Explorists get 1,500 or 3,000 points each
There are multiplereports that this is a new policy, let’s hope it sticks for 2022.
(H/T D C Domer)
Hyatt’s other holiday surprise was scheduled to be this cursed snowman. Fortunately for all of us he melted in the Regency Club.
I noticed it’s busy out this week, anyone know why? Anyway:
1. You may remember that Chase gave a year of DashPass to cardholders starting in January 2021, and for many of you that year is almost up. You can get another year as long as you do the following before January 1, 2022:
Deactivate your DashPass membership
Remove all your Chase cards from DoorDash (I had to do this from the website, I couldn’t figure out how in the app)
Wait one day
Add a new (different from the one you used in January) Chase card to DoorDash
2. A helpful tip courtesy of discussion at Flyertalk, and it’s definitely applicable to some of the fares I’ve already booked — in today’s pandemic-era airline environment:
Almost all fares are changeable with no fee
Almost all fares can be cancelled and held as expiring travel vouchers
Paying for a First Class upgrade with cash or miles has gotten more expensive
So, if you’re considering paying for a seat up front with a ticket you’ve already booked, check the original cost of the ticket paired with the cost of an upgrade and compare that to the cost of a new ticket booked directly into First Class. If it’s cheaper to book directly (right now it usually is), cancel your existing ticket, take the voucher, then use the funds to book into a proper First Class fare.
3.VanillaGift.com has fee-free e-gift cards through this evening with code EGIFT2021. I’m praying to the holiday gods that this one sticks around post expiration exactly the way that FLASH2021 didn’t, though being e-gift cards makes these slightly less useful so my prayer voice is more of a whisper.
4.SoFi is giving $20 for checking your interest rate on a personal loan, and it only requires a soft-credit pull. It took me about 60 seconds to run through the motions, but a SoFi rep called my voicemail twice afterword so keep that in mind. By the way, this deal barely made the cut I’m still trying to figure out exactly where that line is ($20 for one minute is above the line, but the phone calls almost pulled it below).
Happy holidays to you and your families!
Pictured: American Airlines’ First Class “holiday ham cake”, which thanks to this post, you can get for even less.
I’ve written before about cell phone burners and churning as an integral part of travel hacking, but it’s been a long time since then and there are some recent opportunities available right now that are likely to go away when the calendar turns. So, a refresher on why you should have burner phone numbers:
Many FinTech companies tie their account to a phone number, so scaling them requires new numbers
Many referrals and referral bonuses work by referring another phone number
Many online stores use a phone number for two factor authentication and as a back-door way to quantity limit
If you’re shutdown by, I don’t know, Dell or AA, a new phone number is a big part of spinning up a new account
Many amazing mobile phone deals or mobile service deals require porting in an existing phone number
Burner phone numbers give you scale, access to great deals, cheap phone swaps and upgrades, and help you recover from different types of account shutdowns.
Getting New Phone Numbers
Burners are part of the game, but not all burner telephone numbers are equal. For example, free phone numbers from TextNow can’t be ported out, and often companies and services will recognize and block these and other VOIP numbers. Phone numbers from Google Voice usually aren’t eligible for referrals, referral bonuses, or porting out bonuses. Companies have closed the obvious loopholes.
To make sure your burner phone number works with essentially everything out there, you’ll want to get a new number from one of the providers on this list published by Visible, which is mirrored by essentially all the services out there. There are a few easy and cheap options on that list:
Ting: Most of the year you can get a SIM card with a new phone number for $1 at BestBuy and Target. The SIM card comes with $30 in credit which covers all the time you need to port out a number
Google FI: Using a referral code will get you $20 in service credit, which will more than cover the couple of days that you’ll need to hold a number to port out
Mint Mobile: You can get a seven day “trial” service for $2, also at BestBuy and Target. Unfortunately you have to ask customer service for your account number for porting out so I prefer the above options to Mint
Once you’ve got phone numbers from the above, you can either hold them for long-term use or use them to unlock new deals.
Holding Phone Numbers
If you want to hold a phone number long-term, there are a few cheap options:
Google Voice costs $20 to port-in, but there aren’t further fees afterword
Talk about burying the lead eh? Everything above was to bring us to this point. December has some crazy good phone deals, and I’ve linked to some of the best ones here but others are available. Note that if slickdeals says one of the below deals is dead, it’s lying. As always, if you go for one of these deals make sure you use a portal for cash back.
Xfinity: Bring your own device for a $200 gift card per line (90 day service required, but you can have up to 10 phones on the same plan for a total cost of $15 per month, whether its 1 phone or 10 phones)
With the T-Mobile deals, you can open a “Talk and Text only” plan for $20 per month, or switch to that plan right after opening. T-Mobile will automatically unlock phones after about 45 days but will do it sooner when asked. Visible will unlock phones automatically after 60 days. Metro will unlock phones after six months. There’s also a way to unlock phones with AT&T SIM cards if you’re crafty.
Coincidentally, The Daily Churn Podcast just released an episode on flipping iPhones which is quite complimentary and relevant to the above.
What Scale Looks Like
I’ve been through at least three dozen Ting phone numbers in 2021 alone, and I feel like I could have done quite a few more but frankly I just focused on other things. With most of these deals, you can do five to ten in a single sitting, so it doesn’t have to be a slog.
I also know of a particular reader who did over a hundred lines with a particular Visible deal in a single month, and I’m sure there are people out there who’ve done more than that.
Good luck out there!
You may love your iPhone 13 Pro Max and I can’t fault you, but I’m holding out for a port-in deal on one of these beauties.
1. American Express was clearly up too late Sunday night and was loopy from drinking a bottle of Tabasco and eating a jar of pickles on an empty stomach: As first reported by Slickdeals AmEx cards have some amazing and suspicious spending offers on the Membership Rewards family of cards. Reportedly offers have been seen for:
$1,000 back after spending $1,000 up to 3 times
$3,500 back after spending $2,000 up to 3 times
$4,500 back after spending $2,500 up to 3 times
Almost certainly this was meant to be a Membership Rewards points offer and not a cash-back offer, but well into Monday night the offer was still showing as cash-back. Check your cards here, and if you’ve got the offer I do suggest spending on the card on the off-chance that it works, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you end up with just Membership Rewards points as your bonus in the end.
2. A strange SimplyMiles deal has been percolating since Friday night, and honestly I didn’t believe that it was correct and didn’t want to waste your time while you tried to chase a lame unicorn, but I was wrong. What’s the deal? SimplyMiles is giving 6x on all of their outstanding offers for the first three redemptions on your account now through December 27, 2021. (In case you’re not aware, SimplyMiles is a card linked program for Mastercard issued cards that earns AA miles.)
The kicker is that Gary confirmed that that 6x doesn’t mean +6x, it means *6x, so a 40 miles per dollar deal actually means 6*40 miles, or 240 miles per dollar. The best offers on my account:
40 miles per dollar for donating to Conservation International, apparently an unlimited cap
6*40 = 240 miles per dollar with the offer
1,500 miles for a purchase of $45 or more at CVS
6*1,500 = 9,000 miles with the offer
1,500 miles for a purchase of $200 or more at BestBuy
6*1,500 = 9,000 miles with the offer
Those are pretty amazing offers and I did each one the moment the deal was confirmed to be real. Who doesn’t want an AA Web Special economy flight for buying a $50 gift card at CVS anyway?
Good luck out there, and may your day be even wackier than these two deals!
Eat approximately two pounds of these to propel yourself to American Express levels of whackiness.
