Category: Quick Hits

What started out as a slow weekend turned into a landslide:

1. In September there was a backdoor way to turn an American Express Clear credit into $100 in United TravelBank credit through a promotion for a new Clear account. The offer is now back, and it’s still a way to turn a Clear statement credit into a quick TravelBank hundo. The caveats:

  • The $100 TravelBank credit expires after six months
  • You have to fly United or United Express to pay for airfare with TravelBank funds
  • TravelBank funds can’t be used to pay for therapy or liquor, even on a United flight

Last time you didn’t actually need to complete enrollment at an airport for the $100 credit to show up in your account, likely it’ll be no different this time.

2. Check your Chase Offers for 10% or 15% back up to $37 for charges at a Hyatt property from now through Valentine’s day.

3. The demise of the Citi Premier 80,000 points bonus has been greatly overstated. You can still find it at this link, and don’t forget that you can get this bonus multiple times as long as you space your applications out by more than 8 days and you hit the bonus spending threshold after all of your applications are in.

4. Since around Christmas time reports have surfaced that the American Express Blue Business Plus card has been eligible for the 1.9 Million Membership Rewards offer for adding employee cards (20,000 points per employee card that meets the minimum threshold spend, up to 99 employees). To see if you’re eligible, you’ll have to call American Express and ask if there are any offers for adding employees to your card.

The Blue Business Plus variant of this offer is better than the Business Platinum variant though, because the threshold for earning 20,000 bonus Membership Rewards is $2,000 in spend versus the $4,000 spend requirement on the Business Platinum. If you maximize this deal it becomes a 12x everywhere offer for up to $50,000 in spend and 11x everywhere for the remaining $49,000 in spend, wowza.

5. The Free-quent Flyer has an excellent post on how to match your Hyatt status to MGM Resorts MLife gold status, and the instructions clock in at seven words. I admire the brevity.

Pictured: The weekend news dump.

1. Check your Chase personal credit cards at this link for a Q1 spending bonus. Offers have been seen on both co-branded cards and Ultimate Rewards earning personal cards, but none have been reported on the business side. Some examples:

  • 5x at Amazon, Grocery, and Restaurants up to $1,500 in spend
  • 5% cash back on at grocery stores up to $200 in spend
  • $50 back after 15 purchases each month, up to three months
  • 5% cash back at gyms up to $50 cash back

If you get an error message or a blank page, going incognito in your browser will usually fix it.

2. The best way to cash out Dell credits on American Express Business Platinum cards for most of us has been to buy Xbox gift cards for resale, and for essentially all of last year you could get 10% off of one gift card (per purchase) using the promotion code XBOX10 which made your effective cash-out rate even better. That code finally died, but a new one surfaced: GAME10

Note that when Dell starts cancelling your orders (they will eventually no matter what you buy), there are workarounds. Perhaps the simplest and also most annoying is to call the sales office at (877) 717-3355 and place an order over the phone.

3. Delta Air Lines has:

  • Extended existing travel credits and upgrade certificates through Dec 31, 2023
  • Made current tickets and newly booked tickets in 2022 valid through the end of 2024

Delta travel credits are particularly useful for cashing out American Express Platinum airline incidentals, so this is a nice change. (Book a ticket that costs a little less than your travel credit dollar amount + $200 and AmEx will see it as an incidental)

Dell’s order verification team for Xbox gift cards.

Because American Express is still on its New Year’s bender, it’s given us a couple of tidbits related to the crazy offer for up to 1.9 million Membership Rewards points that surfaced in fall 2021 for Business Platinum cards. (Refresher: $4,000 spend on an employee card gives 20,000 bonus points, and you can have up to 99 employee cards per Business Platinum card):

1. According to multiple AmEx call center representatives, the offer on Business Platinum cards is scheduled to be available through late April. Of course that could change at any time so don’t treat it that as your reason to procrastinate.

2. An anonymous friend let me know that there’s a similarly structured offer on his Delta Gold Business card offer for 5,000 SkyMiles for $1,000 in spend, per employee card. Chris let me know that an identical offer was present on his Delta Reserve Business card too, effectively making both of these deals 6x SkyMiles up to $99,000 in spend.

As we learned in the 2021 recap, this offer doesn’t show up online and you have to call and ask about it to enroll, because reasons. So, if you have Delta business cards or any other American Express business cards, when you’ve got a moment give the number on the back of your card a call and say “Are there any offers for adding employees to this card?”

I’m still not sure who’s actually running the show over at AmEx, but wow guys, keep it coming.

American Express’s CEO barking clucking out orders for new card member promotions.

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)

2. Reader Mark passed along a 2022 version of the American Express Pay Over Time offer for 20,000 points, make sure you check all of your charge cards for eligibility. Additionally, make sure you’ve disabled Pay Over Time on your charge cards at this link to have a shot at being targeted in the future if you weren’t on this round.

As with most (but not all) American Express bonuses, plan on holding the card for 12 months if you take a Pay Over Time bonus offer.

American Express and Chase are like two peas in a pod hotdogs in a bun.

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:

(Thanks to Agile.Travel for pointing me to this post at reddit)

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.“

4. Stockpile is still allowing fee-free purchases of up to $1,000 in stock gift cards per day per email address with a credit card, but the annual limit (per email/IP/cookie) is $2,000 .

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.

Running with the cool kids was never more purple.

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:

1. Do this now: Register for IHG’s widely targeted Q1 2022 promotion. This is possibly the lamest promotion in all of 2021 with its one time 5,000 point award after two nights. (thanks to TravelBloggerBuzz)

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 multiple reports 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.