Category: Quick Hits

There’s inexplicably a lot of noise out there in the travel-hacking community this week. Can I offer a suggestion? Before you decide to spend five or so minutes reading an article, read the headline and ask yourself about the author’s motivation. For me it’s become a very effective filter for what’s worth my attention and what isn’t.

With that out of the way:

1. American Express has partnered with Delta to offer targeted status matches to regular American Express Platinum cardholders. You can sign up at this link, and see your matched status tiers at this link. A few notes:

  • You need to have United, American, Alaska, JetBlue, or Southwest status to match
  • You’ll be matched to a higher tier at Delta than your existing tier
  • The terms and conditions say the offer is targeted, but my guess is that it’ll work for anyone
  • You’ll have Delta status through August 31 (or through January 2023 by meeting these requirements)

Don’t forget, you can get AA status through spend on a co-branded card.

2. The Point debit card has 10x back at Target up to $500 in spend. If you have a Target Redcard credit card, perhaps the best play is to make a payment in-store. If not, Visa gift cards are your best bet, and make sure you go through a shopping portal in case the purchase tracks.

As usual, if you want the Point card use a referral link for a better sign-up offer than is publicly available. As of yesterday, the sign-up offer is $100 back after spending $1,000.

3. Capital One has a 20% transfer bonus to Aeromexico and Avianca. The latter has a few nice sweet-spots, like:

  • First Class (Lufthansa) US-Europe or vice-versa for 66,000 Membership Rewards, no fuel surcharges
  • Economy US-Africa or vice-versa for 31,000 Membership Rewards, no fuel surcharges
  • Business Class US-Europe or vice-versa for 49,000 Membership Rewards, no fuel surcharges
  • Economy continental US-Caribbean for 10,000 Membership Rewards, no fuel surcharges

Hint: There are others too, and they often involve a misunderstanding of basic world geography.

4. Check for email from Citi for a targeted offer of 5x at electronics stores and game stores (and a few categories that aren’t interesting) on both Premier and Prestige cards. Reportedly the subject is: “[Firstname], Use Your Citi Card to Earn Bonus ThankYou® Points on Eligible Purchases. It’s So Simple to Activate!” (Thanks to TheSultan1 and FearTheZ)

UPDATE: Oliver let me know of a similar offer on the Citi AA Business card. His offer was for 5x at electronics stores up to $500 in spend by May 31.

Sometimes you need to go with your gut.

Note: I’m now back from a disconnected vacation but still catching up. I hope to respond to everyone by the end of the day today though.

Let’s talk about a few interesting deals that have surfaced:

1. The Target Redcard debit card $80 sign-up bonus is back-again, (you get $40 off of $40 in-store and another $40 off of $40 online) with no hard-pull through March 15. As usual, you can churn this one during the promotional period and use a P2 to get the deal at least a couple of times for each person, see Target Redcard Hacks for more information.

Recent reports suggest that you should wait five business days between closing an old Redcard and opening a new one to avoid any hiccups.

2. Costco online is selling $500 Southwest and Alaska gift cards for 10% off. These may be ever-so-slightly interesting for gift card resale, but they’re definitely interesting if you’re looking at paid travel on one of those airlines anyway.

3. Kroger.com has $10 off of $150 or more in Visa and Mastercard gift cards using promo code MAR2022. Even if you don’t live in an area with Krogers you can still purchase these. The bad news? They’re not US Bank gift cards like in-store, but rather they’re Metabank gift cards processed by Blackhawk.

The other bad news? Your order will probably be cancelled if your account is less than 30 days old.

Any good news? Well, Metabank does issue different BINs.

4. There is potentially a $1,000 sign-up bonus for Chase Merchant Services according to Doctor of Credit. It’ll probably work, but there are caveats:

  • It may be targeted (but just ask if the offer is attached when applying)
  • If you play shenanigans with your Chase card portfolio, maybe skip this one to avoid any eyes on your accounts
  • Don’t run prepaid gift cards or your own credit cards through this account, find a trusted third party and use their credit card

Am I going to do this one? I honestly can’t decide. Also, who is asking me all of these questions?

Yup

Note: I’ve been on a disconnected vacation for a little over a week and I’m traveling home today. If you wrote me, I will get back to you soon. Normal posts will resume tomorrow.

Getting $50 for Three Months from Point

The Point debit card is giving a point for each dollar of “direct deposit”sent into your account in March, April, and May, up to 5,000 points per month. You also need to spend $100 on the debit card each month to be eligible.

Of course direct deposit can always be emulated. For the best luck:

  • ACH from a business account
  • Ideally, use a business account that lets you add an ACH memo when sending
  • Set the ACH memo to “Payroll”

I’d set up a $5,000 transfer to my Point account, wait three days to avoid the appearance of ACH kiting, then set up another $5,000 transfer back out. Even better, schedule all three months now and you can largely forget about it.

As always with Point, use a referral link if you sign up for the card because the public offer is smaller than the referral offer of $100 after spending $50.

Happy Monday!

ACH kiting is serious business, friends.

Note: I’ll be on a mostly disconnected vacation this week, and while I’m still planning on posting M-F, expect slower than normal responses from me. If you do write a note though I will get back to you.

1. Citi has a 15% discount on Apple gift card ThankYou Point redemptions and the spot rate for Apple gift card resale rates is in the 91-93% range, so there’s a spread to push your redemption value up by about 8% (100% / 85% * 93%). In other words, you’ll be getting about 1.08 cents per point by using Apple gift cards as a middle-currency.

2. Visible is at $50 cash-back or 5,000 Membership Rewards points on Rakuten as of this writing. With a Ting SIM card and Visible’s $50 back on bring-your-own-device, you can get a new burner phone number for shenanigans and get paid to do it.

3. The Point debit card currently has 5x on Walmart up to $1,000 in spend in both February and March, which makes this $100 back on $2,000 in money orders spread over a couple of months. (In the past money order purchases have triggered Walmart spend bonuses, so likely that’ll be the case again.)

As usual, if you don’t have the Point card and you’re considering getting one, use a referral link to sign up because the sign-up bonus is much higher than the public link at $100 back after spending $50.

Happy Tuesday!

A Tuesday triple threat for reader @BlueCat: a peanut-butter, cheese, and canadian bacon omelette. Yummy I guess?

Note: I’ll be on a mostly disconnected vacation next week, and while I’m still planning on posting M-F, expect slower than normal responses from me. If you do write a note though I will get back to you.

1. Check here for a targeted MilePlay offer from United. I was targeted for nothing on this round, but several offers have been seen for between 5,000 and 20,000 miles for taking one or more trips, sometimes in a premium cabin, sometimes one-way, and sometimes round-trip.

Of course there’s always the United offer for a complimentary delay out of SFO, no registration required, available to everyone.

2. In case you missed it like I did, last week Robert at Milenomics wrote that JetBlue now has a public policy for extending Travel Bank credits that expire between February 2020 and September 29, 2022. The extension will last through October 1, 2022. A Twitter direct message is likely the easiest way on this one.

3. Bank of America has an increased sign-up bonus of 60,000 miles on the Virgin Atlantic Mastercard after spending $2,000 in three months, and another 20,000 miles for jumping through some modest hoops. The annual fee is $90 and is not waived for the first year.

Of course because this is Bank of America, you can play a few games and end up with two or three of these cards with just a single hard pull if you’ve got a BoA checking account and you’re at or below 7/12. Two of these bonuses are enough for a round-trip to Japan in ANA First Class (110,000-120,000 points). UPDATE: Reader @nutella noted that the BoA Virgin Atlantic card is 7/12, not 5/24.

Happy weekend!

A churner preparing to navigate Bank of America card approval standards.

1. Hyatt announced their category changes and they’re not pretty for many flagship properties. Take a look here, and book before March 22 to lock in the current rates.

2. Office Depot/OfficeMax has $15 off of $300 in Mastercard gift cards. It’s not as nice as the Visa deal because the “Everywhere” cards don’t exist with Mastercards as far as I know, but still a useful sale. As usual:

  • Try to repeat the deal with multiple transactions in a single trip
  • Link your cards to Dosh for an extra $10 back
  • For advanced readers, have each card linked to a different Dosh burner account

3. Do this now: Register for Radisson’s newest promotion that gives a 30,000 point bonus for every three nights stayed through April 30, 2022, up to 90,000 total bonus points. I’m surprised to say it, but Radisson has been ahead of the pack on Hotel promotions recently. Let’s hope they keep it up.

4. Frequent Miler points out that the Nearside debit card has a sign-up bonus of $40 after depositing $200 in the bank account, and you get a normal $50 when using a referral link. The card is interesting because it’s a 2.2% cash back debit card in 2022 without a hard pull on your credit report. Of course it can be quite lucrative with the right plays, so if cash-back is your bag you may want to take a look.

5. The Point debit card was great in 2021 for quite a few reasons (including $10,000 per month in free credit card loads), and it’s been decidedly meh in 2022. The annual fee also used to be $49, but now it’s higher at $99 and the spending offers have been lamer than they used to be, which could be a function of Q1 2022 being slow, or it could be that the company has dialed back its budget.

Nonetheless, for “this week only” (lol), the card has a $100 sign-up bonus when using a referral link and another $100 for the referrer. I’d suggest getting one for your P2 if you already have one for a net $100 win. Just like with Nearside, there’s no hard pull on your credit.

Point was able to lose half their money without even touching crypto.

1. Yet another no lifetime language (NLL) American Express Business Gold link has surfaced, and this one doesn’t have an offer code attached to it which likely means it’s more broadly available than the two from Friday. The sign up bonus is 90,000 Membership Rewards after spending $10,000 in three months.

As always, as long as you have an existing American Express credit card AmEx almost certainly won’t pull your credit, and because it’s a business account it won’t show on your credit report once opened either. In other words, lobbing in an application shouldn’t affect anything whether you’re approved or not. (Thanks to Frequent Miler for the link)

2. There’s an American Express debit card and checking account that just about everyone is talking about, and as far as I can tell most of the talk is purely for novelty sake. Here’s my quick take:

  • Almost nothing is likely to recognize the card as a debit card
  • The earn rate is 0.5 Membership Rewards per dollar (just use a Double Cash instead to earn 2 cents per dollar)
  • If debit cards are really your bag, consider Nearside with 2.2% cash back rewards, or one of the other players

If a play does somehow emerge, I’ll write about it so no need to rush out and get it unless you want to be Don Quixote tilting at windmills FinTechs.

3. JetBlue is running some halfway lame deals this week. As of this writing I’m not sure what today’s is, but it’s supposed to involve JetBlue vacations which could mean a cheap way to get Disney tickets or a cruise.

Happy Wednesday!

Your favorite FinTech in the face of an American Express debit card.

I’m sure you’ve seen it elsewhere but in case you haven’t, Frontier is buying Spirit. What color do you get when you mix Frontier green with Spirit yellow? I can’t imagine it’ll be pretty. Anyway, here are a few items for your Tuesday radar:

1. PSA: US Bank Visa and MasterCard gift cards have all had their PINs reset by US Bank, presumably due to rampant fraud. Plan on calling or registering the cards online to set a PIN before using them. These cards are versatile but holding them has always been like holding a live grenade; fraudsters are good at draining them after you buy. Hopefully this move helps. (Thanks to Put-Grouchy)

2. Simon Mall has 75% off of gift card fees (including the $1,000 denominations) using code 22HAPPY75. These are Metabanks so make sure you have a liquidation plan.

3. There’s a 20% transfer bonus from American Express Membership Rewards to Hawaiian airlines. Sweet-spots:

  • Coach awards between Hawaiian Islands (7,500 points one-way)
  • Virgin Atlantic Business Class/Upper Class to Europe 125,000 (points round-trip)
  • East coast to Hawaii in Business Class (40,000 points one-way)

Now, by show of hands how many of you still have Hawaiian miles left over from when their portal worked for all purchases at Amazon? Keep that in mind before deciding to transfer miles; they’re not worth anything if you never redeem them.

4. Check for an American Express offer for $100 off of $300 at Delta. For tips on turning this into a longer term airfare credit, see this post, the same techniques will apply.

Spirit yellow mixed with Frontier green, which coincidentally also demonstrates how I feel when I “get to” fly one of those airlines.