Category: Quick Hits

1. USAA is offering a shopping portal bonus of $20 back on $100 in spend through May 4. Use Thursday’s trick to liquidate American Express Business Platinum credits if you still have them, or buy a $100 Visa or Mastercard gift card from GiftCards.com after clicking through the portal if you don’t. Unfortunately though, not everyone is eligible to become a USAA member so this one isn’t for all. Don’t forget that if you’ve got USAA, your P2 and your kids are eligible to join for free too so you can scale this deal up to your family size easily.

2. CashApp’s cash back boosts have been snoozers for a few months, but as of this weekend they’ve gotten back in the business of transferring money from venture capitalists’ wallets into yours: A new boost for 5% back on Sam’s Club purchases up to $400 spend for a total of $20 cash back. Sam’s sells Visa and Mastercard gift cards, and they sometimes track on the Rakuten shopping portal (and probably others, but why would you care?)

In case you’re unaware — CashApp is basically a Venmo like program but you also get a real debit card. When you spend on that real debit card, you can get cash back by applying boosts, even with PIN transactions. CashApp has a referral program too, so find a friend or family member to refer you. You’ll both get $5, which is better than a swift kick in the pants or 500 Italian Lira.

An image of a bank note of 500 Italian Lira.
CashApp’s $5 beats 500 Italian Lira in value, but not in coolness. Stay classy, Roman deity.

Remember yesterday’s Alaska Airlines shopping portal bonus that I thought wasn’t worth doing? Well if you have an American Express Business Platinum card, it’s probably worth it now because Dell has a promo offer for 10% off of Xbox Gift cards with code XBOX10. To take advantage of it:

  • Ensure you’ve activated your Dell credit with your American Express Business Platinum
  • Check for any Dell cash back or 2x/3x spend American Express offers
  • Start at the Alaska portal for Dell Home, and click on SHOP NOW. UPDATE: RabbMD let me know that Dell Technologies earns 3x instead of 1x.
  • Add a $100 Xbox Gift Card to your cart
  • Add a $25 Xbox Gift Card to your cart
  • Checkout, and enter promo XBOX10
  • Pay with your Business Platinum

The promo will only apply to one card, but it’ll pick the more expensive one. So, you’ll spend $115, but you’ll get:

  • $100 back from AmEx as a statement credit (or more if you have an offer attached to your card)
  • 615 Alaska miles
  • $82-85 in resale value for the Xbox cards (thanks to Katie for the correction in rates)
  • 115 Membership Rewards points (or more if you have an offer attached to your card)
  • Rid of the Dell credit that expires June 30 and can be hard to use

If you have multiple Business Platinums, create new Dell accounts with new email addresses to use the code again, and don’t ever let the Business Platinum cards co-mingle between accounts. UPDATE: The code works on the same account multiple times, thanks to RabbMD for letting me know.

A prepared stir-fry of vegetables in a wok.
A stir-fry is just co-mingled ingredients.

1. I know that there’s mixed love and hatred out there for AirFrance, but in my opinion they’re an absolutely wonderful airline for Business Class or La Premiere. (Yes, I’m even including the older shrinking fleet with angled lie flat cabins, just make sure you sit in the middle section of Business Class for direct aisle access.) The food and wine is hard to beat, and the service for me has always been outstanding. AirFrance is also great for racking up Delta MQM and MQD on mistake or ultra-cheap business fares. To help with that, AirFrance has a new promo code: SPRINGAF21 for $70 off of your next flight to Europe or Africa, just book by May 14, 2021 for travel between May 1 and October 31.

The code is ok, but honestly I’m writing about this principally because Spring AF is about the funniest thing I’ve seen out of an airline in years. If it was any other code, I’m not sure I’d write about it. Well played AirFrance, though I’m pretty sure it wasn’t played on purpose.

2. Do this now: Register for bonus points at Hilton. It’s a snoozer at 2x or 3x points, but you never know when you might end up at a Hilton anyway and it may be too late to register or you may forget register. Don’t be in that boat!

3. Thanks to the AA 40th’s sweepstakes, you can get 20% off of standard rates at Hyatt properties booked by May 31 for stays through September 12, 2021. Use code AA40TH.

Hot AirFrance. Wait, that’s not what it means.

1. Capital One has added a few airline transfer partners and made a few others 1:1 transfer partners. I’m still not sold on the program as being uniquely different or valuable, but I know some of you like them. Here’s a nice, no-nonsense summary. I think Turkish, Avianca, and Asia Miles are the useful Capital One partners.

2. Alaska Airlines is offering 500 bonus miles for spending $100 with a store after clicking through their shopping portal. The bonus is too small and the fees are too high for me to do anything with GiftCards.com on this one, but if you’re going to buy something anyway… 🤷‍♀️

3. Meijer stores are offering $7.50 off of $50 in Happy Gift Cards. As usual, I’d buy the Happy Treats which functions as a Visa at GameStop, and buy Steam gift cards for resale. Do you have multiple Meijer MPerks accounts yet? I don’t, because I’m pretty sure the closest Meijer to me is at least 1,000 miles away.

A male tennis player holding up a thumb and two index fingers while screaming
A “tennis tuesday triple”, because today I like alliterations.

1. There’s an offer floating around for 150,000 Membership Rewards with the American Express Business Platinum card after $15,000 in spend in three months. This card also has the 5x Office Supplies, Advertising, Gas, Shipping, and Wireless credits already attached, so it works even if you’ve already saved those offers to other cards. I was able to get it by:

If that doesn’t work for you, try another browser, a different search engine (baidu, duckduckgo, bing), and definitely try a desktop browser and not a mobile browser. Each will give seemingly random offers between 100,000 and 150,000 Membership Rewards.

I applied and was approved instantly.

2. Check this link for a targeted offer of 1,000 AA miles for each Hyatt night through July 31, register by June 30. This deal is amazing and unfortunately I wasn’t targeted. You might be though! Update: Thanks to Vince for pointing out the correct promotion date.

3. Southwest devalued their points from 78 points per dollar to 83 points per dollar. Just for that, I’m going to drop a few links in true Robert Dwyer tit-for-tat spirit: You should have this auto-checkin script for Southwest flights in your tool belt, and also this Southwest price drop bot. Both will require a small bit of technical prowess, but if you can write an Excel formula you’ve probably got enough.

Three is the magic number.

Do this now: Open the Uber app, and link your Marriott #Bonvoyed account to your Uber account by going into Settings, then scroll down to “Marriott Bonvoy”.

Look, I don’t love Uber or Marriott, but you can now earn Bonvoy points for spending American Express Uber credits or regular Uber / Uber Eats stuff, as long as the total cost is over $25. Bonvoy points are still useful for converting into many different types of airline miles, and I guess they have a few hotels that you can stay in.

Let’s goose this deal though, because if you have a qualifying purchase by May 31, 2021 you’ll earn an additional 2,000 Bonvoy points:

  • Open Uber, then #Bonvoy them by linking your account
  • Open Uber Eats, then add the promo code 50OFFPICKUP to your account, that’ll earn you 50% off of a pickup order up to $10, but you have to use it by tomorrow night
  • Order a dinner for you and your family or friends that totals at least $35, or $25 after pickup — ideally you use your burner account which you use to store your AmEx Uber Credits
  • Earn $10 off of your pickup and 2,050 #Bonvoyed points

Food recommendation: Go for the local authentic Ethiopian joint if you’ve got one; Ethiopian food is top-notch and I’m guessing a lot of you haven’t had it though I’d love to be wrong. Be adventurous!

Not what I meant by adventurous food, reddit.

1. American Airlines has reduced mileage awards for AA credit card holders back on the table. These are actually a great deal and worth a look, especially because in most cases you can cancel and redeposit the miles with no fees if your trip doesn’t work out. Steps:

2. Southwest is having a nice fare sale with quite a few $50 fares out there. Remember that if the cash fare is cheap with Southwest, so is the mileage cost, and with mileage awards you can cancel and redeposit at any time for no fee. If you book something cheap in early June, you’ll almost certainly be able to change it to any other flight ±30 days in a week or two when the next free schedule change window opens. What a time to be alive!

Final note: The AA 40th contest is still going — lots of people are winning 4,000 mile awards recently. For best results, spin the globe as early as possible after 12:00 AM Eastern time. Since it’s a new week, you can get a bunch of new buttons by logging in and clicking all the blue buttons.

A woman in a riding outfit (flannel shirt, pants, tall socks, boots, and a black riding cap) on top of a cow jumping over a post.
Flying Southwest compared to flying other legacy carriers is a bit like riding a cow instead of riding a horse.

You’ve got a lot of in-person MS options this week:

  • Office Depot OfficeMax is offering $15 back on $300 or more in Visa Gift cards in store, limit one per transaction. Make sure you can liquidate these before you buy, there are plenty of ways but Walmart Money Centers mostly aren’t one of those ways. This is 5x with an Ink Cash or an American Express Business Platinum with the +4x office supplies offer.
  • Staples is offering $200 Visa Gift cards with a discounted fee of $1.95 per card, as we learned Friday. As with the above, use a 5x card if you’ve got one and have a liquidation plan.
  • Meijer is offering $5 off of each $50 in gift cards you buy up to $500 in gift cards with some exclusions after you add the offer to your rewards account. I’d personally buy Happy Treats gift cards and use them at GameStop to buy Steam gift cards for resell at a profit. Make sure you use one of the many cards that bonuses at a grocery store to purchase this one.
  • Meijer is also offering $10 off of $150 in Mastercard gift cards after you add the offer to your rewards account. Use a card that bonuses at grocery like American Express’s Personal Gold, or the Chase Sapphire Reserve (the Sapphire Reserve gives 3x at groceries up to $1,000 per month for now).
  • Stop and Shop, Martins, and Giant are offering 3x fuel points on Mastercard gift card purchases. Mastercard gift cards are usually easier to liquidate from home, so they’re my preference over Visa in general. Use a card that bonuses at grocery for this one too.

And finally, a friendly reminder and warning: Double check all gift cards that you pick up in store for any signs whatsoever of tampering. Sometimes scammers will steal, modify, reseal, and replace the cards to drain them after you activate them. I usually pull cards from the back of the rack on the assumption that they’re less likely to be stolen, and I give each card a good, hard look. I also try and buy gift cards that have barcode numbers in sequence when possible (say, the last 4 digits of the activation code are 3666, 3667, and 3668 when I’m buying three Home Depot cards). If the card supports it, I try and match the ID on the packaging with the ID on the card itself.

A picture of a woman dressed in a black turtle-neck with black jeans, a black beanie, and a black eye covering carrying black bags with white $ signs and money falling out of the bags.
Pictured: gift card scammer. How do the grocery stores not notice this person walking around?