Category: Shenanigans

Introduction

In what has become an annual MEAB tradition for an unbelievable streak of two years in a row (if you include this year), it’s time for another installment of Travel Hacking as Told by GIFs. The 2020 version was, naturally, a rousing success. Time for another one of those, or something.

Let’s Go!

Virgin Atlantic Devalues its Award Charts and Expects us to Book Anyway

Partner flights on Delta tripled in price in many cases. You know that you’ve gone way too far when Delta SkyMiles award prices to Europe are cheaper than yours.

PayPal Key Blocks AmEx on January 4

Remember how merchant coding didn’t pass properly to AmEx via PayPal and everything was a “global restaurant” when you bought with PPK? I do. sniff

Citi Pay-By-Phone Accepts New Cards

When the new year ticked over, a new year’s worth of expiration dates started to sail through, and we celebrate.

American Express Master Value Injection 2.0

Personal Platinums get $30 at PayPal. Co-brand business cards got $10-$20 off of wireless services. Co-brand personal cards get $10-$25 off of dining. It all resets every month! Also, business Platinums get +4x in four categories. We’re happy at first…

American Express with Master Value Injection Redux

By March, we realize we’re working for American Express to cash out a dozen small monthly credits, and it feels like we’re getting nowhere fast while we try and twirl through our credits.

Bank of America Launches a Spirit Airlines Co-Brand Card

Someone really thinks we’ll go for this? Also, 40,000 miles is stingy, even for Spirit.

Fluz Launches power.fluz.app

If you know, you know.

Breeze Airways Takes Flight

We have a new US based air carrier and we got to see its inaugural takeoff roll.

Citi Launches the Custom Cash Card

It’s a no-annual fee card that earns 5x per month on $500 spend in whatever category you spent the most on. Bad? Not at all. Amazing? Not really, but we’ll take it. Unfortunately for me I got a $20,000 credit line on a card that will never see more than $500 in monthly spend.

Visible Sends Us Giant Piles of Mastercard Gift Cards

The Ting to Visible+Rakuten deal landed some over 30 $100 gift cards in their inbox. Now if I just knew where my Creedence was.

The American Express “Three for All” Deal Dies

American Express gave us a bonus three points per dollar, uncapped, for referring someone (like P2) to a new card. Obviously this was abused and became a goldmine.

The American Express “4 for Us” Deal Surfaces

Maybe the “4 for us deal” isn’t quite as lucrative as “3 for all” for heavy hitters, but it’s a great consolation prize to close out 2021. I got one for me and one for P2, but wish I had tried even harder.

American Airline’s SimplyMiles Roller Coaster

We’re all going to get 240 miles per dollar. No wait, we’re not. No, it’s going to post! Then it posts! Then it unposts! Then it posts! Then it unposts!

The Dust Settles and 240 Miles Per Dollar Actually Shows Up

Former US Airways management proves that it can still make a deal that puts other deals to shame, even though they can’t make a sandwich.

Fee-Free MS with Point Dies

You could load cash onto the Point debit card with a credit card using Apple Pay, fee-free, up to $12,500 per month, and then spend the money and earn another 1% on top. It even worked with American Express.

We watch the Marriott Program go from Bad to Worse

After years of devaluation, Marriott gave us something different another devaluation.

Getting Creative with Rental Cars During Carmageddon

Bob at the local mechanics shop will let you rent a fixer-upper for only $150 per day, unlimited miles. What a steal!

Running to Meijer for the Sale of the Year

Meijer announced that they were giving 10% off of third party gift cards for two days, and MSers ran to the Midwest for a feeding frenzy.

Flight Attendants Get Trained on Unruly Passenger Handling

Smh, smh, welcome to flying in 2021.

Debauchery With Reddit Mods and Chase Links

Links were allegedly stolen from source code, reddit /r/churning mods had massive infighting, links were released to the public to hide serious abusers in a crowd, inevitably a bunch of shutdowns occur, and one of the perpetrators walks away unscathed. This could honestly be an HBO mini-series.

Flight Attendants on British Airways Celebrate the Reopening of US Borders

BA1 marked the return of leisure travel to the United States, or at least that was the plan before Virgin Atlantic stole the crown. Fortunately, Miles Earn and Burn has obtained exclusive footage from the safety briefing so we can all take part in the early celebration.

Virgin Atlantic and British Airways Orchestrate Simultaneous Takeoff

After the safety briefings, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic organized a coordinated takeoff at London Heathrow. Later VS decided that it didn’t want a synchronized landing, it wanted to win; so, yay teamwork?

American Express Shuts Down Some Cardholders

It’s always the ball you don’t see coming, right? American Express shut down accounts for cardholders that had opened one or more business cards with the help of a particular employee, and without regard to literally anything else. Imagine opening a single Business Platinum card in 2018 and then having this happen in 2021…

American Express Reinstates Shutdown Cardholders

It turns out that if you’re persistent and if you ask enough times, you’ve got a great shot of AmEx reinstating your accounts. Just make sure you wear your Sunday best.

Screenshotting Offer Terms and Conditions

Sometimes we need to have a picture of what we’re offered to keep a company honest. I prefer using a phone or computer’s built-in tool, but if you’re part of any Slack or WhatsApp groups, you’ll know that not everyone feels the same way.

Your Friend Asks You What It’s Like to Fly Eleven Hours in Coach

Uh, we literally have no idea. If it’s not a lie flat, then we haven’t done it. We might look rugged and experienced, but honestly we haven’t been past row 16 or so on a widebody aircraft since, I don’t know, ever.

GoBank Discontinues Its Card

When notice came in mid-August that GoBank was shutting down in favor of Go2Bank, MSers swiped repeatedly at Walmart to offload gift cards (including Metabank) while they still could.

Brex Gives us Hundreds of Thousands of Points for Very Little Effort

It took me under five minutes on the phone to link PayPal to Brex for 100,000 points. And then there was the 110,000 point sign-up bonus in early February. Oh, and you could do it multiple times with multiple business. In my state, you can register a business for only $70, so there’s that too. (It’s not quite as good, but you can keep the party going in 2022 with the TravelBank 75,000 points after spending $1,000 offer.)

BestBuy Disables Auto-Checkout Bots During Black Friday

BestBuy knows that auto-checkout bots exist, and has countermeasures to disable them. Why does it turn them on for only a week or two a year? I have no idea.

American Express’s Secret 1,900,000 Membership Rewards Offer

Employees that shared your name but with roman numerals were never more exciting! This deal is still scheduled to run well into 2022 on many business cards by the way; you just have to call and ask, because I guess you’re just supposed to know that AmEx has phone only offers and to check periodically?

BravoPay Tries to Fix the 2% Liquidation Loophole

I literally think every day about how badly BravoPay’s programmers built the app and how they tried several times to repair it but kept failing. “It’ll buff out, right?”

Airline Customer Service Teams Try and Keep-up

Apropos of nothing, do you remember how the CARES act was supposed to keep everyone employed at airlines? Anyway, I’m sure that worked out well and nine-hour hold times are how it’s always been, right?.

Pre-check and Clear Make Us Complacent About Timing

Leaving your house 26 minutes before your airline’s schedule departure is prolly fine right?

Getting excited for the Capital One Venture X Card

… and then getting denied.

Staples Runs Another $200 Fee Free Gift Card Sale

It only comes around for two to three weeks a month, so the excitement is hard to summon.

The GivingAssistant Portal Falls Apart

A few probers out there knew that GivingAssistant was really good at awarding cash back even when other portals wouldn’t, like buying Apple Products on BestBuy.com. Did our experimenting cause it to fall apart?

Miles Earn and Burn Celebrates a One Year Anniversary

You may have figured out by now that I’m not big on ceremony for the sake of ceremony, so you probably won’t be surprised to learn that I spared you all from another “WE JUST TURNED ONE YEARS YOUNG!!” blog post. But, the anniversary technically did occur.

The Worst Credit Card Takes a New Tact

I don’t yet have a formal Unsung Villains series to match the Unsung Heroes series, but if and when I do the Mastercard Black Card card will be at the top of the villains list. The thing is, they know that their card is bad so their marketing department has to stretch. Recently they’ve started advertising that their card is heavier than the competition. Wow, you mean my wallet can get even thicker?!? Sold!

Thank You!

I don’t say it enough, but I appreciate everyone’s support over 2021. Thanks for your emails, your Telegram messages, your Slack and Discord groups, and your Patreon memberships. I’m really here because of you.

Until next year, friends!

Introduction

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
  • Tello costs $5 per month with free port-in

December Deals

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.

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.

You’ve got just a little over a week and a half before “reset to factory defaults” happens on just about everything we do. Set aside a bit of time to take care of the following this week:

1. Spend any American Express credits in Uber Eats or Uber, and remember that your December Uber Wallet size is quite a bit bigger than other months when Platinum cards are involved.

2. Check for any annual fees that posted and call the bank for a retention offer, or just chat online if the bank is American Express. Some sample phraseology: “I’m thinking of closing this card because of its high annual fee, but before I decide what to do I was wondering if there are any retention offers or spend bonuses.” If you get an offer, don’t forget to add: “Are there any other offers available?” Sometimes there are better offers if you keep asking.

American Express specific note: If you accept a retention offer, plan on keeping that card for 12-13 months to avoid getting popups that deny credit card bonuses in the future

3. If you have an American Express co-branded personal card (Marriott, Delta, Hilton), make sure you’ve attached the dining offer to your card and spend it soon. The easiest way to do this from home is to buy an exact value Amazon Meals gift card on Fluz. As always, find a Fluz referral from a friend to make their day if you don’t have an account already, they’ll earn something and so will you.

3. Spend any American Express co-branded business card wireless credits by tomorrow night, but make sure you’ve added the offer to your cards first. Don’t forget that American Express Business Platinum cards have a $10 monthly credit too, just make sure you’ve activated it on your benefits page.

4. Make sure you’ve spent any $10 American Express Personal Gold dining credits. My go to is the local coffee shop for a coffee and a crepe which jumps just north of $10 on GrubHub. Buying physical gift cards at a ShakeShack is another option.

5. Cancel any cell phone burner accounts that you’re done with (and for which you didn’t use a virtual credit card number that already expired).

6. Finish off any Q4 5x bonused spend on Chase Freedom cards, Discover IT cards, US Bank Cash+ cards, Citi Custom Cash cards, or similar.

7. Book any American Express Fine Hotels and Resorts (or The Hotel Collection) stays with your $200 Platinum credit for upcoming travel next year, even if it’s speculative. Historically American Express’s systems lose their memory after the calendar rolls, so keep that in mind.

8. Use your Chase Sapphire Reserve $300 travel credit, and remember that it works on groceries this year too.

9. Use your American Express Platinum $200 airline incidental credit, Chase Ritz Carlton $300 airline incidental credit, or PenFed PathFinder $100 airline incidental credit. United TravelBank is a great way to do this. On the American Express card, make sure you’ve selected an airline first. By the way, you can change your airline selection at any time as long as you haven’t yet used any during this calendar year, just call or chat with AmEx.

10. Use any American Express Sak’s $50 credits, but make sure you activate the benefit first. I personally make sure and stop by a physical Sak’s store and buy gift cards to resell at approximately 83% of face value, but if that’s not a good option for you, Agile.Travel put together a nice list of options for things to buy.

11. It’s time for some shenanigans with American Express Clear credits (yes, there are options) so burn those or gift them to a friend. Side note: Soon, it looks like you’ll be able to buy Clear gift cards for resale.

12. Check for any credit card spend bonuses that you may want to hit before the end of the year, like:

  • World of Hyatt Visa free night certificate after $15,000 spend
  • American Express Hilton Surpass and Honors Business free night certificate after $15,000 spend
  • American Express Hilton Aspire second free night certificate after $60,000 spend
  • American Express Delta Platinum MQM boosts after $25,000 and $50,000 spend
  • American Express Delta Reserve MQM boosts after $30,000, $60,000, $90,000, and $120,000 spend
  • British Airways Visa companion ticket after $50,000 spend
  • JetBlue Visa Mosaic status after $50,000 spend

Good luck out there.

The American Express master control panel. They’ve made great use of the turbo button for all of 2021, but a tech earning $12 / hour will push the reset button at 11:59 PM EST on December 31 so be ready.

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.

American Express launches us into the weekend with some great Friday news:

1. If you were shutdown by American Express for the Adam debacle, you’ve got a good shot at getting your cards reinstated by calling the number on the back of your card and asking for reinstatement. A few details:

  • Accounts reinstated on or after November 1st have all remained open as far as I can tell (versus those reinstated before that date which were quickly closed)
  • American Express will charge you $25 per card reinstated
  • Offers remain attached to your reinstated accounts
  • YMMV on whether your points and cash-back are auto-reinstated
  • Not everyone is eligible for reinstatement

If I were shutdown and wanted to reopen cards with American Express, I’d be very selective about which cards to reopen. I may not want to reopen a card that was sitting in a sock-drawer and only open because of a sign-up bonus or retention offer, for example.

2. There are a few links for adding employee cards to your small business Green, Gold, or Platinum card, and while the offers vary, generally it looks something like 20,000 Membership Rewards for adding a new employee card and spending $4,000 in six months. You can do this with up to five employees for a total of 100,000 Membership Rewards points. You can check your offer here:

A few notes:

  • You may be able to earn 100,000 points for each business card in your portfolio, just split them off into their own login
  • Sometimes it’s helpful to have employees with names like yours, right junior?
  • You don’t actually have to provide a SSN or date of birth for an employee card, and they arrive in the mail pre-activated, in the same way that Spirit’s seats are pre-reclined
  • Always choose the no-annual fee green employee card, the offer will still work
Watch for Spirit’s newest two innovations in a post-“pre-reclined” world. First: punishment class (the middle rows), and second: lie-flatish small-business class.

This time of year never disappoints with manufactured spend promotions. Here are a few to look at today:

1. Kroger is running a 4x fuel promotion on third party fixed value gift cards from today through December 7. Time to warm up those grocery store bonused credit cards.

2. The rumor that Sam’s club has started to pay out portal bonuses on gift card purchases again has been confirmed (at least for me). Time to warm up those warehouse club bonused cards and your Rakuten Visa, or take advantage of the 7 days remaining on the CashApp Sam’s boost.

3. HyVee grocery stores are running an offer for $10 off each $150 in Visa gift cards through November 25. I’d buy a $500 Visa gift card for $30 back, and lather, rinse, and repeat.

4. If you have any non American Express issued AmEx cards, use this page to add an offer for $10 back on $10 or more in spend at small business, up to 5 times for a total of $50 back by December 31. I added the offer to my US Bank Flexperks AmEx and liquidated by buying five $10 gift cards at the local coffee shop.

Happy manufacturing!

Pictured: Retailers gearing up for black Friday. Not pictured: our giant manufactured spend robot that eats fastpitches for breakfast.

1. Reader Mark wrote in to let me know that the Target RedCard deal is back, this time worth $80 for each cycle (you get one coupon for $40 off of in-store purchases, and another coupon for $40 off of online purchases). Remember, you can churn this deal. I believe currently you have to wait 48-72 hours between closing a RedCard and opening a new one, which is different than how it worked over the summer.

2. The Point debit card currently has an offer for 15x at Nike.com (or 30x if you’ve gotten your new Point card in the mail), for up to $50 total in cash back. Nike is also currently 5x at the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal and 10% cash back at RebatesMe, and historically physical gift cards have always tracked with portals.

Nike resale rates are around 91% right now, so for buying a $340 card the deal will be worth:

  • With RebatesMe, $53.40
    • $50 back from Point
    • $34 back from RebatesMe
    • -$30.60 resale loss
  • With Chase UR, $19.40 + 1,700 Ultimate Rewards
    • $50 back from Point
    • -$30.60 resale loss
    • 1,700 Ultimate Rewards from Chase

Not bad for probably 4 minutes worth of your time. You can check the current shopping portal rates at cashbackmonitor, and as always, if you sign up for Point use a referral because the referral bonus is $100 while the public offer is $10. Get a referral from a friend, or reach out to me in a pinch.

MS Hint: These are just a couple of debit cards that could be part of your churning toolbelt. Get out there and find a few others, there are some crazy and valuable options.

I mistyped a search at Google with”churning curds” and got this. I call it serendipity.

The Elephant (s) in the Room

Surely you’ve read about the AA elite changes, Marriott point and certificate changes, and Hyatt peak/off-peak changes in a thousand different places so I’m not going to add another “me too” type post, but here are a few concise summaries without all the fluff for your future reference:

  • AA changes (to elite status only, award changes not expected for a long time)
  • Hyatt changes (hotels cost more during peak, less during off-peak, and the same in “normal” times)
  • Marriott changes (#bonvoyed)

What I Really Wanted to Post

With that out of the way, let’s talk about how crazy American Express can be right now, and I hope you can replicate what I did. Background: I opened a Personal Gold card 364 days ago. The annual fee will hit when the statement closes in a few days, so it was a great time to check on a retention offer over chat. I did that, and then a few more shenanigans because reasons:

  • Accepted a retention offer of 30,000 Membership Rewards after $3,000 spend in 90 days
  • Followed this link for an upgrade offer to a Platinum with 25,000 Membership Rewards after spending $10,000 in 90 days, and a bonus 10x on spend at grocery for up to $15,000 in spend from the same card
  • Referred a Player 2 for a new American Express card for a bonus +4x for up to $25,000 in spend for 90 days from the same card

American Express offers stack, and that means that at grocery stores, this card will earn:

  • 24x for the first $3,000 in spend
  • 14x for the next $12,000 in spend
  • 5x for the last $10,000 in spend

You can do this too as long as you’ve got a Personal Gold or Green card that’s been open for at least a year. It’s a good thing that BestBuy gift card resale rates are high right now, amirite?

Basking in the Membership Rewards downpour (with a bonus Easter Egg for Garth)