Category: Unsung Heroes

Fortunately there’s still plenty going on with manufactured spend even though gift card resale prices still stuck in the sewers. Here are a few goodies:

1. Chase Merchant Offers has an offer for 10% back on up to $250 in spend at BestBuy now through March 3rd. Resale rates are at round 93% though, so I’d hold off until closer to March to get a higher rate.

2. There’s a better version of last week’s monster credit card offer for $3,000 back with Capital One: it’s $3,500 instead of $3,000 back if you apply through a business relationship manager (you can call a Capital One branch and ask to speak to their business relationship manager if you don’t already have one). Reportedly approval standards through a relationship manager are lower than if you applied for the public offer.

Side note: You can freeze one or two credit reports with Capital One and still get approved, just make sure you leave TransUnion unfrozen.

3. American Express Offers has $100 off of $400 in Delta flights booked through AmEx travel by March 31. (Thanks to batrick)

4. The most unsung of all the Unsung Hero credit cards, the no-annual fee Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card, is sending out targeted offers for 5% back on “online shopping” spend up to $100 as long as you spend $1,200, and the credit is once per month for three months, for a total of $300 cash back in addition to normal spending bonuses. Other variations have been reported too:

• 12,000 ThankYou Points per month for $800 in spend
• 10x ThankYou Points per month for between $1,200 and $1,300 in spend (thanks to Katie)
• 5% back for spending at least $800 online, up to $90 cash back

I’m sure there are other offers too. Mine came in with the subject line: “Matthew, a limited-time offer just arrived. Activate now.”

5. Meijer MPerks is giving $50 back on $500 in third party gift cards in the form of a grocery credit for your next visit through February 12. Ok, technically it’s $5 back on $50 up to 10 times but you can knock it out with a single gift card.

Of course you should have multiple MPerks accounts to take advantage of this one, and double check that your gift card isn’t excluded (notably Apple is excluded, but BestBuy and Home Depot aren’t).

Introduction

I finally got a kick in the pants to write this post after Rocky emailed and asked why I keep talking about the Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card but haven’t ever posted any real information about it. Why haven’t I posted anything when I clearly love the card? Well, I guarantee you don’t want to know what’s going on inside my head at any given moment, so let’s skip the why and jump into the what. The what:

This no-annual fee card will pay you $700 or more a year, seemingly in perpetuity.

Vitals

This card is issued by Citi and is part of a cobranded relationship with Sears. Yes, Sears, the store that as of two days ago officially has no physical locations and was ransacked for billions of dollars in real estate by Eddie Lampert over the last decade.

• Issuer: Citi
• Type: Mastercard (512106 BIN)
• Rewards: SYWR Points or ThankYou Points
• Earn rate: 10 SYWR Points per dollar or 1 ThankYou Point per dollar
• Bonus categories:
  • Up to $10,000 spend per year combined:
    • 5x at gas
    • 3x at grocery stores and restaurants
  • 2x at Sears/Kmart/Hometown Stores
• Annual fee: $0
• Sign-up bonus: $40 after spending $50 (but YMMV on whether that auto-posts)
• Affiliate-free application link

I think it’s obvious to about everyone in the known universe that if you could choose to earn ThankYou Points or Shop Your Way Rewards, you’d choose ThankYou Points. Unfortunately, the only way to get the ThankYou Point version of the card is to call in and ask to convert your Shop Your Way Rewards earning to a ThankYou Point earning version, but I haven’t heard of anyone having any success doing that since 2020. So, if you’re like me, you’re probably going to be stuck with the Shop Your Way Rewards version.

What do you do with Shop Your Way Rewards? You can redeem ten of them for a penny toward merchandise like toilet paper, iPads, or neoprene dumbbells at shopyourway.com, or you can cash them out for a gift card to resell. I definitely do the latter.

Value

Here’s why this card is really valuable: After you’ve had the card for two to three months and it’s been sock-drawered, you’ll start getting spending offers in your email inbox and those offers stack. And unlike everything else about Citi and Sears IT, they post automatically every-time. For example, I have the following spend offers all running concurrently and all from within the last 30 days:

• $70 statement credit after spending $2,000 anywhere
• 10x points at Best Buy (lol) and home improvement stores up to $1,250 in spend
• 10% back in statement credits on utilities every month through January 2022 (min spend $400, max earn $50 per month)

All of these offers obviously pair really well together. For simplicity, I’ll buy 3x$500 BestBuy gift cards at BestBuy for resale and send a $500 “utility payment”. After those two transactions I’ll earn $120 in statement credits plus another $125 worth of Shop Your Way Rewards points, all from a no-annual fee card.

And while not all months have offers stack as nicely as this month, it happens a lot. A lot.

MS Hint: This card is like other Citi Mastercards in many ways, but it does a few things better than other Citi cards too so don’t forget to probe.

ZOMG Wha??

Circling back to the introduction: this no-annual fee card will pay you $700 or more a year through targeted spend offers. Why? The rumor I’ve heard is that the Sears Shop Your Way Rewards card is one of the most valuable cards in Citi’s portfolio because it’s typically held by older generations that grew up with Sears, and those cardholders typically carry a monthly balance which earns Citi plenty in interest and fees so they want to encourage more spending and bigger balances. The story sounds truthy, but I have no independent confirmation so let’s just call it a likely possibility.

How come you haven’t heard of this card before? Well I’m sure the main reason is Sears, though I don’t think it pays a commission to affiliates so there’s not a financial incentive to write about it. Finally, the Shop Your Way Rewards program isn’t exactly on-par with AAdvantage or Hyatt, so there’s that.

(Special thanks to Garth for introducing the card to me.)

1. One of the Miles Earn and Burn Unsung Heroes has a great offer floating around: The Bank of America Business Cash Rewards MasterCard has a $750 cash back after $5,000 in spend, no annual fee offer. It’s not just worth the sign up bonus, the card is a great ongoing one too. As a reminder, it ears 3% on several methods of online MS shenanigans and you can bump that to 5.25% back by parking some cash, brokerage accounts, or retirement accounts at BoA.

Another bonus hint: BoA Business credit card applications credit inquiries are combined when you apply for multiple on the same day. If you’re instantly approved, maybe lob in another BoA business app too. Just don’t go the same card. An excellent choice is this Alaska Business Card with 40,000 miles and $200 cash back after spending $2,000.

2. Delta sent me an offer for 2,500 Skymiles for changing an already booked flight via the website or mobile app. Thanks Delta, I’d love to do that, but literally every single itinerary I’ve booked says I need to contact Reservations to make the change. Thanks.

Hopefully, you’ll have more luck than I do. The T&C language says that you have to be targeted to get the bonus, but there are reports that it will work for anyone as long as your ticket was booked prior to March 2, 2021.