We’ve seen American Express 99 employee card bonus offers for more than a year and a half, and if you’ve taken advantage of a few of these you’ve probably also learned to deal with slow American Express IT systems that weren’t designed for your 600+ card shenanigans. The slow responsiveness seems especially prevalent when asking for a retention offer or to close a card.
But, what if there were a magical phone number that let you skip American Express’s phone tree, enter your card number directly, and then you’d be sent immediately to the retention department with your card information pushed to the rep’s computer? And what if the rep had minty fresh breath?Then you’d be living on Earth in 2023, because there is just that type of number:
866-376-4552
What’s the provenance of this number, you ask? An American Express chat rep gave it to me while his system was hung trying to load a particular card to look for retention offers. He said their systems were faster and better and that seems true based on my experience. I can’t speak to the minty breath though, you’ll just have to take that one on faith.
Meijer stores sell both Metabank Pathward and Sunrise gift cards. I know which one I’d choose for several reasons, but especially out of principle. I’m currently outside of the Meijer footprint though so my choice instead is to stand outside in the cold rain, watching everyone else’s Meijer party inside the warm, comfy house.
Chase Offers has an easy to game offer for 10% off of Southwest airfare, up to $40 back. The simplest play is to turn this into discount travel funds, but the more lucrative play is to turn this into a statement credit with no effective outstanding charge.
– Hyatt, Southwest, United, Freedom and IHG: 5x up to $1,500 in spend – British Airways: 10x up to $1,500 in spend
Sometimes the Chase website gets confused after a single form submission and incorrectly tells you it can’t find information or you’re not targeted on all subsequent submissions. To avoid that, open a new incognito browser window for each card you check.
– Giftcards.com is on the Capital One Shopping portal – Giftcards.com typically has negative cost deals around major holidays – In the US, July 4 was a major holiday last time I checked – You don’t need to hold a Capital One card to have an account on the portal – I recommend creating new Capital One shopping accounts periodically anyway to avoid clawbacks
Why no, I can’t possibly see how this could go wrong for Capital One, why do you ask?
Pictured: 1. Capital One Shopping portal (road), and 2. manufactured spenders (mud slide)
This marks the first time that I’ve ever seen Nashville in the same city lineup as New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. Nice job Nashville marketing team I guesss?
The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card, now a MEAB Unsung Hero for nearly 2 1/2 years, has a new round of targeted promotions, so far seen only via USPS. This round is 15% back as a statement credit on up to $1,200 in spend at gas, grocery, and restaurants each month for the months of July, August, and September. I Expect that more of these offers will go out via email over the weekend. (Thanks to birt)
– 10% back promotion on up to $1,000 in spend at Walgreens and Uber (and less interesting stores like Ace, Exxon Mobile, Nike, T-Mobile, and Panera) – 10% back on up to $1,000 in spend at other stores
If you max this promotion you’ll get $200 * 26 days, or $5,200 for the math challenged. Level two players can earn even more on the payment side. (Thanks to DoC)
United has 10% off of paid flights in the continental United States booked by July 24 using promo code TAKEOFF10 for travel from July 24 through September 26. This is a (widely) targeted promotion that will work one time if targeted for up to nine passengers on a single reservation, round-trip or one-way.
Do this now: Link your Bilt and Lyft accounts in the Rent Day tab in the Bilt mobile app. You’ll earn a $10 Lyft credit if you don’t hold a Bilt credit card and $20 if you do. (Thanks to DoC)
Usually you can’t use the $10 off coupons directly for another gift card purchase, but if you have a friendly cashier you may get away with it. (Thanks to GCG)
Kroger has taken a page from office supply stores and decided to run a gift card promotion more often than not running one, and that means that in the last two weeks and next two weeks we’ll have had exactly four days without a promotion. #slay
Grocery clerk Jimmy shows us what it means to slay, Kroger style.
Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport has been the unpredictable crazy uncle of airports since the middle of 2020. From a passenger’s perspective, the worst effect has been long security lines, as long has six hours last fall and often dabbling well into the one-two hour range. Currently security at Schiphol has regularized at 10-20 minutes on average most days, but at peak times you could still be waiting much longer than an hour.
Schiphol introduced a free virtual security queue program in April though, and so far it’s effectively a way to have no-line security experience. To use it:
Go straight to the “Time Slots” line at security during your time reservation ±15 minutes
Show your QR code to the attendant
I used it twice in the last week, and both times the “Time Slots” security line was completely empty. There was also a separate baggage scanner and imaging device for people with reserved time slots, and there were no other passengers funneling into the separate scanner and imaging device.
A few caveats:
All slot times were open three days before my flight
No slot times were open the day of my flight
In theory you can change your time, but in practice it seems that you won’t be able to do it same day because the slots will be gone
I’m not a financial advisor and I’m definitely not your financial advisor, but I get questions almost every week about my investment strategies for reasons known only to Betty Badluck. My best advice: seek a low cost total market index fund and HODL. Of course this isn’t that kind of blog though, but there is a travel hacking angle here so: Hey, how you doin? Let’s chat!
My Strategy
My investments fit a simple allocation strategy, and I rebalance my portfolio every three or so months to make sure that the allocation stays proportional:
What’s the MEAB special? It’s stocks that I pick individually for some particular reason, but proportionally allocated in a way such that a catastrophically bad pick won’t be able able to wipe out the majority of my holdings. Historically that 10% generally outperforms the rest, but I attribute that to luck moreso than skill and don’t expect that it’ll continue that way.
The Travel Hacking Angle
There’s always a travel hacking angle, right? Well, as frequent flyer hackers we get an inside view into the operations, rise, and fall of airlines in both a specific and general sense. For me, that means that I have an insider view into how an airline performs that goes above and beyond the information in a 10-Q, and if I’m going to be choosing an airline to hold in the 10% MEAB special, that information may or may not give me an edge.
To be clear: investing in airlines is a tough business and I don’t recommend it, but if you do it, augment the public filings with information you’ve got from your inside view.
Finally, to answer the question that exactly none of you asked: When I invest in the airline industry I short one airline stock and long another airline stock to try and earn based on relative performance while avoiding losses from general industry crapluence. Sometimes it works too, probably just like sometimes a broken analog clock is right.
Giftcards.com’s promotion that was originally 5% back and set to expire on June 17 has risen from the dead. The current zombie variant is 10% back on up to $1,500 in $100 Visa gift cards with promo code SUMMER or YAYSUMMER through tomorrow evening.
Giftcards.com remains absent from airline portals, but it’s still available via Rakuten and the Capital One Shopping. The Capital One mobile app almost always has the highest rate. These are Pathward gift cards.
I’ve received nearly a half dozen reports of clawbacks of American Express Membership Rewards regular spend, +5x referral bonus, and sign-up bonus on Tuesday and Wednesday, and I’ve seen corroborating data-points publicly and privately too. This isn’t happening silently, but rather those affected are notified by email with the message:
After careful review, we noticed activity that indicated these points may have been earned or used in a way that doesn’t meet the terms and conditions of the Membership Rewards program or of the promotional offer under which you earned the points.
Based on conversations with AmEx customer service reps, American Express has tagged certain purchases as gift card purchases and reversed the points earned and the some of the bonuses awarded based on that spend, since the AmEx terms and conditions exclude “cash equivalents” from earning. We’ve seen clawbacks on the following types of purchases:
Some Speedway purchases that are a near multiples of $505.95, but not all
Some Walmart purchases that are a near multiple of $504.90, but not all
Some giftcards.com purchases, but not all
Some grocery in-person gift card purchases (various chains), but not all
Clawbacks have happened on (at least) Business Gold cards, Business Platinum cards, Blue Business Plus cards, and Personal Gold cards. Other than earning Membership Rewards, bonus categories and card types probably don’t play a factor in whatever’s happening.
There’s some less-bad news too though:
It seems that clawbacks have only happened on some cards, even if multiple cards could have been affected
It seems that clawbacks are happening specifically on cards in the sign-up bonus period or in a +5x referral period
All clawbacks seem to be for late-May or June spend
So far it looks like American Express is only targeted cardholders that closed a card in the last month or so (even if it wasn’t the same card)
If you’re working on a sign-up bonus in the near future, I’d try an avoid spending in suspiciously obvious amounts at big-named retailers which seems to help, and be careful about when you close any AmEx card. Good luck!
(Thanks to Tyler, D73, SideShowBob233, Brooke, and Brandon for collaborating with me on this post)
