If you’ve read any credit card churning forum or blog in the last 24 hours, you’ve almost certainly heard about the Citi Premier 80,000 point bonus. It’s elevated and fine on the face of it, but nothing to go bananas over so don’t needlessly get sucked in to the hype machine. If you’re going to go for it though, don’t forget that you can get multiple ThankYou Point card sign up bonuses back-to-back even though it seems like you can’t on the face of it. The Citi Terms and Conditions are tricky, but the following points are relevant:

  • You aren’t eligible for the bonus if you’ve received a bonus in the last 24 months
  • You aren’t eligible for the bonus if you’ve closed a ThankYou Points card in the last 24 months

Do you see the wiggle room between those two bullets? It’s there, and it works. The trick is that you can apply for multiple Citi cards, (the Premier and the Prestige, for example), just don’t hit the spend threshold for the bonus points on any of the cards until after you’ve been approved for all of them. Then, you can hit the spend threshold on each and get the bonus on each.

Side note: Astute readers will note that I mentioned the Citi Prestige, which is apparently discontinued for new account holders. But, don’t believe everything you’ve read on the internet, you can still apply for it through a Zombie link! (Thanks to David for the link.)

So, if you’re eligible and you think the deal is good at 80,000 points, why not shoot for 210,000 points for two Premiers and a Prestige? Or if you’re gutsy, 260,000 points for two Premiers or two Prestiges? Or some other combo, potentially including other cards? Just keep in mind that Citi will auto-deny your application if you have more than one approval every eight days, but there’s always reconsideration (or, just wait eight days between applications). Thanks to Cari for the clarification.

PS: There are other Citi hacks, just “look into history to learn more” as the muppets say.

A rube goldberg style complex chain-reaction machine
The delicate inner workings of the credit card hype machine

1. Register here for Hyatt Bonus Journeys. You’ll earn 3x Hyatt points on stays of at least two nights when you checkout between July 20 and September 15. Don’t procrastinate just because you think you may not be traveling. Register anyway in case something happens.

2. The new AmEx Platinum changes are being probed and a nice hack has already surfaced: United and Delta frequent flyer members get discounted Clear membership of $119 even with no status, and you can add a Player 2 for an extra $60 which happens to exactly equal the $179 credit. So, your one Platinum credit is good for at least two people with almost no work.

Side note: It’s against the T&Cs to sell the Clear credit (I assume it is anyway), but you can almost certainly cash them out with a quick post on your Facebook page saying something like “I’m selling one year Clear membership for two people for $125.”

I’m on vacation and have been since Friday afternoon, and I’m punch drunk on California beach vibes so I went experimental today. Without further ado, here’s my review of the new American Express Platinum card changes, in haiku form.

Huge annual fee
is unjustifiable
find another card

Clear reimbursement
could save 55 minutes per year
if you are lucky

Equinox credit
useful in almost no cities
use YouTube instead

One lifetime bonus?
terms and conditions are lies
bonus will come

New York Times is saved
by entertainment credit
otherwise no-one pays

Fine Hotels and Resorts
credit does not earn you status
better than nothing

Air incidentals
credit was hard to abuse
but was worth real cash

Lounge access is great
until you realize that
many cards grant it

Will not renew
personal cards will be golds
business cards will cease

Vacation vibe vibes.

1. Meijer grocery stores have $10 back on on $150 or more in Visa Gift Cards. Make sure you clip the coupon first, and multiple accounts will help with scale. I’d personally buy a single $500 Visa Gift Card to maximize spend and minimize liquidation time.

2. Google Pay has an offer for 20% back at Walgreens, up to $25 maximum cash back. If you happen to be at a Walgreens, buy a $125 gift card to max this one out; BestBuy, Steam, or Home Depot (in that order) are likely your best options. Of course, put a card that bonuses at drug stores like the Chase Freedom Flex behind Google Pay if you have one.

3. Check any Chase co-brand card for a new spend offer at chase.com/mybonus. Try all of your co-brand cards (Hyatt, BA, Southwest, United, AARP, etc), but realize that if you got an offer in the last round that’s still going, that same offer is what you’ll see this time.

4. This weekend you were able to get up to three $250 Visa Gift Cards at 10% off at GiftCards.com, and it worked across multiple orders even though it wasn’t supposed to. I didn’t write about it since the Terms & Conditions said it would expire before yesterday’s post, but amazingly it’s still working (although the code has changed slightly, now it’s INDEPENDENCE10). It may be actually dead by the time you read this, but maybe not. If it does work, be sure to go through a portal for extra miles or cash back.

Remember, FLASH2020 at VanillaGift.com lasted about five months past its expiry so don’t be afraid to lob a few tries at GiftCards.com. Also, remember “Trust but verify” when it comes to the T&Cs, this is another great case study.

5. Ling let me know that Cash.app has a boost for 5% back at Sam’s Club Online this week. When the portal bonus for Sam’s is elevated, this can be a great deal, especially if you have a Membership Rewards earning Rakuten account.

A tombstone with the words: FLASH2020 VANILLAGIFT.COM GONE, BUT NEVER FORGOTTEN 2020 - 2021
We still miss you, FLASH2020.

Fuel points have become a big part of the manufactured spend landscape because they’re really valuable and as fuel prices go up, the market for them goes up too. Kinda like the ocean went up (in flames) this weekend. Oh, too soon?

Now, a software bug at Kroger means that since Wednesday, gift card purchases are earning 6x instead of the expected 4x promotional rate and as a result, the fuel points chatter in various MS groups has blown through the roof. Kroger appears to be trying to fix it — multiple times for multiple hours on Friday and Saturday only 2x, or sometimes 0x, was awarded at the register. So far though no permanent change has emerged.

There’s a further rub too, on Friday reports started coming in that say Kroger is shutting down accounts that generated huge fuel point balances, and it seems to be triggered by calling them which puts eyes on your account.

Side note: a hack that some take advantage of but I never felt comfortable with is that you can call Kroger, let the automated system know you’re missing fuel points, and as long as you tell it that 2,000 fuel points or fewer are missing, it would auto add them to your account… until last Thursday that is. Now reportedly the system transfers you to an agent after you tell it about missing points, and likely that puts eyes on your account.

Where am I going with all of this rambling? Now is a good time to earn fuel points, but keep your balances reasonable and keep eyes off of your account when you game the system. That last bit is good advice in general.

The boat in the upper left is the Kroger IT Department trying to put out the fuel points fire

I’m sure you’ve heard all about the new American Express Platinum changes ad-nauseam, but in case you haven’t there’s a nice overview here (short version: higher annual fee, more stupid benefits). Once we know a little more about what works for hacking the value out of the benefits I’ll make sure you’re all up to speed.

In the mean time though, I want to offer a piece of advice that will hopefully up your game: When it comes to the Terms & Conditions in credit card offers, shopping portals, spend bonuses, or anything else we deal with in travel hacking: Trust but verify. Here’s a concrete example for us to work with: The new, higher annual fee, stupified additional credit American Express Platinum card. If you read the Terms and Conditions for the card, you’ll see the following sentence at the beginning in big bold letters, slapping you in the face:

Welcome offer not available to applicants who have or have had this Card or previous versions of the Platinum Card.

That’s pretty easy to understand — if you’ve had a Platinum card, you’re not eligible for another bonus. Ultimately if you absolutely, positively must have this sign up bonus or you don’t want the card, you should probably trust what the terms say because that’s the legal framework that you’ll be working under if something goes wrong. However, (you knew there was a “however” coming, right?) that statement is verifiably not actually how sign up bonuses have been working in practice. Despite what the T&C says, you’ll get the bonus with American Express unless they give you a popup during the application that says: “… you are not eligible to receive the welcome offer. We have not yet performed a credit check. Would you still like to proceed?” The flip side is true, you may be eligible for a bonus according to the T&C, but you may still get the popup and you definitely won’t receive the bonus in that case.

So much of what we do in this hobby is reliant on the Terms and Conditions, and certainly if you ever go to mediation or court with a company, the Terms and Conditions will be hard to walk away from. That said, a lot of what we do in this hobby is to hide in the noise, and sometimes the noise is simply just overzealous T&C that doesn’t actually govern what happens in practice.

So, know what’s in the Terms and Conditions, but verify within in the community to see if they’re actually enforced. If you don’t, you’ll be missing out on a fair number of hiding “in the noise” opportunities.

Happy holiday weekend, don’t blow up your face with a firework.

Yes friends, even the firework’s Terms and Conditions “do not hold in hand” term isn’t enforced.

After a heavy week of posts, it’s time for a return to normalcy. (Yes I mean the pre-COVID kind. No, I don’t actually have a way to get us there, but thanks for believing in me.) So, let’s jump in with a quadruple:

1. Check your inbox for a targeted free $100 from Delta to use by August 31. To search for it, I’d use the query: “in:anywhere from:delta subject:100“. I didn’t get it, but maybe they’ll like you more than they like me.

2. Kroger has a digital coupon for 4x fuel points on gift cards starting yesterday and running through July 13. Expect to see a lot of Marshall’s, Nike, Best Buy, and Home Depot demand from gift card resellers over the next two weeks. The two put together can easily make this a money maker deal before the credit card rewards, and a gonzo deal after them.

3. For your manufactured spending needs (except American Express), Simon has a code for 44% off of fees for purchasing Visa and Mastercard gift cards with the code: FS44JUN

4. Apparently this has been around for a while but it’s new to me: Create a dummy award booking with Delta and during the checkout process you may find an offer for a Delta Personal Gold card with 70k bonus miles, a 20k miles rebate, and no annual fee in the first year. I’d take that offer if I could. Just close it after when the annual fee hits after 12 months, or better yet get an upgrade or retention offer on the card for a juicier win.

A picture of a human leg muscle group, with arrows pointing at the quadriceps muscles. The muscles are labeled as: Delta $100, Kroger 4x, Simon 44%, and Delta Gold 90k.
Presented without additional commentary.

I alluded to some of the weekend train-wreckage that was happening in private groups on Monday, but now that the situation is public and many in the community are affected, I think we should go over a few points:

  • A semi-well known /r/churning Redditor, JonLuca, allegedly examined Chase’s source code last summer and manufactured or found links that bypassed Chase’s backend business intelligence rules (it’s unclear to me what is meant by “source code”, perhaps just looking at the HTML/JavaScript at chase.com, or perhaps something else).
  • This weekend in private groups there was a discussion about leaking the JonLuca hacked no-lifetime-language, pre-approved Chase business credit card links to the greater community as an attempt to shield a few heavy hitters from potential shutdown by overwhelming Chase’s fraud team with sheer numbers, allowing them to blend into the noise.
  • After a long discussion, the links were shared in several private groups, then at a semi-public event, and finally on Reddit. To be clear, I think the motivations were different for each case, and disclaimers ranged from none at all to very cautionary/”this might get you shutdown”. Certainly not all actors were malicious but some probably were and the cat jumped way out of the bag.
  • Yesterday, a wave of Chase shutdowns came and according to several other private groups, they keep coming. There are mixed data points, but it seems like if you used at least three of those links, or perhaps just two, you’ve been shutdown or you shouldn’t be surprised if you get shutdown over the next couple of days.

In the end, I think a fair number of shutdowns happened to people who probably weren’t going into the links with their eyes wide open or with full information, and that sucks. This game can be very caveat emptor and you should always be slightly weary.

Where do I stand in all of this? I didn’t use the links or share the links because I didn’t think they were safe, so I’m fine and I hope you’re right there with me. What’s the difference between these links and the American Express links I shared yesterday? The main difference is that the American Express links are low risk to me because they are semi-public, they don’t bypass any American Express backend eligibility checks, and they’re widely targeted.

My advice for you: Don’t use backdoor applications that bypass eligibility checks unless they’re public links you can find at the bank’s website, or if the links are widely targeted. Definitely never, ever use links that were hacked out of an examination of a bank’s source code, whether or not that source code was public. If you don’t know where a link came from, research it, ask around (feel free to ask me if you don’t know who else to ask), and do some diligence. Stay safe out there!

A stuffed cat emerging from a bag.
A freeze frame capture of the actual moment the cat jumped out of the bag.