1. Do this now: Register for Marriott’s promotion for double points at Marriott Homes & Villas booked by June 5 for stays through September 4.

    Why do this now? Previously unplanned bookings happen all the time, and sometimes promotions apply differently than you’d expect.
  2. Kroger stores have a promotion for 4x fuel points on third party gift cards excluding Amazon running tomorrow only.

    BestBuy is generally the best choice for resale rates for manufactured spenders, but lately there are activation issues with certain BestBuy cards (those with serial numbers starting with FD seem fine, those in the 1124 batch are bad news bears). Other brands may be better choices for rookies.
  3. Kroger has fee-free variable load $150+ Visa and Mastercard gift cards with coupon through Tuesday. Unfortunately, this coupon is single use per Kroger account, but gamers gonna game.

    These are Pathward gift cards, Kroger’s US Bank stock is long gone.
  4. Simon Mall is shutting down its bulk Visa gift card buying platform on July 11. As long as you had a seasoned account, this was a five-figures a day program for more Old School Cool people than you’d probably guess. Let’s call them the Old School Coolers!

    The part that worries me the most about the shutdown is where all the volume is going to go, and what it’ll do to the next thing when it goes. (Thanks to Anthony, Sam, and mpohl)
  5. American Express Offers has quite a few new hotel promotions:

    – $50 back on $250+ at IHG properties in North America through August 26
    – $100 back on $500+ at Opal properties in Florida by September 30
    – $100 back on $500+ at Omni Hotels through September 12
    – $100 back on $500+ at Wyndham properties through October 31

    Don’t forget faux-cardpointers amex-load-offer.js.

The Old School Coolers’ mascot is now filled only with tears.

  1. The Wyndham Rewards personal and business credit cards have a promotion for 10x rewards at Sunoco gas stations through August 31. There are Sunocos that sell Swedish Fish monster packs for $506.95 too. (Thanks to FM)
  2. Blit’s 200% transfer bonus for Gold and Platinum members to Accor ALL on Sunday is a backdoor transfer bonus to other programs that integrate with Accor too. For example, with Sunday’s 1:2 transfer ratio:

    – 1,000 Bilt → 2,000 Accor → 2,500 Qantas Frequent Flyer
    – 1,000 Bilt →2,000 Accor → 2,000 AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue
    – 1,000 Bilt →2,000 Accor → 1,250 ITA Airways Volare

    Honestly, some of those rates are so fetch, or at least Chad says they are. (Thanks to Alec for letting me know about the Qantas angle)
  3. American Express Offers has an offer for a $250 statement credit with $1,250+ at Qantas Airways for flights booked by July 4 originating in the US.
  4. Breeze Airways has a promotion for 44% off of base fares with code BIRTHDAY for travel booked by Friday and flown between June 11 and January 6, 2026. There are blackout dates around when you’d expect them.

    It’s been a while since we’ve played a round of the Breeze Route Dartboard Bingo™, so let’s call another route: Wilkes-Barre, PA – Fort Meyers, FL, or AVP-RSW for the ICAO geeks out there! If you’ve made a bingo, reach out for a 44% off of base fares promotional code on any Breeze route, including this one.

Have a nice Wednesday!

Spending $506.95 for a Swedish Fish shows that inflation’s already hit Big Gummy.

Giftcards.com

Giftcards.com has had a storied past with shopping portals, with rules that spanned the entire distance between “rewards on nothing” and “rewards on everything”, and plenty of stops in-between. Most recently, they’ve only awarded spend on a rolling $20,000 in purchases in a rolling 365 day period. Terms didn’t make it clear about whether that was per loyalty account, per shopping portal, per giftcards.com account, or something else. While science made progress in answering the question, the point is now moot because that weird language is gone. All the major airline shopping portals have reverted to the following terms:

Orders over $2,000.00 are not eligible. To qualify for rewards, you must complete your purchase within the same session you start the purchase without exiting your browser. Opening a new tab or returning later will result in rewards not tracking.

Changing it again is a bold strategy Cotton, we’ll have to see if it pays off for them.

Barclays+[Frontier,JetBlue,Arrival+]

Today, Barclays has both card linked and shopping portal offers for card holders under a program named “Barclays Simple Earn”. Maybe giftcards.com will show up here too? I’ve been able to find press releases about Frontier, JetBlue, and Arrival+ cards, but I’d be surprised if they don’t show up on AA and Hawaiian co-brand cards even though both will soon be leaving the Barclays portfolio.

Barlcays has had “Barclays Card Rewards Boost” for a long time, and from the outside it appears to be run by the exact same technology and backend provider as the US Bank shopping portal. My educated guess is that they’ll use the exact same thing for co-brand cards, so tricks that work at US Bank’s portal will probably work here too. (Thanks to David)

Southwest T-0

Today is the last day for the old Southwest way of doing things. Basically, you’ve got until midnight in who-knows-which timezone to do the following:

  • Book travel that includes free bags on all fares
  • Consolidate Ticketless Travel Funds (TTF) now, because they’ll have expirations if issued after today
  • Book Wanna Get Away or Wanna Get Away+ fares before they pumpkin
  • Convert LUV vouchers to flight credits which are transferrable and have no expiration
  • Add any companions to existing reservations to ensure they’ve got old-school benefits too

Thanks to Southwest guru Brian M for the comprehensive list!

Happy Tuesday!

Giftcards.com’s analysis team uses cutting edge technology to calculate its optimum rewards strategy.

  1. Staples has fee-free $200 Visa gift cards through Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  2. Meijer stores have a promotion for 10,000 MPerks points with the purchase of $100+ in Choice or One4All gift cards. Both of these have variants that convert to Home Depot and post-Pepper rates for Home Depot are currently north of 90%.

    This one is limited to one per MPerks account, but, uhhh, you know.
  3. Blit Rewards will have a tiered transfer bonus of between 50% and 200% to Accor ALL on Sunday June 1, which brings the effective value per Blit point above 4.5 cents for top tier members with the boosted 1:2 ratio and combined with the current value of the dollar which is trash compared to the euro. You’ve got the week to earn points to prepare. For a refresher on Accor’s reward program, check the mini-guide here.

    I’m 100.000001% sure (aka fluz sure) that my travel patterns are different than yours, but I love the Accor program for Europe and I’ll be transferring in quite a lot as part of this promotion. (Thanks to VFTW)
  4. The no-annual fee Mesa Visa home owners credit card has a sign-up bonus of 50,000 points after $5,000 spend in 90 days with promo code BONUS50. The new iteration of the card pays rewards on a mortgage of up to $100,000 per year whether or not you finance through Mesa’s lenders, unlike their prior version of the card. To be eligible for mortgage point earning though, you have to spend a sum of $1,000+ monthly on the card.

    Word on the street is that mortgage validation is an incomplete process, and so is reporting to credit agencies. I expect both of those things to tighten up in the future. They’ve added transfer partners for points earning too, with Finnair and Accor ALL being the most interesting.

Have a nice Monday friends!

View of the Mesa mortgage validation team’s workbench.

  1. Bank of America’s increased bonuses for the Customized Cash Rewards and Unlimited Cash Rewards cards is scheduled to start on June 1, but applications are occasionally already showing the enhanced bonus because BofA’s IT department has yet to discover a futuristic technology called “the calendar”. Anyhoodles, we’ve now seen what bonus cash-back will look like with Platinum Honors uplift with these offers:

    – Unlimited Cash gets an extra 0.5% cash back in the first year regardless of status
    – Customized Cash’s rewards are boosted based on status

    You know what they say though: IT that hasn’t mastered calendars probably hasn’t mastered boosted rewards either.
  2. The Citi AA Executive card has an increased offer of 100,000 miles after $10,000 spend in three months.

    When this card was introduced, you could open eight of them at the same time, hit the minimum spend, and cancel all before the annual fees hit. Those days are long gone from Citi, but not every bank is Citi.
  3. The Citi Rewards+ card, notable for its 10% rebate on redeemed ThankYou Points, will be converted to the no-annual fee Citi Strata card on July 20. The 10% rebate will either go away in July 19, 2025, or July 19, 2026 if you’ve held your card for less than a year so it’s time to redeem while the redeeming is good. The Citi Strata’s interesting bonus categories are:

    – 3x at grocery, transit, gas, and EV charging
    – 3x on a selectable category which is largely lame

    If you want the Strata card, you’ll be able to apply on July 20.
  4. Bank of America’s Alaska card’s bonus often bounces between 60,000 and 70,000 miles, and whenever it bounces there’s discussion. But, alaska75k.com has been around for a long time and continues to work. Can we stop talking about the other ones yet? [end micro rant]
  5. United is removing the Excursionist Perk and elite YBM upgrades from its MileagePlus program on August 21, and removing its upgrade award chart on November 24. But don’t worry, award redemption rates continue to outpace inflation, so #winning?
  6. Kroger has fee-free Visa gift cards online through Tuesday with promo code CLASSOF2025. These will also earn fuel points.
  7. Stop & Shop, Giant Foods, and Martins earn 10x points on Zift Zillions cards through Thursday. Their little step brother Giant earns 4x over the same time. No, Giant Foods and Giant being the same company but different isn’t confusing, why would you think that?
  8. Blit Rewards added Qatar Airways as a transfer partner at a 1:1 ratio (Or according to their poor layout on the “Participating Loyalty Partners” page, it’s actually a -1:1 ratio).

MEAB factoid of the day: The Toyota Blit can transfer you to your Qatar flight, completing the circle of award life.

  1. Kroger has a 4x fuel points sale on third party gift cards other than Amazon starting tomorrow and running through Monday evening.

    And with Target resale rates recently returning to 91%+, I think it’s safe to say the major brand bulk gift card reselling market has healed from its Pepper burns.
  2. Blit Rewards* cut earnings on rent payments made with a credit card to 0.5x.
  3. Bluebird and Serve will be shutting down in June 2026, which gives you *checks notes* a full year to finish abusing them, ideally with five per social security number.
  4. Citi ThankYou’s reduced value cash-out for Strata Premier cardholders won’t affect those with linked Rewards+ or Double Cash cards in their ThankYou Points accounts. To link your Premier and another card to the same ThankYou Point pool, call 800-842-6596.

    Note that linked cards can be unlinked in the future, but it does weird things to points held in your account and may inadvertently cause points expiration depending on your card portfolio. To be safe if you ever unlink, make sure every card has earned at least one point in the last 18 months.

*The company gets too much undeserved press, so (1) I’m not linking them, and (2) quoting reader Jim’s sage advice “I don’t care what  the media says about me as long as they spell my name right.”

Blit Reward’s company kitchen shopping list.

  1. Do this now: Register for Choice Hotels’ Summer promotion for 5,000 points – 8,000 points after two stays through September 2, with the variance being based on the hotel you stay in.
  2. Barclays launched its version of the GM Mastercard with a 30,000 point after $1,000 spend in 90 days sign-up bonus and 3x everywhere earning.

    The Marcus version of this card had a better bonus and earns 4x everywhere. The Marcus cards will convert to Barclays cards soon, but the earning structure for conversions is unclear.
  3. American Express offers has an offer for $100 back on $500+ at participating Wyndham properties through October 31. Gamers gonna (spooky) game.
  4. Virgin Atlantic has 20% off of award tickets on its own metal for travel between the US and the UK through September 30 booked by May 27.
  5. Alaska has a paid fare sale for flights to and from Mexico, Central America, Hawaii, and Florida for travel between August 12 and November 19 using promo code GETAWAY25 and booked by tomorrow night.

    Although the terms and conditions don’t mention a cabin restriction, I was only able to make the promo work on economy tickets.

Happy Wednesday!

GM points cover up to $750 on used GM vehicles, which means this beauty might be within reach.

  1. Citi ThankYou Points has a 25% transfer to Wyndham Rewards through June 21.
  2. Uber One Member Days has two travel related promotions for Uber One subscribers:

    – 3,000 SkyMiles for 10 Uber rides or 10 Uber Eats orders by June 8
    – $25 Marriott Bonvoy gift card with $100 in Premium Uber rides by June 8

    If you have a 7-eleven in your neighborhood, I imagine you’ll find an easy way to earn 3,000 SkyMiles. (Thanks to Tom R)
  3. The Citi Strata Premier’s 1 cent per point cash out option will be reduced to 0.75 cents per point on August 23, though other cash outs aren’t affected.

    It’s unclear how accounts pooled with a Rewards+, Double Cash, or other cards that have a one cent per point value will be affected, but there are other methods.

Happy Tuesday!

Drivers love getting jobs like this, especially 10 of them.