Usually I’d buy Visa or MasterCard Gift Cards from GiftCards.com to hit these bonuses, but they’re kinda small right now so just keep the bonuses in mind for everything else you’re doing. For example, if you’re using buyer’s groups, these could work for Dell or BestBuy. Hint: There is a play at Sam’s club that should work for these too.
2. Discover is offering a $10 statement credit for paying your phone bill 3 times, (I paid $1.00, $1.01, and $1.02, all back to back). It may be targeted, check for an email with the subject “Earn a $10 statement credit for paying your phone bill” or “Don’t forget your $10 statement credit offer”.
3. If you have any international travel coming up in the next couple of months, call a clinic or hospital in the foreign country you’ll be in and get a COVID-19 test scheduled now. As of January 26, the US will require that you have a negative test within 72 hours to reenter the country, citizens included and if you don’t book soon, you may not be able to get an appointment.
I think we got 3 today, right? Honestly, #3 felt over-covered in the blogosphere, but it’s important enough that it bears mentioning here so you don’t get trapped while trying to get home.
SoFi is offering $25 in round-ups for January. For me, this took about 12 seconds to take advantage of, which really consisted of re-enabling my SoFi debit card for Amazon and Xfinity tiny payments in debbit, a free program that you run on your own computer. If you haven’t sent up debbit yet, it might be a good time. I realize $25 isn’t that exciting, but you set debbit up once and keep taking advantage of deals like this and the cash adds up to something substantial.
Yeah, $25 is small potatoes, but $25 buys a lot of small potatoes.
I know most of you use credit cards, shopping portals, points, and gift cards as part of your overall travel hacking strategy. Maybe my sample size is just too small, but I don’t really know of anybody including cell phone burners in that strategy regularly, and I think that’s a mistake. All you need to start with cell phone burners is an unlocked phone and some cheap SIM cards. I’m guessing a lot of you probably have an old, cracked-screen unlocked phone already in your junk drawer so you don’t even need to use your main phone for SIM swapping.
Here’s why cell phone burner numbers are useful to a travel hacker:
Uber Eats gives new accounts $25 off of orders, and $10 off for referrers. (A new account really means a new phone number).
DoorDash gives new accounts 3x$10 off of orders, and $15 off for referrers. (Remember, new account really means new phone number).
CashApp gives new accounts $5 and the referrer $5, but more importantly, you have more access to some of the excellent CashApp boosts. (New account = new phone number, blah blah blah.)
Fluz gives 3×35% off vouchers for gift cards to new accounts, and 1 voucher to the referrer. The referrer also gets a very small percentage of the commission on gift cards purchased by accounts that they referred.
Deals come up all the time that require an existing number. When you’ve got an existing number that you don’t use, you can it take advantage of that right away without affecting your main phone number. A recent but not representative example of this deal was buying 10 Xfinity iPhone SEs for $15/mo total ($1.50/phone). Lots of times, the deals only need a single phone number for port-in or trade-up, they’re not all this complex.
Are you banned by a store or an airline? Using a name variation, address variation, and a new phone number, say from a burner, will usually get you jump-started and back in the game.
There are always deals like the above coming up, and having burners lets you take advantage of them at scale.
Here’s why I’m writing this today: BestBuy and Target are both selling Ting SIM cards with two months worth of credits for $0.99. With each SIM card, you can get a new burner number. You don’t have to use them right away either; you can buy a couple now and put them in your sock drawer for when you need them or want to use them in the future.
When you set up the Ting SIM card, give them a Citi Virtual Account Number card or similar that expires before they try to start billing you for the third month so you don’t have to remember to cancel. If the number is useful, you can keep it for $5 per month by porting it to Tello. (Don’t forget to use a portal for $10+ back from Tello when you port.) I’m sure there are other ways to keep a phone number for even cheaper, but I haven’t needed to find them.
My suggestion to you: Buy least two of these sim cards for $1.98 out of pocket, then incorporate them into your travel hacking at your leisure.
One man’s crisis is another man’s opportunity for a burner.
[Update: AmEx fixed this.] American Express Business Platinum cards get $100 in credits to spend at Dell every 6 months, but right now they seem to be reimbursing at the 2020-MVI rate of $200 every 6 months. If you have one of these cards, I’d buy $200 in XBox GCs ($50 cards move the fastest) and sell at 83% instantly or sell at a higher rate if you wait a few days. Don’t forget to use a portal for extra cash back or for miles. Both “Dell Consumer” and “Dell Business” work for portal bonuses in my experience.
Check Amazon for 40% up to $40 savings off when you use Membership Rewards points at checkout, but only use 1 point, the redemption rate is terrible other than this offer. If you don’t have organic spend, buy a 3rd party gift card for later use or resale. BestBuy is my normal go-to but it won’t move at higher rates until next month so keep that in mind, or liquidate today at around 97.5%.
I wish $200 in Dell credits knocked my top-hat off.
The Barclay Arrival+ card used to award 2.2% on spend when points were redeemed for travel, and used to be an OK card mostly for that reason alone. They nerfed it a few years ago, but I slacked and redeemed outstanding points for the annual fee rather than closing it like I should have. Now, Barclay is helping procrastinators like me by allowing you to redeem your points to cover charges at gas and grocery stores, minimum $50. I’ll be doing that and closing the card ASAP, if you still have one — prolly do the same. Get the Citi DoubleCash as a no-fee, better alternative.
But more importantly, please internalize a tip that affiliate bloggers can’t write about: Call and ask for a retention offer on every premium card you have at least once a year. You’ll get one more often than not and often they can be quite large, like sign-up bonus large. The language I usually use is “I’m thinking of closing this card given its large annual fee, but before I make a decision, I was checking to see if there are any retention or spending offers available”.
My Barclays Arrival+ getting ready to leave the sea of my sock drawer.
1. Have an American Express card? Sign up for National Executive Elite through February 2023. The status game is basically a hamster wheel, but National EE status is usually worthwhile at major airports for getting a car other than a gold Toyota Camry with 98,000 miles. Don’t book with National just because you have this status though, only use it when National has the best price (or the second best price if the best price is with FOX Rent-a-Car).
2. Blah blah blah, I know. Southwest has a fare sale about every 4 days, but this time it’s actually worth looking at. Fares start at $29 per one-way, and you’ll have to book by tomorrow (January 7, 2021).
Southwest can fly you to see this cow for only $29.
1. Hot on the heels of yesterday’s AmEx Master Value Injection for Personal Platinum cards, there’s an MVI for Business Platinums as well. The injection comes in the form of +4 points, up to 80,000 miles for certain categories as AmEx Offers. Check for them in gas, office supply, advertising, telecom/internet, and shipping. (Incidentally, there are good new offers on the Personal Platinum too, check for $50 off of $50 at BestBuy, $50 off of $100 at Home Depot, etc.)
2. Get Alaska Airlines gift cards for 10% off at Costco. These will be good for years, or for the lifetime of Alaska Airlines depending on your state’s gift card laws. This is a nice way to save on upcoming paid travel in 2021 or 2022. But, I wouldn’t hold them longer than that, a low cost index fund is a much better investment than a fledgling airline’s gift card. I’m not aware of card exchanges that will buy these quickly, so the easy gift card resale angle probably isn’t there on this one.
3. I’m sure you’ve already heard: Virgin Atlantic kersploded its award chart for Delta redemptions. You probably haven’t heard: ANA awards with Virgin Atlantic miles can’t be far behind; I’d book any fledgling miles on ANA flights for late 2021 or early 2022 as soon as practical, otherwise you may find yourself sitting on a pile of worthless miles; yes, worth less than even SkyMiles.
Kerbal Space Program demonstrates the Virgin Atlantic award chart kersplosion.
The American Express Master Value Injection (MVI) is back for 2021 for Personal Platinum cards at least. They now give up to $30 per month in PayPal statement credits, which I guess is a barely passable replacement for PayPal Key no longer working with AmEx. Call it the Master Value Injection 2.0. This is good from January 1 through June 30, giving you 6 months * $30/month or $180 in total credits per Personal Platinum.
I personally would buy discounted gift cards for resale from anywhere but PayPal Digital Gifts when a deal comes up, or use Fluz with PayPal checkout to liquidate these credits. I suppose you could also be basic and liquidate via real purchases. Fluz has a pyramid scheme built into it, so find a friend for a referral if you haven’t used it before, or contact me for one if you don’t know anyone else.
There’s some bad news too though. American Express is again charging the excise tax for transferring miles to US based travel partners (Delta, Hawaiian, JetBlue). Call it the Master Value De-Injection. Ok, so this resumption was due to the CARES act suspending the taxes until 12/31/2020, not AmEx directly; but whatever, I still blame AmEx for charging it in the first place.
American Express (left) injects “Master Value” into you as a Platinum card holder (right). Since businesses don’t have arms, this doesn’t work on the Business Platinum.
