American Express has a “targeted” sign-up bonus on its personal Gold card for 100,000 Membership Rewards points after $4,000 in spend. To be “targeted”, try this link on different operating systems, browsers, in incognito mode, and even even a different IP address until the offer appears. (UPDATE: Corrected link, thanks to Shashank)
You can buy 2,000 AA miles for $9.99 by signing up for Homer through the AA portal and cancelling after one month (just set a reminder in your phone). There’s apparently an AmEx offer for $9 back on Homer purchases too. Note that I wouldn’t normally post a deal this small, but the AA Loyalty Points that you’ll earn pushes this slightly above the line. (Thanks to Frequent Miler)
Juno (formerly OnJuno) has been paying 6% on USDC crypto holdings since early this year, which made it one of the best backdoor interest bearing accounts available. On Friday they sent a note that the interest rate is falling ever so slightly to 0% on September 1, which makes the platform largely useless as a place to park money.
The company also announced in the same message that they’ve raised a Series A financing round. When FinTech companies raise more money, profitable promotions usually come our way, so stay tuned.
As reported by some weirdo on the internet known for being apocryphal yet this time with a trustworthy source (DC Domer via MEAB slack), the glitch affecting Membership Rewards cash outs and partner transfers was resolved yesterday afternoon. 🎉
Southwest has run its first major schedule change for flights from early September through early November, though the number of impacted flights is smaller than is typical which could mean there will be another round of changes, or it could mean Southwest is changing the way it rolls out schedule updates.
If you have flights booked in that window, now is a good time to see if you’re affected and rebook if the updates don’t work for you. Southwest allows you to change to any other flight between the same city pairs ± two weeks when a schedule change affects your itinerary. (Thanks to Brian M via MEAB slack)
Do this now: Register for Q3 spending categories on major 5%/5x rotating category cards:
Expect ideas on manufactured spend for these categories soon.
American Express has been sending out new Pay-over-Time 20,000 or 30,000 point offers every week for over a month. Not everyone that’s eligible receives an email or mailer because American Express, but fortunately it’s easy to check via these links:
It doesn’t take a super-hacker to see the patterns in those links, so I suppose it’s really easy to look for alternate links that aren’t yet known. (Thanks to DoC, reddit, and my inbox for these links)
Kroger has a 4x fuel points sale on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercards running from today through Sunday. Unfortunately the fuel points resale market prices continues to drop, and this sale won’t help it recover. I think we’ll see depressed fuel points and gift card prices through at least mid-July as a result
There’s also widespread reporting that Kroger has started to shutdown accounts that were created with the anonaddy.com service, so I guess be careful and remember that only you can prevent wildfires.
It may seem like the US Forest Service is being literal, but in reality they’re referring to Kroger burner accounts.
There’s inexplicably a lot of noise out there in the travel-hacking community this week. Can I offer a suggestion? Before you decide to spend five or so minutes reading an article, read the headline and ask yourself about the author’s motivation. For me it’s become a very effective filter for what’s worth my attention and what isn’t.
With that out of the way:
1. American Express has partnered with Delta to offer targeted status matches to regular American Express Platinum cardholders. You can sign up at this link, and see your matched status tiers at this link. A few notes:
You need to have United, American, Alaska, JetBlue, or Southwest status to match
You’ll be matched to a higher tier at Delta than your existing tier
The terms and conditions say the offer is targeted, but my guess is that it’ll work for anyone
Don’t forget, you can get AA status through spend on a co-branded card.
2. The Point debit card has 10x back at Target up to $500 in spend. If you have a Target Redcard credit card, perhaps the best play is to make a payment in-store. If not, Visa gift cards are your best bet, and make sure you go through a shopping portal in case the purchase tracks.
As usual, if you want the Point card use a referral link for a better sign-up offer than is publicly available. As of yesterday, the sign-up offer is $100 back after spending $1,000.
3. Capital One has a 20% transfer bonus to Aeromexico and Avianca. The latter has a few nice sweet-spots, like:
First Class (Lufthansa) US-Europe or vice-versa for 66,000 Membership Rewards, no fuel surcharges
Economy US-Africa or vice-versa for 31,000 Membership Rewards, no fuel surcharges
Business Class US-Europe or vice-versa for 49,000 Membership Rewards, no fuel surcharges
Economy continental US-Caribbean for 10,000 Membership Rewards, no fuel surcharges
Hint: There are others too, and they often involve a misunderstanding of basic world geography.
4. Check for email from Citi for a targeted offer of 5x at electronics stores and game stores (and a few categories that aren’t interesting) on both Premier and Prestige cards. Reportedly the subject is: “[Firstname], Use Your Citi Card to Earn Bonus ThankYou® Points on Eligible Purchases. It’s So Simple to Activate!” (Thanks to TheSultan1 and FearTheZ)
UPDATE: Oliver let me know of a similar offer on the Citi AA Business card. His offer was for 5x at electronics stores up to $500 in spend by May 31.
In what has become an annual MEAB tradition for an unbelievable streak of two years in a row (if you include this year), it’s time for another installment of Travel Hacking as Told by GIFs. The 2020 version was, naturally, a rousing success. Time for another one of those, or something.
Let’s Go!
Virgin Atlantic Devalues its Award Charts and Expects us to Book Anyway
Remember how merchant coding didn’t pass properly to AmEx via PayPal and everything was a “global restaurant” when you bought with PPK? I do. sniff
Citi Pay-By-Phone Accepts New Cards
When the new year ticked over, a new year’s worth of expiration dates started to sail through, and we celebrate.
American Express Master Value Injection 2.0
Personal Platinums get $30 at PayPal. Co-brand business cards got $10-$20 off of wireless services. Co-brand personal cards get $10-$25 off of dining. It all resets every month! Also, business Platinums get +4x in four categories. We’re happy at first…
American Express with Master Value Injection Redux
By March, we realize we’re working for American Express to cash out a dozen small monthly credits, and it feels like we’re getting nowhere fast while we try and twirl through our credits.
Bank of America Launches a Spirit Airlines Co-Brand Card
Someone really thinks we’ll go for this? Also, 40,000 miles is stingy, even for Spirit.
We have a new US based air carrier and we got to see its inaugural takeoff roll.
Citi Launches the Custom Cash Card
It’s a no-annual fee card that earns 5x per month on $500 spend in whatever category you spent the most on. Bad? Not at all. Amazing? Not really, but we’ll take it. Unfortunately for me I got a $20,000 credit line on a card that will never see more than $500 in monthly spend.
Visible Sends Us Giant Piles of Mastercard Gift Cards
American Express gave us a bonus three points per dollar, uncapped, for referring someone (like P2) to a new card. Obviously this was abused and became a goldmine.
Maybe the “4 for us deal” isn’t quite as lucrative as “3 for all” for heavy hitters, but it’s a great consolation prize to close out 2021. I got one for me and one for P2, but wish I had tried even harder.
American Airline’s SimplyMiles Roller Coaster
We’re all going to get 240 miles per dollar. No wait, we’re not. No, it’s going to post! Then it posts! Then it unposts! Then it posts! Then it unposts!
The Dust Settles and 240 Miles Per Dollar Actually Shows Up
Former US Airways management proves that it can still make a deal that puts other deals to shame, even though they can’t make a sandwich.
Fee-Free MS with Point Dies
You could load cash onto the Point debit card with a credit card using Apple Pay, fee-free, up to $12,500 per month, and then spend the money and earn another 1% on top. It even worked with American Express.
We watch the Marriott Program go from Bad to Worse
After years of devaluation, Marriott gave us something differentanother devaluation.
Getting Creative with Rental Cars During Carmageddon
Bob at the local mechanics shop will let you rent a fixer-upper for only $150 per day, unlimited miles. What a steal!
Running to Meijer for the Sale of the Year
Meijer announced that they were giving 10% off of third party gift cards for two days, and MSers ran to the Midwest for a feeding frenzy.
Flight Attendants Get Trained on Unruly Passenger Handling
Links were allegedly stolen from source code, reddit /r/churning mods had massive infighting, links were released to the public to hide serious abusers in a crowd, inevitably a bunch of shutdowns occur, and one of the perpetrators walks away unscathed. This could honestly be an HBO mini-series.
Flight Attendants on British Airways Celebrate the Reopening of US Borders
BA1 marked the return of leisure travel to the United States, or at least that was the plan before Virgin Atlantic stole the crown. Fortunately, Miles Earn and Burn has obtained exclusive footage from the safety briefing so we can all take part in the early celebration.
Virgin Atlantic and British Airways Orchestrate Simultaneous Takeoff
It’s always the ball you don’t see coming, right? American Express shut down accounts for cardholders that had opened one or more business cards with the help of a particular employee, and without regard to literally anything else. Imagine opening a single Business Platinum card in 2018 and then having this happen in 2021…
Sometimes we need to have a picture of what we’re offered to keep a company honest. I prefer using a phone or computer’s built-in tool, but if you’re part of any Slack or WhatsApp groups, you’ll know that not everyone feels the same way.
Your Friend Asks You What It’s Like to Fly Eleven Hours in Coach
Uh, we literally have no idea. If it’s not a lie flat, then we haven’t done it. We might look rugged and experienced, but honestly we haven’t been past row 16 or so on a widebody aircraft since, I don’t know, ever.
GoBank Discontinues Its Card
When notice came in mid-August that GoBank was shutting down in favor of Go2Bank, MSers swiped repeatedly at Walmart to offload gift cards (including Metabank) while they still could.
Brex Gives us Hundreds of Thousands of Points for Very Little Effort
It took me under five minutes on the phone to link PayPal to Brex for 100,000 points. And then there was the 110,000 point sign-up bonus in early February. Oh, and you could do it multiple times with multiple business. In my state, you can register a business for only $70, so there’s that too. (It’s not quite as good, but you can keep the party going in 2022 with the TravelBank 75,000 points after spending $1,000 offer.)
BestBuy Disables Auto-Checkout Bots During Black Friday
BestBuy knows that auto-checkout bots exist, and has countermeasures to disable them. Why does it turn them on for only a week or two a year? I have no idea.
Employees that shared your name but with roman numerals were never more exciting! This deal is still scheduled to run well into 2022 on many business cards by the way; you just have to call and ask, because I guess you’re just supposed to know that AmEx has phone only offers and to check periodically?
A few probers out there knew that GivingAssistant was really good at awarding cash back even when other portals wouldn’t, like buying Apple Products on BestBuy.com. Did our experimenting cause it to fall apart?
Miles Earn and Burn Celebrates a One Year Anniversary
You may have figured out by now that I’m not big on ceremony for the sake of ceremony, so you probably won’t be surprised to learn that I spared you all from another “WE JUST TURNED ONE YEARS YOUNG!!” blog post. But, the anniversary technically did occur.
The Worst Credit Card Takes a New Tact
I don’t yet have a formal Unsung Villains series to match the Unsung Heroes series, but if and when I do the Mastercard Black Card card will be at the top of the villains list. The thing is, they know that their card is bad so their marketing department has to stretch. Recently they’ve started advertising that their card is heavier than the competition. Wow, you mean my wallet can get even thicker?!? Sold!
Thank You!
I don’t say it enough, but I appreciate everyone’s support over 2021. Thanks for your emails, your Telegram messages, your Slack and Discord groups, and your Patreon memberships. I’m really here because of you.
There’s a triple for today, but first let’s talk some blog meta: A week from Friday it’s time for the MEAB annual Travel Hacking as told by GIFs post, and frankly that post is a ton of fun but also a bunch of work. The biggest part of the work is deciding which travel hacking events or changes for the year were significant, and while I’ve come up with a dozen or two, I could use your help. Drop me a line and let me know from your perspective which events in 2021 should be addressed. Thanks in advance!
Back to our regular programming:
1. Delta is having an award sale to Cancun and Los Cabos from various US Cities. Sale prices depend on the city, but range between 11,000 miles round trip and 22,000 miles round trip. Use Delta’s flexible calendar search for the quickest results. (Thanks to DDG)
2. In a move that surprised absolutely positively no-one, Office Depot/OfficeMax has $15 back on $300 or more in Visa gift cards running through Saturday evening (or likely Friday evening, because, you know, reasons). To maximize the deal:
Buy the “Everywhere” variety of gift cards for lower fees, but make sure you have a way to liquidate (Bravo is still a higher fee way)
Try and get at least two and perhaps more transactions through back-to-back with the cashier
A caveat on the Rakuten card-linked program: Every time you use an offer you have to go back to the site and activate it again.
3. Stockpile has increased their fee-free gift card purchase when using a credit card to $1,000 per-transaction. According to DoC, the annual gift card limit has moved from $1,000 to $2,000, but I don’t think either of those limits were or are true. I was able to get more even before the change. For best success though:
Get a new IP address every couple of transactions
Use a new email address every couple of transactions
Use private mode in your browser
Use a credit card like the Chase Freedom Unlimited, Citi Double Cash, or American Express Blue Business Preffered that earns 2x on these transactions (or the US Bank Altitude Reserve for true hackers). Update: Chaim from HelpMeBuildCredit wrote in to remind me that Stockpile doesn’t take American Express
Apropos of nothing, I’d like to share this here because no-one else would understand. This morning, my P2 said to me: “You’re the worst to shop for. All I can come up with is to buy you $1,000 in BestBuy gift cards and let you turn those into points or something.” 😂
A machine that shreds BestBuy plastic gift-cards and turns them into showers of points. (Patent pending)
You’ve got just a little over a week and a half before “reset to factory defaults” happens on just about everything we do. Set aside a bit of time to take care of the following this week:
1. Spend any American Express credits in Uber Eats or Uber, and remember that your December Uber Wallet size is quite a bit bigger than other months when Platinum cards are involved.
2. Check for any annual fees that posted and call the bank for a retention offer, or just chat online if the bank is American Express. Some sample phraseology: “I’m thinking of closing this card because of its high annual fee, but before I decide what to do I was wondering if there are any retention offers or spend bonuses.” If you get an offer, don’t forget to add: “Are there any other offers available?” Sometimes there are better offers if you keep asking.
American Express specific note: If you accept a retention offer, plan on keeping that card for 12-13 months to avoid getting popups that deny credit card bonuses in the future
3. If you have an American Express co-branded personal card (Marriott, Delta, Hilton), make sure you’ve attached the dining offer to your card and spend it soon. The easiest way to do this from home is to buy an exact value Amazon Meals gift card on Fluz. As always, find a Fluz referral from a friend to make their day if you don’t have an account already, they’ll earn something and so will you.
4. Make sure you’ve spent any $10 American Express Personal Gold dining credits. My go to is the local coffee shop for a coffee and a crepe which jumps just north of $10 on GrubHub. Buying physical gift cards at a ShakeShack is another option.
5. Cancel any cell phone burner accounts that you’re done with (and for which you didn’t use a virtual credit card number that already expired).
6. Finish off any Q4 5x bonused spend on Chase Freedom cards, Discover IT cards, US Bank Cash+ cards, Citi Custom Cash cards, or similar.
7. Book any American Express Fine Hotels and Resorts (or The Hotel Collection) stays with your $200 Platinum credit for upcoming travel next year, even if it’s speculative. Historically American Express’s systems lose their memory after the calendar rolls, so keep that in mind.
8. Use your Chase Sapphire Reserve $300 travel credit, and remember that it works on groceries this year too.
9. Use your American Express Platinum $200 airline incidental credit, Chase Ritz Carlton $300 airline incidental credit, or PenFed PathFinder $100 airline incidental credit. United TravelBank is a great way to do this. On the American Express card, make sure you’ve selected an airline first. By the way, you can change your airline selection at any time as long as you haven’t yet used any during this calendar year, just call or chat with AmEx.
11. It’s time for some shenanigans with American Express Clear credits (yes, there are options) so burn those or gift them to a friend. Side note: Soon, it looks like you’ll be able to buy Clear gift cards for resale.
12. Check for any credit card spend bonuses that you may want to hit before the end of the year, like:
World of Hyatt Visa free night certificate after $15,000 spend
American Express Hilton Surpass and Honors Business free night certificate after $15,000 spend
American Express Hilton Aspire second free night certificate after $60,000 spend
American Express Delta Platinum MQM boosts after $25,000 and $50,000 spend
American Express Delta Reserve MQM boosts after $30,000, $60,000, $90,000, and $120,000 spend
British Airways Visa companion ticket after $50,000 spend
JetBlue Visa Mosaic status after $50,000 spend
Good luck out there.
The American Express master control panel. They’ve made great use of the turbo button for all of 2021, but a tech earning $12 / hour will push the reset button at 11:59 PM EST on December 31 so be ready.
Thanks to everyone for your questions and comments over the week, it seems like you’ve had a ton of recent successes and I’m always glad to hear about them (and of course I appreciate hearing about the “less optimal” situations too).
There are a few deals to ride into the weekend:
1. It turns out that in addition to the existing methods for extending the expiration of FlyingBlue miles there’s a new way: Have miles that expire in the middle of a pandemic and then wait. FlyingBlue announced yesterday that any miles expiring before December 31, 2022 are now extended through that date.
2. In August, Chase had a preregistration open for the Aeroplan credit card and offered 10,000 if you joined the pre-registration list. Now, Chase is sending links for signing-up for the new credit card and claiming those 10,000 points. Check your inbox (mine hadn’t arrived as of this writing or I’d see if there was a link I could share).
MEAB mini-review of the Aeroplan card? The sign-up bonus will be hard to use effectively, but 3x uncapped at grocery is great. That said, my Citi Premier also gives uncapped 3x at grocery and lets me transfer to Avianca Lifemiles or Turkish Airlines for the same general award availability as Aeroplan with competitive or better flight prices. So, hard pass. I’d rather just churn a few Inks.
3. Now that the “4-for-us” promotion has ended, American Express has refreshed its referral bonus offers and there are reports of seeing referral bonuses of up to 50,000 Membership Rewards points.
4. Remember the Rakuten in-store card-linked program? Well, Staples is ready to make that one exciting: They’re having another fee-free $200 Mastercard gift card sale (limit 5) which should stack nicely with 2.5% cash back. If you’re going to scale this deal, I’d throw in a few pens and a bag of candy or something to try and avoid drawing Rakuten’s anger.
5. The BestBuy gift card market has been steadily improving since Cyber Monday, I’m seeing spot prices at or above 97% again, and bulk card inventories at aggregators and buyers are slowly shrinking.
6. Lowe’s has its promotion for a free $10 Lowe’s gift card when purchasing a $200 Visa gift card running through Wednesday, December 8. This can be rather lucrative if you have a good liquidation channel for the Visas, and the $10 gift card should sell for $8.00 – $8.50. Hint: Buy the “Everywhere” variety of cards for lower fees and better liquidation options. I’ll be out running this one. (Thanks to DoC)
Update: Reader Avi reminded me to mention that your cards should all be linked to JetBlue’s TrueBlue Shopping to earn 3x at Lowes, and this does work when buying gift cards.
7.Target is back with 10% off of gift cards, up to $500 per card for Saturday and Sunday. It took until February for the market to recover from this sale last year, but I think it’ll recover more quickly this round. To scale the deal go in-store with multiple Target circle accounts, but keep it to no more than $1,500 total per credit card. Spot prices are currently at 90-92%.
It was a strange Black Friday weekend in 2021– we saw shakeups in the BestBuy resale market, Kroger shopping rewards market, and a lack of major deals from big-box retailers; hopefully everything clears up for Cyber Monday, but I’m not holding my breath. I’ll recap everything in a day or two after all the dust settles, but in the mean time here are a few things to look at:
2. There’s a new no-lifetime language (NLL) offer for the American Business Express Gold card. The sign-up bonus is 90,000 points after spending $10,000 in three months. Unfortunately the offer isn’t available for me, but that’s unsurprising since I currently have eleven American Express charge cards and the limit is typically ten. I also have five American Express credit cards and haven’t been able to bust through that limit. (Thanks to tehflip449, and thanks to BlueCat for pointing out that this one is a Business Gold card)
Side note: I’ve been debating internally about whether the Personal Gold is another candidate for an Unsung Hero card. It’s certainly my favorite American Express charge card and I’d keep 15 of them if I could, but isn’t exactly unsung. Story developing
3.The Point debit card has a new variation on its Streak offers, and it’s even more annoying than it’s been in the past. This one requires $200 in total spend and that you use the card at least once a day for seven days before December 24, after which you’ll get $30 back. Still worth it? Yes, provided that you’ve got automation. I bought a $200 gift card for resale at Whole Foods to take advantage of the 10x bonus and then I set up debbit to make a $1.xx charge at Amazon for the next six days. There’s a debbit sample configuration for another Point Streak deal here.
As usual, make sure you use a referral if you sign up for Point because the referral bonus of $100 is better than the publicly available offer. Reader Mark was the first to let me know that the referrer’s bonus is now also $100 and no longer one fifth of a crappy suitcase.
5. Meijer has $10 off in $150 or more of Mastercard gift cards with a limit of one per MPerks account. This is a decent deal if you’re already near a Meijer, but I wouldn’t go out of my way for this (unlike their Homerun deal).
6. You can cash out your Citi ThankYou Points at 1.125 cents per point today only by buying Apple gift cards at a 20% discount with ThankYou points and selling at 90% (or more) of face value. (Thanks to nutella)
