What started out as a slow weekend turned into a landslide:
1. In September there was a backdoor way to turn an American Express Clear credit into $100 in United TravelBank credit through a promotion for a new Clear account. The offer is now back, and it’s still a way to turn a Clear statement credit into a quick TravelBank hundo. The caveats:
The $100 TravelBank credit expires after six months
You have to fly United or United Express to pay for airfare with TravelBank funds
TravelBank funds can’t be used to pay for therapy or liquor, even on a United flight
Last time you didn’t actually need to complete enrollment at an airport for the $100 credit to show up in your account, likely it’ll be no different this time.
2. Check your Chase Offers for 10% or 15% back up to $37 for charges at a Hyatt property from now through Valentine’s day.
3. The demise of the Citi Premier 80,000 points bonus has been greatly overstated. You can still find it at this link, and don’t forget that you can get this bonus multiple times as long as you space your applications out by more than 8 days and you hit the bonus spending threshold after all of your applications are in.
4. Since around Christmas time reports have surfaced that the American Express Blue Business Plus card has been eligible for the 1.9 Million Membership Rewards offer for adding employee cards (20,000 points per employee card that meets the minimum threshold spend, up to 99 employees). To see if you’re eligible, you’ll have to call American Express and ask if there are any offers for adding employees to your card.
The Blue Business Plus variant of this offer is better than the Business Platinum variant though, because the threshold for earning 20,000 bonus Membership Rewards is $2,000 in spend versus the $4,000 spend requirement on the Business Platinum. If you maximize this deal it becomes a 12x everywhere offer for up to $50,000 in spend and 11x everywhere for the remaining $49,000 in spend, wowza.
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%.
Two new credit cards entered the travel hacking sphere this week. It’s too early to tell how gameable they’ll be, but it’s not too early to get an opinion on how useful they seem from a site that has no financial interest whatsoever vested in whether or not you apply for a credit card.
To that end, today I’ve tried to summarize what’s unique about these cards and leave out crap that won’t matter to most of you, because usually that stuff is just chaff to make you think you’re getting a bigger value then you’ll probably end up with (see the $120 annual Equinox credit).
100,000 Capital One points after spending $10,000 in six months
Annual Fee
$395, not waived for the first year
Bonus Categories
– 10x Hotels and Rental cards only when booked through the Capital One travel portal – 5x on Flights only when booked through the Capital One Travel Portal
Major benefits
– Primary rental car protection – Trip delay protection (for delays six hours or longer, or overnight) – Cell phone protection – 10,000 bonus points every card renewal – $300 travel credit
Issuer quirks
– Capital One pulls from all three major credit bureaus – If your credit score is too high (say, above 800), they probably won’t approve you – You may have better odds of approval if you note that you often carry balances during the application
Is this card worth it the first year? I think so. The points you earn from $10,000 in spending for the sign up bonus and the $300 travel credit will cover the annual fee, and you’ll still have the bonus to use to pay for travel directly or to transfer partners.
Is this card worth it for year two and beyond? No, probably not. Capital One’s transfer partners certainly lag the offerings of Chase and American Express, and likely lag those of Citi too. They also lack a good hotel transfer partner. After year one, I’d rather keep:
A Citi Double Cash and a Citi Premier which will have a total annual fee of $95 with stronger earning potential and the same to better transfer partners.
An American Express Personal Gold which has a total annual fee of $295, stronger earning potential, and better transfer partners
A Chase Sapphire Preferred or Chase Ink Preferred which has a total annual fee of $95, stronger earning potential, and much better transfer partners
American Express Morgan Stanley Blue Cash Preferred
– 6% at grocery stores and supermarkets, but only up to $6,000 per year – 3% on gas stations and transit (but not airfare or car rentals)
Major benefits
– $100 annual credit after spending $15,000 – 0% interest for all purchases within the first year
Issuer quirks
– American Express probably won’t do a hard pull of your credit if you already have another American Express – You have to have a Morgan Stanley brokerage account to qualify ($5,000 in Access will do) – You won’t be able to use a referral link for this card, it’s only available by head-on application
Is this card worth it the first year? Well, if you don’t have another good manufactured spend card for gas stations, probably yes. If you do though, the real benefit is the $300 sign-up bonus — and that’s pretty weak compared to $750+ offers seen elsewhere.
Is this card worth it for year two and beyond? If you don’t have another card that bonuses at gas stations and you’re good at manufactured spend, definitely. $15,000 worth of manufactured gas station spend to offset the annual fee is child’s play with Speedway.
That said, I’d rather just have a Citi Double Cash and a Citi Premier which earns transferrable miles, has better earning potential for the long term and also earns 3x at gas stations, and it can still be cashed out at the same rate. That combo also has a $95 annual fee, but doesn’t offer a published benefit for offsetting that with spend (of course a retention call to Citi will typically yield the same end-result).
What I Did
Morgan Stanley Blue Cash Preferred: I have better options for gas stations than the Morgan Stanley Blue Cash Preferred, so I wrote this card off.
Capital One Venture X: I applied with the intent of holding it for one year, and I was denied (likely my credit score is too high).
Good luck out there, and have a drink for me at the Venture X party if you make the cut!
The Capital One Venture X party that excluded me. (With thanks to @nutella for the updated BoA image.)
1. A new American Express Platinum authorized user 20,000 Membership Rewards bonus link came into my inbox yesterday. It’s worth a shot to see if it works for you too. Login to your American Express account first, then click this link to see if you’re targeted. The bonus requires the authorized user card to spend $2,000 in six months. Of course I’d recommend adding the no annual-fee gold authorized user card instead of the platinum version.
Note: American Express authorized user cards arrive already activated and remain that way for 60 days, so you can spend the $2,000 without ever attaching a social security number.
2. My Citi Custom Cash card coded as a grocery store for certain manufactured spend techniques even though the same charges haven’t coded as grocery on my Citi Premier. So, if you’ve got a Custom Cash, forget what you know about Citi merchant coding and try again.
3. You’ve no doubt heard about yesterday’s announced Chase United Club Infinite card changes elsewhere. Don’t buy into the sales hype, but the changes make the card a good one in a few very specific instances. It might be a good card for you if you:
Fly United a lot*, and you value United Club access for all-you-can-eat cheese cubes (or for a less worthy reason)
Redeem United miles for domestic coach saver space a lot* (I’m unclear as to whether this applies to X award space only, or also to XN which is extra availability for elites and card holders)
Should that describe you*, the card’s United Club access and 10% rebate on domestic coach saver tickets can really add up to be worth more than the annual fee. If that doesn’t describe you though, skip this one.
4. Amazingly, the offer for American Express Business Platinum employee cards is still alive and kicking. As a reminder, you can get a 20,000 Membership Rewards bonus per employee for adding up to 99 employee authorized user cards and spending $4,000 on each. That’s a total of about 1.9 million Membership Rewards.
The downside? You have to talk to a human for this one. Call American Express’s Business Platinum phone number and ask “Are there any bonus offers for adding employee cards to my Business Platinum card?”
1.Staples is offering another sale on its Visa Gift Cards starting on Sunday, but this time the deal isn’t nearly as great as it typically is. You can purchase $200 Visa Gift Cards for a $1.95 fee. It’s still a mostly good deal with an AmEx Business Platinum 5x or Chase Ink 5x, mostly. Honestly, it’s better than a pile of rocks.
2.The Southwest free change window is back between May 9 and June 5. Book the cheapest fare between your preferred cities somewhere within that date-range, then change it to ±30 days for the actual flights you want for no additional fees.
3. I’m sure you’ve heard it elsewhere already, but American Express Centurion Lounges are disallowing guest access to guests on February 1, 2023 unless you spend $75,000 on your American Express Platinum card. As Windbag Miles says, look into the Morgan Stanley Platinum which gives a free Authorized User Platinum card also with lounge access benefits. Little known fact, a decent balance at Morgan Stanley for Platinum card holders gives an annual credit to offset the annual fee on this card.
4.Today is the last day for the Citi Premier card’s 25% uplift in point values on travel redemptions (1.25 cents per point today vs 1.00 cents per point starting tomorrow), so lock any bookings in now before it’s too late. Hint: Disney park tickets are a decent way to lock in the 25% uplift for a long while.
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.
Blit Rewards* cut earnings on rent payments made with a credit card to 0.5x.
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.”
Do this now:Make any Hyatt award bookings today that fit your schedule before the award chart is retooled tomorrow and lots of hotels go up in redemption cost. Most award bookings have great cancelation policies, so even speculative bookings probably make sense.
Turkish Airlines and Hilton have a promotion (registration required) for 1,000 bonus Turkish miles for stays through June 30, provided you set Turkish as your preferred travel partner in your Hilton profile. For new Hilton accounts, you earn 1,000 Turkish miles for each stay, but for existing Hilton accounts can you only earn the bonus once.
The best ongoing use case for this card used to be converting it to an AAdvantage Silver after a year, but because Citi will be the exclusive card issuer in 2026, that ship has probably sailed for new applicants. Instead, the best use beyond the sign-up bonus is probably to get a higher (or initial) credit line at Citi after the takeover.
Since it’s launch in 2021, I’ve thought the Chase United Quest Card was stupid, but it just keeps getting stupider and I’m convinced the product development team for the card lives in an alternate plane of existence. The annual fee has increased to $350, and there are new stupid credits to, uh, justify (?) the stupid increase:
– $5 monthly Instacart credit, plus $10 one time Instacart credit – $150 in credits at stupid Renowned Hotels and Resorts – $8 in monthly rideshare credits, except in December when it’s $12 – $150 in stupid JSX purchases – Small TravelBank credits for your first two rentals with Avis or Budget, but only using the United AWD which has generally inflated prices
This is probably a good change for exactly three cardholders on the planet, and bravo to you if you’re one of them.
An amusement park in the United Quest Card team’s alternate plane of existence.
In what might be the lamest churn known to the community: You can book the Best Western Hollywood Plaza Inn for $76.80 with AAA or similar discounts, and 2*$76.80 =$153.60. That means you can churn $50 Best Western gift cards for only $153.60, and get two nights in a hotel that probably won’t kill you and two elite night credits too.
If you don’t already have the credit card, it’s probably not worth your time, just get a Citi Double Cash and Strata Premier instead for much better earning, especially when paired with a Rewards+ for its 10% redemption rebate.
