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It’s time to jump into the pre-Halloween weekend, but before you turn into a pumpkin:

  1. Southwest has extended its schedule through August 4th, which includes most of summer’s travel season. As a general rule, booking summer travel in autumn often means there will be schedule changes, and with Southwest schedule changes often mean a free change to any other flight between the same city pairs ±2 weeks.
  2. Chase Southwest cards have increased sign-up bonuses of 75,000 Rapid Rewards points on the personal cards, or 80,000 points on the Rapid Rewards Business card. These offers aren’t all-time highs, but they are interesting getting two of them and hitting the spend threshold for the bonuses after January 1, 2024 will earn you a Companion Pass through 2025.

    No one out there seems to remember the downside of the Companion Pass though: you’re still on Southwest.
  3. Office Depot/OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 in Visa gift cards starting Sunday and running through the following Saturday. To maximize:

    – Consider that maybe multiples of $300 might behave strangly
    – Link your credit cards to Dosh
    – Try for multiple transactions back-to-back
    – Don’t forget about the American Express Business Gold $20 credit, which you can use twice during the promotional period

    These are Pathward gift cards, and often only work with PIN transactions for a total of $480 every six minutes per store. (Thanks to DoC)
  4. Do this now: Register for double Avios on up to 10 flights booked by November 21 for travel by January 14, 2024. Surprisingly this works with AA, Iberia, and Finnair paid flights credited to BA too.
  5. Sebastian notes that Bank of America’s Business Unlimited Cash Rewards Mastercard still has a $500 sign-up bonus available with $5,000 spend in 90 days. This card is useful because:

    – In conjunction with Bank of America Preferred Rewards Platinum Honors status, this is a 2.625% everywhere card
    – You probably still have time to get it before More Rewards Day on November 9

    Don’t forget that with Bank of America, one card is nice, but more is better. (Vague much, MEAB?)

Have a nice weekend!

Pictured: Your 23 year old companion after the fourth leg on Southwest between Eugene, OR and Greenville, SC.

  1. Office Depot/OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 or more in Mastercard gift cards through Saturday. To maximize:

    – Link your cards to Dosh
    – Cash-out your American Express Business Gold credits for October
    – See what happens when you try and scale a transaction
    – Try for multiple transactions back-to-back

    These are Pathward gift cards so have a liquidation plan in place.
  2. Giant PA stores, (maybe) Stop & Shop, and (maybe) Martins stores have 10x rewards points on Lowes gift cards and 5x on GreenDot debit cards starting Friday. There’s definitely a Lowes gift card resale liquidation channel that supports high volume. For GreenDots, the landscape is tougher.
  3. The American Express Hilton Surpass and Aspire cards were retooled last week, on the whole they’re slightly worse but still a good value. To make up for it I guess, American Express increased the sign-up bonuses for both cards to the highest we’ve seen:

    – Hilton Aspire: 180,000 Hilton Honors points after $6,000 spend in six months
    – Hilton Surpass: 170,000 Hilton Honors points after $3,000 spend in three monts

    The bonus is also available via referrals with most referrers getting 20,000 Hilton points, so go that route if you’re in two-player mode or if you’ve got a friend who can generate a link for you.

Happy Monday!

Taco Bell statistically has the fastest, uh, food to go with your Monday Quickies.. The bad news is this is the food.

  1. Kroger has an in-store 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards running today only. There are scalable plays in these sales, and sometimes happy accidents too. Always be probing.

    Kroger used to sell US Bank gift cards, then switched to Pathward, and now seems to be switching back to US Bank, double check what you’re getting when you buy.
  2. Kroger online has 5% off of Visa and Mastercard fixed value gift cards through Tuesday with promo code FIVE2023. The real win here is that these purchases earn fuel points, if you’re not going to use those in some way this isn’t a deal because you’re not getting special coding.

    These are US Bank gift cards.
  3. The American Express personal Green card has a historically high sign-up bonus available directly and through referral link for 60,000 Membership Rewards after $3,000 in spend in six months, but you’ll also get 20% back on travel and transit purchases for the same time period with a maximum statement credit of $200.

    Pre Dodd-Frank this was a great card to sign-up for, get the sign-up bonus, and then upgrade to a Gold or a Platinum immediately thereafter for another bonus. Now though, consumer cards can’t have an increased annual fee in the first year, so no upgrade is available until year two. It remains a way to slowly build a stable of Gold cards though after the first year. (Thanks to DoC)
  4. Staples has fee free $200 Mastercard gift cards starting Sunday and running through the following Saturday, limit eight per transaction. As always, try and run multiple transactions back to back to minimize your time at Staples stores.

    These are Pathward gift cards so have a liquidation plan in place.

A stable of American Express Gold cards located somewhere in a Kroger parking lot.

  1. IHG has 15% off of award bookings for card holders and for Platinum and Diamond elites through tomorrow for stays through December 16. Yes, this has been around for a few days, but today is the first day that elites are also eligible for the discount.

    Be sure to reprice any existing IHG reservations in addition to looking at new bookings.

  2. Southwest has a fare sale through tomorrow evening for travel from:

    – November 29 through December 15 of this year
    – January 10 through March 8 of next year

    Reprice existing reservations too, and note that if your spring break dates fall within two weeks of March 8, you might consider a refundable points booking on near the end of the promotion and hope for a schedule change that lets you switch to your desired dates for no additional fee.

  3. American Express employee card offers have now been reported for the Plum card, Delta Reserve Business card, Delta Business Gold card, and the Business Platinum card, which gives us the updated list of offers for up to 99 employee cards per primary card:

    – Plum card: $50 statement credit for $2,000 in spend per card [new]
    – Delta Business Gold: $50 statement credit for $1,000 in spend per card [new]
    – Delta Business Reserve: $50 statement credit for $1,000 in spend per card [new]
    – Blue Business Plus: 5,000 Membership Rewards for $1,000 in spend per card [new] UPDATE: There are multiple reports of $1,000 in spend required and $2,000 in spend required, it seems variable on this card
    – Blue Business Cash: $50 statement credit for $1,000 in spend per card [new] UPDATE: There are multiple reports of $1,000 in spend required and $2,000 in spend required, it seems variable on this card
    – Business Platinum: 5,000 Membership Rewards for $2,000 in spend per card [new]
    – Hilton Business: $50 statement credit for $1,000 in spend per card
    – Marriott Business: $50 statement credit for $1,000 in spend per card
    – Lowe’s Business: $50 statement credit for $1,000 in spend per card
    – Green Business: $50 statement credit for $2,000 in spend per card

    Don’t sleep on these, each one is an additional 495,000 points or $4,950. (Thanks to Sebastian, Marrisa94, and Jim for new data points, and thanks to everyone who reached out to me yesterday noting that 99 * 5,000 ≠ 49,500 🤦‍♀️)

  4. Check for a targeted email from Discover for an extra 4% cash back on up to $2,000 in purchases by December 31. The subject: “Congrats [name], enjoy up to $80 extra cash back” (Thanks to an anonymous contributor)
  5. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards starting today and running through Tuesday after clipping the digital coupon. If you’re using fuel points to subsidize gift card reselling, you should be able to do so profitably with a little care. My current guidance on avoiding fuel account locks:

    – Create a new fuel points account with a new incognito session on the browser on your mobile device when not connected to wifi
    – Buy everything in one or two transactions total, ideally in off-hours (customer service counters let you scale this a bit)
    – Do your best to work with a fuel points end-user that can use the points within an hour or two of loading

    Good luck!

Showing my work from the math in yesterday’s post.

A thought to start your Tuesday: Sometimes this hobby is slow, but based on my experience it’s definitely not slow right now. If it feels slow to you, use the time to get out there and start probing. Keep building your network too; fellow churners and manufactured spenders probably have a few tools that you haven’t used yet. Anyhooldes:

  1. The Point debit card refunded annual fees on a pro-rated basis and announced the existing version of the card would be shutdown on September 23. They also announced that existing members will get a free year of PointCard Titan when it launches later this year. A few action items:

    – If you have a Point card, cash-out your balance sooner rather than later
    – If you don’t have a Point card, I’d try and get one now in case the free year of Titan is worthwhile [Update: Point seems to have pulled the application link]

    I earned over $10,000 in cash back with the Point card, most in the first half of 2021 after launch. I also got quite a bit of no-fee manufactured spend in the first half of 2021. Based on those two experiences I’m hopeful that the new Titan card will present a few nice opportunities. (Thanks to Nathan via MEAB slack)

  2. Alaska and AA’s shopping portals have a spend bonus like last week’s Southwest and United portal bonuses:

    – Alaska: 1,200 bonus miles after $600 in spend
    – AA: 2,000 bonus miles after $600 in spend

    A manufactured spending hall of fame payment processor is still running some giftcards.com cards in a favorable way.

  3. Clear is running a $75 Uber credit promotion for new accounts. If you still have an unused American Express Platinum $189 Clear credit or two, sign up for an account with new information to cash-out that credit. So far, none of the Clear promotions like this have needed a complete enrollment at the airport in order to pay out.

    Remember, if you don’t cash-out every one of those Clear credits, the terrorists win. (Thanks to FM)

  4. According to DoC, more people have been targeted for an American Express Business Gold or Green upgrade offer to the Business Platinum for 140,000 Membership Rewards after spending $10,000 in three months. To see if you’re targeted, login to AmEx, set a Business Green or Gold card as your default card, then click ‘Request an Upgrade’ at this link.
  5. In a move that should surprise absolutely no one, starting tomorrow and running through Tuesday, August 9th, Kroger is having another 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards.

A probing tool recommended by my network (In retrospect, I should have been more specific).

Since American Express has effectively consumed the majority of this month’s posts with their ludicrous, new-Subaru-MSRP-valued offers, it seemed fitting to send the month off with discussion about scaling and financial reviews based on chatter in and around the community.

Scaling

American Express is more tolerant of massively scaled spending than any other big bank, but keep the following in mind:

  1. AmEx doesn’t care about cycling your credit lines. You can spend up to your credit limit, pay it down before the statement closes, and then spend a bunch more.
  2. AmEx does care about an explosion in spending. If you typically spend $5,000 per month and then spend $300,000 in two weeks, you could end up with a financial review. For rough numbers lets say:

    – A quick ramp of 3x to 5x of your normal spending is probably OK
    – A quick ramp of 20x+ of your normal spending is probably not OK
    – A slow, multi-month ramp to 20x+ of your normal spending is probably OK

  3. AmEx doesn’t care if you spend multiple times your annual business revenue on business cards.
  4. AmEx often cares if you spend multiple times your annual income on personal cards.
  5. AmEx doesn’t care about round numbers — 30 to 50 repeated $1,000.00 transactions won’t cause any problem, provided you’re playing by the above rules.
  6. AmEx won’t typically shut you down immediately if you violate the above rules, instead you’ll end up with a financial review. (Shutdowns at AmEx are more like being in the wrong place at the wrong time unfortunately.)

Financial Reviews

When American Express finds behavior it doesn’t like you’ll get a call asking for a financial review. When you get a financial review, American Express will usually ask:

  • “Why are you spending so much at TurboGiftCardsNow.com?” (Answer: to separate my expenses of course)
  • “Why did you start spending so much more this month than normal?” (Answer: big business contract)
  • “What’s the source of your income?” (Answer: my job and the big business contract)
  • “Can we see your tax returns for the last two years?” (Answer: of course, here’s a signed 4506-T form)

AmEx usually suspends your charging privileges during a financial review and they typically take two to four weeks to complete their investigation. Assuming the income reported on your tax return meets or exceeds the income you put on your card applications, you’re almost certainly in the clear and you’ve essentially got a green light to keep the shenanigans rocketing toward the moon. Then you can go inception and use all those Membership Rewards to buy yourself a Subaru with your American Express to earn even more Membership Rewards to earn another Subaru.

Have a nice weekend!

Recharging your new 99 employee-card funded electric Subaru for another MS run.

Foreward: I apologize in advance for what’s coming. It kind of just happened in the first paragraph and then, well, you’ll see shortly.

1. Delta Platinum and Diamond medallions should make sure they’ve selected their Choice Benefits for the 2021 medallion year by the end of the day. (Confusingly, 2021 medallion year Choice Benefits are for status earned in 2020.) Tonight at midnight these choices turn into a pumpkin.

2. Check the dashboard of your American Express Green and Gold personal cards for an upgrade offer of 75,000 Membership Rewards after spending $6,000 in six months and +5x points for up to $15,000 in spend at supermarkets, gas stations, and restaurants. In case you do math like a pumpkin, that means 1x+5x, or 6x. (Thanks to bewhoaleavemealone)

3. Kroger.com has $10 off of $150 in Visa and Mastercard gift cards using code JAN2022 now through Wednesday. Unlike the physical US Bank cards that Kroger sells in store, these are Metabanks and are processed by Blackhawk Network, so liquidation is a bit tougher; you may have to resort to buying pumpkins for resale.

4. Kroger stores are running a 4x fuel points sale on gift cards starting Wednesday and running through February 8. Bulk gift card resale markets still look like a rotting pumpkin though, so while normally a 4x fuel points sale like this would depress the market value of Kroger fuel points, I don’t expect that to happen this time.

potato
Be glad these aren’t pumpkins.

Hello friends! Let’s start the week off right with a few quick hits and a few big deals:

1. Here’s an updated link for the Delta Platinum 7,500 miles authorized user bonus from last Thursday, give this one a shot in case the other one didn’t work for you.

2. A follow-up from a week ago: my application for the US Bank Business Triple Cash card was approved with a ginormous credit line. How I’m going to play it: Hit the minimum spend to earn $500, lower all of my US Bank credit lines, then apply for three or four more of these before the offer goes away.

3. Rakuten’s card-linked cash back program has added BestBuy, Walmart, Gamestop, and Walgreens cash back at 5%, which blows the Staples 2.5% that we discussed in early December out of the water. Each of these stores sells one or more valuable gift cards, and each of them will let you buy those gift cards with a credit card (like perhaps an Amex that has an 99 employee card for 1.8 million points offer and a +4x offer attached?) Just don’t forget to link your cards to Rakuten and click “Link Offer” in your account.

The last time Rakuten had great partners with their card linked program it all went well for a while until they shut down a few accounts doing major volume in gift card purchases. So, add a kombucha, a banana, and a usb cable to your purchase to mask what you’re doing. At 5% cash-back, you can afford to treat yourself to America’s favorite fruit.

4. I think that Staples has had more weeks with a gift card sale going than weeks without one in 2021. Maybe next year I’ll post only if they’re not running a promo to save everyone time. That said, it isn’t next year yet, so… Staples is having a $200 fee-free sale on Visa gift cards issued by Metabank running through Saturday, limit five per transaction. (Thanks to GC Galore)

Liquidation? Try bill-pay services and try grocery stores that aren’t Kroger or Safeway/Albertsons; also, maybe look at the Western Union agent locator. Remember, the velociraptors in the documentary Jurassic Park found weaknesses in the electric fence that separated them from the money order terminals by probing. Be a velociraptor.

5. American Express has a 20% transfer bonus to Singapore Krisflyer, and Gary pointed out that this stacks with a promotion that Singapore Airlines is running through the end of February for Star Alliance Gold status. I’m calling this out because if you fly United a lot, and I mean a lot, and if you want to redeem a Singapore award for you and P2 (and maybe P3+) in the next couple of months you could get a ton of value because Star Alliance gold status through Singapore will get you into United Clubs when flying United Airlines (and a free checked bag, but if you’re flying United a lot then they’ve already lost your bag so you don’t have one to check, and you didn’t have to pay for them to lose it thanks to your status).

Just do this one on or after January 1 so that you’ve got effectively 25 months of club access (through February 2024).

The victory scene in Jurassic Park when the velociraptors successfully buy a money order.