Search Results for: kroger fuel points

  1. Kroger has an in-store 4x fuel points promotion running this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday on fixed value Visa and Mastercards and third party gift cards. This year’s frequent sales have spiked the secondary markets and they show no signs of slowing, apparently like “the artificial turf movement” (I know what you’re thinking, but no, I didn’t make that up.)

    If you’re not sure why you should care, The Daily Churn released a good podcast on the subject last week.
  2. Wells Fargo has a churnable checking bonus that doesn’t require that you hold funds in an a near-zero interest earning account to earn. For the bonus, you can’t have a current Wells Fargo checking account or one in the past 12 months, and you’ve got to:

    – Open a new Everyday Checking account by October 12
    – Direct deposit (or “direct deposit”) $1,000 within 90 days

    There is a $10 monthly service fee that’s easily avoided with $500 per month in electronic deposits. There’s no reason that you can’t just electronic withdraw back the next day too, so just schedule some back-to-back ACHs at an existing bank once you set up your account. (Thanks to DoC)
  3. Do this now: Register for Accor’s Q4’s autumn promotion for 4x points on stays through November 26, provided you book by October 15. These hotels are a great option in expensive cities in Europe even without a promotion, and the points have a high value equivalent roughly to the value of a Hyatt point.

From Kroger fuel points to artificial turf to death, talk about escalation.

  1. American Express changed quite a few things yesterday for Platinum cards:

    Personal Platinum Family:
    – Some partner cards that were churnable are now giving pop-ups
    – The monthly Audible credit is going away in October (Wall Street Journal replaces it)
    – The minimum spend for sign-up bonuses is now $8,000
    – Platinum authorized user cards now have a higher fee of $195 each, and you no longer get three for a single fee
    – Gold authorized user cards are now called Companion Platinum Cards and have no fee
    – New language about churning restrictions in most applications (but language doesn’t matter in this case)

    Business Platinum Family:
    – Platinum employee card’s annual fee remains at $350 each
    – Gold employee cards are no longer available
    – Green employee cards are now called Employee Business Expense cards

    Fortunately employee card bonuses are still around under the new regime. There’s also wide speculation that these moves will reduce lounge crowding, and to that I say “hah, fat chance”.
  2. Kroger.com has $10 off of $150 or more in Visa and Mastercard gift cards using promo code DEALDAYS2023 for purchases through August 30.

    These are US Bank gift cards, and you will earn 4x fuel points too. Incidentally, The Daily Churn Podcast released a Kroger Fuel Points 101 explainer episode on Tuesday and it’s a great listen if you’re not familiar with the Kroger Fuel Points program.
  3. Staples has fee-free $200 Visa gift cards Sunday through the following Saturday, limit eight per transaction (or maybe five like last week? It’s unclear.) Don’t forget that they also sell $500 cards now with a fee, and depending on your liquidation channels and your value for your own time, that may be a better deal.

    These are Metabank Pathward gift cards.

Pictured: Tuesday afternoon line for the SFO Centurion Lounge bar.
The heightened AU fees will remove two of these people, at most.

First, a warning: If you’re playing the Kroger fuel points game, use care when creating your accounts and vary all details as much as possible, more information and tips will be coming in the near future as the dust settles. With that out of the way, there are a few items for the weekend:

  1. Do this now: Register for Hilton’s new Q3-Q4 promotion for double points between September 6 and December 31 on all stays and an extra 2,000 points per stay when checkout isn’t on Saturday or Sunday.
  2. The Bank of America AAA card was a sleeper card unless you really knew how to hack it, and when you did know it was good enough to be in the queue as a future MEAB Unsung Hero. Unfortunately, for the second time in a month we’re losing a Hero. This one is moving to Comenity bank and changing its reward structure. The new card will offer uncapped 3% cash back at grocery which great at first glance, but it’s still a big downgrade from the BoA version. (Thanks to Sideshowbob233)
  3. Staples has fee free $200 Mastercard gift cards from Sunday through the following Saturday, limit 8 per transaction (instead of the usual recent limit of 5 per transaction). They’re Metabank gift cards so have a liquidation plan in place. (Thanks to coole106)

And finally a status update for the, *checks notes*, zero of you that asked: I took a voluntary denied boarding for $1,000 on my short, hour-long flight home last night with a replacement seat leaving this morning. Sounds great, right? Well, the airline put me up in a Four Points (Marriott) property. The property is almost completely empty, but I still got a base room on a floor under construction, a room type that wasn’t booked because those rooms were under construction, a view of a FedEx truck parking lot, and the restaurant and fitness center closed because of course construction (#bonvoyed).

Did I come out ahead between the airline and the hotel? Almost certainly, but it still feels like a gentle kick in the pants, which I believe is the sweet spot that Marriott Bonvoy strives for so bravo Marriott.

Have a great weekend friends!

Ok, so this wasn’t my Four Seasons hotel, but it is a Four Seasons hotel.

  1. There are shopping portal spend bonuses at Southwest and United, and giftcards.com currently shows up on both. Coincidentally some types gift cards are again easy to liquidate at an old favorite payment processor with the right type of target.

    – Southwest: 2,000 bonus miles after spending $550 or more plus 2x per dollar
    – United: 2,500 bonus miles after spending $600 or more plus 2x per dollar

    Likely Alaska’s portal and AA’s portal will add similar back-to-school bonuses shortly, so keep an eye out.

  2. Chase is now giving out retention offers on even more co-brand cards. We’ve recently seen:

    – Hyatt $95 statement credit
    – Sapphire Preferred $100 statement credit
    – Sapphire Reserve $200 statement credit
    – Marriott Premier Plus: $100 statement credit
    – United MileagePlus Explorer: $50 statement credit

    It’s probably worth calling Chase when you’ve got a minute and saying something like: “I’m considering canceling my Chase Credit Card Type, and I’m wondering if there’s any spend bonus or retention offer available?” (Thanks to Sharky’s reports via MEAB slack)

  3. Kroger will do something this weekend that they’ve done every single weekend for the last month-and-a-half, and frankly I’m surprised they keep doing it: 4x fuel points on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards, Friday – Sunday.

    The continued Kroger fuel points promos have effectively killed most of the major buyers’ capacities for the first time in a very long time. I don’t expect much traction this weekend, and if you want to take advantage of the deal you may find that selling fuel points on ebay is your best bet, which is almost never the case in the normal, right-side-up world. (Thanks to GC Galore)

Cheering for the Tuesday Triple.

  1. Staples has fee free Visa gift cards for sale starting on Sunday and running through the following Saturday, limit five per transaction. As usual, try for back-to-back transactions to minimize your time getting to Staples stores.

    These are Metabank gift cards, and yes, there are ways to liquidate them both online and in-person. (For example, the high fee BravoPay/Famigo.)

  2. Lowe’s has an offer for a free $15 Lowe’s gift card with the purchase of a $200 Visa gift card, delivered via email, running through Wednesday of next week. The “Everywhere” variety of cards are eligible too. To maximize the deal:

    – You can buy multiple cards in a single transaction and still be eligible for the rebate
    – There is a limit of two $15 cards per email address, but you have multiple email addresses, right?
    – Look for a gift card buyer offering at least 86% on small denomination Lowe’s gift cards
    – Be sure to link your cards to your JetBlue ShopTrue account to earn 3x JetBlue miles on the purchase

    These are also Metabanks.

  3. Delta’s AmEx card landing page has some great offers that are now widely targeted (and note that while not always the case, Delta cards are typically eligible for a bonus multiple times with or without no-lifetime language. AmEx will give you a popup letting you know you’re not eligible before your final submit regardless of the language of the offer):

    – Delta Gold Personal 70,000 SkyMiles + $200 statement credit after $2,000 in spend, annual fee waived the first year
    – Delta Platinum Personal 90,000 SkyMiles + $200 statement credit after $3,000 in spend
    – Delta Reserve Personal 80,000 SkyMiles + $200 statement credit after $5,000 in spend
    – Delta Gold Business 75,000 SkyMiles + $200 statement credit after $4,000 in spend, annual fee waived the first year
    – Delta Platinum Business 95,000 SkyMiles + $200 statement credit after $5,000 in spend
    – Delta Reserve Business 85,000 SkyMiles + $200 statement credit after $6,000 in spend

    Note that only spend on the on the Platinum and Reserve flavors counts toward Delta’s spend waiver for elite status. (Thanks to DoC)

  4. Simon Mall has 60% off purchase fees for Visa and Mastercard gift cards of up to $1,000 face value through tomorrow evening. Use promo code JUN22FLASH60.

    Need I say it? Sigh, these are Metabanks. (Thanks to Stephen at FM)

  5. Last year the weekly hotness was an office supply store running a fee-free promotion effectively every week. This year the new hotness is Kroger running a 4x fuel sale on third party gift cards effectively every week, this time through June 21.

    Apparently Kroger is also running a 4x fuel sale for every weekend in June, and in the past magical things happened when a weekend and a weekly fuel points promotion overlapped. My suggestion is that you go experiment this weekend and see what voodoo you can conjure with Kroger fuel points.

Have a nice weekend!

Before Kroger’s IT team coded up their fuel points rewards system they rode this thing, which should explain a lot.

The Deal

Meijer is running its best promotion for a manufactured spender, an instant 10% discount on $500 in purchased gift cards after clipping the digital coupon. The sale runs today and tomorrow, limit one per MPerks account. The deal excludes a few major gift card resale brands like Apple and Amazon, but does work on others like Nike, Home Depot, Adidas, Best Buy, and Disney.

There are years where it’s been worth traveling to Meijer land just to take advantage of this deal, but thanks to effectively a month of crazy Kroger fuel points deals, rates and demand on major brands are at a local minima. As a result, it probably only makes sense to travel into the region if you’ve got quite a few 99 AmEx AU card offers to blow through or you can find a cheap way to get there.

A Reader Report

At the last of these Meijer sales in November, 2021, reader Mike booked a roundtrip flight to Ohio for a Saturday day trip. His experience:

  • He had a little over seven hours between his outbound and return flights
  • He made 15 MPerks accounts the night before, but that only lasted him a couple of hours
  • He traveled to six stores over the course of his time on the ground
  • He bought 36 $500 BestBuy gift cards for $450 each
  • He took his time but believes he could have been much more efficient with a plan

At the time resale rates for BestBuy were about 97%, so with $35 per BestBuy card in profit, he netted about $1,260 in cash and $18,000 in grocery store spend.

A favorite trope in the manufactured spend community is that “all manufactured spend is local”. The good news is that we can just redefine local with a quick trip.

Fly-over country becomes fly-to country. If not for Meijer, it’s for, err, whatever this is.

Thankfully it’s time to sail into the weekend with a few positive notes after a strange week:

1. Two new no-lifetime language (NLL) links for the American Express Business Gold have surfaced, if you’ve had the card before it’s worth checking to see if you’re targeted. The limit on American Express charge cards is currently 10 or 11 per person, depending on the person. Why depending on the person? #noidea

These offers are for 90,000 Membership Rewards after spending $10,000 in three months. The secondary play here is to watch for an upgrade offer to the Business Platinum for another 100,000 or more Membership Rewards, which could come as early as one statement after opening. (Thanks to tehflip499)

2. Are you a Hyatt person? Me too, but generally Hilton is a good program for churners and big redemptions as well, especially because churning American Express cards is as easy as pie (because apparently pie is easy). It’s almost certainly worth your while to learn a bit about it.

To that end, American Express has increased offers on its Hilton cards:

  • 70,000 points on its no annual fee card (think of this as about 30,000 Hyatt points)
  • 130,000 points on its $95 annual fee Surpass card, which is great for manufactured spend (think of this as about 60,000 Hyatt points and a bonus free night certificate for spend)

As with item (1), the secondary play here is to watch for an upgrade offer to a Hilton Aspire card, but those are rarer than Business Platinum upgrades, and they may require calling in or chatting to discover that there’s an offer on your account.

3. Sigh, Staples has a fee-free Mastercard gift card sale starting on Sunday and running through Saturday, February 12. As usual, the limit is five per customer, but in practice that really means five per transaction. Always try and run at least two transactions back-to-back to minimize the time you have to spend at a store that focuses on selling recycled printer toner to the elderly and repeatedly tries to turn the office supply retail space into a monopoly.

4. The gift card resale market has gone pear-shaped in the last several days with BestBuy resale rates dipping to below 93% and Kroger fuel points spot prices jumping to above $19.50 per 1,000 points. As usual if the rates you’re seeing aren’t at least $19.00 per 1,000 fuel points, look for another use or another buyer. Don’t settle for less.

Have a nice weekend friends!

Staples’ high quality aftermarket toner strikes again.

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.