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. Giftcards.com has a sale for 10% off of $100 Visa egift cards using one of the promo codes EOSSUMMER, EOS10OFF, EOSSAVE, or VISA10OFF. The limit per order was six based on my experiments, but you can place multiple orders provided you stay under Giftcards.com’s $2,000 in electronic gift cards per rolling 48 hours.

    Reader irieriley shared related good news: Giftcards.com has returned to airline shopping portals. While it’s not currently showing on cashbackmonitor.com, you can find it directly at AA (3x), United (2x), Alaska (2x), Southwest (2x), and Delta’s (2x) portals.
  2. Barclays is sending targeted spending bonuses on the personal AAdvantage Aviator cards, with 1,000 bonus miles per month for $2,000 spend per month, for both August and September. The promo was actually weirder than that, but the rest of it requires time travel back to July to complete, so we’ll just ignore that. (Thanks to Justmeha)
  3. Breeze Airways has 30% off of fares booked by tomorrow evening with promo code YOUDOYOU for travel from September 5 through December 19, excluding two weeks around Thanksgiving.

    Breeze is Dave Neeleman’s latest airline which attempts to answer the question: “What if you started an airline with service from Vero Beach, FL to Providence, RI and tried to make money doing it?”
  4. Southwest is having a fare sale through tomorrow evening for flights that are at least 30 days away, with two black-out dates around Thanksgiving and two black-out weeks around Christmas.

    I repriced all of my already booked award travel and without exception, all of the fares were cheaper with the current sale and averaged about 25% off of my previous points cost, so double check existing bookings.

Happy Wednesday!

Pictured: The festivities surrounding the return of giftcards.com to airline shopping portals.

Confession time: It may surprise you to find out that I regularly travel. Shocker, right? In February I was visiting Phoenix, AZ for an extended weekend trip. If this were a normal travel blog maybe I’d embellish the post with information about the Hyatt™ Hotels® I stayed at, the National Car™ Executive Aisle® selection, and the new PHX™ SkyTrain® to the Rental Car Center©, but none of that is germane to today’s topic: Chase Sapphire Reserve’s primary rental car collision insurance. (Oops, did I need an ® there too?)

The Crash

I rented with National, and the Executive Aisle had a new Audi S4 sedan with about 400 miles on the odometer. I took that car Thursday night for an extended weekend rental.

On Saturday afternoon, I was driving in the left lane a straight road with two lanes going in each direction and a middle turn lane (here’s the Google Street View for the visual learners out there). There was a strip mall on the right side and a stopped, beat-up Nissan Altima waiting to turn left at the parking lot exit (wanting to go the opposite direction as me). Inexplicably, the Nissan accelerated out of the strip mall as I was passing by, slamming into the right side of my car and causing it to spin about 270 degrees into a screeching halt.

Immediately thereafter, I swore, looked for a spot to move the car, then drove out of the middle of the road into an empty lot a few feet away. The Nissan driver followed me.

The Damage

Fortunately, no one was hurt in the accident. I was by myself, and the other car had five passengers. The Audi on the other hand looked pretty rough – the passenger doors were banged in, the rear axel was bent or broken, the rear tire was flat and the rear rim was bent. It’s frankly impressive that I was able to get the thing out of the middle of the road under its own power.

The Nissan’s front bumper was dragging on the ground and the front panels were pretty bent, but it was drivable.

The Immediate Aftermath

I got out of my car and the Nissan driver offered a few hundred in cash to forget the whole thing 😂, I declined and called the police. After about an hour the police came, cited the other driver for driving with an expired license and failure to yield, and wished me good luck.

After calling the police, I called National’s emergency roadside assistance line (which by the way, is probably the best customer service line I’ve dealt with in the last decade), and gave them a rundown of what happened. National was great, they:

  • Sent a link to my phone for a free Uber ride to the airport to get a new car
  • Offered to call and coordinate with family and emergency services
  • Arranged for a new car at the airport
  • Scheduled a tow truck to come take the Audi

Tip for the future: You don’t need to wait for the towing company to come, or at least I didn’t have to. You can just leave the keys in the center console and never look at the car again as long as it’s not causing a public safety hazard.

I got to the airport, grabbed a new car, and drove back to my hotel to deal with insurance.

Insurance

I called the other driver’s insurance to file a claim, and I filed an initial accident report and uploaded pictures at eclaimsline.com, the handler for Chase’s rental car insurance. I also ordered a copy of the police report from the Phoenix police department to send to eclaimsline. (Which was perhaps the biggest ordeal of the whole process, Phoenix is weird! But, I digress.)

That was it for about a month, until National’s “Damage Recovery Unit” sent me a repair estimate for the car via email and USPS. The estimate was approximately $16,000, well under the Sapphire Reserve’s $75,000 limit. I uploaded that document to eclaimsline too.

After two more months and a phone call to check status, I got an email from eclaimsline saying that my claim was approved, a check was sent to National, and I didn’t need to take any further action. About two weeks after that, National sent me a letter via email and USPS saying that they consider the matter settled and closed.

Other Notes

  • I was concerned that National wouldn’t let me rent any more cars with the outstanding damage, but that wasn’t an issue. Between the accident and the resolution I had a half dozen National rentals that went smoothly.
  • As far as I can tell based on a call with the other driver’s insurance, eclaimsline never tried to get the other insurance to pay for the damage to the Audi. They just covered it themselves.
  • I’m not here to sell you credit cards, but I will say that I’ll be happy to pay the annual fee to keep the Chase Sapphire Reserve in my wallet for its rental insurance. Of course, if you do it right in concert with a Freedom you may have a negative annual fee so that also helps.

Happy Tuesday friends!

A replica of my police report from the Phoenix police department.

Today is officially #HurriQuake hangover day, so we’ll keep it short and sweet.

  1. Do this now: Register for Hilton’s Q4 promotion for double points in most cities (and triple points in a dozen or so small cities you’ve probably never heard of like “Los Angeles”, “London”, and “Tokyo”) from September 6 through December 31.
  2. The Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card has a new offer for five free night certificates valid for one year, each for a stay of up to 50,000 points. The sign-up bonus requires $5,000 in spend in three months, and the annual fee on this card is $95.

    This is an outstanding deal for Marriott if you’re able to use all five certificates in the next year, but you will probably end up paying for parking and resort fees, so remember that free isn’t free when you’re Bonvoyed. (Thanks to FM)

Happy Tuesday!

Helpful advice for #HurriQuake recovery.

  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.

  1. Breeze Airways has a promotion for $50 off of round-trip travel booked through the end of today, for travel between September 5 and December 19, but excluding two weeks around Thanksgiving using promo code EZ50.

    Breeze is a low cost airline that largely serves secondary cities, like my “favorite” route from San Bernadino California to Provo Utah. Dave Neeleman’s latest airline endeavor after a string of startups and reboots, including JetBlue, WestJet, and Azul.
  2. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion running Friday, Saturday, and Sunday on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards.

    As usual for those in the resale market, make sure you only work with brokers that assume account shutdown liability within a business day. (Thanks to GCG)
  3. VRBO has an offer for 2,000 bonus United MileagePlus miles when booking a stay by August 31. If you have any existing bookings it may be worth trying to rebook. Are there other ways to game VRBO? Of course, but they require quite a bit more work than normal. Do you have a spare bedroom? Do you have a P2? Just wondering, no reason.

This Lubbock VRBO is extra cheap, because reasons.

  1. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card, the 1990s Hakeem Olajuwon of credit cards and a MEAB Unsung Hero, has a few new targeted offers for online spend through September 14 via email. We’ve seen:

    – $40 statement credit with $600 spend
    – $80 statement credit with $800 spend
    – 7,000 ThankYou Points with $600 spend
    – 200,000 Shop Your Way Rewards with $600 spend

    This offer will stack with the current offers for utilities too, provided you can pay your utility bill online. (Thanks to Mike, Santosh, and Jacob)
  2. Promotional Southwest Companion Passes from Southwest’s April offer are now active for bookings through September 30, and are working on both paid and award bookings. (Thanks to sctrader)
  3. Costco has $500 Alaska Airlines e-gift cards on sale for $449.99, limit 10 per member. These can be loaded to your Alaska wallet too which makes it easy to track, but wallet funds do quasi-expire. (Generally Alaska will renew soon expiring wallet funds after asking nicely on Twitter X, a great tip courtesy of Sam at Milenomics)

    UPDATE: Mike sent a correction about Alaska wallet fund expiration; funds added directly with a credit, debit, or gift card don’t expire.
  4. Safeway and Albertsons family stores have unlimited 5x Just4U points earning on Uber gift cards $50 or greater through August 28. These can be a back-door way to earn Alaska miles too. (Thanks to GCG)

Happy Wednesday!

If Olajuwon is the Shop Your Way Card, churners are the referee, I guess?

Southwest announced that they’ll implement same day standby for all passengers by the end of the month, joining Delta, American, and United. [Insert rah-rah puff embellishments here about how shockingly great this for mothers, business owners, toddlers, dead presidents, African swallows, firefighters, and walruses here. Readers will eat that up, right?]

With that out of the way, let’s talk about how I use this flexibility more often than I care to admit.

The Problem

Sometimes I need to book a flight within the next day and prices for both award travel and paid fares are at a premium for desirable flight times.

The Solution

I book a cheaper flight that I’d take if I had to on the airline that has the desirable flight time, but then do a same day standby for the more expensive flight that I actually want.

Tips For Success

  • Some airlines let you see how many seats are available and the depth of the standby list on flights departing in the next day, which means you can make an educated guess about your chances of success both before and after you book. Using this technique I’ve got roughly a 90% success rate.
  • If you have elite status on a legacy airline or you bought a Wanna Get Away Plus fare on Southwest, you’ve also probably got the option to do a same-day confirmed change to the flight you want at no additional charge directly in app, no standby needed. This works better on United or Southwest than other airlines in general due to their more generous same day change policies, but there are hacks with Delta and American too.
  • If you’re departing from a major airport, you can double or triple your chances for success by booking refundable award fares and staggering your stand by flights across multiple carriers, canceling the rest after the earliest one works out.

Good luck!

Using same day standby, this walrus made it back to the Canadian tundra long before it melted while waiting for its original itinerary.