You’ve no doubt heard that Southwest announced they’d be moving from a mediocre product offering to a bad product offering yesterday because literally every news outlet, blog, skywriter, and mommy stroller affiliate site wrote about it. I tried to ignore it here, but instead decided to write a quick summary in iambic pentameter to keep it fresh:

On fares most cheap, a fee doth now descend,
for Wanna Get Away, a basic name doth lend.

Flight credits, once free, now swiftly fade,
yet open boarding’s chaos still we’ve made.

Elites and cardholders find some gentle aid,
yet still, no first class seats or distant shores are displayed.

Midway’s woes persist, a traveler’s plight,
even Spirit offers more comfort in its Big Front Seat’s light.

Rapid Rewards points now face variable fate,
their value shifting with each flight’s demand and date.

Sorry, even I feel dirty after that one.

When non-travel sites cover travel stories:
Do they mean that (a) Southwest will charge the bag’s battery, or (b) that they expect the bag to pay?

  1. American Express has a newly targeted offer for 20,000 Membership Rewards for turning on Pay Over Time. You’ve got two shots:

    – Check the generic landing page for an offer on every charge card
    – Check this specific link for an offer on every charge card

    Make sure you set a reminder to turn off Pay Over Time in 121 days, and if you get the bonus offer on multiple charge cards, consider activating them in separate tabs as close together as possible. All of this is obviously because reasons.
  2. American Express Offers has new targeted offers for:

    – $50 back on $250+ at Grand Hyatt through April 15
    – $300 back on $2,000+ at Qatar through April 30
    – $150 back on $1,000+ at Emirates through April 30
    – $100 back on $500+ at Mandarin Oriental through May 6
    – $100 back on $400+ at SLS hotels through May 14
    – $200 back on $900+ at Four Seasons in the Americans and Europe through May 21
    – $40 back on $200+ at Ceasars though June 30

    Gamers gonna game.
  3. Meijer MPerks has a promotion for 50,000 bonus points with a $500 third party gift card purchase, limit 50,000 points per MPerks account. Obviously it’s impossible to have multiple MPerks accounts, right?

    In normal times there are plenty of brands that are well suited to this promotion, but in the current Pepper-pocolptic market, the workable brands are basically Apple and Lululemon.
  4. The Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card has an increased sign-up bonus of three 50,000 point free night certificates after $3,000 spend in three months, and the $95 annual fee is not waived in the first year. The main utility in this card is that it has an upgrade path to the Chase Ritz-Carlton card after one year; it’s definitely not found in three 50,000 point certificates which will work at a lower end US airport hotel if you’re lucky.

    The same offer will probably be available through referrals by the end of the week too, so check referrals before applying.

Happy Tuesday!

Sample US Airport hotel currently priced at 50,000 Bonvoy points nightly.

  1. The Chase Freedom Unlimited card has an uncapped double cash for the first year back sign-up bonus. You may need to try different browsers, mobile devices, a VPN, or by making Chase jealous and applying for an American Express instead.

    There are golden plays where uncapped 3x Ultimate Rewards massively moves the needle.
  2. Etihad Guest has a tiered transfer bonus for incoming Capital One, Accor ALL, and Hyatt transfers through March 31:

    – 20% bonus: < 10,000 miles
    – 30% bonus: < 50,000 miles
    – 40% bonus: 50,000+ miles

    The bonus miles aren’t awarded instantly, and may take up to April 15 to arrive.
  3. The Office Depot / OfficeMax $15 off of $300+ Mastercard gift cards promotion mentioned on Friday turned out to be lies, and not the good kind (?). I guess there’s no need show up to a 9,000 square foot sparsely stocked, poorly-lit office supply store manned by exactly two 19 year olds, one of whom is on their lunch break, this week.

The Chase and American Express relationship.

We have a lot of strange updates to slingshot us into the weekend, just like yesterday’s SpaceX Starship was slingshotted (slungshot?, slingshat?) to orbit:

  1. The next installment of American Express versus the Floosies dropped. In the new chapter, Chapter IV: That Time Maurice Posed in Duck Face, American Express blocked most floosie merchants, preventing charges from going through. This was made especially easy because the floosie merchants all shared some common traits.

    My opinion: The floosies are lucky that it shook out this way and that it wasn’t worse. I bet they’ll strike back though.
  2. The AA, Alaska, Delta, Southwest, United, Airline shopping portals have limited earn on giftcards.com purchases to the first $20,000 per rolling 365 days. Emirates, JetBlue, and Virgin Atlantic have limited earn to the first $2,000 per month. The curious case of another portal remains a curious case though.

    My takeaway is that giftcards.com orders through an airline portal should only happen when the bonus is 2x+, or when there’s a cumulative spend shopping bonus.
  3. Recurring American Express statement credits for airline incidentals, $200 Dell credits, $10 telecommunications, $10 GrubHub, $50 Saks, and $20 flexible business credits stopped posting for charges after February 17. Resy 10x and 15x bonus points stopped around the same time too. Don’t stress, it’s not you, it’s them. They’ll get it fixed eventually, this happens roughly every year.

    Dunkin, Hilton, Clear, Walmart+, and Resy restaurant credits remain unaffected.
  4. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 in Mastercard gift cards through Saturday. Buy in even multiples of $300 for a bigger overall discount. Also, finally, something normal!

    These are Pathward gift cards.

Have a nice weekend friends!

Yes the duck face is real, and no you won’t find it here.

  1. The AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue Bank of America Mastercard has two new increased sign-up bonuses:

    – 70,000 FlyingBlue miles and 100 XP after $3,000 spend in three months
    – 60,000 FlyingBlue miles, a $100 statement credit, and 100 XP after $3,000 spend in three months, presented during checkout with a dummy flight booking

    This card is interesting for status chasers, especially because you can have multiple and the anniversary XP bonus stacks.
  2. Alaska has an award sale for fares booked by tonight, but generally only for travel starting in late march and ending in late May . I’m seeing:

    – 4,000 miles for short-haul and some flights to Mexico
    – 7,500 miles for west coast to Hawaii
    – 7,500 miles for transcontinental flights

    You can still transfer Membership Rewards to Alaska via Hawaiian, though hopefully (?) that dies soon.
  3. Southwest Wanna Get Away and Wanna Get Away Fare Plus fares earn fewer miles per dollar spent. Why mention it here? It slightly changes the calculus Chase Sapphire Reserve point bookings versus transferring to Rapid Rewards and booking with points through Southwest.
  4. The Southwest Rapid Rewards shopping portal has 1,000 bonus miles with $300 spend through March 17. Something something points calculus.
  5. Harris Teeter stores, the zombie stepchild of Kroger has 4x fuel points on all third party gift cards excluding Amazon through Tuesday.
  6. Reportedly the Capital One Travel portal has a promotion for 20x points on a hotel booking for those who haven’t booked a hotel through the portal before, with a maximum bonus of 50,000 points through April 15. (Thanks to FM)

Happy Thursday!

Kroger affiliates: Harris Teeter (left), the others (right).

If you search Perplexity for “What are American Airlines miles worth?”, you may get a range of numbers from 1.0 cents each to 2.5 cents each and a lot of hallucinated reasoning behind those numbers too. If you repeat the search, you’ll probably get a different result. Valuing miles is hard, even for AI. So, often we revert to one of the hobby’s normal methods:

  • A mile is worth the value of selling it on the grey market
  • A mileage redemption is worth the cash that you would have paid without the miles
  • A mileage redemption is worth the cash price that the ticket or property is listed for
  • A mile is worth 1.0 cents, because most programs let you redeem at that level
    A mile is worth your opportunity cost for acquiring it

Those are all fine and good, but sometimes you need a legally defensible valuation for a mile as part of a settlement, tax action, corporate valuation, or similar rigorous process, and the above answers typically won’t cut it because of logical holes big enough to fly an A380 through. Also, judges in particular hate it when you’ve got a hand-waivey answer with variability left up to the eye of the beholder. So, let’s reintroduce a mileage valuation that’s easily defensible:

  • A mile is worth what the program will sell it to you for

Right now, I can buy 10,000 AA miles for $338.63, so for the purposes of a legally defensible valuation for miles, AA miles are worth 3.3863 cents each.

Happy Wednesday!

Yes, there’s another common way to determine mileage value.

Before we dive in, let me answer a few frequently asked questions about yesterday’s post:

  • No, I’m not building an alternative gift card marketplace
  • I think the opportunity for someone who successfully builds one is huge though
  • Yes, there are probably a bunch of mid-tier gift card resellers that you don’t know
  • You can find a recent-ish list of reputable gift card buyers here
  • No, I wouldn’t recommend starting new with Pepper any more, if you’re still there, float what you’re willing to lose based on your risk tolerance
  • No, I haven’t tried the Campbell’s ghost pepper soup, but yes, I do have a reader review ready

And now, today’s news:

  1. Chase has been accidentally reporting open business credit cards to TransUnion for a relatively small set of churners, but seemingly only if cards were opened with a social security number as the primary tax ID (versus an EIN).

    This seems to be an error on Chase’s part, and they’re fixing it within 10 business days if you call and ask. In theory . So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to check your TransUnion credit report and put a ticket in with Chase if necessary.
  2. FlyingBlue Promo Rewards for March have been released for travel booked in march and flown through August 31. The promotional US cities are Detroit, Seattle, Washington DC, Boston, and Austin.
  3. Chase Ultimate Rewards has a 20% transfer bonus to British Airways Avios through the end of March. As usual, this is effectively a transfer bonus to all carriers that use Avios as their currency.
  4. Staples has fee free $200 Visa gift cards through Saturday.

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  5. VanillaGift.com has fee free Vanilla Visa gift cards with promo code VGWOMEN through Saturday. Purchase limits for Incomm sites are $10,000 per account per rolling 24 hours.

    These are Incomm gift cards. Incomm sites won’t earn points or count toward a sign-up bonus on American Express first party cards.
  6. The Chase Freedom and Freedom Flex cards have two bonus 5x categories in March: Insurance and tax preparation services, no registration necessary.

    The original $1,500 spend across all 5x categories for the quarter remains.

Happy Tuesday!

Your next mission: Fly for 12 hours in this.

The biggest volume gift card reselling platform Raise’s GCX, which incidentally via a broker is where most manufactured spender’s gift cards end up, recently made moves that seem to effectively push all but the top three or four sellers into insolvency unless they have a stable of private buyers or a mostly non-existent big alternative. Based on discussions with several anonymous brokers, the new normal is:

  • New tiers (that sound like Delta status levels) based on quarterly sales volume:
    • <= $19,999 for Bronze
    • $20,000+ for Silver
    • $100,000+ for Gold
    • $500,000+ for Platinum
    • $1,000,000+ for Diamond
    • $10,000,000+ for Delta 360 Diamond Plus
  • Platform selling fees ranging based on tier level from 15% to 6%-ish (that means if you sell BestBuy at 98.50% of face, you’ll take-home 83.5% after fees as a Bronze member, maybe up to 45 days later)
  • Penalties for cards that don’t sell quickly enough
  • Increased penalties for debited transactions (when a buyer says the card doesn’t work)
  • No more grace period for bad quarters, immediate tier demotion
  • Longer holding times before payout for many gift cards

If you want to sell on Raise / GCX and compete with the big three current sellers that are paying approximately 6-7% in fees, you’re going to have pay around $40,000 in extra commissions on your way to that tier too. That means:

  • Raise’s changes are forming an oligopoly of gift card resellers
  • Smaller resellers are going to drop out (I’ve heard of three already)
  • The bar to entry to be an effective bulk competitor is higher than ever
  • Competition for manufactured spenders selling gift cards to brokers will fall
  • Manufactured spenders will see decreased profits as competition falls
  • The existing oligopoly will see increased profits as competition falls

Raise is likely to have a simpler business and a smaller support staff with these changes, but they’re also leaving themselves vulnerable to a new marketplace competitor with lower fees and a penchant for marketing that could take over as the new de-facto gift card resale platform. Watch for turbulent times in the short term, and (hopefully) a new reseller focused marketplace in the medium term.

Oh, and since we haven’t talked about Pepper for a while, let’s take a tangent from the main topic to mention Pepper’s weekend: they were offering 20% back in Pepper Coins for Best Buy purchases, and 25% back for Target purchases. Completely auspicious right?

Happy Monday!

GCX/Raise’s totally original status program elite bag tag.