Search Results for: barclays

  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.

  1. Staples has fee free $200 Mastercard gift cards starting Sunday and running through the following Saturday, limit five per transaction.

    These are Metabank Pathward gift cards, so have a liquidation plan in place.
  2. The Barclays Lufthansa Miles & More Mastercard credit card has an 80,000 mile sign-up bonus after $3,000 in spend in 90 days. The card sucks for ongoing spend at 1x and isn’t worth your time unless you want easy access to Swiss Air First Class. For that, you’ll need 182,000 miles each way for the US and Europe and Miles & More status, either via match or direct earn. So, it’s actually quite useful for aspirational travel but otherwise skip it.

    Don’t forget that it’s possible to clown around with Barclays to an extent. (Thanks to DoC)
  3. Barclays has two other increased sign-up bonuses which have more general applicability:

    – JetBlue Plus 75,000 bonus miles after $1,000 spend in 90 days
    – Hawaiian 70,000 bonus miles after $2,000 spend in 90 days

    If you have existing Barclays cards, it’s best to ramp up spending for a few months on them in anticipation of applying for new cards.
  4. The Target Redcard $40 online plus $40 in-store churnable sign-up bonus has died. The new iterations are for $50 off either online or in-store but not both, and churning restrictions have increased to between 60 and 90 days.

    There’s one of the new, $50 promotions going through August 19 for both the credit and the debit card, and there might be utility in a $50 RedCard credit card sign-up bonus.
  5. Do this now: Sign-in to your Marriott account and then check your promotions page for targeted Q3 promotions. We’ve seen:

    – 6,000 bonus points after two stays, 7,500 more points after three, and 9,000 more points after four stays
    – 7,500 bonus points after a single stay and 15,000 more points after a second stay
    – 3,000 bonus points for your fist stay, 2,000 more for your second, and 5,000 more for your third
    – 2,000 bonus points after a single stay that includes a Friday or Saturday night, and 3,000 more points after another

    These are for stays through November 15. (Thanks to SideshowBob233 and DDG)

The spending ramp for easy Barlcays card approvals.

July is apparently a good news and bad news sort of month. For example in the apparently not-a-joke competitive sphere of competition eating Joey Chestnut won a 16th hot dog eating contest on Tuesday, but to win he had to eat 62 hot dogs so there’s that.

In our world we’ve got a bit of bad news too:

But, there’s good news:

  • Rakuten will have 10x back at Dell (and probably Saks) on Monday, so you’ve got time to strategize your American Express credit liquidation
  • The IHG credit card’s sign-up bonus has bumped to 140,000 points and a $100 statement credit at IHG properties after $3,000 spend in three months
  • The Barclays Wyndham Business card has a targeted offer for 5,000 bonus points:

    – 1,000 bonus points per month for any purchase in June, July, and August
    – 2,000 additional points for $3,000 in spend or more over all three months

    Yes, we’re past June, so really this is a 4,000 bonus point offer going forward. Look for an email from [email protected] to see if you’re targeted. (Thanks to Welcome Offer)
  • American Express sign-up bonuses do eventually post

Have a nice weekend!

Another good news / bad news situation.

  1. Meijer stores has a clickable coupon for $10 off of $150 or more in Visa gift cards through Saturday, limit one per MPerks account.

    Meijer stores sell both Metabank Pathward and Sunrise gift cards. I know which one I’d choose for several reasons, but especially out of principle. I’m currently outside of the Meijer footprint though so my choice instead is to stand outside in the cold rain, watching everyone else’s Meijer party inside the warm, comfy house.
  2. There’s a new link for the Barclay AA Aviator card’s 70,000 mile sign-up bonus requiring only a single purchase. For better approval odds, spend a lot on existing Barclays cards and then pay them off. (Thanks to DoC)
  3. There are four new transfer bonuses for July:

    – American Express has a 30% transfer bonus to British Airways Avois through August 31
    – American Express has a 30% transfer bonus to Iberia Avios through August 31
    – Capital One has a 20% transfer bonus to AirFrance/KLM Flying Blue through July 31
    – Chase has a 70% transfer bonus to IHG through July 31
  4. Chase Offers has an easy to game offer for 10% off of Southwest airfare, up to $40 back. The simplest play is to turn this into discount travel funds, but the more lucrative play is to turn this into a statement credit with no effective outstanding charge.
  5. Chase also has targeted offers for spend at gas, grocery, and restaurants on personal credit cards:

    – Hyatt, Southwest, United, Freedom and IHG: 5x up to $1,500 in spend
    – British Airways: 10x up to $1,500 in spend

    Sometimes the Chase website gets confused after a single form submission and incorrectly tells you it can’t find information or you’re not targeted on all subsequent submissions. To avoid that, open a new incognito browser window for each card you check.
  6. The Capital One Shopping portal has a mildly interesting $10 bonus for both the referrer and referred on new shopping portal accounts provided the new account installs the Capital One toolbar and spends $10 through the portal within a month. A few notes:

    – Giftcards.com is on the Capital One Shopping portal
    – Giftcards.com typically has negative cost deals around major holidays
    – In the US, July 4 was a major holiday last time I checked
    – You don’t need to hold a Capital One card to have an account on the portal
    – I recommend creating new Capital One shopping accounts periodically anyway to avoid clawbacks

    Why no, I can’t possibly see how this could go wrong for Capital One, why do you ask?

Pictured: 1. Capital One Shopping portal (road), and 2. manufactured spenders (mud slide)

Hopefully you’re recovering from any Friday afternoon RobinHood induced hangovers that may have found their way into your accounts (more to come later). To help, focus on the following:

  1. American Express has an offer for $200 back on $1,000 in spend or more with AirFrance/KLM. This one is an easy base-hit with correlation breaking, no phone calls needed; as usual you could instead just be basic and actually book airfare and fly as intended. (Thanks to hwplainview41)
  2. Giftcards.com has another promotion code for 5% off the total purchase price of Visa e-gift cards: YAYSUMMER.

    I’m still seeing 4% back on the Capital One Shopping mobile app and purchases are tracking each time for me. Limits are $2,000 per rolling 48 hours, and $600 per order, both per email address. Don’t log in for the promo code to apply.
  3. On Friday we discussed an increased sign-up bonus for a few Barclays cards, and on Saturday a link surfaced for an even better version of the Hawaiian card sign-up bonus: 70,000 miles with only a single purchase of any size. (Thanks to DoC)
  4. The Delta SkyMiles portal has a rare spend bonus: 500 miles on purchases summing to $100 or more through June 9.
  5. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have a gift card promotion for $15 or $10 off of $300 or more in Mastercard gift cards. Watch out: normally this is a negative cost deal with $15 back, but in some regions it may be $10; with the reduced payout and $6.95 purchase fees you’re looking at $403.90 for $400 in gift cards (or $303.90 for $300 in gift cards if you hate maximizing things).

    These are Pathward gift cards so make sure you can liquidate before you buy a bunch. There are still methods out there that work, always be probing.
  6. Meijer stores have $25 worth of points back on $250 or more in third party gift cards other than Amazon. Scale with multiple MPerks accounts. (Thanks to GCG)

Happy Monday!

The source of Friday afternoon’s sadness.

  1. Barclays has a few increased co-brand sign-up bonuses:

    – The Barclays AAdvantage Aviator card has a bonus of 70,000 AA miles after making a purchase and paying the $99 annual fee within 90 days of card opening. This card is doubly interesting because on day 366, you can convert it to a Barclays Aviator Silver card which is only available by product change and offers two companion tickets and $25 per day in AA inflight food and beverage credits.

    – The Barclays Hawaiian Airlines card has 70,000 Hawaiian miles after spending $2,000 in 90 days. You don’t get a backdoor conversion to a cooler card after a year though so close it on the anniversary.

    If you apply for both of these on the same calendar day Barclays will combine the credit pull, though both will eventually appear on your credit report and affect 5/24 individually. Aren’t sure if you’re eligible for a bonus? Barclays makes it easy – if you’re approved you’ll get the bonus after hitting the minimum spend regardless of the language in the application; I can only assume it’s this way because Barclays backend tech is still catching up to Web 1.0 and they’ve just migrated to NCSA Mosaic.
  2. There’s a 30% transfer bonus from ThankYou Points to Qatar Avios through June 30, which is actually a great option for several travel hacks:

    – AA or Iberia business class to and from Europe for 70,000 Avios
    – Qatar business class to and from Doha, Qatar for 70,000 Avois
    – Royal Air Maroc business class to and from Morocco for 70,000 Avios
    – Transferring your Qatar Avios to British Airways Avios and booking AA short-haul domestic for as little as 7,500 Avios

    I don’t like pooling points in a particular program and wouldn’t pool much at any airline, but it’s not hard to beat the alternative 1 cent per point ThankYou Point cash-out with Qatar Avios. (Thanks to TheSultan1)
  3. IHG Hotels now allow confirmed suite upgrades on award stays. These are available as elite choice benefits and availability opens at 14 days prior to the stay.

Have a nice weekend!

Bet you didn’t know you could use Avios to book travel on AA to Lubbock, TX to see Prairie Dog Town. Yes, this is real and it actually exists.

MEAB is here with the real questions for you this year, like: “What if Manufactured Spend, Loyalty, and Travel hacking companies were Vice Presidents?” Hard hitting stuff I know! Also, it’s slow during the last week of the year so I guess let’s go:

Happy Thursday!

MEAB’s official 2022 tee-shirt.

  1. BravoPay, now maybe known as Famigo depending on where you look, has increased fees for accounts created after September of this year to 10% + merchant processing fees, or about 13% all in. The good news is that using the app instead of the website currently works for the lower fee structure even on new accounts. (Thanks to Ben via MEAB slack)
  2. The major airline portals including Scrooge McDuck Delta have bonuses for downloading their browser extension and making a $25 purchase by December 11, and of course you can repeat this with P2, P3, … P(N-1) (for math inclined readers, N-1 isn’t a typo; Sorry, I don’t make the rules). These offers used to contain language requiring you to keep the extension installed for 30 days, but that’s now absent. Links:

    – Alaska: 1,000 bonus miles
    – AA: 1,000 bonus miles
    – Delta McDuck: 1,000 bonus miles
    – Southwest: 1,500 bonus miles
    – United: 1,000 bonus miles

    If you don’t have any actual purchases, happy cards at giftcards.com have a good resale rate.

  3. Reader Dean was the first to let me know that the Discover debit card is now behaving like a BlueBird or Serve card at Walmart in that it allows for fee-free “cash” loads at registers (who remembers action code 70?). The limits are $1,000 per rolling 24 hours and $20,000 per calendar month. Unfortunately Discover checking isn’t currently accepting new applications, so as Bill reminds us, reread yesterday’s post.
  4. The Barclays AA Aviator Red Mastercard is currently available with 60,000 AA miles after a single purchase and the annual fee is waived for the first year. Of course, spending $67,000 on this card for some Hyatt elites could mean nearly two years of AA Executive Platinum status too. (Thanks to DoC)

Delta’s newest airplane and captain pose for an upcoming SkyMiles devaluation poster.