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. American Express Offers has two big offers:

    – 25,000 Membership Rewards with $1,500 spend with Royal Caribbean through December 31
    – $100 statement credit with $500 spend at Hiltons in Nevada through March 15, 2024

    American Express does clawback offer bonuses that are refunded, but in a rather simplistic way. (Thanks to Conner)
  2. United TravelBank funds can now be gifted to friends and family, and in related news TravelBank loads still work for the American Express Platinum’s airline incidental credit. This is great news at first blush, but the addition of “friends” probably means this isn’t going to end well for anyone.
  3. Plastiq, the once plucky upstart bill pay service that failed to IPO, went bankrupt, and was then acquired by its (loose) competition, has taken a page from the airline frequent flyer playbook: A silent devaluation. They’re now charging $0.99 for ACH delivery and $1.49 for paper check delivery in addition to other fees.

    16 days ago they announced that they’d accept American Express payments in a “couple of weeks”. They don’t currently accept AmEx, so I guess by “accept American Express payments” they really meant “charge new fees when sending to American Express, but also everyone else” which frankly is the most Plastiq thing that could have happened.
  4. Vacasa redemptions through Wyndham also took a note from the frequent flyer playbook with a silent devaluation. Vacasa redemptions were 15,000 points per bedroom and worked on properties that cost up to about $500 per bedroom before fees, but now the limit is somewhere around $350 per bedroom.

    We’ve been #bonvoyed by a non-Marriott hotel chain.
  5. The Gift Card Shop has 50% off of purchase fees on orders over $150 using promo code 2023HOLIDAY through October 29.

    Visas and Mastercards are issued by InComm. (Thanks to SideShowBob233)

The airline frequent flyer playbook in action.

Let’s talk possibilities:

[Q]: Is it possible to manufacture $100 spend per day?
[A]: Yes

[Q]: $1,000?
[A]: Yes

[Q]: $10,000?
[A]: Yes

[Q]: $100,000?
[A]: Yes

Does this continue forever? No, but the ceiling is high. Always be probing.

Is it possible that this is OJ?

  1. Chase “green star” offers have returned with targeted increased sign-up bonuses for Ink cards:

    – Ink Business Premier: 150,000 Ultimate Rewards after $15,000 spend in three months
    – Ink Business Unlimited: $1,200 after $6,000 spend in three months

    To see the offers, click the hamburger menu (≡) in app or online, then click “Just for you”.
  2. Check your email for a targeted offer from Bilt for 1,000 bonus points on any charge at AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, Comcast, Xfinit®, Spectrum, Spotify, Netflix, and Hulu using your Bilt Mastercard.

    The bonus caps out at 5,000 points, or *checks notes and runs a massive program on a super-computer* five merchants. (Thanks to DDG)
  3. Do this now (if you hold an AA credit card): Register for +1 miles and +1 Loyalty Points for AA charges made in the month of November.

    Can you game this? I don’t know, but I like your odds on this one.
  4. Safeway, Albertsons, Vons, and other Just4U stores have a coupon for 10x points on various gift cards, and even though they’re not explictly named, all of the Choose Your Card variety are currently earning the bonus.

    The best option that I know of is to convert to Lowes which has a resale rate of approximately 90%.

The MEAB supercomputer.

  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.

Sometimes regular posts
start to feel repetitive
so we “go haiku”

  1. Capital One Shopping has targeted increased cash-back for Giftcards.com of up to 12%. MEAB’s haiku review:

    Twelve percent beats fees
    you won’t earn Loyalty Points
    cashing out is key

    Note that you’ll probably have a different cash back offer for the mobile app, the desktop, and a targeted email, so check all three.
  2. American Express Offers has $150 back on $1,000 or more in airfare at Air Canada for flights originating in the US and ticketed with US Dollars booked by December 31. Now, let’s haiku:

    AmEx offers abound
    breaking correlation helps
    never play it straight

    You can game it, but just don’t game it in Canadian currency. (Thanks to TeddyH)
  3. A quick recap of Delta’s “devaluation rebiggening”:

    – You need slightly fewer MQDs to attain status, but still more than before
    – If you have a Delta Platinum or Reserve card, you get an annual $2,500 MQD credit
    – Million Milers bump up in lifetime status levels
    – You can spend rolled-over MQMs on status extensions, 100,000 MQD per year
    – Better exchange rates on existing MQMs in 2024

    But MEAB, can you let us know how you feel in the form of a haiku?

    Changes beat stick in eye
    SkyMiles are still the worst miles
    too little, too late
  4. American Express has retooled the Hilton Aspire and Surpass cards with:

    – Bigger annual fees (+$100 on Aspire and +$65 on Surpass)
    – Bigger Hilton credits ($200 x 2 at resorts on Aspire, $50 x 4 on Surpass)
    – Loss of Priority Pass
    – $200 annual airline incidental credits switch to $50 quarterly airfare credits

    “Haiku me”, I hear you say:

    Aspire was O.P.,
    was future Unsung Hero,
    now I’m not so sure
  5. Kroger online has $10 off of $150 or more in Visa and Mastercards with promo code OCT2023 through October 25. Let’s jump to the chase:

    U.S. Bank issued,
    won’t code as grocery so
    useful for fuel points

Have a nice weekend friends!

Can someone please rewrite this banger as a haiku, or do I have to do everything myself?

American Airlines AAdvantage reward email confirmations have a super-annoying quirk: AA never sends you an email showing both the number of miles redeemed and the record locator in the same message. Instead you’ll get two separate emails:

  • One with the subject “Your recent AAdvantage Award Redemption” (shows miles used)
  • One with the subject “Your trip confirmation (XXX – XXX)” (shows record locator)

If you’re only booking one or two awards per day, it’s easy enough to suss out which redemption email corresponds which which trip confirmation, but it’s still annoying. If you book multiple awards a day it can be really hard to figure out which goes with which, especially months after booking when your email is buried behind thousands of other messages. I can only assume AA does this because their UX team decided that Windows 3.11 was the epitome of user friendliness.

Dave via MEAB slack shared that you can get an email with both the record locator and milage in the same email though, just put the award on hold, then pay for it immediately:

The award hold email lists both the record locator and award cost in a single place.

Have a nice Thursday, and check back tomorrow for all the hot takes on Delta’s devaluation rollback. (Would that properly be called a devaluation de-biggening? I’m gonna say yes, duh.)

A dialog box that says "Are you sure that you don't want to invert the unselected widgets?" with possible responses "Yes, No, Cancel"

AA’s ideal user experience model.

  1. Chase Offers has an offer for 15% back at most Hyatt property brands for up to $323 in spend through the end of the month. It even works at the Hyatt Place Lubbock, sorry.
  2. Do this now: Register for 5x bonus miles up to 50,000 miles total on flights to and from London LHR, Amsterdam AMS, or Paris CDG airports. It’s a great offer of sort, but United found away to “put the Lubbock” into this offer as it is wont to do:

    – Only valid for economy flights
    – Not valid for basic economy
    – Not valid for travel on non-United operated flights

    Travel must complete by December 13. (Thanks to FM)
  3. DoC notes that as of Monday, Chase business bankers have increased bonuses available to targeted clients:

    – Ink Premier: 150,000 Ultimate Rewards after $10,000 spend in three months
    – Ink Business Unlimited: $1,200 cash back after $6,000 spend in three months

    Note that in two player mode with a 40,000 Ultimate Rewards bonus, you can still do better on the Ink Business Unlimited from home. Also, note that I haven’t been able to independently confirm that these offers exist, even in Lubbock.
  4. Southwest has a deep-discount fare sale for flights departing before 8:00 AM or after 7:00 PM local time for travel between November 7 and March 6 booked by tomorrow night. They’ve Lubbocked it up a bit too:

    – Several blackout days around the holidays
    – Not valid for flights on Fridays and Sundays, the two busiest travel days

    It’s worth re-pricing any existing reservations assuming you like to depart when the Sun’s not up.

United will include this shirt in its next MileagePlay promotion, obviously.