Search Results for: barclays

  1. Southwest is having a nationwide fare sale for travel from November 29 through February 15 until tomorrow. It’s worth double-checking any bookings you’ve got during that time too, I had one particular flight drop from approximately 4,800 points to 1,111 points. The new price is the equivalent of a $16 fare, which frankly is bananas. (Thanks to Javier via MEAB slack)
  2. Bask bank accounts increased the earning rate on deposits to 1.5 AA miles per dollar on deposit. That’s nice I guess, but with interest rates climbing above 3% (or much higher with a little effort) I’d take this news item as a good point to evaluate whether or not your money is still best parked at Bask. I’d say it’s probably not.
  3. With the new month, there are new airline transfer bonuses running:

    – 30% Ultimate Rewards to Virgin Atlantic, use for business class to Europe or ANA business and first to Southeast Asia through November 12
    – 25% Membership Rewards to Choice Hotels (targeted), use Citi points instead for the Ascend collection through October 31
    – 20% Membership Rewards to Marriott Hotels (targeted), don’t bother. Instead, cash-out and use that to pay for your stay.

  4. Barclays has again increased its sign-up bonuses on business co-branded airline cards, including a statement credit that offsets the annual fee:

    – JetBlue 80,000 TrueBlue miles and a $99 statement credit after $2,000 in spend in 90 days
    – AA 80,000 AAdvantage miles and a $95 statement credit after $2,000 in spend in 90 days

    The Hawaiian business card also has an elevated 90,000 mile sign-up bonus after $8,000 in spend, but no statement credit. Don’t forget to read about clowning with Barclays to maximize your applications.

Happy Wednesday!

An airline frenzy — given the state of the airframes I’d guess these are meant to be Allegiant planes.

  1. Southwest seems to be counting award travel for A-List and A-List Preferred status as of last week. Is this intentional? I dunno, but my guess is that if you get status this way that you’ll keep it whether or not it’s a just a bug. Notably it still doesn’t count toward earning a Companion Pass.

    Hopefully Southwest is trying to copy Delta’s change that allows award tickets to earn Medallion status. (Thanks to Brian M via MEAB slack)

  2. JetBlue cardholders can now earn a referral bonus for referring new card members. The link to generate a referral is in your inbox from Barclays, if you can’t find it, customer service can have it resent though it may take a few tries to find the right person.

    The referral offer is as good as the best public offer, 80,000 points after $1,000 in spend in 90 days, and 10,000 points for the referrer.

  3. Check your American Express offers for $100 back on $500 or more at Alaska Airlines.

    Buying a non-refundable, non basic-economy ticket that costs around $500, waiting 24 hours, and canceling the ticket will allow you to bank $500 in your Alaska wallet for a net cost of $400, though eventually those wallet funds do expire so this is a short to medium term play, not a long-term one.

  4. Rakuten has 2% back or 2x Membership Rewards on Safeway purchases via their card linked program. I’m sure you can find an interesting use for this one.

A-List and A-List preferred status get you unlimited complimentary upgrades to the economy cabin.

  1. Southwest has a companion pass offer for booking a single round-trip or two one-way flights by tomorrow evening for travel before November 17. After you qualify, you’ll receive a companion pass valid from January 4, 2023 – March 4, 2023.

    (Thanks to the ineffable Brian M’s report via MEAB slack)

  2. Barclays has increased its personal JetBlue card’s sign-up bonus to 80,000 TrueBlue points after $1,000 in spend in 90 days. The card has a $99 annual fee and isn’t waived the first year. (Thanks to DoC)
  3. The Citi Shop Your Way Mastercard (a MEAB Unsung Hero) has been sending out targeted offers since last week. We’ve seen:

    – $40 back after six purchases of $50 each month for three months
    – 4,000 ThankYou points after six purchases of $50 each month for three months
    – 15% in statement credits up to $60 in travel purchases each month for three months

  4. Meijer online has $5 off of $100 Visa gift cards, limit 10. They’re Metabank gift cards, but Kroger, Walmart, and Safeway still universally allow $99 swipes with these and the cards will auto-drain a small balance at most grocery stores, so liquidation is possibly more straightforward than is typical.

    Unfortunately I have to counteract the good Metabank news with some bad: These are fulfilled by BlackHawk Network and won’t code as grocery for any credit card category bonuses.

Good news: Meijer sells sushi for less than a dollar and will auto-drain your Metabank gift card. Bad news: This is the sushi.

  1. American Express has another set of no-lifetime language (NLL) heightened offers available. To see if you’re targeted, login to AmEx and check the following links for two great no-annual fee cards:

    – Blue Business Plus 75,000 Membership Rewards after $15,000 in spend in 12 months
    – Blue Business Cash $750 after $15,000 in spend in 12 months (discussed yesterday)

    Both of these have phone in employee card offers available, 5,000 Membership Rewards after $2,000 in spend on the Blue Business Plus and a $50 statement credit after $2,000 in spend on the Blue Business Cash. Both work for up to 99 employees, or 450,000 bonus points on the Plus or $4,500 in statement credits on the Cash.

  2. Check for email from Citi for targeted 5x on PayPal spend, up to $600 by September 30. This has been seen on:

    – Double Cash
    – Premier
    – Rewards+
    – AAdvatage

    Related to the above: PayPal raised its credit card fees for person-to-person payments to 2.99%, and stopped allowing friends and family payments from personal accounts to business accounts.

  3. Check this link for Barclays credit card targeted 5x spend bonuses on grocery, gas, and restaurant purchases up to $700 in spend through September 15. (Thanks to San_K)
  4. Staples has fee-free $200 Visa gift cards, limit five per transaction running from Sunday through the following Saturday. These are Metabank gift cards, and based on lots of prodding from reader Jim, I won’t say anything bad about Metabanks (today). (Thanks to DDG)
  5. Simon’s volume purchasing program has for 50% off of bulk Visa and Mastercard gift card purchases using promo code JUL22WKND50.

Jimmy’s dog helps us jump toward the weekend with a Delirium Tremens. #JimmyStyle

I guess it’s patriotic to tie the number four into a post on the 4th? To be honest I wasn’t really listening during my Patriotic Blogging 101 course in college, so let’s just assume that I’m right and roll with it. I know I will.

  1. Visible has $45 in cash back (or 4,500 Membership Rewards) at Rakuten for the fourth of July holiday and it stacks nicely with a few other offers. We’ve seen better around black Friday, but if you need a burner phone number for shenanigans, this is a great deal for this time of year. You’ll get:

    – $50 Mastercard from Visible for porting in a number (like a $0.99 Boost number)
    – $45 cash back or 4,500 Membership Rewards via Rakuten

    And your cost will be:

    – $5 with a referral (with a current Chase or Bank of America offer for $20 off of $25) for the first month
    – $20 with Party Pay for the second month

    Of course, you can use the same tricks to upgrade an old or very old phone to a new Moto G Pure android for negative cost.

  2. There are targeted Chase offers for:

    – 15% back at United for airfare
    – 15% back at IHG and several Marriott brands

    The total cash back varies by account and can be as low as $10, or as high as $40.

  3. Check for a targeted spend offer from Barclays personal cards via email for 5x rewards at grocery, drugstores, and restaurants up to $700 in spend. (Thanks to DoC)
  4. Meijer has two Visa gift card deals, and one works even if you’re outside of Meijer land. Just be sure to scale with multiple MPerks accounts and use them all back-to-back as quickly as possible, like La Jolla, San Diego in 2012:

    – $5 off of $100 in Visa gift cards online, these are Metabank cards
    – $10 off of $150 in Visa gift cards in-store, these are either Sunrise or Metabank depending on which you pick (I’d definitely pick the former)

    (Thanks to Stephan at GC Galore)

Have a nice holiday!

Blowing up a Meijer terminal La Jolla style with hundreds of MPerks accounts. Go big or go home, amirite?

1. United’s MileagePlusX mobile app has a targeted offer for 5,000 bonus miles when signing up for Clear. There are two possibilities here:

(Thanks to TheSultan1 on reddit for pointing out the bonus offer)

2. There are new targeted United MilePlay offers, check for yours at this link. Sometimes these are really lucrative and other times they’re not worth your time, but do take a look in case it’s the former on this round. For me, it was definitely, without a doubt the latter. My offer:

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3. There’s a new no-lifetime language American Express Business Gold card offer for 90,000 Membership Rewards after spending $10,000 in three months. You can get a bonus 10,000 Membership Rewards by adding an employee card and spending $1,000 or more on that card, also within the first three months.

These cards are great for gas station manufactured spend primarily, but can also be great for advertising spend if you can manufacture that (or have legit advertising spend).

4. There’s a Hyatt Globalist requalification offer for current Globalists that aren’t likely to hit 60 nights this year but still want to maintain status until February 2023. The catch? You still have to stay 20 nights between now and February 28, 2022 to meet the requalification offer so it’s not exactly a slam dunk.

5. Staples has $200 Mastercard gift cards fee free running Sunday through the following Saturday, limit five per transaction. I almost didn’t write about this one because we’ve reached the point where these deals are happening more often than not and it’s not really news any more. (Thanks to DoC)

6. Tomorrow is the last day to transfer your Citi ThankYou points to AA. I truly believe this deal will come back because:

Of course, time will tell. Happy weekend!

An image of Steph Curry missing a dunk.
Pictured: Te Hyatt Globalist requalification play.

I’ve already mentioned Debbit a time or two, but there’s a neat hack that it helps enable: Some credit card issuers will give you a monthly small balance waiver for balances under a buck or two, and often those issuers correspond with credit cards that you keep in your sock drawer anyway (Barclays, Discover, USAA, and US Bank are examples).

For those sock drawer cards, I suggest set up a recurring small charge in Debbit once a month as an Amazon balance reload, Xfinity bill payment, AT&T bill payment, or similar and you’ll earn a free $10-$20 / year for each card. You’ll also prevent them from being closed for non-use, which does happen.

Will you get rich like this? No, but at the end of the year you can buy a $10 Chipotle card with your Amazon balance. Is it worth your time? Maybe not just by itself, but multiplied by a few cards and convolved with having debbit set up for bonuses, it will pay off in due time. Also, at the end of the year through some advanced tom-foolery known as “paying with a gift card”, you can turn it into a burrito* to reap your rewards.

Woman eating a burrito.
Reaping the small balance waiver rewards

*For more on the origin of travel hacking and the burrito, I highly recommend visiting Milenomics and listening to their excellent, high quality podcast. I’m not a paid shill, just a big fan.

The Barclay Arrival+ card used to award 2.2% on spend when points were redeemed for travel, and used to be an OK card mostly for that reason alone. They nerfed it a few years ago, but I slacked and redeemed outstanding points for the annual fee rather than closing it like I should have. Now, Barclay is helping procrastinators like me by allowing you to redeem your points to cover charges at gas and grocery stores, minimum $50. I’ll be doing that and closing the card ASAP, if you still have one — prolly do the same. Get the Citi DoubleCash as a no-fee, better alternative.

But more importantly, please internalize a tip that affiliate bloggers can’t write about: Call and ask for a retention offer on every premium card you have at least once a year. You’ll get one more often than not and often they can be quite large, like sign-up bonus large. The language I usually use is “I’m thinking of closing this card given its large annual fee, but before I make a decision, I was checking to see if there are any retention or spending offers available”.

My Barclays Arrival+ getting ready to leave the sea of my sock drawer.