If you were a programmer at a bank and you had to code a bonus category for a particular vendor, say like earning 32x Membership Rewards points on flights to Mars booked through Deep Discount Mars Trips, how would you do it? You’ve got a few decent options for how you might award a bonus based on:

  • A particular merchant account and payment processor
  • A particular merchant category code (MCC)
  • A specific merchant name, like “DEEP DISCOUNT MARS TRIPS LLC”

Of course you don’t have to pick just one of those, good banks and good programmers will do two or all three. Of course, there are some FinTechs out there that take the easy way out and do the bare minimum, for example, searching for “MARS” in a charge’s name and awarding 32x if the letters are found in the charge description. When that happens you’ll earn 32x at:

  • Marsha’s Grab and Go
  • Cactus and Marshes LLC
  • The Marshmallow and Vacuum Emporium

Often the FinTech programmer figures out that they’ve made a mistake and will fix the bonus award by implementing a blocklist instead of fixing it the right way, so the logic is: Award 32x if “mars” is in the charge description, but not if the description is “The Marshmallow and Vacuum Emporium”. Because of course they do.

Well, in the cat-and-mouse game with FinTechs, there are often ways to name-mangle your merchant description to side-skirt blocklists, for example by paying with a service like PayPal which will prepend PAYPAL MARK* to the front of your charge description, leading to 32x again.

It should probably go without saying, but let’s say it anyway: bonus street cred if you use one FinTech product to mask the charge for another FinTech. Happy hunting!

The Marshmallow and Vacuum Emporium, ripe for earning 32x.

  1. Check your Chase Offers and Bank Of America Deals for 15% back at US Hyatt properties through December 10, up to $37.95 back.
  2. Do this now: Register for an Enterprise Car Rental elite status extension through February 2024 with any car rented in 2022 (even cars rented earlier in the year before registration). You’ll also get double points through January 21, 2023.
  3. Office Depot/OfficeMax has $100 gift cards on sale for $95.95 after activation fee, limit two per account. These are Metabanks and won’t get special office supply coding when buying online because they’re fulfilled by GiftCardMall. As a no extra fee bonus though, you get to solve some annoying cartoon captchas during redemption.
  4. Wyndham’s shopping portal is offering triple points through December 29. According to the language on the site, the 3x is already baked in to the displayed rate, so don’t expect to earn more than you see. (Thanks to FM)
  5. Staples has physical $25 Uber gift cards for sale at a 20% discount and it seems that no-one is enforcing any quantity limits during purchase so go nuts.
  6. American Express has a 15% transfer bonus to Avianca LifeMiles running through December 7 in addition to last week’s 25% transfer bonus to FlyingBlue. Sweet spots with the program generally involved geographically challenged routing rules, but their award chart is in general good for many redemptions.
  7. Xbox gift cards are back in stock at Dell, so liquidate second half 2022 American Express Business Platinum while you can. To avoid burning a Dell account, keep the number of transactions involving a gift card to five per year per account.
  8. Seats.aero, a community driven mainstay for close-in Star Alliance award alerts, now searches AA award space too. (Thanks to levelniner)

GiftCardMall’s devious captcha system. At least we can eliminate the pineapple I guess?

American Express Annual Credits

Many of American Express’s Platinum and Business Platinum credits famously reset at the end of the calendar year, providing the scrooges among us an alternative reason to like the holidays. For our purposes, the most relevant are:

  • Business Platinum
    • $400 Dell credit ($200 January – June, and $200 July – December)
    • $200 airline fee credit
    • $189 Clear credit
  • Personal Platinum
    • $100 Saks Fifth Avenue credit ($50 January – June, and $50 July – December)
    • $200 annual airline
    • $189 Clear credit

The Triple Dip

When you combine the annual reset with the fact that American Express bills its annual fee at the close of the 12th statement for the card and its 30 day after annual fee posts refund policy, you’ve got a recipe for getting nearly three years worth of credits with a single annual fee. The procedure:

  1. Open a new card in late November or early December
  2. Call American Express as soon as you activate the card and push the statement date as late as possible
  3. Spend your 2022 credits before the new year
  4. Spend your 2023 credits next year
  5. Spend your 2024 credits on January 1, 2024
  6. Close the card within 30 days of the annual fee posting in late 2023 or early 2024

Earnings

There are other less valuable (garbage) credits on the American Express Platinum cards, but the big ones mean you’ll earn the following with a single annual fee:

  • Business Platinum
    • $600 in airline fee credits ($200 in 2022, 2023, and 2024)
    • $800 in Dell credits ($200 in 2022 and 2024, $400 in 2023)
    • $567 in Clear credits ($189 in 2022, 2023, and 2024)
  • Personal Platinum
    • $600 in airline fee credits ($200 in 2022, 2023, and 2024)
    • $200 in Saks credits ($50 in 2022 and 2024, $100 in 2023)
    • $567 in Clear credits ($189 in 2022, 2023, and 2024)

Of course the trick works for any other American Express card credits, or for triple dipping spend caps too; you can get the $25,000 4x grocery capacity on the Gold card or the $50,000 2x Blue Business plus capacity three times with a single annual fee, so be creative!

A favorite holiday treat completed with free mustard from Saks Fifth Avenue.

It’s a good-news, bad-news Thursday it seems. Let’s start with the bad so we can leave on a positive note:

The Bad

  1. Dell has stopped selling Xbox gift cards, which are a mainstay for cashing out American Express Dell Business Platinum credits after reselling the gift cards, or for loading a cash balance at Microsoft to buy an expensive laptop. It’s also been reported that orders placed Friday and later are either:

    – Not being charged, but being fulfilled
    – Being cancelled

    If you’re in the first camp expect Dell to come back in three to six months and ask you to pay up long after your AmEx Dell $200 credit expires.

  2. Stephen at GC Galore has been investigating Bitmo and reports that not only have they likely silently closed shop and aren’t redeeming card purchases any more, they’ve launched a new company called HungryFriend that seems to be a direct copy of the Bitmo code. So, prolly stay away from HungryFriend going forward.

The Good

  1. American Express has a 25% bonus for Membership Rewards transfers to AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue. Sweet spots:

    – Promo awards
    – Economy flights in Europe
    – Business class on SkyTeam to and from Europe

  2. H-E-B Grocery stores have a promotion for 20% off of several $100 third party gift cards, including a few popular brands for resale like Kohl’s, Adidas, and Macy’s with clipped digital coupon. There are reports that the discounts aren’t always coding correctly (in favor of the buyer), so try a few different combinations and see what you find.
  3. Kroger has another 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards running for the next couple of weeks through December 6. Fortunately, enterprising third party gift card resellers still have utility in the fuel points side of the game too.

Happy Thursday friends!

The Dell website with a gaping Xbox hole.

  1. American Express gift cards are fee free through the end of the year with promo code BUYMORE, which is useful when combined with the current American Express gift card offer (Thanks to reader Hamed)
  2. Now that yesterday’s super-secret Target gift card ship has sailed, let’s recap what happened so you have an example for future probing. There was a particular three pack of $20 Visa gift cards with an $8.50 load fee, but when you balance checked the gift cards, each actually had $60. So, you paid $68.50 and had $180 in Visa gift cards.

    Lesson: Always balance check gift cards after you buy them.

  3. Do this now (if you hold a Chase Sapphire Reserve): Register for two years of Lyft pink:

    – Open the mobile app
    – Set your default payment card to the Sapphire Reserve
    – Click “Lyft Pink” under the menu
    – Check “I agree” and click Activate Now

    Set a reminder in your phone to cancel the service on November 1, 2024 too to make sure that they don’t auto-bill you in two years.

  4. Check for an email from Capital One Shopping for a targeted offer of 24% back at Giftcards.com, up to $2,000 in spend.

The Capital One Shopping portal 24% back deal. (iykyk)

Tuesday Gift Cards

Apparently this is the week of open loop gift card deals, what a time to be alive! Here are a few more because yesterday wasn’t enough:

  1. Gift Card Granny has free shipping on Visa and Mastercard gift cards through November 24 with promo code NOV22. These are Sutton bank gift cards and typically easy to liquidate in person.
  2. American Express has several offers for a discount at amexgiftcard.com:

    – $50 back on $1,000 or more
    – $20 back on $300 or more
    – $10 back on $100 or more

    These are American Express gift cards so money order liquidation and other typical in-store techniques are out. Also, yes, it’s safe to buy these with an American Express. (Thanks to DoC)

  3. I heard from many of you that there’s a special blend of gift cards for sale in store at Target that are quite rewarding for manufactured spend. Always be probing.
  4. Starting tomorrow and running for a week, Hy-Vee stores will have $10 back on $150 or more in Visa gift cards, and likely that means $30 back on a $500 Visa gift card so go nuts.

    Remember that if your family lives in flyover country Hy-Vee territory and you’re visiting for Thanksgiving, this might be a good money-making escape.

Liquidation

Since those American Express cards in particular are hard to liquidate, let’s discuss a few strategies that effectively always work on gift cards from home:

  • BravoPay (high fee though, effectively 3.5%)
  • Kiva (can be zero fee, but there’s a risk of loss and a time component)
  • Services designed for corporate bill payment

There are other options too, and they’re almost always a FinTech that’s trying to transfer money from investor’s bank accounts to yours solve a problem that didn’t exactly need solving, so look around.

Another form of liquidation, FTX’s FTT coin. (Too soon?)

  1. Meijer MPerks has $50 back in rewards with a $500 third party gift card purchase through December 10. Notable exclusions include Apple, Amazon, Visas, and Mastercards, but other bulk brands like BestBuy, Nike, Home Depot, and ebay are eligible.

    The best use of MPerks rewards at scale is often buying electronics to ship to buyer’s groups.

  2. Giftcards.com has a sale for 5% off of the total purchase price of physical or virtual Mastercards through Thursday on up to $1,500 per order. There are currently three promo codes: VETERANSDAY, VETERANSDAYSALE, MASTERSALE, and as far as I know they’re interchangeable. You can repeat the order for physical gift cards every 24 hours, or for virtual gift cards every 48 hours per account.

    Don’t forget to go through a shopping portal, and also don’t forget about the “politician upset over loss” shopping portal bonuses which make this even more compelling.

  3. Staples has fee free $200 Mastercard gift cards, limit eight per transaction through Saturday. These are Metabanks, so have a liquidation plan in play. (It’s possible to do both from home and in-store. Always be probing.)
  4. Office Depot/OfficeMax has $15 back in $300 or more in Visa gift cards through Saturday. They’re also Metabanks. To scale:

    – Try for multiple transactions back-to-back to optimize your time
    – Link your credit cards to Dosh
    – Add a pen, paperclips, or some other item to your transaction for Dosh longevity
    – Buy the “Everywhere” cards for a lower fee and usually easier in-person liquidation

Happy Monday!

Alec Baldwin reminds us of an oldie, but a goodie — especially this time of year.

Introduction

Historically speaking the time between the second week of November and Christmas has been the biggest volume for manufactured spend in the year, at least during my career. That’s because:

  • Buying lots of Visa and Mastercard gift cards is temporarily normalized
  • Most stores run first-party holiday gift card promotions
  • Big gift card sellers run third-party holiday gift card promotions
  • Consumer electronics and other hot items for buyer’s groups are well stocked and often on sale
  • Nit-picky cashiers and customer service representatives are too busy to worry much about what you’re doing

If you want to participate in the gift card or buyer’s groups holiday manufactured spend cluster-hug, this weekend is a great time to get signed up with the major players so you have a liquidation channel and deal alert notification flow.

Gift Card Buyers and Resellers

In no particular order, most volume in third party gift cards flows through one of these buyers, all of which are considered generally reputable in the community, and I’ve checked with all of them and they’re ready to on-board for the holidays:

Buyers Groups

The following buyer’s groups are considered generally reputable in the community, and if you sign-up this weekend you should be on-boarded in time for black Friday:

Let me also offer some unsolicited advice: While you’re figuring out how buying groups work, stick with deals from Amazon and skip the other stores which can often require some voodoo to get working properly.

Good luck!

A manufactured spend prepper’s closet.