1. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercards in-store running today through June 20, a full two weeks.

    While the fuel points and third party gift card resale markets have been hovering around a local maxima, I expect that by June 20th rates will have fallen. As usual if your fuel points broker isn’t assuming liability quickly after purchase then you should probably look for another broker.
  2. Southwest has a 20% off fare sale to and from DEN and COS for travel though November 1 (with a few date caveats) with promo code SCORE20.

    DEN is a Southwest hub, so you could also consider booking a connection through DEN on two separate tickets which might price out better with the promo code than a single booking without. Of course having two separate tickets could be its own set of headaches. (Thanks to Brian M)
  3. While it’s always possible to forcibly bypass an American Express pop-up with shady tactics, or almost always possible to bypass one with co-branded spend, sometimes it’s nice to play it straight. To that end, there are Hilton links that apparently bypass the pop-up for everyone who’s tried at hilton.com/SeekingSummer.

    Which is my favorite offer, asked no one? The business card for its gas station bonus category, low annual fee, ability to earn three free-night certificates in the first year, churnability, and 150,000 point sign-up bonus.
  4. AA has updated their upgrade policy: Starting June 9, all elites are eligible for upgrades on award tickets including a single companion. Priority is changing slightly too, with tier status first and rolling average of the last year’s earned Loyalty Points second as the main factors for upgrade order; this of course means that you can manufacture-spend your way to a higher position on the upgrade list.
  5. Smart and Final stores have $20 off of a grocery purchase when buying any third party gift card except Tracphone or NET10 cards, limit one per transaction. I’ve linked to their digital weekly ad, but even there the print is so small that I’ll be surprised if you can read it even with movie-grade CIA photo enhancement technology.

A preview of next week’s Smart and Final ad. They solved the small print problem, but, uh — keep working on it guys.

Bank of America has increased the Premium Rewards card’s sign up bonus to 75,000 points after $5,000 in spend in 90 days. This $550 annual fee card is normally a sleeper in the community but should be on your radar for the right use cases, especially if you have Preferred Rewards because:

  • You get an easily gameable $300 travel credit every calendar year, for $600 total per card member year
  • You get a $150 statement credit per calendar year for various retailers including those with a legacy dating back to Han’s Deli, for a total of $300 per card member year
  • With top tier preferred rewards, this is a 2.625x everywhere Visa
  • You can probably downgrade this card within the first year for a prorated annual fee refund without repercussion, but don’t do it until you’ve gotten your 2024 credits
  • If you book paid airfare (lol, I know) with points, you get a 20% uplift pushing their value from 1.0 to 1.2 cents per point

If you don’t have Preferred Rewards, getting it in conjunction with a $750 sign up bonus brokerage transfer to Merrill May make sense too. Caveat emptor: Occasionally Merrill accounts won’t properly link to Preferred Rewards status and will require manual intervention with Merrill.

If you’re going to apply for this card, maybe grab a bunch of other BoA cards too. Between the Merrill Bonus and this one, you’re looking at $750+750+600+300-550 = $1,850 in value, and even more with Bank of America application shenanigans, uplift, or downgrades.

Good luck!

Being sad after you have to call Merrill to get your accounts linked.

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.

  1. Kroger is having another 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards Friday through Sunday.

    – Digital coupon for third party gift cards
    – Digital coupon for fixed value Visa and Mastercards

    The fuel points market isn’t as high as it was in the roaring 2021s, but it continues to adapt and recover nicely. Good fuel points brokers are assuming shutdown risk immediately or within 24 hours, so choose wisely my friends. (Thanks to GCG)
  2. I don’t cover things that I think aren’t worth your time, which is why you won’t see anything about $2,500 sign-up bonus for a bank account that requires $200,000 in new funds to be locked up for 90 days and pays 0.15% in interest; it just doesn’t make sense to waste time reading about something like that when you can easily earn 4-6% on those funds with existing savings or money market accounts.

    This philosophy means I almost never talk about Bilt, but I’m going to make an exception today because 2x everywhere for Hyatt points is definitely above the line: The first of every month is “rent day”, and you earn 2x on general spend on the Bilt Mastercard for up to $10,000 on rent day. Unfortunately today doesn’t coincide with the Kroger 4x promotion, but I guess you can’t win ’em all.
  3. Do this now: Register for Wyndham’s summer promotion for stays through September 5 booked by August 31:

    – 5,000 bonus points on two night stays
    – 10,000 bonus points on three night stays
    – 15,000 bonus points on four night stays (or longer)

    Wyndham cardholders can earn a bonus twice, non-card holders once.
  4. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card, once a Sears co-branded card, has a new targeted spending bonus:

    – 90,000 Shop Your Way points for $300 in travel spend, once per month for each month between June and December for a total of 630,000 points (!)

    Sears famously didn’t win them all either. (Thanks to birt)

Sears showing that you can’t win them all in the most Sears way possible. (Thanks to Kyle for the picture)

We’ve talked before about getting out of the various American Express penalty boxes, which is when AmEx won’t give you referral links or gives you a pop-up telling you that you’re not eligible for a welcome bonus on new applications. Despite some noise to the contrary that keeps surfacing, the main way out still exists and it remains the same:

Spend a lot on your existing AmEx cards

What’s missing seems to be what “a lot” means, so let’s clarify based on what we know:

  • $30,000 – $40,000 a month for three months on a co-brand card almost always gets you out
  • $40,000 – $50,000 a month for three months on a Membership Rewards or cash-back earning card will probably get you out

Of course neither of these are fool-proof but based on data-points I’ve worked with, this volume of spend will work about 80% of the time. It’s also even worked even after a past bankruptcy write-off with AmEx.

What if you don’t have a co-brand card? Apply for one even if you get the pop-up with no bonus, then start spending. There are a few no-annual fee co-brand cards like the Delta Blue and the Hilton Honors card so you’ve got options.

Good luck!

Now we just need to have AmEx send these when someone spends their way out.

  1. Giftcards.com has a promotion for 5% off of up to six $100 Visa e-gift cards using promo code SUMMER23 or SUMMER. As of this writing, the best portal to use is Capital One Shopping’s mobile app with 4% cash back. You should be able to do $2,000 per 48 hours across four different orders per account.

    It took me longer than I care to admit to make this work, but the punchline is don’t use a Mastercard (for whatever reason three from separate banks all failed for me) and definitely don’t be logged in, check out as a guest. The total cost was $605.70, and I’ll earn that in credit card spend and $24.20 from Capital One Shopping.
  2. Do this now: Earn a $25 Lyft credit for:

    – Linking your Hilton and Lyft accounts
    – Registering with Hilton here (Thanks to Kurt for the corrected link)
    – Staying a single night in a Hilton property through September 5

    After that’s done, reset your Lyft partner link back to Delta or Bilt if you prefer one of those programs to Hilton.

Happy Tuesday!

My keyboard after trying the 18,000th giftcards.com order.

  1. Walmart is 6x in-store at Rakuten, up from 3x last week. The terms and conditions haven’t otherwise changed but I think the likelihood of cancellation for heavy hitters is higher at 6x than 3x because Rakuten seems to investigate high balance accounts.

    If you’re tech savvy and can isolate your digital footprint well, you can scale with multiple Rakuten accounts.
  2. With the end of the month approaching, don’t forget that you’ve got through Wednesday to:

    – Spend your AmEx Gold $10 dining credits
    – Spend your AmEx Business Platinum $10 wireless credits
    – Spend your Chase GoPuff $10 credits

    In my opinion, Shake Shack gift cards, T-Mobile credits, and in-store pickups are the best way respectively to maximize each of these three credits with a minimum amount of time and breakage.
  3. Staples has fee-free Visa gift cards in-store through Saturday, limit eight per transaction. As usual, try for back-to-back transactions if you’ve got the liquidation capacity to minimize your time spent in a dying, overpriced, one employee per 1,500 square foot, big-box office supply retailer.

    These are Metabank Pathward gift cards so have a liquidation plan ready before you buy enough to stand up as a fifth leg for your desk.
  4. Truist has a $400 personal checking account bonus through July 25 for opening a new account and having two direct deposits totaling $1,000 or more in the first 90 days. When signing up, use promo code TRUISTCHKQ223, and note that DoC says this is state limited; that’s not been my experience with Truist though (in general if you can’t sign up online, pretend you’re Lady Gaga).
  5. There’s a 30% transfer bonus for Membership Rewards to Virgin Atlantic through June 14. This program has some great sweet spots, but double check availability before transferring anything in. I don’t have any particular inside knowledge but I think a devaluation of this program is near.
  6. Dell is currently at 12x on Rakuten, so it’s a good time to try and cash out your American Express Business Platinum Dell $200 Q1/Q2 credit and have your order cancelled.

Pictured: Dave pretending to be Lady Gaga to get a Truist bonus. Little does he know they’ll lock his account for shenanigans in T-58 days.