First, a few newsworthy items:

  1. Am let me know about a Chase Ink Cash offer for 5,000 bonus UR for $5,000 spend, up to three times. It’s available on other business cards too, check yours at chase.com/mybonus. Offers seen:

    – 5,000 Ultimate Rewards after $5,000 spend, 3x on Ink cards
    – 5,000 Rapid Rewards after $5,000 spend, 3x on Southwest business cards
    – 5,000 MileagePlus miles after $5,000 spend, 3x on United business cards

  2. The Target Redcard $40 in-store +$40 online sign-up bonus is back through May 28. Currently data-points suggest you can churn this card as long as you wait ten business days between closing and opening, and there are other RedCard hacks too that make the credit card version worth while.
  3. Do this now: Register for IHG’s 2-4x points promotion for stays through August 31. You’ll earn:

    – 2x points on nights 2 through 5
    – 3x points on nights 6 through 14
    – 4x points on nights 15 and beyond

  4. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion for third party gift cards through May 19. Just make sure you clip the digital coupon first. Note that Harris Teeter (the CRJ-200 of Kroger’s fleet), has now moved to the same software system used by other affiliates.

And second, Delta SkyClub access rules are changing on June 1:

  • Access at your origin airport is allowed only within three hours of departure
  • Access at a connecting airport is allowed anytime
  • Access on arrival is no longer allowed

I don’t think this changes much about the value proposition of credit cards that give you SkyClub access, but there’s a chance that this may turn into a statement credit as compensation in the future just like when the American Express Platinum card lost AA lounge access.

If Kroger was United Airlines, Harris Teeter would the United Express CRJ-200.

Yesterday’s post spurred plenty of questions, discussion, and further digging. Sam at HelpMeBuildCredit.com started by letting me know about other heightened offers from Barclays, and I heard from many of you about their rules. Let’s go over both:

  1. The JetBlue Business Card has an offer for:

    – 80,000 TrueBlue points and a $99 statement credit after spending $2,000 in 90 days

    The card has a $99 annual fee which is effectively erased by the statement credit. As with yesterday’s Barclay AA card offer, this one is probably a “get the sign-up bonus, sock-drawer, then cancel or get a retention offer after your one year anniversary” card. That said, I know a few of you like to keep it and spend $50,000 a year for Mosaic status.

  2. The Hawaiian Business Mastercard has an offer for:

    – 80,000 Hawaiian Airlines miles and a $99 statement credit after spending $2,000 in 90 days

    This card also has a $99 annual fee effectively erased by the statement credit. This is also a sock-drawer and cancel after a year card.

And, a few things that came up in the last day:

  • Q: Can I have multiple versions of the same Barclays card?
    A: No
  • Q: Do I have to close a card to apply for it again?
    A: Yes
  • Q: Will Barlcays offer to match a retention bonus if you recently opened a card?
    A: Sometimes, YMMV
  • Q: Do I really have to wait six months between closing a particular card and opening the same card again?
    A: Probably, YMMV
  • Q: Does Barclays care about credit line cycling?
    A: They don’t seem to care on business cards as long as it’s 2-3x per month, they’re stricter on personal cards
  • Q: Barclays doesn’t care about anonymous bill payments.
    A: That’s not a question

And finally, I’ve been told that Barclays may not enforce 6/24 at all on personal cards — if you have a datapoint related to that I’d appreciate it if you let me know.

Happy Wednesday friends!

Against all odds, Barclays comes back for another post.

Barclays has heightened sign-up bonuses on several of their cards rolling out this week:

  1. The Barclays AAdvantage World Elite Business Mastercard (editors note: just typing that card name made my eyes glaze over, and its 15 trademarks almost made me ditch this post entirely) has an interesting new sign-up bonus:

    – 80,000 AA miles and a $95 statement credit after spending $2,000 in 90 days

    This is effectively a free 80,000 miles for $2,000 in spend in the first year after the $95 annual fee is offset by the statement credit, and it might be interesting beyond the sign-up bonus if you’re playing the AA LoyaltyPoints game. If you’re not, sock drawer it after hitting $2,000 in spend and close it in after a year.

  2. The Barclays Wyndham Business Visa card (editors note: I’m not typing the whole credit card name after the above fiasco) also has an interesting sign-up bonus:

    – 65,000 Wyndham points after spending $1,000 in 90 days
    – 10,000 additional points for making a single purchase on an employee card

    This one doesn’t have a statement credit to offset the $95 annual fee unfortunately, but if you can manufacture spend at gas stations it’s probably worth holding long term even with the fee.

Now, because we’re gamers, let’s talk about gaming:

  • Barclays will combine hard credit card pulls for applications made on the same business day, and you can be approved for up to three cards a day
  • If you have an existing Barclays credit card, spend a lot, pay off your balance, and then apply to boost your approval odds.
  • You can churn Barclays cards, but you typically need to wait six months between churns
  • Barclays has a 6/24 rule that’s usually enforced (you’ll probably be denied for a card if you’ve had 6 new accounts on your credit report in the last 24 months), but big spend on existing Barclays cards can bypass the rule

Just redeem those AA miles on partner airlines if you can. Unless you’re in to the whole “regulated garbage” things that is.

Mother’s Day deals have started, and as a result non-Mother’s Day things have to try harder to stand-out. To wit:

  1. Do this now: Register for Hilton’s new promotion. You’ll earn double points on one or two night stays and triple on three night or longer stays between today and September 5.
  2. There’s a 25% transfer bonus from Citi ThankYou Points to AirFrance/KLM FlyingBlue through May 20. The best use of FlyingBlue is either economy or business class between North America and Europe. A few FlyingBlue notes:

    – You can find business class flights at a price-point of about 52,000 miles each way regularly
    – They run monthly promo awards which make certain city pairs even cheaper
    – Check for onward connections to other cities to lower the cost of an award ticket (e.x., ORD-AMS-BRU)
    – Check for train connections to other cities to lower the cost of an award ticket (e.x., LAX-CDG-ZYR)
    – It used to be hard to reset the expiration of transferred miles, but that’s no longer the case

  3. US Bank has an interesting new checking account sign-up bonus for existing business credit card holders. You’ll earn $500 for opening a new business checking account, depositing $5,000, keeping the funds in-place for 90 days, and making 5 qualifying transactions in the same timeframe (so, five $0.50 Amazon balance reloads) with promo code CKEUM8Z. The effective APR here is 40% over 90 days.

    The offer doesn’t seem to have any language about only being available to new business checking account customers, but it does have language saying it’s only available to the addressee and is non-transferrable. Because it’s on a public web-page with a normal URL and a public promotion code on the same page, I’d guess it’ll work for anyone. (Thanks to Astheworldchurnd)

    UPDATE: The language was updated to mention that it’s only available for new business checking account customers, thanks to Jay for letting me know.

  4. Capital One 360 has a $450 sign-up bonus for opening a new “360 Performance Savings” account with promo code SAVE22, depositing $50,000 or more in funds during funding, and keeping the funds in-place for 90 days. I calculated the effective savings rate of the bonus and it came out to 3.60% APR or 360 basis points, I see what you did there Capital One and I guess I’m mildly amused?

    In today’s environment this deal is only mediocre, but having the account is likely to increase your approval odds for a Capital One credit card which is why it bubbled up. (Thanks to DDG)

Happy Monday!

The mixed eligibility requirements language in the US Bank Business Checking bonus, as cookies.

Since American Express has effectively consumed the majority of this month’s posts with their ludicrous, new-Subaru-MSRP-valued offers, it seemed fitting to send the month off with discussion about scaling and financial reviews based on chatter in and around the community.

Scaling

American Express is more tolerant of massively scaled spending than any other big bank, but keep the following in mind:

  1. AmEx doesn’t care about cycling your credit lines. You can spend up to your credit limit, pay it down before the statement closes, and then spend a bunch more.
  2. AmEx does care about an explosion in spending. If you typically spend $5,000 per month and then spend $300,000 in two weeks, you could end up with a financial review. For rough numbers lets say:

    – A quick ramp of 3x to 5x of your normal spending is probably OK
    – A quick ramp of 20x+ of your normal spending is probably not OK
    – A slow, multi-month ramp to 20x+ of your normal spending is probably OK

  3. AmEx doesn’t care if you spend multiple times your annual business revenue on business cards.
  4. AmEx often cares if you spend multiple times your annual income on personal cards.
  5. AmEx doesn’t care about round numbers — 30 to 50 repeated $1,000.00 transactions won’t cause any problem, provided you’re playing by the above rules.
  6. AmEx won’t typically shut you down immediately if you violate the above rules, instead you’ll end up with a financial review. (Shutdowns at AmEx are more like being in the wrong place at the wrong time unfortunately.)

Financial Reviews

When American Express finds behavior it doesn’t like you’ll get a call asking for a financial review. When you get a financial review, American Express will usually ask:

  • “Why are you spending so much at TurboGiftCardsNow.com?” (Answer: to separate my expenses of course)
  • “Why did you start spending so much more this month than normal?” (Answer: big business contract)
  • “What’s the source of your income?” (Answer: my job and the big business contract)
  • “Can we see your tax returns for the last two years?” (Answer: of course, here’s a signed 4506-T form)

AmEx usually suspends your charging privileges during a financial review and they typically take two to four weeks to complete their investigation. Assuming the income reported on your tax return meets or exceeds the income you put on your card applications, you’re almost certainly in the clear and you’ve essentially got a green light to keep the shenanigans rocketing toward the moon. Then you can go inception and use all those Membership Rewards to buy yourself a Subaru with your American Express to earn even more Membership Rewards to earn another Subaru.

Have a nice weekend!

Recharging your new 99 employee-card funded electric Subaru for another MS run.

May typically marks the start of great deals for gift-card reselling and this year the deals started early. A good gift card resale deal will be cashflow positive, scalable, and provide a nice credit card bonus category. Three of those have just hit:

  1. Many Vons, Safeway, Albertsons, and other Just4U stores have an offer for $10 back on a future purchase with a purchase of $50 or more gift cards through May 10, the most worthwhile of which for a manufactured spender is Apple with its 90-92% resale value. This is unique for two reasons:

    – The limit is one per transaction, not one per account which makes scaling easy
    – The deal isn’t chain-wide; check your region’s local weekly ad to see if it’s available near you

    Provided your Just4U store allows you to buy gift cards at self checkout, I’d buy as many of these back-to-back as you’re comfortable with using a card that bonuses at grocery or with several of your many AmEx employee cards. (Thanks to GC Galore)

  2. Save Mart and Lucky stores are running a similar deal with similar math: you’ll get 1,000 points worth $10 in groceries for purchasing $50 in more of gift cards through May 10. The best option here is also Apple.

    Unlike the previous deal though, this one requires clipping a digital coupon and is limit one per account. So, scale this one with multiple accounts, but remember that redeeming 1,000 points across multiple accounts will be annoying.

  3. Shoppers stores will print a $15 off coupon when buying $100 in gift cards for certain third party brands. The most interesting ones are Starbucks or Sephora which resell at approximately 89%.

    This will print off a coupon with each transaction, so I’d camp at self check-out and run as many back-to-back as you’re comfortable with, using the coupon for the last transaction to buy the next gift card over and over again. (Thanks to Roger)

While we’re at it, don’t forget about the slightly less profitable but still great deal for $50 back on $500 in gift cards from Meijer.

Happy Thursday!

The one thing that could throw a wrench in your plans: self-checkout lines like this.

Today we’ve got a few new options to save on airfare:

  1. Southwest has a 30% off fare sale to and from Hawaii, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America with promo code GOTROPICAL and bookings made by tomorrow evening for travel between September 6 and November 4. Schedule changes haven’t happened for those dates yet by the way, why would you ask?
  2. Create a new frequent flyer account with Alaska Airlines for $25 off of airfare in most states, or $50 off of airfare if your fake new account lives in California or Hawaii. You’ll receive the code via email within three days.

    Of course booking a one way for you and a one way for your twin will yield twice the discount on a round trip, but unfortunately your twin doesn’t have six months to cash in the deal like your 99 American Express twins do, rather the code expires 28 days after the account is opened. (Thanks to FM)

Mango Punch Tampico and Citrus Punch Tampico each have an Alaska Airlines frequent flyer account. That doesn’t make them not gross.

Introduction

There are several different “penalty boxes” with American Express, but they all share one thing in common: You get a pop-up telling you that you’re not eligible for some bonus due to your past relationship with American Express.

Getting In

There are multiple ways to get put into the penalty box, but all of them involve a single principle — you’ve done something that AmEx didn’t like. Known routes in:

  • Closing or downgrading a card within the first 12 months of having the card
  • Closing or downgrading a card within the first 12 months of a retention offer
  • Closing or downgrading a card within the first 12 months of earning an upgrade bonus
  • Too many card referrals to the same person

There are probably other ways in too, but data-points are sparse so it’s hard to find more patterns.

Getting Out

There are two known vectors out of the penalty box:

  • Spend ($20,000 per month for a month or two, especially on a co-branded card)
  • Time (1-2 years)

Spending on Membership Rewards earning cards seem to be less likely to get you out, while co-brand cards like the Delta or Hilton cards are more likely to get you out. The likely reason that AmEx purchased a bunch of co-brand rewards points and gets to remove some of them off of their books, improving their overall balance sheet.

Hangin’ in the AmEx penalty box.