Giftcards.com in Recent Memory

Since Summer of 2020, shopping portals have had the following language for purchases giftcards.com: “Orders over $2,000.00 max per month per customer are not eligible”. Of course there’s room to drive a truck through that language. For example, here are vague questions that aren’t answered by the text (but I’ve given my own answer based on experience):

Q: What is a customer anyway?
A: Roughly speaking a giftcards.com account. By the way, giftcards.com does basic matching of multiple accounts by a single customer so scale requires more than just a new email address.

Q: What if all of your orders are under $2,000 max per month?
A: You may get lucky and have more than $2,000 in aggregate purchases track, but that’s not a guarantee. Usually $2,000 is indeed the maximum that they’ll pay out on in aggregate.

Q: Is it $2,000 per shopping portal?
A: No. It’s across all portals, with an asterisk described below.

New Kid on the Block

In August of this year, Capital One Shopping started offering 6% cash-back on giftcards.com. Unlike the other portals, it lacks language about a maximum payout of $2,000 per month. Of course, hitters gonna hit and some people went really big on giftcards.com purchases through the Capital One Shopping portal in August, and continued through September and October. What happened with purchase tracking (and was pointed out to me by AllezSport, thanks!):

– August: Everything tracked
– September: Everything tracked and paid out if it was purchased very early in the month. Afterword, purchases over $2,000 were zeroed out sometime in the last week
– October: So far everything is tracking, but I think they’ll also zero out anything over $2,000 before the payout next month

The lesson here? I guess there are two:

  • Stop buying giftcards.com cards through any portal after $2,000 in purchases if the portal payout matters
  • If giftcards.com appears on a new portal without the $2,000 per month language, go ham early

And an unsolicited piece of advise: Try large purchases with Capital One Shopping, it probably won’t behave the way you think it will.

Have a nice weekend friends!

Sometimes things are bigger than you expect them to be, like this spoon.

  1. Do this now: Link your Delta SkyMiles and Starbucks accounts for 500 SkyMiles and 150 stars after making a purchase with Starbucks before December 31, and then ignore all the fluff pieces you’ll see about the partnership in the next week; other than linking there’s nothing here worth your mental bandwidth.
  2. The American Express Business Gold 130,000 Membership Rewards sign-up bonus after $10,000 in spend in three months is now available via referral. As usual with American Express, to find the best offers:

    – Try multiple browsers
    – Connect to a VPN
    – Check mobile and desktop
    – Check with incognito
    – Check logged out and logged in

    And if it wasn’t a referral offer, you should also try arriving at the bonus landing page by searching for “American Express Business Gold” on several different search engines and clicking the first link.

    The current best referral offer I know of gives 30,000 Membership Rewards and an additional 4x on travel and transit for three months on up to $20,000 in spend for the referrer, which potentially makes this offer a total of 110,000 additional Membership Rewards for the referrer on top of 130,000 Membership Rewards for the referred (!).

  3. US Bank has a $500 bonus for a new personal checking account using promo code 2022OCT, provided you haven’t had a personal checking account at US Bank in the last two years or received a US Bank banking bonus in the same timeframe. The requirements:

    – Fund the account with $25
    – Direct deposit at least $6,000 twice (see The Daily Churn for ideas on fake direct deposits)
    – Enroll in online banking

    If you’re not in US Bank’s footprint, open a brokerage account with them and you’ll then be eligible for a checking account and bonus. (Thanks to DoC)

  4. Check your Chase offers for 10% back on Southwest purchases, up to a total of $50 back. This is reportedly available even on Chase co-branded Southwest cards.

Where the Starbucks Delta news belongs after you’ve linked your accounts.

  1. New American Express Pay-over-Time 20,000 Membership Rewards links, make sure to leave Pay-over-Time enabled for 120 days to avoid any penalty boxes:

    – https://americanexpress.com/activatenow38
    – https://americanexpress.com/activatenow39
    – https://americanexpress.com/activatenow40
    – https://americanexpress.com/activatenow41
    – https://americanexpress.com/activatenow42

    Any guesses about what the next link will look like? Yeah, me neither.

  2. Check your American Express offers for $50 off of $100 or more at Dell for purchases through October 20. You can stack this with another offer for 10% back, and with the Business Platinum’s $200 credit for a net of $275 in spend.

    As of this writing Dell is also 10x at Rakuten, meaning you’ll get 2,750 Membership Rewards or $27.50 cash back on top of the credits.

  3. Do this now: Register for Hilton’s Q4 double elite qualifying night promotion.
  4. The Chase Ink Premier card is now available for online applications. The sign-up bonus is $1,000 after $10,000 spend in three months, and the annual fee is $195. The card earns:

    – 2.5% cash back on purchases of $5,000 or more
    – 2.0% cash back otherwise

    Unlike other ink cards you can’t transfer the points as Ultimate Rewards to another premium Chase card, so this is a pure cash-back play. The Bank of America Cash Rewards family of cards are effectively 2.625% everywhere cash-back cards with Preferred Rewards, so in general those are better options for anything other than the sign-up bonus.

  5. Simon.com/volume has 72% off of purchase fees on Visa and Mastercard gift cards. The usual warnings with these: these are Metabanks, American Express won’t award cash back or points for Simon transactions, and never feed the mogwai after midnight.

For some reason my computer isn’t giving good results when I try and compute the pattern of Pay-over-Time links.

  1. In case you missed the Royal Air Maroc deal, Gary points out a new way to get AA lounge access for a big discount: You can buy Qantas Club membership for about $250 USD this week only, and that also gets you and a guest access to AA lounges when flying AA.
  2. Capital One Shopping‘s mobile app started offering 8% cash back at giftcards.com on Saturday, and it’s still alive. Last month there were no effective limits with cash-back paid out on that portal, and presumably this month will be the same.

    You don’t need to be a Capital One account holder for Capital One shopping, it’s available to anyone.

  3. Check to see if any upcoming IHG paid bookings could be converted to award nights at less than 0.5 cents per point. If so, consider taking advantage of the IHG points sale here for 0.5 cents per point and then rebook your stays as awards. (This is where I’d normally say something about a budget IHG hotel in Lubbock, Texas, but I’m trying to grow.)

The secret note passing device between guests and housekeeping at the Staybridge Suites, Lubbock, TX. I guess old habits die hard.

  1. According to an American Express Aspire Hilton credit card statement shared by Kyle (K), the COVID-era policy that Hilton Free Night Certificates are valid for any night, not just weekend nights, is now permanent.
  2. Office Depot OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 or more in Visa gift cards through Saturday. As usual:

    – 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

    These are Metabank gift cards, have a liquidation plan in place before buying a bunch. (Thanks to DoC)

  3. Staples has fee-free $200 Visa gift cards, limit eight per transaction. If you encounter staff that wants to limit you to fewer than eight, pull up the linked add and show them the bottom of page 9.
  4. Marriott is running a lame promotion through Thursday in classic Marriott fashion, and of course they’re also pushing it like it’s the best deal in travel. It’s largely forgettable, but some properties are offering discounts on cash bookings and others on award bookings, so double check anything you’ve got on the books for price drops. (Thanks to VFTW)
  5. IHG has an interesting fast track to elite status offer, registration required:

    – Stay two nights before December 23 for Gold status
    – Stay three more nights before December 31 for Platinum status

    This is very easy, low-hanging fruit for Platinum status, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to earn it either because, well, let’s say Holiday Inn Express.

Marriott’s special Oktoberfest promotional meal, also available through Thursday.

Introduction

Something that likely slipped under the radar for most of you is that in late spring, Delta moved to a new rebooking engine. The change has wide implications on how gaming certificates, same day confirmed changes, schedule changes, elite upgrades, and international changes work, and as a result I’ve had to relearn how to best utilize each of those things in Delta’s new “next gen reshop” workflow.

This post isn’t actually meant to be about Delta though, so watch for more about that here at some point in the future (especially because for the most part the public information about all of these things is now partially or completely wrong). What is relevant for today is that with Delta’s new engine:

The desktop and mobile app don’t produce the same results.

This point is true with plenty of the services we use in the hobby, including bill payment services, fintech platforms, airlines, ride-sharing services, and others.

Relevance

Obviously you should look into both the mobile app and the website when you’re exploring something (and you already knew that after reading the post’s title). What might be different when you do? Without naming services, here are a few we’ve seen recently:

  • Authentication is needed on the website, but not mobile
  • Many search results are returned on mobile, but only a few results are returned on the website
  • A transaction will work successfully on the website, and fail on mobile
  • Promo codes work on mobile but are rejected on the website
  • Spend limits are higher on mobile than on the website

Of course there are other examples out there too. When you’re exploring, look for multiple ways in.

Pictured: The computer driving a particular payment processor’s website (which explains why the mobile app made in a different century behaves differently).

[For those of you outside of Kroger land, general principles about tackling problems may still be applicable.]

We’ve talked about the strange state of Kroger Fuel points several times this year, but there are new developments that warrant yet another one of these posts. Unfortunately things aren’t great and nearly every heavy-hitter manufactured spender that was utilizing fuel points in their strategies has had accounts irrevocably locked and lost at least a little money as a result. The updates:

  • Kroger now seems to have a dedicated team seeking fuel points abuse
  • Kroger is reaching out to some heavy hitters by email, asking them to explain the account
  • Accounts are being locked in near real time while loading, and it seems to be triggered by back-to-back purchases
  • Kroger is finding ways to correlate accounts, apparently even by the purchasing credit card
  • Kroger has shutdown an account mid-redemption

So, if you still want to play the game, you need to stay under the radar. That means:

  • Get a new IP address before creating or accessing an account (some ideas here)
  • Use a new incognito window when creating or accessing an account
  • Use a new credit card number when buying (AU and employee cards can help)
  • If you do back to back transactions, use multiple cards and Kroger accounts
  • Load fuel points at a drip over several days
  • Redeem fuel points back-to-back, as quickly as possible if outside of your own geography, or as a slow drip if within your own geography

The window is very much closing on this one, stay safe!

The Kroger fuel points marketplace.

  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.