I’ve known a number of manufactured spend hall-of-famers and I’ve learned several lessons from every one of them. There’s a common theme that falls out of many of these lessons:

The best deals are often deals that already died.

I can attest to this being true. A great way to explore manufactured spend is to do a little investigative work on dead deals. You may find that they’ve risen from grave, ready to join yet another spin-off of AMC’s The Walking Dead.

Good luck!

A pirate treasure map, because today we’re mixing metaphors like no one’s business.

  1. Do this now: Register for Radisson Rewards Americas’ promotion for 3,000 bonus points per night at Radisson family hotels in the Americas through December 15, 2022.
  2. The Rakuten 2% back or 2x Membership Rewards on Safeway purchases had new conditions added yesterday: Maximum $20 back per transaction, and a maximum of 10 transactions are eligible. If you were hitting it hard, double check that you’re not at the limit already before going again.
  3. AA has a bunch of lame deals celebrating its 35 year partnership with Citi, but two of them are mildly interesting (you can use your browser’s developer tools to see the upcoming deals before they’re unhidden):

    – 535 bonus AA miles when spending $135 through the shopping portal with a Citi AA card (hello giftcards.com)
    – 350 bonus miles for redeeming a SimplyMiles card linked offer between Friday and October 7

    Loyalty points for those of us chasing status, you ask? I don’t know for sure, but my guess is the 535 bonus miles won’t count but the 350 will.

  4. Simon’s volume site has 52% off of Visa and Mastercard gift cards through Sunday using promo code SEP22FALL52. They’re Metabank gift cards so have a liquidation plan.

A sampling of the Citi+AA marketing team’s other great promotional work.

Call me out of touch, but I don’t use airline electronic boarding passes on my phone unless I’m really, really late and don’t have time to get one. Why? When I use a paper ticket:

  • The battery doesn’t die on my boarding pass
  • I don’t need to worry about the brightness setting on my boarding pass
  • I don’t need to worry about FaceID, TouchID, or a passcode to unlock my boarding pass
  • When entering a lounge or asking for help at the gate, I don’t need to hand over my phone
  • I have a place to put my checked baggage claim stickers (though I rarely actually check a bag)
  • I can still use my phone while waiting for my boarding group to be called instead of constantly fiddling with the screen to prevent it from dimming or locking at an in-opportune time

#WorldsLamestTravelHack

Weird flex but ok.

Introduction

As we’ve discussed before in multiple instances, getting eyes an account ripe with shenanigans is a good path to a shutdown of at least that account, and probably all accounts held at an institution. So you should place a high priority on avoiding the prying eyes of an analyst when your account is filled with gift card purchases, payments by phone, money order deposits, anonymous payments, or anything else that banks don’t like in bulk.

Fraud Alerts

Perhaps the quickest path to an analyst from a bank’s fraud team looking at your account to do nothing when you get a fraud alert. That’s because when a fraud alert is generated, banks will put your account in a queue for manual review and (hopefully) notify you about the alert via a push-notification, text message, or email. Good banks will typically service that queue within 24 hours, while other banks like, I don’t know, Citi, can take up to a week to get through that queue. When an analyst pulls your account out of the queue, they may not like what they see and give you the axe.

If, however, you preemptively clear an alert, it’s almost always removed from the queue and no analyst looks at your account. Even better, fraud detection algorithms are usually trainable and a cleared alert means it’s less likely that you’ll see another alert in the future.

So when you get a fraud-alert, the action item is obvious: Don’t procrastinate. Just clear it as quickly as possible to keep anyone from looking at your account, either by responding to the alert or by calling the bank’s fraud line and hopefully doing it with an automated system. Bonus tip: if you can’t clear an alert with an automated system, calling outside of normal US working hours is more likely to get you to a customer service representative that lives in another country and is generally more apathetic about what happens in an account.

MEAB Scaremongering

So that we can appropriately calibrate urgency here: There’s buying a gift card or two and depositing a money order once a month, and then there’s going ham. If you’re not in that latter category I wouldn’t worry too much and just keep doing what you’ve always done. If not though, keep the bank’s analysts out of your accounts!

A captured screen shot from Citi’s soon to be released fraud alert verification system.

  1. The Target Redcard $40 online and $40 in-store sign-up bonus is back starting on Sunday and running through October 8. Why is $80 interesting for a new card? Isn’t that way below the line? Well, normally yes, but:

    – The debit card is churnable and has no credit pull
    – The credit card is churnable and unlocks interesting games both in-store and via the phone

    For more, see Target Redcard hacks, and note that the current time between closing an old card and opening a new one is somewhere around 10 business days. (Thanks to Derthsidious)

  2. Check your American Express offers for:

    – $40 back on $200 or more at Hertz car rentals
    – $100 back on $500 or more at Marriott hotels (Edit: Brian let me know that this may be limited to Marriott Homes and Villas)
    – $60 back on $300 at Grant Hyatt hotels
    – 2% to 2.5% back on co-branded business card spend

  3. There are multiple reports of a targeted 80,000 point Bank of America credit card sign-up bonus sent directly via email with the subject “[name], don’t miss your chance at this 80,000 bonus mile offer!”. Don’t forget to read up on Bank of America churning shenanigans if you’re going to apply for this one. (Thanks to DoC)
  4. It’s apparently now possible to generate referral links for personal Citi AA cards with $100 per referral, up to five referrals per year. It doesn’t seem to work for non-AA cards or for business AA cards based on my testing. (Thanks to coole106)

Have a nice weekend!

Jumpstarting the weekend with an external battery.

  1. Do this now: Register for Q4’s 5x spend on rotating category cards at Chase and Discover.

    – Chase’s Freedom and Freedom Flex, 5x at PayPal and Walmart
    – Discover IT: 5% back at Amazon and on digital wallet purchases

    The US Bank Cash+ and Citi Dividend registration links haven’t yet updated for Q4.

  2. Do this now (too): Register for Cathay Pacific’s incoming mileage transfer bonus for mileage transfers from credit card flexible currencies through November 12. Registering gets you two things:

    – A 10% bonus on transfers of less than 30,000 miles, or 15% on larger transfers
    – Resets expiration on miles in your account earned prior to 2020

    In October 2021, there was an American Express Membership Rewards 20% transfer bonus to Cathay Pacific AsiaMiles. If that or something similar from Citi or Capital One appears I’ll be making a large transfer into the program. (Thanks to FM)

  3. Simon’s volume site has 65% off of purchase fees through tomorrow on both Visa and Mastercard gift cards using promo SUPER22SAVE65. These are Metabanks so have a liquidation plan, like, I don’t know, using one of the satellite registers at Walmart for something other than a money order.

A satellite cash register, I guess?

Introduction

Major US and world airlines all have some variation of a “flat tire” rule, so named because United Express gets flat tires nearly daily [citation needed]. The gist of these rules is that if you’re late to the airport, miss a flight, and show-up within an hour or two after departure, the airline will reaccommodate you on another flight on a space available basis.

Well, gamers gonna game, so we can take advantage of these rules.

The Game

Let’s say that you’ve booked an evening IAH-LAX-DEN versus a direct IAH-DEN flight because it was a few hundred dollars cheaper than the direct IAH-DEN flight that leaves an hour later, but you’d really still like to take the direct flight. You can see where this is going, right? As long as there’s space on that direct flight, you can probably “miss” the IAH-LAX flight time by a few minutes and be rebooked on the direct IAH-DEN flight under the flat tire rule. Why did I choose this example you ask? Uh, let’s keep it at “because reasons”.

Aside from switching to a direct routing, there are other creative reasons to do this:

  • To extend your time in a city (especially useful when you’re booked on the last flight out for the day)
  • To let you sleep in past that early morning departure
  • To avoid flying on a CRJ-200
  • To miss the last direct flight of the day and be rebooked with a connection, only to backdoor hidden-city ticket and leave the airport at the connection
  • Because upgrade chances on another flight are much better

Airline Rules

When do you have to show up at the airport to qualify for the flat rule?

  • AA: 2 hours after originally scheduled departure
  • Delta: No official policy, but generally anything within two hours is fine
  • United: No official policy, but generally anything within an hour is fine
  • Southwest: 2 hours after originally scheduled departure

Of course, there’s a good shot that if you call in to the airline’s customer service department after your missed departure, they’ll handle everything and you won’t have to go to the airport at all, but ymmv.

Caveats

Obviously playing these games could backfire in several ways, for example: flights are sold out for a few days and you’re stuck, you might end up in a middle seat, you may be routed through Lubbock, TX, and so on. The best defense to problems like these is to know what flight availability and seat-maps look like after your scheduled departure time, so make sure to tilt the odds in your favor.

Happy flying!

Another form of Russian Roulette: Taking your originally scheduled flight on an ERJ-145.

  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.