1. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion on all third party gift-cards running through April 19. The consequences of another 4x sale on the ailing bulk (BestBuy, Nike, Home Depot, Apple, Amazon, etc) gift card markets are:

    – Resale rates, already low, are likely to fall by 0.5% or 1.0% over the next two weeks
    – Fuel points demand is likely to saturate for points expiring in May
    – Fuel points resale rates will likely fall by a dollar or two
    – Capacity from major bulk buyers will be completely filled for the month

    Let’s look on the bright-side: I could be wrong.

  2. American Express Personal Platinum cards are now refunding up to $20 per month for Hulu, Disney+, and ESPN+ streaming services. Just make sure you’ve registered for the Entertainment coupon (or whatever AmEx is calling it now) before switching your billing over or before subscribing.
  3. SimplyMiles has an offer for 465 AA miles at Uber and Uber Eats up to three times with a purchase of at least $20. I’d normally want to combine this with the monthly American Express Uber coupon (or whatever AmEx is calling it now), but SimplyMiles only works with Mastercards. I guess that means I’ll pair it with the Citi merchant offer, which coincidentally is also valid for three uses. Why would I care about 465 miles? First, because it’s 465*3, but really it’s because they’re elite qualifying and I’ve fallen into the AA loyalty points trap apparently (Thanks to reader Dave)
  4. It seems like Star-Alliance was jealous of last week’s $49 offer for unlimited domestic AA and Alaska lounge access and they bullied ANA into running a similar program: Status match to Star Alliance Gold for access to United Clubs when flying United or any other Star Alliance airlines, even domestically, even in coach. This status match costs $0 and lasts through March 2023, so it’s [DIVIDE_BY_ZERO]x better than the oneworld version. On the other hand, you’ll be probably be flying United after using the lounge so there’s that. (Thanks to Loyalty Lobby)

United Club’s famous “baked bean stuffed chocolate donut surprise”.

Introduction

Let’s get something out of the way before we discuss: Return fraud is real, and I’m not suggesting that you do anything like it. That said, there are a number of reasons that you may want to make correlation between a charge and a refund difficult, for example when you’re working with bank sign-up bonuses at a bank that rhymes with “mace”. Here’s an annoying and real issue with this bank. Let’s suppose that you:

  • Apply for a credit card with a sign-up bonus after spending $4,000
  • Spend $3,992 on random things
  • Spend $10 on three bottles of kombucha, which triggers your sign-up bonus posting and makes this transaction special
  • Notice mold in the kombucha, and return it, which gets your $10 back and leads to a clawback of your bonus (again, that transaction was special)
  • Buy something else to push you back over $4,000, but the bonus doesn’t post
  • Open a case with the bank and wait 6-8 weeks for it to resolve

We could fix this in a few ways, for example by returning two bottles in one transaction and a third bottle in another transaction, or by buying a stick of gum in the same transaction as returning three bottles so that the refund amount doesn’t match the original purchase amount. Either way, we’re preventing the bank’s algorithms from matching the original purchase with refund.

Airfare Specific Tricks

Thinking about how to break automatic correlation is a fun mental exercise, can save your sign-up bonus, and is potentially interesting for other reasons too. Now, let’s discuss getting the same effect with airfares. Some angles work in general while others are airline specific. To set you on the right path, consider the following:

  • Buy a refundable airfare, switch it to another slightly more expensive flight, pay the difference
  • Look for an upcharge that refunds automatically with airfare, like:
    • Pet charges
    • Seat selection fees
    • Cabin upgrades
  • Buy a refundable airfare, and call the airline to book into a higher fare bucket
  • Change a refundable ticket to a cheaper flight to get an immediate partial refund

See, mental exercises are fun too!

Only at MEAB can we correlate moldy tea with bank sign-up bonuses. You’re welcome I guess?

It’s “alliteration (at the) Alila” day I guess 🤷‍♀️.

  1. The Point debit card will have 20x back on Delta, American, United, Southwest, and JetBlue purchases through through April 10 for up to $250 in spend per airline. (Thanks to Neil on the MEAB Slack for the correction from $500 in spend)

    If you don’t have immediate airfare plans, I’d book a main cabin fare on any of these airlines, wait a couple of days, and refund it to a travel voucher or wallet for future use.

  2. Hyatt is adding new all-inclusive brands and resorts to its portfolio. There’s a nice list at Doctor of Credit. A travel hacking tip: Hyatt’s all inclusive properties can get punitive with the number of points required to add a third and fourth guest. Instead, you’ll usually have good luck and a cheap up-charge by booking two with points and then calling the property directly to ask about cash rates for adding a third and fourth guest.
  3. The least sexy but potentially heaviest-of-hitters in the MEAB Unsung Hero family, the Citi Shop Your Way Rewards Mastercard, sent out a new targeted spend offer for April, May, and June. This one is for 15% cash back or 15x ThankYou Points for between $500 and $600 in spend per month (up to $90 back each month) at gas, grocery, and restaurants; talk about a gimmie. The subject for my offer was: “Matthew, activate your 15% back in statement credits offer now“.

    For those keeping score at home: In March this card payed me approximately $270 in statement credits and 150,000 Shop Your Way Rewards points with various targeted stacked offers.

The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card if it were a drink.

It was a busy weekend in the travel hacking space:

  1. We saw transfer bonuses all over the place:

    – Membership Rewards 40% transfer bonus to AerLingus Avios
    – Membership Rewards 40% transfer bonus to British Airways Avios
    – Membership Rewards 25% transfer bonus to Marriott Bonvoy (don’t do it)
    – Ultimate Rewards 25% transfer bonus to AirFrance/KLM FlyingBlue
    – LifeMiles 25% transfer bonus from Citi ThankYou Points

    Remember that Avios can be transferred between different partners, including the newly added Qatar Airways which has sweet spots for premium cabin travel to the middle east and south pacific.

  2. There’s an American Express offer for $100 back on $300 (or $350) of spend at Delta Airlines. Don’t forget that you can turn this into a travel credit by booking a non-basic economy fare, waiting until after midnight the day after booking, and then canceling.
  3. The Target RedCard debit and credit card offer for $40 off of $40 online and another $40 off of $40 in store is back through April 16. These are churnable as long as you wait at least a week between closing an old account and opening a new one. Even though a $80 sign-up bonus for a credit card is relatively small, there’s a lot of value to be had with that card.
  4. Costco is selling $500 Alaska Airlines gift cards for $400 in store. With the partnership with AA, you can book certain American Airlines flights marketed by Alaska with this gift card too.
  5. Multiple reports of being approved for a sixth credit card with American Express have been trickling in since Christmas, and as recently as Friday public data-points have surfaced too. It seems that the old five credit card limit is being phased out, or at least the number of people stuck at five is shrinking.

    My own data-point: I opened a sixth credit card in December, then closed a different credit card a couple of weeks ago. Two days later, I applied for a new sixth credit card and was approved (Thanks to C F Frost for giving me guidance on timing with those card changes).

Happy Monday!

With a 25% transfer bonus, you too can cash-out your Membership Rewards at 0.45 cents per point for a hotel room and free breakfast (Platinum elites and higher only) at the Marriott Courtyard in Lubbock, TX. Yum?

Starting a year or two ago with a slight murmur, which then turned into a rumbling, and now into an earthquake, sportsbooks have the hit the manufactured spend community and churning world in force, now at peak with an exposé article at Bloomberg. Whether or not you’re a gambler or have any interest in gambling, sportsbooks ought to be a part of your manufactured spend and churning toolkit because:

Sounds a lot like the manufactured spend and churning playbook, eh? With that in mind, a few notes:

  • Even if sportsbooks aren’t legal in your state, you can still participate anytime you’re in a state where they are legal
  • You can play both sides of a bet on two different sportsbooks to avoid losses (betting arbitrage sites help make this easy)

Great. So, let’s chat about how to avoid shutdowns:

  • Bet all the money you add before cashing out (just play both sides to avoid losing)
  • Bet in roundish numbers like a normal person would

Good luck, and have a nice weekend!

How is this related to sportsbooks? I’m not sure, but it had to be published so here we are.
  1. Check your Chase credit cards at chase.com/mybonus/ for targeted spend offers for Q2. Offers have been reported on both business and personal cards for:

    – 5x for up to $1,500 in spend at grocery and gas stations
    – 5x for up to $1,500 in spend at grocery, gas stations
    – 5% back for up to $200 in spend at gas stations

    If the website gives a strange error, try incognito mode. (Thanks to this thread at reddit)

  2. Check your Point.app debit card for a targeted offer for $10 back on $10+ in spend by this evening. The email subject to look for is “Get $10 in points on your next purchase“.

    There are still increased $150 “golden ticket” referral opportunities floating around for new referrals, and those expire today. Unfortunately most referrers have a limit of one to three golden ticket referrals so they can be hard to chase down but they do still exist.

  3. You can get one year of Alaska and American Airlines lounge access (even when flying those airlines domestically) for 49 euros through Royal Air Maroc’s new status match promotion, and the matched oneworld status lasts through the end of March 2023.

    – Register for a Royal Air Maroc Safar Flyer account (no, that spelling is not a typo)
    – Apply for a status match at safarflyerstatusmatch.com (also not a typo)

    What’s the catch? There’s always a catch, right? Well, unfortunately yes. The Safar Flyer website is buggy and often doesn’t work when registering a new account. The annoying workaround is to call them at (800) 344-6726, select option 3 at the main menu, and then hope you win agent roulette and find one that’s willing to create an account over the phone. As a bonus, you’ll get to hear repeatedly about their Magic Universe (not a typo) program for children while on hold. (Thanks to manageroftheyear)

  4. Check your Citi Merchant Offers for:

    – $10 back on Uber, valid for up to four uses through the end of April
    – $10 back on Uber Eats, valid for up to four uses through the end of April

    (Thanks to Raymond via the MEAB Slack)

Royal Air Maroc’s Magic Universe. You know, for kids.

Let’s start with a quick reminder: You have only today and tomorrow to knock out any Q1 5x bonus spend and any end-of-month credits, especially omnipresent with American Express “premium” cards (you know, the premium cards that offer Walmart+ credits).

With that housekeeping out of the way, we’ve got an airline centric-ish day:

  1. Use promo code SAVE20NOW at Southwest.com through tomorrow evening for 20% off of point redemptions for award travel through May 25. Unfortunately you won’t be able to take advantage of this discount with the Southwest changes trick because mass schedule changes have already happened through June.
  2. Alaska has partnered with Air Tahiti Nui. The major change for travel hackers is the ability to redeem the good Air Tahiti Nui availability on the fifth freedom LAX to Paris route, and Alaska mileage earning on Air Tahiti Nui paid flights.

    I guess this makes it easier to French Polynesia with Alaska miles too.

  3. American Airlines will start expiring miles on Friday. It’s a good time to check your AAdvantage accounts to make sure you’re not going to let Toby win lose miles in your account.

    Note that although I’m sure AA didn’t really intend for this trick to work, you can currently book an award ticket and then cancel it the next day with AA’s free award cancel policy to extend your miles. There are other tricks for extending your miles in this Flyertalk thread too.

  4. There’s a new bonus iteration on the American Express Personal Platinum “add an authorized user, spend $2,000 in six months, earn 20,000 Membership Rewards” bonus offer. Because the offer code is different than past variants, it will almost certainly post even if you’ve done (many) of these in the past. (Thanks to SideShowBob233)

Happy Wednesday!

Exclusive: Screenshots extracted from the AA Head of Loyalty’s phone may explain AA’s punitive mileage expiration policy.

We’ve got a grab-bag for today:

  1. The Bilt credit card is now wide-open for applications, and based on coverage in the space it’s likely paying a big affiliate commission for new applications too. My affiliate relationship-less opinion:

    – Hyatt, AA, and FlyingBlue are great travel partners
    – It’s easy to earn 50,000 points by paying P2 $50,000 per year in rent via a check
    – No annual fee
    – 3x on dining is easy to game
    – The lack of sign-up bonus is lame (I’d expect to get at least $750 out of a sign-up bonus typically)

    If I weren’t shooting to be under 5/24 I’d have gotten this card a long time ago, and I’d expect that I’d already be shutdown too. That said the jury is still out on how quickly Bilt will bring down the axe.

  2. American Express has targeted more accounts for:

    – 20,000 or 30,000 Membership Rewards for enrolling in Pay-over-Time (thanks to sctrader)
    – 90,000 Membership Rewards for a no-lifetime language (NLL) Business Gold card, check for a pop up on your dashboard for other accounts

    (Thanks to sctrader and churnandburn58 for the first reports of each, respectively)

  3. Citi’s banking division is emulating Will Smith by slapping the credit card division in the face after being told it wasn’t good enough: They’ve got retention offers for checking accounts through their automated chat system for between $50 and $200 based on your account type. To enroll:

    – Log into your bank account at citi.com
    – Click “How can we help?”
    – Type “close account”
    – Choose “Checking” in the dialog and hit next

    The bonus comes as a statement credit after you make a purchase with your debit card of at least the offer amount.

Citi’s banking division is sick of playing second fiddle to the credit card division.