{"id":11161,"date":"2025-01-28T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-28T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=11161"},"modified":"2025-01-27T23:21:43","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T06:21:43","slug":"tuesday-gift-card-updates-past-shenanigans-and-marriott-devaluation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/28\/tuesday-gift-card-updates-past-shenanigans-and-marriott-devaluation\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday: Gift Card Updates, Past Shenanigans, and Marriott Devaluation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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  1. Simon Malls will stop selling gift cards in-store on Friday<\/a>. The glory days of Simon gift cards have passed, but because we like to study the past to learn for the future, there was a time when:

    – They carried $1,000 GCs in-store
    – Some malls coded as restaurants with some issuers
    – The cards could be easily liquidated at Safeway, Kroger, or Walmart

    None of those things are true any more.
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  2. Regarding the elephant in the room: I think Pepper manufactured spenders are largely informed about the current risks involved with the platform<\/a>. If and when it fails, I think the probable outcome is:

    – Gift cards issued more than a week prior are probably safe
    – Gift cards issued in the last days of the platform may<\/em> be zeroed by BlackHawk
    – Floated coins will be lost

    Why bring this up today? Yesterday Pepper offered effectively unlimited quantities of Amazon gift cards at 22% cash back. Most of that 22% won’t post for a few weeks. So, I guess I’m reading the room which I’m good at about 50% of the time. I still have floated coins with Pepper, but I’ve been scaling way back. I actively chose not to buy yesterday.
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  3. In a move surprising only the ghost of Spiro Agnew, Marriott devalued its award chart for higher end properties<\/a>. A few notes:

    – High end property redemptions increased by as much as 80%
    – Don’t trust a blogger’s valuation of points, use your own redemptions as a guide
    – My valuation of Marriott points was already low at ~ 0.5 cents each, this doesn’t help

    New valuation? Still 0.5 cents, but a low 0.5 cents.
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  4. Bilt’s rent day promotion for Saturday is a 20%-100% transfer bonus to Avianca LifeMiles<\/a>, depending on your status in the program. You’ve still got time to earn points that’ll post by Saturday. I’m certain there’s going to be a limit on the bonus, but I can’t find it published and I’m of course not part of Bilt’s marketing campaigns because reasons.

    Avianca has strange loopholes that lead to great redemptions, but availability often isn’t great.
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  5. Staples stores have $200 fee-free Mastercards in store through Saturday<\/a>, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward gift cards.
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    \"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

    More Bonvoy math.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    More Bonvoy math.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[53,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gift-cards","category-hotels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11161"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11168,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11161\/revisions\/11168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}