Endorphins hit differently when you get a big sign-up bonus, make a great redemption, or get a great deal. Each of these can be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars, and everyone likes to see a hockey-stick chart on their points balance right?

Sometimes though, you can “find churning money or points” by dealing with the sludge of churning. In just the last couple of months, I’ve had to:

  • Figure out how to get my Flexperks points back after an airline cancelled booking
  • Get refunded for stolen in shipping items for reselling
  • Find every hidden unsubscribe from the Motley Fool (after kicking myself for going for the portal bonus again)
  • Work with giftcards.com for e-gift cards that showed the CVV as “Error retrieving CVV”
  • Bug Alaska for missing travel credits

None of those things are fun, none of them give me the same endorphin hit of an initial churn. They’re all worth real, sizable money though. And if I didn’t do them, I’d negate plenty of the endorphin-laden kind of churning. So, the lesson:

Earning $1,000 from housekeeping is as good as $1,000 from a bank bonus. Also taxes something something.

– MEAB

Have a nice weekend friends!

Sometimes the hockey stick goes in the wrong direction.

  1. Hyatt has a promotion for Under Canvas properties for 1xAA miles per dollar through September 15, registration required. This stacks with Hyatt’s other Under Canvas promotion which runs through June 10.
  2. SAS Eurobonus has a promotion for 25% off of award flights booked by Sunday night for travel through September 30. Pricing:

    – Business: 37,500 miles US↔Europe
    – Premium Economy: 30,000 miles US↔Europe
    – Economy: 22,500 miles US↔Europe

    This is an outstanding promotion, provided you can find availability and that you’ve got SAS Eurobonus points, or at least an American Express from Great Britain with British Membership Rewards that know how to transfer to Eurobonus.
  3. Kroger stores have a promotion for 4x fuel points on One4All, Choice, and Giving gift cards through Tuesday, and if you don’t like that option, they’ll also have 4x fuel points on all third party gift cards except Amazon on Friday only.

    The best options will be cards that convert to BestBuy or Home Depot for the long promotion, or Lululemon, Marshalls, and Apple for the Friday promotion.
  4. Southwest is extending its schedule this morning for flights through January 26, 2026.

    Honorary Southwest CMO Brian M also reminds us that you’ve got to book before May 28 to avoid new Southwest’s new bag fees, basic fare classes, flight credit expiration, and other airline castoff ideas.

The newest dress code violation guidelines(*) on Southwest Airlines start on May 28
(*)I assume

Bilt, a company best known (according to me) for inadvertently advertising how to abuse their program just weeks after sending a “you’re shutdown” email followed by a “j/k j/k” email to a bunch of cardholders, added Japan Airlines Milage Bank as a 1:1 transfer partner yesterday

The landing page for the linking your Bilt and JAL accounts includes the language:

“If your JAL Mileage Bank account is less than 60 days old, there will be up to a 7 day hold before you can use JAL miles to book travel.”

It turns out that Bilt is inadvertently teaching us another lesson, which is that unseasoned accounts can often cause you to be unable to use your miles until your account is old enough or until you jump through hoops like:

Having older accounts with some activity mitigates these problems, so when you do your churning spring cleaning, consider seasoning mileage accounts that you may use in the future.

Happy Wednesday!

Seasoning on Southwest hits different.

  1. Hyatt has a promotion for 1,000 Etihad Guest miles for stays between May 15 and July 14 at properties in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, registration required.
  2. Best Western has a promotion for 10,000 bonus points after three nights for stays through September 1, registration required. You can earn the 10,000 bonus points two times, which works out to be approximately 21,034.4431 points according to ChatGPT.
  3. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 or more in Visa gift cards through Saturday. As usual:

    – Buy in even multiples of $300
    – Look for the lower-fee “Everywhere” cards if you have a good liquidation channel
    – Be approximately 1.2% sad that Dosh isn’t around anymore

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  4. Two Incomm sites have gift card promotions running through the end of May:

    – VanillaGift: Fee-free $200+ Visas using VGGRAD100
    – TheGiftCardShop.com: Bonus $10 Mastercard with $200+ using GRADBONUS35

    These are Incomm gift cards (duh).
  5. Emirates First awards are now only bookable for Emirates elites or through non-Emirates partners, most notably Qantas. Pricing for Qantas awards is more-or-less inline with prior Emirates pricing, so EK F divas can chill.

Happy Tuesday!

EK F divas eat tacos too.

Last Friday was best known because it was National Christina Day, but something a little less overt happened Friday, hidden in the noise of the National Christina Day parades: Chase shutdown some of its biggest manufactured spend abusers in a second round of purging about a month after the first round. This round of shutdowns appears to be for:

  • Floosies that accidentally or purposefully took advantage of bonus multipliers to the tune of at least a few thousand dollars
  • Churners who found their own ways to trigger bonus categories and did so with medium to heavy volume this year
  • People with large suspicious money flows in our out of their deposit accounts

The first two groups saw only credit cards close while deposit accounts were untouched. The last group saw everything closed. There are enough questions swirling around the churnosphere that probably the subject probably deserves answers beneficial to the whole commnity:

[Q]: What happens to your points when Chase shuts you down?
[A]: They stick around for 30 days unless you’re in New York, in which case it’s 90 days. In rare cases your points vanish immediately, but this is only when Chase suspects fraud or money laundering.

[Q]: Can I get back into Chase if I was shutdown?
[A]: It very much depends on the reason, and how you were shut down. Depending on the circumstance, it’ll be one of: you’ll never see another card again, you’ll be back in after five years, you’ll be approved for cards but they’ll be shut down in a month or two, or you’ll be back in 60-90 days

[Q]: Is there anything I can do to reverse the shutdown?
[A]: There are certain types of shutdowns like bust-out risk that can be overturned by the Chase Executive office. Unfortunately, this round doesn’t seem to be related to any of those types of shutdown, so for those affected in April and May the answer is probably no

[Q]: If Chase shuts me down, can I link new transfer partners in the Ultimate Rewards portal post-shutdown?
[A]: Yes

[Q]: Will pending points post after I’m shutdown?
[A]: Yes

[Q]: Do I need to worry about another round?
[A]: Probably if you know the details of what happened to trigger bonus categories and you had significant volume; otherwise probably not

[Q]: Should I self-shutdown preemptively?
[A]: I would if you were part of the bonus category shenanigans and you haven’t been axed yet

[Q]: Do I need to worry that I’ve maxed spend on my Chase Ink Cash cards at office supply stores?
[A]: No

Good luck, and happy Monday!

Next time: The story of how boomer-era Chase Manhattan Bank helped propel National Christina Day into the worldwide spotlight.

  1. American Express had several big waves of shutdowns yesterday in addition to the its ongoing, nearly daily smaller batch of shutdowns at least partially related to foreign buyer’s group behavior. Based on discussion with and datapoints from those affected, yesterday’s reasons appear to be:

    – Round two of floosies missed in the the first American Express Big Axe, even if they cut out their floosie lifestyle in February
    – Accounts with big spend at international merchants and or with charges in multiple states simultaneously
    – Holders with multiple large, missed payments

    It feels to me like American Express is trying to de-risk its accountholder portfolio and extraneous, abnormal behaviors aren’t as safe as they have been historically. I know nothing about anything, but assuming that’s true, lowering your balances with American Express every single day probably can’t hurt.
  2. The American Express Platinum brokerage cards have increased sign-up bonuses, and you can have both provided you have the right underlying brokerage accounts:

    – Schwab: 125,000 Membership Rewards after $8,000 spend in six months
    – Morgan Stanley: 150,000 Membership Rewards after $8,000 spend in six months

    The Schwab’s best use is cashing out Membership Rewards at 1.1 cents per point, and Morgan Stanley’s is cashing out at 1.0 cents per point and giving the cardholder a free Platinum authorized user card with lounge access.
  3. Starting on June 7, Hyatt will only allow 10 incoming awards (like Guest of Honor, Club Access, Suite Upgrade Awards, etc.) from another member per year.

    Apropos of nothing, last I heard it was still possible to have more than one email address.
  4. AA has a limited time heightened status match for JetBlue elites through June 30:

    – JetBlue Mosaic 1 matches to AA Platinum
    – JetBlue Mosaic 2 matches to AA Platinum Pro
    – JetBlue Mosaic 3 and 4 match to AA Executive Platinum

    These are instant matches that last four months, and you can retain the matches with flight activity. How much activity? In the most AA way possible, you won’t know until they email details on the successful match 🙄.

Have a nice weekend!

Lowering your American Express risk profile comes in many forms.

  1. Do this now: Register for IHG’s Q3 promotion for your choice of either:

    – 2,000 bonus points for every two nights
    – 8,000 bonus points for every four nights

    This is valid for stays through the end of August. If you’re going to stay at least four nights, the second option will always earn more than the first.
  2. Bel-Air, Nob Hill, and Raley’s food stores have 15x points on One4All and Lowes gift cards (ok, ok, and some other stupid ones too) through Tuesday.

    Home Depot cards converted from One4All and Lowes resale rates are currently 90%+ in the post-modern Pepper-is-still-broken world.
  3. Speaking of Pepper, they’ve launched a landing page with a waitlist for their AI based shopping platform, but you’re still unable to redeem pending coins.

    tl;dr: There’s even more reason than ever to answer “nah man!” to the “how do I get into Pepper?” question.
  4. Smart & Final and El Super stores have a $20 grocery coupon with a $100 purchase of some gift cards, notably BestBuy, airbnb, Disney, Lowes, and One4All cards through Tuesday, limit one per transaction. The $20 grocery coupon expires on May 20.

    You should be in the 90-92%+ resale range for these cards.
  5. Several people wrote about a no-lifetime language (NLL) offer link at the generic American Express Business Platinum landing page. The bonus is 150,000 Membership Rewards after $15,000 in spend and $500 off of $2,500 in flights booked through American Express Travel within three months. I didn’t post it before because:

    – It’s very specifically targeted
    – There are better offers around
    – Gamers may worry less about NLLs than others

    Since I heard from several of you, I think my assessment to leave it out was wrong, mea culpa.

For those of you new to the game.

  1. Three airline shopping portals have spend bonuses through May 12:

    – AA eShopping: 2,000 bonus miles with $800+
    – Alaska MileagePlan Shopping: 2,000 bonus miles with $400+
    – United MileagePlus Shopping: 2,500 bonus miles with $400+

    Each of these is probably worth burning through your $20,000 annual giftcards.com capacity. Now is that per portal or per giftcards.com account? If you’re not sure like me, vary both simultaneously.
  2. Southwest has a promotion for 30% off of base fares for both award and paid tickets with promo code SUNNY30, which is valid for travel booked by tomorrow night and flights between May 27 and November 19.

    The validity period for this promo is really long, suggesting all is not well at the airline presently being haunted by the ghost of Herb Kelleher past.
  3. Chase’s tool for viewing pre-qualified credit cards is back online. If you’re preapproved though, don’t apply through the tool. Instead use a referral link from another player or a friend, or use Rakuten.
  4. Citi Offers has a card linked offer for $50 off of $200+ in JetBlue flights through June 30. Also, Citi sucks at correlation, and you can often find the same offer on multiple cards.
  5. Chase Offers has a card linked offer for 10% off of Southwest fares with up to $40 cash back, and a card linked offer for $30 off of $150+ at Turo. Chase’s offer system is exactly like Citi’s offer system.

When you feel a knot in your stomach on a Southwest flight, don’t stress; it’s just the ghost of Herb haunting management.