December 30, 2015

Do This Now: Deals & Offers That Expire on 12/31

Last year, I published a year end checklist of sorts with various deals, offers & promotions that I thought were worth considering maximizing before they expired. A lot of you found it helpful so I did the same for this year with a quick list of offers or promotions that expire on 12/31/15 that you should seriously consider taking advantage of.

The clock is ticking…

1. Use the Airline Credit on the American Express Platinum ($200) or Premier Rewards Gold ($100) – Even though the official language regarding this credit is meant to cover baggage fees, lounge passes etc., I always buy gift cards to make sure I fulfill this credit, since I wouldn’t complete it on fees alone. Buying $50 Delta e-gift cards or $100 American Airlines gift cards does the trick. Make sure you have chosen the airline first!

2. Maximize Chase Freedom Q4 Bonus & Earn 10x at Amazon – The Chase Freedom Q4 5 10% Bonus category is Amazon, Zappos, Audible, & Diapers.com and you will earn 10% cash back up to $1,500 in spend in these categories. I’m a big Amazon shopper so I will always stock up on Amazon gift cards to make sure I hit the $1,500 in spend. You could take a similar approach for the other stores by buying gift cards for future purchases. I’ll gladly take earning 10x on all my Amazon purchases for next year!

If you plan to buy Amazon Gift Cards or reload your Amazon Gift Card Balance to maximize this promotion, please consider using my Amazon link here. I do earn a small referral for any purchase – thank you for your support!

3. Use Those Great Amex Offers – In the past quarter, American Express has released some of the better Amex Offers which can offer some substantial savings especially if you have multiple Amex cards in your household like I do. Here is a quick summary of the better offers expiring on 12/31 – if you don’t have anything to buy, consider a gift card.

Amazon – Spend $60, Get a $15 Statement Credit
Best Buy – Spend $199, Get a $20 Statement Credit
Walmart – Spend $35, Get a $15 Statement Credit
Dunkin Donuts – Spend $10, Get a $5 Statement Credit
AirBnb – Spend $100, Get a $50 Statement Credit
Newegg – Spend $200, Get a $25 Statement Credit

4. Maximize Discover + Apple Pay Promotion for 10% Cashback on In-Store Purchases – This is a huge deal that is valid on the first $10,000 of spending so you could earn a cool $1,000 on top of all normal cashback from Discover (such as their Double Cashback promotion so this is really worth $2,000). If you have no clue what I am talking about, read this post from Frequent Miler.

5. Apply for a CitiGold Checking Account for 50k AA Miles or 50k Thank You Points – You must have an American Airlines credit card (Platinum Select) for the AA offer using code 42ERCWNQU6 or a Thank You Points earning card (Prestige, Premier, Preferred) for the Thank You offer using code 42ERCZ42PY. I’ve written extensively about taking advantage of this offer and how to do it here, here and here (though this was a savings account which is also worth reading about).

6. Use the $300 Ritz Carlton Credit Card Travel Credit – This is similar to the American Express airline credit with the main differences being it can used across many airlines and that the credit is not automatic. You must call in and it has effectively gotten much tougher to get credit for items that normally don’t qualify for a credit, such as airline gift cards. You can try to go down that path if you are willing to fib about the actual charge so I recommend buying lounges passes or upgrading to economy comfort/plus seats for travel already booked for next year. You can see what others have had success with here.

7. Use the Citi Prestige $250 Travel Credit – Unless you have a December 31 close date on your statement, it is too late to do this but for those that do, make sure you use the $250 airline credit from the Prestige card. Unlike the Ritz or Amex cards mentioned above, this credit is not calendar year based but rather expires for the year on your December statement close date. So for example, if you statement closed on 12/20, it is now too late to use your 2015 credit but you can start using your 2016 credit today since that statement will close in 2016. This credit is also good for the purchase of anything from the airline – including actual tickets!

8. $15 Statement Credit for Using a Chase Freedom with Visa Checkout – This is pretty simple to execute, go to a store that accepts Visa Checkout (Staples, Newegg, Gap and more) and use your Chase Freedom for a purchase of $15 or more to see a $15 statement credit in a few weeks.

These are the ‘bigger’ offers I could think of – what did I miss?

December 21, 2015

Monday Musings – How to Get a Retention Bonus, Hyatt Diamond Success, & More

My Monday Musings are a little light today and I expect my posts in general to be a bit more sporadic until New Year’s as I will be enjoying the holiday season. That said, if another deal like the Etihad mistake fares around Christmas 2014 occur again, I’ll make sure to get a post up or at the very least, tweet about it from @PointsCentric.

1. I was interviewed for an article about retention bonuses on CreditCardForum.com and I thought the piece was well done. Another blogger, Miles to Memories, was also interviewed for the article and between us, I think we gave some great tips and tricks on how to evaluate and handle a retention call. I highly recommend reading the article or at least bookmarking it the next time you go to cancel a card.

2. Finally, after several back & forths with Hyatt over the past month, I am now officially a Hyatt Diamond member after a successful match of my Hilton Gold status! As most of you know, Hyatt has tightened this status match to currently be for SPG Platinum members who have stayed 20 nights this year. However, I submitted my request for a status match the morning this promotion was announced and argued with Hyatt that they should honor my request because I submitted it before the terms of the offer were changed.

I won’t get into details on the exchanges with them but in short, I basically presented my argument on why Hyatt should match me as I had followed the rules of the promotion at the time I submitted it and it was unfair to change the terms after I already submitted my application. The Gold Passport team kept refusing the match but once Hyatt got their consumer affairs team involved, my account was finally upgraded. This obviously isn’t replicable unless you submitted your request before noon EST on 11/20 (which is when Hyatt told me the terms of the offer changed). If you did, I would push for the status even if you’ve been denied. In the case, perseverance was key. I’m excited to try my new diamond status at the Grand Hyatt Kauai next year.

3. Speaking of Kauai, I finally got my first class Hawaii award flights I mentioned a few weeks ago booked. I’ve been monitoring United award space between EWR-HNL like a hawk (checking several times daily) and I finally saw space open on a Sunday red-eye home. I took a chance and instead of booking it right then and there with United miles for 40k miles per person, I transferred Citibank Thank You Points to Singapore to save 10k miles per person. I had to wait about 26 hours for the transfer but lucky for me, the award space was still there. Right now we are planning on spending 3 nights in Honolulu and 6 nights at the Grand Hyatt Kauai. For Honolulu anyone have recommendations for a nice hotel?

UA BusinessFirst EWR – HNL Seats

4. I’ve pretty much stopped all reselling activities until the New Year. I’m relatively new to reselling & I might be overly cautious by doing this but I am worried about the Christmas hangover on sales and the increased threat of returns. If I see a screaming deal, I might jump on it but for now I’m content to sit out a few weeks and start fresh for 2016.

5. Lastly, I thought this was an impressive article on hacking movie tickets. I’m not a movie person (seriously, the list of classic or “must-see” movies I haven’t seen is quite embarrassing) so this isn’t for me but still nice to know if you are into movies.

December 18, 2015

The Easiest Way to Get Targeted for a 50,000 Point Signup Bonus on the Chase United MileagePlus Explorer Visa

A few months ago I posted about a 50k offer I received for the Chase United MileagePlus Explorer Visa and as I noted, there seemed to be one telling clue on how I got the offer. On the top of the mailer, it stated “Congratulations, Ralph on recently earning miles” and by looking at the activity in my United account, I was quickly figured out it was related to online shopping done through the United MileagePlus Shopping portal. I suggested back then that others try shopping through the portal to generate an offer but I wasn’t sure if that actually would work. With the help of some clients and others, I can confirm in most cases, earning miles via the United shopping portal will result in a targeted mailer for a 50,000 point offer a few weeks later.

To test this out, I asked several clients who were looking to get this credit card to make a purchase of any size through the portal and track if/when they got a mailer for a 50,000 point offer. In these examples, some clients previously held the Chase United Explorer card (myself included) while others did not. One person even had just created a United account recently and never had any activity with United before. In almost all cases, everyone reported receiving a mailer about 2-3 weeks after the miles posted to their account.

Some of my mailers…

My experience was similar though I did not receive a mailer for every individual shopping transaction. From November onward, I shopped through the portal 5 times but only got 3 offers in the mail. Now this could be because several transaction were on the same day so they got lumped together perhaps? Or the system is programmed to send them at different intervals as interestingly all my offers have different links and expiration dates. Here is the one I got in the mail this week. For those who want to try and see if they are targeted, try this link: UnitedExplorerCard.com/A123

I feel rather confident in suggesting this as a solid approach to try and earn a targeted offer for a 50,000 point signup bonus (and 5,000 bonus points for adding an authorized user) on the Chase United Mileageplus Explorer Card. Of course I can’t guarantee this will work but in my testing with clients, I’ve covered most of the scenarios, it seemed to work for many people and there is little to no downside to trying this. Remember though if you are a former cardholder, this bonus offer is not available if you received a new cardmember bonus for this card in the past 24 months.

If anyone else has experience with getting a targeted offer for this card, please let me know in the comments!

December 14, 2015

Monday Musings – Craigslist Reselling Fail, AwardWallet Love & Please Don’t Get the Premier Rewards Gold Amex Now

1. If you’ve followed my posts over the past few months, I’ve talked about how I have been using reselling as a way to increase my manufactured spending and for the most part, I’ve had a lot of success. However, this past weekend I tried selling a laptop on Craigslist and got a pretty interesting exchange out of it.

The quick backstory is a guy named Alex emailed about the laptop asking some normal questions about it and after a few email exchanges, he wanted to come by to pick it up. I said no problem and that morning, we exchanged cell phone numbers. Without any other communications, this is what happened:

Umm…what? I have so many questions. Was this guy just a prankster? Or was this text meant for someone else? Did he think I was into him (for the record I’m happily married)? So many unknowns but after being annoyed that he wasted my time, I got a good laugh out of the whole situation. And I imagined to unload the laptop on Amazon the next day so I did get the last laugh.

2. I love AwardWallet – it’s by far the easiest way to track the balances and expiration dates of all my (and my wife’s) airline and hotel loyalty accounts in one place instead of having to log into each and every account. From this post, I learned Award Wallet can actually do a lot more and track your rewards for stores like Best Buy, Staples, CVS and even monitor your cashback balances at shopping portals like Topcashback, Shop at Home and eBates. Very cool feature I didn’t know about that will save even more time now. If you haven’t signed up for AwardWallet yet, I highly recommend it. And if you’d like an invite to AwardWallet’s new beta version let me know – I have a few invites I can share.

3. I refuse to link to this post since its only purpose as a post was to serve as an advertisement but Ben at One Mile at a Time posted why you should get the American Express Premier Rewards card now. His argument, as I read it, basically stated to get the card now because 1) the 25,000 point signup bonus is basically as good as it gets since American Express doesn’t have large signup bonuses anymore and 2) you can get the $100 airline credit for both 2015 and again for 2016 in your first year as a card member.

I’ll start with the second point above in which Ben is absolutely correct but he fails to mention you can always double dip on this $100 credit in one membership year. Let’s say you waited until Feb. 2016 to get the card, you can still double dip on the credit in 2016 and 2017 while it is still just one membership year. So his argument to get the card now fails since this double dip is almost always available. If he argued for a potential triple dip, I might have bought that as a legitimately good reason.

For his other main point, I think it is a poor idea to just settle for the standard 25,000 point signup bonus. Remember, American Express will only give you the bonus once a lifetime so ideally you want to make each applicaion count and apply for the card at or near its peak. So why rush to get it now as he says since the signup bonus is only 25,000 points which you can get at almost anytime? I wouldn’t settle for less than 50,000 points on this card unless I was in a crunch for MR points. I think for a “prominent” blogger Ben is giving some awful advice here.

4. Lastly my mini, trivial rant of the day. Why do transfers from different banks to the same frequent flyer program (in this case Singapore Krisflyer) take different amounts of time? I think the answer relates to how the bank processes it but it’s kind of crummy that Amex can send my points over to Singapore in just hours while for Citibank I am waiting over a day now. Yes, I know that’s well within the expected timeframe of 1-2 days for Citibank but it’s frustrating when one bank can do the same exact thing much better. Fingers crossed the award space doesn’t disappear.

P.S. Don’t get forget today is the last day to book any Hyatt awards before Hyatt takes the Gold Passport loyalty program offline for a few days. If you don’t book today, you must wait until Dec. 19th to book any type of awards or even access your account.

December 10, 2015

So I Guess It Is Finally Time to Get the Chase Fairmont Visa Credit Card

I’m sure many of you saw this make the rounds yesterday in the blogosphere but Accor Hotels will be acquiring Fairmont Hotels (along with Raffles & Swissôtel hotels) and the deal is expected to close sometime in 2016. I was personally was shocked to see this announcement as it came out of left field from a chain, Accor, that many of us know nothing about except that they hand out their worthless top tier stauts like candy. After the annoucement of Marriott’s acquisition of Starwood, it’s safe to say the hotel landscape has got markedly worse for us in the points & miles game.

This leads me to a point that I don’t think is being mentioned enough in light of this news and that is the last opportunity to apply for the Chase Fairmont Visa credit card. Historically, this card hasn’t got much play on the blogs due to it not being a great card to put any spend on, Fairmont’s crappy loyalty program (no other way to earn or transfer points in, a confusing reward program), and was probably also ignored due to the fact it didn’t pay bloggers any commission (just being honest here). Either way, the initial signup bonus of 2 free nights is comparable to the Chase Hyatt Visa or Citi Hilton Reserve credit cards and is a card I am now considering adding to my next round of credit card applications.

Key Details of the Offer:

Two Free Nights at Any Fairmont Hotel after spending $3,000 in 3 months
Complimentary Fairmont Premier status – Bascially you get 2x $25 food certificates, 1 room upgrade certificate, 1 suite upgrade certificate and some other smaller perks
$95 Annual Fee is Waived for the 1st Year
5 Fairmont Reward Points for every $1 spent on Fairmont stays, 2 for every $1 spent on airline tickets purchased directly with airlines, at car rental agencies, and on transit and commuting, and 1 for every $1 spent on all other purchases
Annual Free Night after Spending $12,000 or more in a year

Basically if you want to take advantage of two free nights at any Fairmont this card should now be on your radar before Chase is forced to stop accepting applicants for this card. I am recommending this card only for the signup bonus of two free nights and I would not put a dime of spend over $3,000 on it as the rewards program is pretty awful. You earn Fairmont Rewards points but you can’t redeem them for free nights at Fairmont hotels as there is no award chart like most other hotel chains. Instead, you can basically redeem the points for a penny each for gift cards or apply them to the cost of a hotel or airline ticket at the same penny per point value. So that $3,000 of spending, assuming no bonus categories, gets you a $30 gift card somewhere – not enticing and you can do much better with other cards.

Unlike with other hotels mergers (and even airline consolidations) there is no guarantee you will be able to obtain a credit card that will enable you to earn points or free nights for these current Fairmont properites like the Chase Fairmont does now. In fact, Accor doesn’t even have an affiliated credit card that I am aware of and I highly doubt one will ever be made available to the US market. So essentially this is your last chance to get two free nights at any current Fairmont properties. With many Fairmonts being quite expensive and considered high end properties, this could be an easy way to enjoy a luxurious weekend at some premier properties. If both you and your significant other get this card, that’s 4 free nights- definitely enough for a long weekend.

There are some fantastic Fairmonts around the globe that I would love to enjoy two free nights at. I’ve personally visited the Fairmont Kea Lani in Maui which gets great reviews, a friend enjoyed his stayed at the Fairmont Mayakoba, and the ones in Bermuda look inviting for a long weekend (in fact from the East Coast this card plus some Avios makes for an easy & free long weekend).