Alaska Airlines Visa Two Browser Trick

May 13, 2015

The Alaska Airlines Visa with $100 Statement Credit is Now Easier to Get with a Direct Link

A real quick post but I broke the news Sunday that it was once again possible to get a $100 statement credit when applying for the Bank of America Alaska Airlines credit card. In order to get the offer with the $100 credit attached, you had to pretend to book a flight and click a link to the offer on the final payments page as I couldn’t find a working link to the offer. However, I’m happy to say Maximizing Money did me one better and has found a direct working link to the offer!

NewAlaskaAir100SC

Click here for the link to apply.

My advice from my previous post on this offer remains the same – you can (or rather should) pick up multiple Alaska cards in one day and it will result in just one pull. Don’t be discouraged by the small signup bonus of 25,000 miles – Alaska miles are valuable as they can be used on Delta or American but more interestingly can be used to fly Emirates and other premium carriers like Cathay Pacific. In fact, if you acquired four of these bad boys Bank of America would be paying you $100 to fly to the Middle East/Maldives/India/Asia in first class with an onboard shower on some routes. That my friends is a pretty good deal and why you should care about this card.

 

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April 20, 2015

PSA: Don’t Apply for the Alaska Airlines Credit Card Unless It Has a $100 Statement Credit

Update (5/10:) Link below does not work anymore but I found a workaround to still get the $100 statement credit.

If I’m being honest, one of the things that really irks me about this hobby is several well-known bloggers not making their readers aware of the best offer on a particular credit card. The latest example is the Alaska Airlines credit card which according to these expert bloggers only has a 25,000 mile signup bonus. The truth is there is actually a public offer that has a 25,000 mile signup bonus + a $100 statement credit for spending $1,000 in 3 months.

Alaskan Airlines

The best part about this card (and Bank of America cards in general) is that you can get several of them on the same day for just one credit pull. I was able to get 2 Alaska credit cards on my wife’s latest churn on the same day without issue. Recently Frequent Miler reported he was able to get 4 Virgin Atlantic credit cards (which are also issued by Bank of America) in his crazy quest for a week on Necker Island. It is nice to see Bank of America being so liberal giving out multiple cards on the same day when other banks have tightened up this practice.

While this may not be groundbreaking news to many of you, consider this your friendly public service announcement to always make sure to apply for the Alaska Airlines Visa with the $100 statement credit. With every application, Bank of America is essentially paying you $25 ($100 statement credit – $75 annual fee) to acquire 25,000 Alaska miles. If you were able to get 3 of these cards in a day, that one credit pull would be worth 75,000 miles in addition to receiving $75 dollars. That sure beats paying $225 for the same amount of miles if you didn’t know about this offer and listened to those other bloggers.

February 4, 2015

Positive Updates on the Two Browser Trick for the Alaska Airlines Credit Card

Update Dec. 2015: The two browser trick is dead. 

About two weeks ago I wrote, what turned out to be one of my most popular posts so far in 2015, about how the Two Browser Trick was Back with the Bank of America Alaska Airlines Credit Card. In case you missed it, I tested whether you could apply for two Alaska Airline credit cards simultaneously in two different browsers and get the signup bonus of 25,000 miles + $100 statement credit on each. I applied for two personal cards for my wife and she was instantly approved for both with identical $20,000 credit lines on each card. Two days after approval, the miles posted to her Alaska account, since the miles are awarded upon approval and there is no minimum spending requirement (you do need to spend $1,000 for the $100 statement credit).

Confirmation of miles posting

Confirmation of miles posting

Well, I’m happy to report on two more positive updates I learned from doing this two browser trick.

1) The Two Credit Pulls Are Combined Into One – When I posted the initial blog on this trick, I speculated that there would be two credit pulls from Bank of America but I hoped they would automatically get combined into one. I pulled my wife’s Experian credit report last night for free using her Annual Free Credit Report and sure enough, there is now only one pull from Bank of America!

One only pull from Bank of America!

One only pull from Bank of America!

I did an App-O-Rama for her on January 10th and picked up a total of 5 cards including the Chase Hyatt Visa (two free nights at the Park Hyatt Maldives) and an American Express Hilton HHonors Surprass (80k HHonors points) which you see the credit pulls for in the screenshot above. I unfroutnately don’t have the credit report from right after the application but almost a month later now, her credit report clearly shows just one inquiry from Bank of America. Since there is only one credit inquiry after the fact, I would argue that almost everyone should be applying for two Alaska Airline cards at the same time to get double the miles for the same credit pull. While it does seem Alaska is blocking award redemptions on Emirates First Class after March 28th, you can still book business class in addition to all their other partners.

2) You Can Get the Alaska Airline Business Card on the Same Day As Well – While I didn’t try this personally for my wife, one of my consulting clients wanted to do the Two Browser Trick AND apply for the Alaska Airlines Business card as well on the same day. She didn’t try the Two Browser Trick on the Business card, instead opting to apply for just one after getting approved instantly for both personal cards. In fact, on the approval screen, there is a direct link to then apply for the 25k Alaska Airlines Business card.

She was not approved instantly for the business card and she didn’t have a chance to call the reconsideration department right away. However, a few days later she was notified automatically she was approved for the business card as well! So while not a same day approval, she was able to secure 3 Alaska Airline credit cards in total without the system rejecting her.

These are some great, positive developments and I fully plan on incorporating these cards in my next round of credit card applications since I did these for my wife. I’m curious to see if the Two Browser Trick will work for the Business card – I’ll report back my findings when I try next month.

January 21, 2015

The Two Browser Trick is Back with the Bank of America Alaska Airlines Credit Card

Update Dec. 2015: Per the comments, the double application trick is effectively dead. 

Note: I posted an update here about the miles posting. 

Back when I first got into points & miles, one of first tricks I learned from other blogs was the infamous “two browser trick” with Citibank American Airlines credit cards in which you could get two American Airlines credit cards with a 75,000 mile signup bonus if you applied for the cards at the same time using different internet browsers. Well, I can now confirm the newest two browser trick: Alaska Airlines personal credit cards from Bank of America.

AlaskaAir

While prepping for my wife’s latest round of credit card applications, I wanted to include an Alaska Airlines credit card since they are churnable as you can get the signup bonus again and again without any issue. On Flyertalk, there was a post of someone getting approved for both cards at once so I decided to try it and report my findings. The current best offer for the Alaska Airlines credit card is 25,000 miles + $100 statement credit after spending $1,000 in 3 months with the annual fee of $75 NOT waived. This isn’t the largest ever signup bonus for this card and not necessarily an exciting offer by itself. However if you could double this offer for a single credit inquiry, this offer becomes more attractive.

Here how I got approved for two personal Alaska Airlines credit cards:

  1. Closed all internet browsers and opened an incognito Google Chrome window and a private session Internet Explorer (I’m sure a private window in Firefox would work as well).
  2. Pasted the link for the 25,000 mile offer + $100 statement credit in each browser.
  3. Important: On one application, I chose the Northern Lights design while on the other I chose the Classic design. I have no idea if this actually made a difference but my thinking is BofA’s computers will not mark the applications are duplicates since technically the applications are different due to the card design. I haven’t tested trying out the same design on each but I recommend doing different designs since I know this works. AlaskaAirDesign
  4. I completed the application for my wife in each window quickly to avoid possible timing out the page but I did NOT click submit yet.
  5. Once I got to the next page before hitting the final submit application, I quickly verified the information I entered on each was identical (with the exception of the design of the card noted above).
  6. I clicked submit on one application and I immediately, as quick as I could (use ALT+TAB) switched to the other application and hit submit. I did this in about a second or so. I don’t know how quick you need to be but I imagine a few seconds is fine.
  7. About 30 seconds later, I got the message my wife was instantly approved for both cards with identical credit lines on each card. Make sure the credit line is above $5k otherwise you will get approved for a lower level card and not receive the 25k miles.
  8. Since there is no minimum spending requirement for the 25,000 miles (you only need to spend the $1,000 to get a $100 statement credit), the miles should have posted a few days after approval. I applied for the cards on 1/10 and 50,000 miles posted in my wife’s account on 1/18 though the activity was backdated to 1/12. SUCCESS!
  9. I currently see two credit pulls from Bank of America on my wife’s credit report. They haven’t combined just yet but I fully expect them to do so within a few weeks. And if they don’t, I’m confident in my ability to call and get the pulls combined.

Confirmation of miles posting

Confirmation of miles posting

Even though the above worked for me, there are some remaining open points:

Will this work for other Bank of America credit cards? I don’t know and I haven’t test this out to try it. Personally, I believe the offers from BofA to be pretty weak with the Alaska Airlines card as the true standout among their offers due to how valuable their points are.

What if I’m not instantly approved and I have to call the reconsideration line? I don’t know how Bank of America will react if a rep see two pending applications. They will most likely assume it’s a duplicate application but you might be able to explain why you need two cards. You could explain that you want to track different type of expenses or if you added an authorized user on one card, you want to keep the expenses from individuals on separate statements. This is a big YMMV.

Can I do this with Bank of America Business cards? Again, I don’t know and I haven’t tested it. What is interesting though is that after applying for the personal card, on the approval screen I was offered the chance to apply for the business version of the card as well. I didn’t try it out as my wife doesn’t have a legitimate business but I did have someone else try this for me. The business application was initially marked as pending after getting approved for both personal cards. After a call to reconsideration, he was approved so in total he netted 3 Alaska cards (2 personal, 1 business) in a day.

Post your results and findings in the comments!