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I just opened the Southwest Rapid Rewards card for the 50k bonus. Aside from being a cattle car airline, their frequent flier program is probably the friendliest in the business for the average flier just trying to book a domestic award flight. Based on the routes I fly, it's actually worth a little more than Chase Sapphire Preferred's 40K miles (even with the $99 fee vs waived fee for Sapphire). Southwest also has a 2k spend over 3 months where Sapphire asks for 3k.Boris Galerkin posted:How do I tell if a straight up cash back vs airline points is the better card for me? A cash back card is almost always going to be better unless you're also flying and supplementing your cc spend with flight miles/booking your own flights. Cash is king. The only reason I personally do hotel/flight credit cards is because I open them, spend to the minimum to get the bonus, open another card, and close the cards at the 11 month mark. Some cards have even paid me straight cash to keep the account open when I go to retentions.
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Nov 15, 2014 01:17
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In some cases you want the card closed because you can qualify for new account bonuses if you aren't a current customer and you haven't received the bonus in the last 24 months.
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Nov 15, 2014 23:57
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Brian Fellows posted:That's bad general advice. If you're using points and miles you're not usually paying 1 mile: 1 cent rate. Airline mile pricing is based on region to region, hotel points are based on hotel category. A $1500 round trip economy flight to Europe may be had with 60,000 airline miles and minor taxes in cash. So your opportunity cost is $600 in cash back (or I guess $1200 if you've got a .02/dollar spent card, which you should), but you're saving a ton more money than if you just collected cash back. I agree, that's why I pointed out at the end that I only do hotel and airline cards for the bonus where a person is getting 50K+ miles or equivalent on sign up and min spend. With no bonus, it should be cash back card spend.
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Nov 17, 2014 03:12
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khysanth posted:There is a flat $35 fee for paying with a card, so here are my thoughts: Between groceries, cell phone, utilities, gas, and odds-and-ends, you can't make the $3,000 spend without rent? If you can avoid those fees, that's $70 in your pocket.
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Nov 19, 2014 19:34
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Shrimpy posted:Has anyone had any luck with getting American Express to give you your credit card number before actually receiving the card? In case anybody runs into this problem in the future, you have to have pop-ups and ad blocks disabled when you apply. They only show you the number once online-- at the very end of the application, and it's not in the email-- until you get your card, and I had those enabled so I didn't get to see the number. Had to wait until the card came in, as they would not provide me the number over the phone.
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Jan 5, 2015 08:55
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If Visa Signature is meant to compete with mid-level Amex on a product level, it failed the first test. Delta Amex deposited bonus miles as soon as I hit my spending threshold. Southwest Visa Signature waits until the billing cycle, then 4-6 weeks. It's like, you get every piece of financial data on me instantly, can respond within minutes of any suspicious purchase like a Jack in the Box meal buy 40 miles from my home, and you have all the control of my financial future with a credit score-- but you need over a month to process and apply a few hundred dollars worth of airline miles? What do you think my scam to get HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS from a financial institution is, and how will one month delay stop it?
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Jan 10, 2015 02:36
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Finally got static from Chase after about 16 months of churning cards. I got the Southwest card in December and plowed through that, but they gave me a considerable credit line on it, and my new REI card has no stated limit. So, when I went to open the Sapphire card at the bank while doing some other things, the banker had to call and they gave me a pretty low limit for a mid-premium card. I closed my United card too so I could open it again later this year when they do another 50k bonus, and I'm hoping that 3-4 good months of just chipping away at this Sapphire card will give some breathing room. June/July should be SPG 30k sign-up bonus time too, so gotta get ready for that. It's a shame that Amex doesn't allow re-registering for bonuses after a certain period of time.
Blinkman987 fucked around with this message at 05:34 on Jan 30, 2015 |
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Jan 30, 2015 05:30
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Brian Fellows posted:Don't outright cancel cards. Cancel the card and ask them to move the credit to another existing credit card. These are the steps you should follow: Thanks. I'll do that next time. Should I call sometime to ask to reduce my Southwest card to 10K in preparation for this? Chase is the only company that's offered to pay me to keep one open. $200 credit to cover the yearly fee on the United, netting EDIT: +$105 Blinkman987 fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Jan 31, 2015 |
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Jan 30, 2015 06:33
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For all the new Sapphire users, remember that you can get 5k extra points for signing up a secondary authorized user on the card during the bonus window and then using that card. For funsies, I use the name of someone who's dead and therefore doesn't exist. Just use the card at a gas station once and you're done.
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Feb 1, 2015 08:55
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Thanks, I can confirm they have the same numbers and CVV2 are the same. I figured that Chase may have done something new because the last time they offered me this bonus, I didn't even have to use it. Just had to sign someone up. I'll abstain from using the card for the month and see what's up.
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Feb 1, 2015 19:44
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TraderStav posted:Great, didn't want to bring it up if it wasn't a welcome topic for any reason. No Redbird as of last month in CA. I thought they weren't allowing cc loads. I'm not a MS player, but when I looked into it, Amex seemed the most aggressive about squashing that stuff. Edit: Those SPG points are worth multiple times more than your SkyPesos, even with a bonus. I wouldn't transfer. Blinkman987 fucked around with this message at 09:02 on Feb 16, 2015 |
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Feb 16, 2015 08:41
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TraderStav posted:Do you mean that you cannot find the Redbirds or they are preventing CC loads? They are a limited release right now so many stores don't have them. I meant that CA is not a test market. I didn't know they were allowing CC loads. I thought Amex/Target were preventing them because of all the problems with Visa vanilla MS. I'm headed to WI in about a month and definitely plan on getting a Redbird there, finishing off my Sapphire sign-up bonus threshold and then moving to SPG. I was going to wait for the 30K sign up bonus on the SPG Amex, but this is way too good to pass up. Yum. Thanks for the heads-up on this.
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Feb 16, 2015 19:02
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dexter6 posted:- Withdraw cash over there (but get charged non-Wells Fargo ATM fee, and the local ATM fee) If you qualify for one, some banks have tiers of checking accounts that don't charge you for the first X ATM withdrawals. I usually upgrade mine before the flight, then downgrade it once I return home. Many "travel" branded cards don't have foreign transaction fees on it, but I'm not sure if the rate is the same as given with ATM withdrawals.
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Feb 26, 2015 00:15
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cheese posted:My friend can't stop talking about his Starwoods Preferred Guest card. Says he used it for literally everything last year and got a couple of misc Sheraton stays for free thanks to their program. SPG points are the most valuable out of all of these loyalty programs, so they're pretty good. You're probably better off doing 2% cash back unless you have a plan on how to spend those points and you can fulfill the requirements for the 25k free SPG points when you open the Amex. If you do a lot of hole-in-the-wall dining, they probably won't take your Amex. In n Out Burger doesn't take Amex. You would have to carry a Visa card on you if you had an Amex, so maybe you want to do both cards?
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Mar 1, 2015 00:45
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Can you feed a Redbird with an Amex CC? I thought I read that Amex will shut that loop down if they catch you doing it, but it was just fine for Visa and MC.
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Mar 3, 2015 08:24
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Joined the Redbird club today. Hopefully I get my new card before the month end so I can finish off my Chase Sapphire Preferred bonus. I had to load with $5 cash because my initial cc load of $500 was rejected as suspicious activity and I didn't have time to wait for the email, confirm my identity as I had a plane to catch. When I called ahead to see if the Target had the cards, the lady was very short with me and basically scolded me pre-emptively with a "you are only allowed to buy one." Fat Wallet loving buffons once again ruining things for everyone, I assume.TraderStav posted:Fine print says that all cards will be upgraded. This is a nice deal and I spend a big chunk on Amazon. At $.05 that is more valuable than SPG points. Looks like I need to find my Amazon Store card #. Don't think I ever received a physical card and it's asking for the acct #. If a person is flush with cash and makes regular purchases on Amazon, they can buy the gift cards when Freedom does 5% back on Grocery Stores and Gas Stations. That's basically 3/4ths of the year covered (since the last quarter is Amazon itself) without needing Prime so long as you're normally not capping out at the bonus limit. Blinkman987 fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 22:07
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Swingline posted:Does Amex only let you get one signup bonus ever from any of their cards? I recently opened my first card with them and got a $250 bonus (blue cash preferred). Now, when I go to their site while logged in, all of the signup bonuses disappear for all cards. When I open a new browser and visit anonymously, I see signup bonus offers for all their cards. I'm not talking about churning the same card, it looks like they just wont ever give you any signup bonus for any of their cards again once you get one. This has been true for a little less than a year. Most of the agreements have: "This offer is offer is also not available to applicants who have or have had this product.” So far, AMEX is the only company I know that does this. That makes it kinda important to make sure you get the juiced promotional bonuses (50K Delta Plat, 30K SPG) when you do sign up. FWIW, Amex is easily the best credit card company I've ever dealt with in terms of software. Aside from some errors their system threw while signing up with a pop-up blocker running, their web interface is 10 times better than any other company. Plus, there's Small Business Saturday when you basically get $X for free to spend at specific businesses, and the occasional free money Uber promo. So long as I can negotiate discounted annual fees, I'll keep my card.
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Mar 23, 2015 18:12
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In the 15 years I've been with Chase, they have never caught actual fraud on my cards. I used to travel once a month for business over 5 years, so whatever, card compromises happen. Either the thieves understand the bank's process for fraud detection better than the banks, or my consumer profile has $500 truck stop purchases incorporated into it. I estimate that I had cards compromised 5 times across that 5 years. Again, never once did they actually flag those as fraud. I caught them when I'd log into online banking and fill out the paperwork, eventually get refunded. I opened up the Sapphire Preferred about 2 months ago and have been pushing money through it, you know, because the incentives Chase laid out tell me to do so. Last night, I bought some dinner, paid for Comic Con hotel, bought concert tickets for the 1 millionth time in my life, and paid my car insurance bill. Apparently that triggered a fraud alert. Luckily for me, they didn't stealth reject the comic con hotel purchase or else I would've probably driven a car through their corporate HQ lobby. So, I have to waste another 10 minutes of my life answering dumb security questions that pretty much anybody could socially engineer the answers to and verify that yes, I purchased $1,000 of travel on your loving flagship travel card. A short list of other things that have triggered fraud alerts on my account in the last year: Buying sneakers an hour away from my home Buying Jack in the Box and gasoline an hour away from my home Purchasing United partner (Copa) airfare on the United branded card When I occasionally go into a branch, they ask if they can sell me on their investment services or review my portfolio. I just tell them it's with Vanguard and I'm very happy with Vanguard's service and fees. I don't tell them that between all these fraud alerts, sending chip and signature cards (instead of the actually useful chip and pin), etc... that they're the most loving downsy bank I've ever dealt with and I'd never, ever trust them to make good decisions in my best interest with any real amount of money. gently caress, they're frustrating. The only real reason I even have any accounts with them at all is because their mobile app is pretty good at depositing checks. Anyway, that's my rant. I'm now done with Sapphire and even did my first Redbird swipe on it today. Had to call in to notify them of the purchase since they rejected the $500 initial load (obviously did NOT want to make this call). I looked around last night and there aren't any great sign-up bonuses floating around out there, so I might do a Marriott/Hilton/IHG card while I wait. Edit: Signed up for the US Airways card, figure there's a pretty good chance I'll get to stack it with the AA card still and get 100K. If not, that's ok too. Still looking for any juiced sign-ups bonuses since I don't have any great outlet for Redbird MS right now. Blinkman987 fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Mar 25, 2015 |
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Mar 24, 2015 22:15
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Cacafuego posted:Can you sign up for 2 tiers of the same card (ie Citi AAdvantage platinum and Citi AAdvantage gold) to get each bonus (50k and 25k)? I don't want to waste a hard pull if not. I can't speak for Citi specifically, but in general yes that works. I had both Gold and Plat Delta cards from Amex. Oddly enough, they would occasionally get different offers with my Gold card getting the coveted $10 refund on an Uber ride, but my Plat not.
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Mar 25, 2015 03:44
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Shoutout again to Amex savings who has a modern interface (if you dig the tablet/mint look) and easy and gives 0.89!
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Mar 30, 2015 22:04
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Boris Galerkin posted:Except that they do this really lovely godawful burn it to the ground seriously wtf were they thinking side-scrolling rewards offers thing. Like gently caress I don't even bother checking anymore if they have some kind of cash back reward for a store I was going to go to anyway because it's so terrible. I agree, and it appears they've pretty much abandoned the Twitter aspect of the deal as well. I like the offers as it's really, really good for people who can expense business purchases, but the way in which one is informed of them and chooses the offers is indefensible.
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Mar 31, 2015 16:05
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I used to visit a frequent flier community when I was traveling 70K miles a year (BIS miles). As you can expect from a forum full of travelers who either pay for their flights through wealth, business, or min/maxing bonuses, they're quite a miserable lot. Their Redbird thread is full of people complaining that some manager said they couldn't load $2,500 on a card that wasn't in their name, or that some manager DARED to make a decision on allowing/disallowing CC loads, or that a product that's supposed to be in test phase in test markets doesn't work perfectly. One guy was threatening to go to the state finance board and wage a complaint because the system didn't handle his bullshit MS acrobatics and it may have lost a transaction. So, uh, since everyone else has decided scorched earth is the best policy-- smoke 'em while you got 'em. In churn news, Citi sent me a letter confirming that I would get my AA Plat Select card in 10 days instead of, you know, just sending me the card. US Air just sent me an email confirming that I would get their card as well instead of just sending me the card. The US Air one with 50K miles (which will be converted to AA) is still available, but only via referral link.
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Mar 31, 2015 21:33
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TraderStav posted:Yeah, FlyerTalk is a bit of a sinkhole when it comes to that. I look at MS as a gift. If it works, I roll with it. I don't argue with a manager or cashier, nor do I try to push the limits of the way the card works because I'm lazy. I do have 3 redbirds but have the common courtesy to go to the service desk first or a cashier without a line. I do the one-swipe for $1k load, unless there's still no line then I'll do another. Otherwise I'll walk through the store, grab a Blu-ray or something, go back in line buy it and reload again. Yup, I am willing to be honest with myself that this is pretty grey and although really harmless, definitely unintended by the financial institutions. If they don't mind my gamesmanship in figuring out how to bend their systems, cool. If they do, that's cool too. It's a gift, and I'm never going to freak out over what amounts to $25-$35 of free money. And if they need a bit of dog-and-pony show, that's alright. I usually load, then either pick up something I planned on getting or I act like I'm going to shop. Plus, trying to position myself as superior to a store manager-- someone who's actually in charge-- is never going to be productive. I feel bad for anybody who gets off on that. Ultimately, it's the staff that's in control of what I'm allowed to do and I need to respect that. I think it's funny that a lot of these people look down on those store managers, but the head store manager probably makes more money than they do. If they made more than store managers, these MS freaks wouldn't be losing their minds over $20 unless they were on the autism spectrum. Blinkman987 fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Mar 31, 2015 |
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Mar 31, 2015 23:50
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Baddog posted:If I got 4 cards, at 2% that'd be $80 every time I go to costco for like 10 minutes work....I dunno about you but that beats my hourly! I hear you on the other stuff, although I think even if it did happen it would just be a waste of time hassle, not long term loss of money or credit... So far, 2 out of 3 Targets I've gone to ask me to go to customer service in order to load the cards and check ID. I only ever load 1k; I've never even tried to do the 2/2/0.5k load. Today, the customer service cashier said the manager had to come over to verify my ID and my credit card. I've never had money lost, but I always save the receipt and everything I do is relatively normal on the card. Some people have multiple Redbirds and do what you're proposing with ease, but with each thing you do that's outside of what resembles a regular transaction, you risk being shut down by a manager. Everything is YMMV. I've read of guys doing 10k a day on cards with no complaint through Simon Mall GCs. I've also read of multiple people getting blacklisted by Chase for life as a unsatisfactory customer. AMEX Blue Cash is 6% back at supermarkets up to $6k a year. Citi has the double cash card, 2% back no limits. You can do Freedom when there's a 5% bonus on a place that sells GCs and try to load with your GCs, but sometimes cashiers won't do that either. Blinkman987 fucked around with this message at 09:07 on Apr 4, 2015 |
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Apr 4, 2015 08:02
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Barry posted:I haven't bothered to find one myself but apparently there are targeted 50k point offers for the United card out there that aren't that hard to get. Yup. And if a person is flying, sometimes the kiosks at the airport in the United terminals will have 50K offers. I haven't seen the United card offer 50K openly in some time, so it's probably coming up. I know when I signed up two years ago it was a May/June offer.
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Apr 8, 2015 00:01
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Between Freedom and Double Cash, you would be set. Amex Blue would be a nice touch, but right now you're just trying to get set up and not necessarily min/max. I don't think you'd have a problem getting either of those cards, but they may have small limits at first. If you want to get some free sign up cash, Sapphire is nice but at no point is it really better than Double Cash unless you're traveling a lot and charging it to the Sapphire.
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Apr 15, 2015 18:22
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Totally depends on how easily you can cash out the points. By your math, 1 Citi point = ~0.008 so dining dollars on that card return approximately double than the Citi Double Cash. Most people managing their CCs have cards they specifically use for major types of purchases, as you've done with your Amex and electronics. If you spend more between multiple cards, you probably lose any extra value you would get but you should make a budget so you don't do that anyway.
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Apr 20, 2015 01:45
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Insane Totoro posted:I got an offer for 50k points on the business version of the United Mileage Plus card. Isn't that what they usually offer?? It's usually 30k.
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Apr 21, 2015 23:33
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Cacafuego posted:After the announcement today, the crying over Target redcard not taking CC loads starting tomorrow is pretty funny. Everyone kinda knows that the deal is that a source of unloading could go away at any moment. Anybody truly hosed by this is a moron. I'll probably keep the thing. The 5% off combined with Cartwheel coupons isn't too bad OH GOD TARGET HAS ME IN THEIR ECOSYSTEM NOW THEIR PLAN WORKED VVVVVV: Yeah, I was hoping this would last through the summer to complete a bunch of hotel min spend offers, especially SPG once the promo eventually comes out, but luckily I can do that with my regular spending stretched over a longer period of time. Blinkman987 fucked around with this message at 01:36 on May 6, 2015 |
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May 6, 2015 01:06
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United Explorer is offering 50K miles on a $3K spend across 3 months. Signup ends June 2nd, which is lame because I'll hit my 2-year reset on that bonus on June 14th. =/ https://www.theexplorercard.com/50kAFWLTO
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May 7, 2015 22:23
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antisocial86 posted:I have kind of a weird question. I'm away frequently from my girlfriend who I help out with money and I have a chase freedom account that says I can add a cardholder. The thing is my girlfriend is on welfare and has some custody issues with her kids that we're working through. Target Redbird Prepaid can behave like this. Basically, you can create sub-accounts where you would deposit $500 on the card, and then she could her card like a debit/atm card for $500. I'm not educated enough to know whether or not it hits the credit report. Doesn't seem like it should since one of the use cases it gives is to give it to a nanny for incidental costs. I've given a name for my Chase card as most of the sign-up bonuses include an extra bonus for adding an authorized user. I've always given them a deceased family member's name. They've never asked for a SSN. I also don't know what happens if they can connect that name to someone who is actually known to me. Blinkman987 fucked around with this message at 00:04 on May 19, 2015 |
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May 19, 2015 00:01
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I'm booking about $3,600 in SPG hotel stays. 30k sign-up bonus please come asap.
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Jun 2, 2015 01:39
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Can't get the 30k SPG points offer Amex to show up, and I had actually sent all my points out to another program so I don't have points to try to book a room. Any suggestions? I have about $5k worth of Westin stays coming up at the end of next month, so I really want to get this card going. =)
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Jun 17, 2015 23:33
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If you're in the middle of fulfilling a bonus with Amex and they put out a new, better promo, is Amex opening to requests to switch to the better promo? I would assume "no," but Amex is so customer friendly for a financial institution that I had to ask.
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Jul 1, 2015 19:37
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SPG Amex 30k points promotion is live, but only through referral. I saw in the rules no "referral gimmicks" so to speak. I feel like this isn't one. So, PM me or otherwise get me your email and I can send some out. $3k spend across 3 months. If this does fall under the rules, then I take it all back >_>
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Aug 11, 2015 18:05
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Cacafuego posted:I don't think it's referral only, but likewise, with a PM, I can also provide a 30,000 point Amex SPG referral link if someone needs one. You're right. The email I received implied it was through referrals, but I found the 30K offer advertised on the SPG website. Edit: Shoutout to Amex for not giving me the switch to the 30K bonus, but instead just straight-up giving me 5k SPG points for being a loyal Amex customer.
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Aug 11, 2015 19:31
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Blinky2099 posted:Great, thanks. I'll try to take advantage of this for holiday flying. I'll probably end up canceling it before the end of the year to avoid the $40 annual fee. Is it possible to just downgrade it to a free card instead? When I tried to downgrade my Delta Plat, I could only downgrade into other branded cards like SPG. They wouldn't let me do any of the Amex products.
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Aug 18, 2015 20:46
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Residency Evil posted:I think I got targeted for a 50k Delta sky miles card for 1k spend in 3 months. I still have about 10k MR points from an old Amex. Are the Delta points worth it? I haven't tried lately. The skypeso is lovely even compared to other FF program points, but you'll still be able to do something with 50k miles and that's a really low spend. There's no rush to do it, though. Remember, you can only get Amex sign-up bonuses once in a lifetime.
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Aug 24, 2015 22:59
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I was able to get a EMV debit card at my local Chase bank. So, for those of you who are like me and have been waiting over a decade for this service, you can get one.
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Aug 26, 2015 17:42
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I just booked my two free nights from my Citi Hilton Reserve spend threshold, and basically they offered me 500 HHonors points (a laughably small amount) to hear a pitch. I listened anyway because I'm Asian and can't give up value. It's a pitch for timeshares masked as a fabulous vacation getaway, but basically the deal came out to 3 nights at one of their Las Vegas properties (no blackout dates), two free Cirque tickets, a $200 credit for a future Hilton stay, and 6,000 more HHonors points for $168 total. I guess the funniest part in the pitch was her selling "fabulous Orlando, FL" to me after I just booked a trip abroad. Yeah. Fabulous. There were Hawaii options, but I'm not really interested in that. Anyway, anybody else get this pitch? It seems on the up and up, and I don't think Hilton is in the business of burning their Gold+ members on this stuff, right? The handful of reviews I read were from a few years ago, but everyone seemed to have a decent time and the timeshare reps took the "no" for an answer pretty well. Blinkman987 fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Aug 29, 2015 |
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Aug 29, 2015 16:14
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