American Express bonuses at 7-11 and using Bluebird internationally

Apologies for the light blogging this week, I've been on a cross-country train trip, at my brother's destination wedding, on board a transatlantic flight, and now struggling with Eastern European internet access. That and I'm dealing with a stubborn cold, which I'm sure everyone in BusinessElite was ecstatic about on the 10-hour flight here from Portland.

American Express Gas Station Bonuses

Enough about me. Since my American Express credit card statement closed I want to report on my experiment testing whether 7-11 store locations (where Vanilla Reload Network and PayPal Cash cards are sometimes available for purchase with credit cards) would earn bonus points with the American Express Hilton card, which gives 5 HHonors points per dollar spent "on gasoline at U.S. stand-alone gas stations." I had already confirmed that Visa cards issued by Chase and US Bank do bonus these purchases, but being able to buy Hilton HHonors points at 0.13 cents each (with the Surpass) or 0.16 cents (with the no-fee card) would bring back one of the most solid money-saving hacks out there.

Unfortunately, I did not earn bonus points on my 7-11 purchase. While my purchase was categorized correctly as a gas station:

View fullsize

I earned only the standard 3 HHonors points, and no bonus points:

View fullsize

Unfortunately, I suspect this means that other cards issued by American Express which bonus gas station spend will likewise only give bonus points for gas purchases (for example, for those transactions carried out at the pump).

Using Bluebird in Europe

Virtually all serious travel hackers have an American Express Bluebird card, which can be loaded using the above-mentioned Vanilla Reload cards ($1,000 per day, $5,000 per month). Until this trip, I had only used my Bluebird balance to pay credit cards bills and pay my monthly rent.

However, one of the most amazing features of Bluebird, which makes it superior to virtually every checking account, is that there are no foreign transaction fees, including on international ATM withdrawals (you will still pay a $2 out-of-network ATM fee).

Since I'm often stuck paying with cash in Europe, this can save huge amounts of money during a long stay overseas (I'm in the Czech Republic until mid-August, for example). Compare the following two ATM transactions.

First, I made a 3,000 Czech Koruna withdrawal from my Bank of America checking account. My BoA account shows a:

•  $152.15 ATM withdrawal;
• $5 out-of-network ATM fee;
• $1.52 international transaction fee.

The next day, I made a 5,000 Czech Koruna withdrawal from my American Express Bluebird account. That account shows a: 

• $254.83 ATM withdrawal;
• $2.00 ATM fee.

Even though the exchange rate used by the banks are almost identical (19.71 CZK per dollar vs. 19.62 CZK per dollar), Bank of America's fees are 250% higher, plus 1% of the transaction amount.

You may ask, why did I make an ATM withdrawal using my Bank of America account?  Good question, and it brings me to the drawback of relying on Bluebird for ATM withdrawals: while American Express compatible ATMs are virtually everywhere in the United States, they are much rarer here in the Czech Republic, and I suspect that's true in many parts of Europe. So while you're likely to get a competitive exchange rate and lower fees, you should still bring some cash and/or a backup ATM card.

As a reminder, if you have a monthly direct deposit to the account (all inbound ACH transfers appear to count, including withdrawals from a PayPal account in any amount) , then all ATM fees are waived at MoneyPass ATMs in the United States.

How much would you pay for United Premier Silver?

A few days ago, Marriott and United Airlines announced the RewardsPlus partnership, obviously modeled on the Crossover Rewards program offered by Delta and Starwood. Basically, if you're a United Premier Gold elite or higher, you can receive Marriott's mid-tier Gold status for free, and if you're a top-tier Marriott Platinum elite, you can receive United Premier Silver status for free.

Naturally, my first thought was "how can I hack this?" Here's what I came up with. Note that I don't actually recommend doing this: whether or not it makes sense for you depends on your specific situation.

Approach #1: Status Match to United

United has a published status match program which runs from January 1 to August 31. If you have Delta Gold or Platinum Medallion status, you can have your United account upgraded to Premier Gold or Platinum for 90 days. If you fly 12,500 PQM (Gold) or 18,000 PQM (Platinum) within those 90 days, you'll keep United Premier status for the rest of the program year.

What I don't know  is whether you would be able to register for RewardsPlus during your probationary period, or only after successfully completing the status match. Either way, once registered you would receive free Marriott Gold status for the remainder of the 2013 program year.

Assuming you intend to complete your challenge exclusively through mileage runs at 4 cents per PQM, you can buy Premier Gold status for $500 or Premier Platinum status for $720. Through RewardsPlus, you'll also then have Marriott Gold status.

Approach #2: Status Challenge to Marriott

Marriott likewise offers status challenges to their top-tier Platinum status, through a program called "Taste of Platinum." You have 3 calendar months, plus the remainder of the calendar month you begin your challenge, to complete 9 paid Marriott stays. If you complete the stays within the challenge period, you're upgraded to Platinum status for the remainder of the program year.

At the end of the program year, you can use 40,000 Marriott Rewards points (for example, transferred from a flexible Ultimate Rewards account), to buy back your Platinum status for the next year.

If you're completing your 9 paid stays exclusively on mattress runs at $75 per night, you'll earn Marriott Platinum status (and United Premier Silver) after spending $675.

Is it worth it?

A status match to United or Marriott (or any airline or hotel loyalty program) always makes sense if you actually intend on flying or staying with that airline. For example, if your company forces you to fly an airline or stay with a hotel chain you don't yet have status with, be sure to status match before you start traveling in order to take advantage of your new elite benefits.

The specific question I'm interested in here is whether it's worth doing a status match specifically to take advantage of RewardsPlus.

Unfortunately, it usually won't be worth hacking RewardsPlus. The more lucrative version would usually be Approach #2, and it's probably too late for this to be worth doing this year (since the United Premier program year runs through the end of February). But if this program is continued again in the 2014 program year, then paying about $700 for United Premier Silver status, which entitles you to a 500-mile earning minimum and a 25% earning bonus, plus free Economy Plus seats at check-in, might be worth it for leisure travelers and those who fly short-haul domestic United and US airways flights, who without status are only earning the flown mileage on short routes.

You can think of this as bundling an Economy Plus subscription (which United sells for $499) with an award accelerator and free checked bags. If you're the kind of traveler who is likely to take advantage of some or all of those, then having Premier Silver from the beginning of a new program year may be worth the upfront cost of a Taste of Platinum challenge. Of course, the cheaper you can find your mattress runs, the better a value you'll receive, and you'll also earn 15 Marriott Rewards points per dollar spent on your mattress runs, which gives a rebate value of 10-15%, depending on the properties you're likely to use your points at.

Do this now: Hilton 3rd quarter promotion

Registration is now open for Hilton's third quarter promotion.  Between July 9 and September 30, 2013, you'll earn triple base HHonors points for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights stays, and double base HHonors points on Monday-Thursday night stays.

There's a long list of properties that aren't participating in the promotion, so try to book away from those properties if at all possible.  I don't see any of the properties I've recently stayed or where I have upcoming stays booked on that list, but as always be sure to check before you book if you're counting on earning this bonus.

I've updated my Hotel Promotions page with the details of this promotion, and all the other ongoing hotel promotions I'm aware of.

Register now, before you forget. 

Chase United Business Credit Cards

Since I started this site, I've written about what has historically been one of the strongest offers for the United MileagePlus Explorer Card: 55,000 United miles after spending $1,000 in the first 3 months and adding an authorized user to your account. Indeed, it's the offer that I used to sign up for the card late last year. 

Getting that offer has always involved a bit of luck. The most reliable method seemed to be opening a new "private browsing" or "incognito" window, signing into MileagePlus, and then opening this page.

Over at FlyerTalk, this thread appeared back on June 9 pointing out that a similarly lucrative offer is available for the Chase United MileagePlus Business Explorer Card, for 50,000 United MileagePlus miles after spending $2,000 within 3 months of cardmembership, with the $95 annual fee waived the first year. I've verified that the technique described by econwatch in this post works. Again, I recommend beginning the process in a fresh private browsing (Firefox) or incognito (Chrome) window, since your existing browser cookies will  interfere with this offer displaying correctly:

Login to your UAL, 
Products and Services, 
Get Credit Card, 
United MileagePlus Explorer Business Card, 
shows 30K offer, $1K spend in 3mo.
Click on MileagePlus Club Business Card tab, 
click back to MP Explorer Business Card, 
shows 50K offer, $2K spend in 3mo.

I would only point out that the offer for the United MileagePlus Club Business Card is also extremely strong.  The waived annual fee for the first year of card membership means a free year of United Club access, plus 1.5 United miles per dollar spent on the card. While the earning rate isn't quite as lucrative as the 2 Ultimate Rewards points earned per dollar at gas stations with the Chase Ink cards, it is a very strong earning rate in what is arguably the most valuable traditional frequent flyer currency.

GoBank Shutdowns Begin

Note: for background to this post, check out my posts tagged "gobank", especially  "Does GoBank have a monthly swipe reload limit?" "GoBank Customer Care Calls the Free-quent Flyer," and "GoBank Calls Again."

This is very much a developing situation, but according to a number of posts on this FlyerTalk thread (starting towards the bottom of this page), we are starting to see the first GoBank account shutdowns. I want to give my very rough impressions of the situation so far, very subject to ongoing updates:

• Shutdowns appear to be based on statement closing dates. As I reported in this post, I received my second call, the one from GoBank's fraud department threatening me with account closure, shortly after my June statement closed (showing $17,000 in swipe reloads).
• All the reports of shutdowns have been for total monthly load volume exceeding $10,000.
• People have been shut down who mixed in "regular" spending on the cards: restaurants, grocery stores, etc. So shutdowns appear to be based principally on Walmart swipe load volume.

I highly value the ability to unload my Nationwide and US Bank Visa Buxx cards for free using Gobank, so I've scaled back my Walmart swipe reloads to slightly less than $5,000 per month: $3,000 in Visa Buxx loads and roughly $2,000 in MyVanilla Debit Card and Alaska Airlines Debit Card loads. This allows me to still load a full $5,000 per month in Vanilla Reload Network reload cards to my American Express Bluebird card, and requires just 2 trips per month to Walmart.

That's the level I'm comfortable with, and I hope it keeps me out of GoBank's crosshairs for a little while longer.  Share your experiences in the comments: what load volume are you comfortable with going forward?

Do this now: register for Chase Freedom (and Discover it) 3rd quarter bonus categories

If you carry a Chase Freedom card, you probably know you need to register each calendar quarter for that quarter's 5% cash back categories. If you've read my eBook book, The Free-quent Flyer's Manifesto, you also know you can move the Ultimate Rewards points you earn with your Freedom card to a flexible Ultimate Rewards-earning card in order to transfer them to one of Chase's airline, hotel, and rail partners, or to redeem them for paid airline tickets at 1.2 cents each.

Finally, if you read my blog regularly you can imagine why I'm excited about the Chase Freedom 3rd quarter bonus categories. After earning 7,500 Ultimate Rewards points in the first week of January, I'm very excited to pay $11.85 for another 7,500 the first week of July.

I want to note that the Discover More/it (depending on whether you got your card before or after the rebranding) 3rd quarter bonus is also gas stations. However, I don't know whether Discover uses the same merchant codes as Visa does, so I can't guarantee that 7-11 purchases will qualify for 5% cash back. I'll make a test purchase in July and report back here on the blog when my statement closes.

In any case, register now for the Chase Freedom and Discover More/it 3rd quarter bonuses, before you forget. 

Barclaycard Arrival redemption follow-up

One of the most frustrating things about having multiple rewards-earning credit cards is the fact that each rewards currency is redeemed in a totally different way, and it's not always clear from a card's promotional material what the redemption process consists of. 

That's why last month I walked through a redemption of Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard miles, so readers could know exactly what they were getting into. But one thing bothered me: in this, the 4th screenshot in that blog post:

View fullsize

There are 4 redemptions options: the last 4 $25 intervals.

I've subsequently redeemed more points using this card, and discovered that when you don't have enough miles to redeem for the full amount of a charge, only three redemption options are available: the last 3 $25 intervals. 

I don't know exactly what the logic behind this is, but my suspicion is that the 4th redemption "slot" is reserved for redeeming miles for the complete value of a purchase. While partial redemptions are only allowed in 2,500 miles, $25 increments, "complete" redemptions are available in 100 mile, $1 increments:

View fullsize

Does this have much of a practical impact? Not really, since Arrival miles are worth 1 cent each, so it doesn't make much of a difference in which combination or order they're redeemed.

Except...the next question I intend to investigate is whether after making a partial redemption it's possible to make another redemption for the remaining amount of the same transaction. Since Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard redemptions have a 10% rebate of points used to make travel redemptions, It might be possible to redeem 100,000 points for a $1,000 statement credit, then use the 10,000 point rebate to make an additional $100 redemption against the same $1,100 transaction.

Does anyone have any experience making two redemptions against the same transaction?

Guide to Chase's Ultimate Rewards-earning cards

With all the flurry this week over the increased signup bonuses for Chase's Ink line of small business cards, I realized that even I was having trouble keeping track of all the different Ultimate-rewards earning cards issued by Chase. In case there's anyone else in the same situation, lets take a systematic look at all 7 cards.

While some of the cards are personal cards and some are small business cards, that's a less important distinction than between the fixed-value and flexible Ultimate Rewards points they earn: 

View fullsize

The Freedom and Sapphire personal cards and Ink Cash and Ink Classic small business cards earn Ultimate Rewards points that cannot be transferred to Chase's travel partners unless you first move them to the Ultimate Rewards account associated with one of the 3 flexible cards. They can be redeemed for cash, gift cards, or paid travel – except the Ink Cash, whose points can only be redeemed for cash.

The next, arguably even more distinction between the cards is the constellation of overlapping bonus categories:

View fullsize

Since you only need to hold one flexible Ultimate Rewards card in order to convert all your points into flexible points, for 95% of travelers it doesn't make sense to pay more than one $95 annual fee (note that this analysis only applies once the first, fee-free year has elapsed).

Which annual fee should that be? The Sapphire Preferred, Ink Bold, or Ink Plus? The chart above makes clear that the most relevant question is: how much do you intend to spend at gas stations and office supply stores?  If you'll spend more than $25,000, you'll need to either carry an Ink Bold or Plus, or both an Ink Cash and Ink Classic, since each card's $25,000 cap on 2x earnings is counted separately.

The ability to manufacture Ultimate Rewards points at 0.4 cents each is what made me assess the Ink cards as the second best tool for buying Vanilla Reload Network reload cards at gas stations. This is an incredibly lucrative opportunity: the question is to what extent you plan on taking advantage of it.

If you liked this analysis, please consider supporting the blog by ordering a copy of my eBook, the Free-quent Flyer's Manifesto!

An unusually auspicious week for an application cycle

The travel blogosphere erupted this week with word of Chase's increased signup bonuses for their Ink line of small business charge and credit cards. While I'm extremely conservative in the pacing of my credit card applications, and it's been less than 90 days since my last application cycle, I have been eyeing the Ink Bold ever since I discovered Vanilla Reload Network reload cards could be purchased at my local 7-11 store locations, which are coded as "gas stations" by the Visa supplier network and therefore earn 2 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar when purchased with a Chase Ink card.

If you are due for an application cycle, this week became an even more lucrative  window of opportunity with the announcement of enhanced signup bonuses for the Delta Business Platinum American Express. As regular readers know, I signed up for this card back in April with a much lower signup bonus. I use this card to "mileage run from home," earning 20,000 valuable MQM per year and 1.4 SkyMiles per dollar when I spend exactly $50,000 per year on the card.

The new, higher signup bonus, which is supposedly good until July 7, 2013, is for 25,000 bonus SkyMiles and 5,000 MQM after your first purchase, and an additional 30,000 SkyMiles and 15,000 MQM after spending $5,000 on the card within 3 months of card membership.

In other words, this week is a remarkably auspicious time to apply for these two small business credit cards, if you have good credit and haven't applied for credit in the last 90 days: I think it's unlikely that two offers this good will come along again this year.

Bizarre changes to United elite qualification requirements

It's hard for me to objectively evaluate the drastic changes to United elite qualification announced today:

Starting in January 2014, Premier qualification for members living in the United States will include a minimum annual spending level. We will track this new requirement with Premier qualifying dollars (PQD) – dollars spent on most United tickets, including partner flights, and Economy Plus purchases. The changes will not affect Premier qualifying miles (PQM) or Premier qualifying segments (PQS). The new criteria will look like this:

• Premier Silver: [25,000 PQM or 30 PQS] and $2,500 PQD
• Premier Gold: [50,000 PQM or 60 PQS] and $5,000 PQD
• Premier Platinum: [75,000 PQM or 90 PQS] and $7,500 PQD
• Premier 1K: [100,000 PQM or 120 PQS] and $10,000 PQD

On the one hand, these changes very closely parallel the recent changes to Medallion elite status qualification on Delta, my preferred airline. On the other hand, I don't mind meeting the Delta Medallion Qualification Dollar requirement by spending $25,000 on my American Express Delta Platinum Business card, since I also earn 10,000 Medallion Qualification Miles for reaching that threshold. That is to say, by reaching the $25,000 threshold I both earn higher Medallion status and am exempted from Medallion Qualification Dollar requirements.

It's true that the Chase United MileagePlus Explorer card gives 10,000 bonus miles after $25,000 in purchases per calendar year, but those miles don't count towards elite status.

The problem is that it's fantastically more lucrative to make United purchases with a flexible Ultimate Rewards point-earning Chase Sapphire Preferred card than with United's own co-branded credit cards. And that's ignoring the possibility of manufacturing Ultimate Rewards points at gas stations.

My sense is that this change will alienate United flyers in a much more profound way than Medallion Qualification Dollars alienated Delta flyers, in no small part because of United's disastrous customer service. Meanwhile, I'll continue earning Star Alliance Gold status by crediting United and US Airways flights to the Greek airline Aegean Air, giving me free checked bags and lounge access on domestic flights.