Thoughts and feelings about BankAmericard Travel Rewards

The best deal in travel

In my opinion the best deal in travel hacking is likely the BankAmericard Travel Rewards credit card with Bank of America Preferred Rewards Platinum Honors. That combination turns every dollar in unbonused spend into 2.625 cents towards future travel redemptions.

That's not to say there isn't competition for best deal:

• A Chase Ink Plus and Sapphire Reserve combination allows you to earn 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent at office supply stores and redeem them for 1.5 cents each on paid travel.
• Likewise an Ink Plus combined with the Southwest Companion Pass allows you to redeem those 5 Ultimate Rewards points for (very roughly) 3.2 cents each on Wanna Get Away fares with Southwest when flying with your designated companion, the equivalent of earning 16% on your office supply store spend.
• An American Express Premier Rewards Gold card and Platinum Business card would let you earn 2 Membership Rewards points at supermarkets and redeem them for 2 cents each towards premium-cabin airfare, plus enjoy the flexibility of Membership Rewards points transfers.

That said, I don't personally have a Travel Rewards card, and suspect the vast majority of travel hackers either don't have or don't use one. Here's everything you need to know about the pros and cons of BankAmericard Travel Rewards and Preferred Rewards with Bank of America.

You need to have a lot of money (occasionally)

To qualify for Platinum Honors with Bank of America Preferred Rewards, you need to have $100,000 in combined balances with:

• Bank of America;
• Merrill Lynch, the bank's full-service brokerage business;
• and Merrill Edge, the bank's self-directed brokerage service.

Sound simple? Hang on tight.

To initially enroll in the program, you need to have an average daily balance over the preceding 3-month period of $20,000 or more (the minimum to qualify for the Gold tier in Preferred Rewards). Each month after that Bank of America checks to see if you're eligible for a higher tier: if you enroll with a 3-month daily average balance of $20,000, you'll be upgraded to the Platinum tier when your 3-month daily average balance reaches $50,000 and to the Platinum Honors tier when your 3-month daily average balance reaches $100,000. That "check" only happens once per month.

After you've reached a tier in Preferred Rewards you keep that status for 15 months. Technically you earn the status for 12 months and then have a 3-month grace period to requalify before being moved to a lower tier or removed from the program. [Edit 1/7/16: Please see Robert's comment for clarification on how the enrollment period and grace period work in practice.]

Three-month average daily balances are a funny thing. You could meet the $100,000 requirement over 3 months in any number of ways, including:

• Month 1: $100,000. Month 2: $100,000. Month 3: $100,000.
• Month 1: $0. Month 2: $150,000. Month 3: $150,000.
• Month 1: $0. Month 2: $0. Month 3: $300,000.

All three variants produce an average daily balance of $100,000 over a 3-month period, but you must have an account for 3 months to qualify. You can't just deposit $300,000 in a new account and enroll in the Platinum Honors tier the following month.

Most people don't have that kind of money in cash, but you might. If you just sold a house or inherited some money, for example, you might have $300,000, and if you aren't in a rush to spend it, parking it with Bank of America for a month would qualify you for the Platinum Honors tier for the next 15 months.

Investing with Merrill Edge

Obviously, most people don't meet the Platinum Honors tier requirements that way. Instead, they open up a Merrill Edge account and move $100,000 or more in cash or securities into their account, and leave them there.

Note: I'm a passive, indexed investor, so all of the following is going to be from the point of view of passive indexed investing.

In writing this post I scoured the ends of the internet to find as complete and accurate information as possible regarding how to transfer, buy and hold Vanguard mutual funds and ETFs with Merrill Edge. Here's what I found.

• Merrill Edge accountholders can buy shares of Vanguard ETF's and "Investor" shares of most if not all Vanguard mutual funds.
• As a Platinum Honors accountholder you receive 100 free stock and ETF trades per month, so there would be no cost to purchase Vanguard ETF's with cash. Purchasing new Investor shares of Vanguard mutual funds has a $19.95 fee.
• This creates an obvious chicken/egg problem: to get free ETF trades, you have to be Platinum Honors, but to be Platinum Honors, you have to have funds in your account.
• Unless you want to park $100,000 in cash in your account, the obvious solution is to transfer $100,000 (or more) in existing securities from their current custodian.
• Merrill Edge allows some, but not all, "Admiral" shares to be transferred in-kind from Vanguard. That means you are able to hold in a Merrill Edge account shares that cannot be purchased in a Merrill Edge account.
• Once you hold Admiral shares with Merrill Edge you can reinvest dividends and capital gains, but you still can't purchase new shares. Admiral shares have the advantage of being lower cost than Investor shares and, in some cases, ETF shares (VTIAX is cheaper than VXUS, for example). You can read way more about this issue here.
• If your Admiral shares can't be held by Merrill Edge, or if you intend to use Merrill Edge for ongoing contributions and don't want to hold two different share classes in your account, you can convert Admiral shares in all but four Vanguard mutual funds into ETF shares. You can also convert Admiral shares into Investor shares, but since Investor shares have higher fees than ETF's that's unlikely to be your lowest-cost move.
• ETF shares can be moved in-kind from Vanguard to Merrill Edge, although fractional shares will be sold, not transferred. This may produce a taxable capital gain if the transfer is between taxable accounts.
• [Edit 1/6/16: See reader EightBall's comment below for more on this issue, and this Boglehead forum post.]If you elect to reinvest dividends from an ETF, Merrill Edge will charge a 10% "fractional share liquidation fee" on any partial shares. In other words, they buy the whole number of shares your dividends can afford, then charge you 10% of the remainder as a convenience fee before depositing the rest in cash. To avoid that fee, you can elect to receive dividends in cash and manually purchase whole ETF shares, which sounds hellishly annoying. This is one reason I personally prefer Admiral shares to ETF's.

This may seem like a lot of trivia. But I'm laying it all out here for two reasons. First, it took me a couple hours of searching and reading to find the answers to all these questions, so hopefully putting it in one place saves somebody else the same trouble. Second, I truly believe the best way to build wealth is the long-term, automated, low-cost purchase of mutual funds tracking broad market indices.

Merrill Edge, like all brokerages, would like you to do as much short-term, manual, high-cost buying and selling of speculative securities as possible.

Merrill Edge new account bonuses

So you're a mid-career upper-middle-class professional, or early-career FIRE enthusiast, and you've got $100,000 sitting in your Vanguard account. You're intrigued by what your humble blogger earlier called "the best deal in travel hacking." The next step is to open a Merrill Edge account and transfer $100,000 in securities in-kind, right?

Not so fast.

Like many online brokerages, Merrill Edge offers signup bonuses for new customers who open accounts with qualifying balances. The standard Merrill Edge bonus is $100-$600 depending on the amount you deposit within 45 days of opening your account.

But that offer periodically goes as high as $1,000 for deposits of $200,000 or more. There's even a landing page for the higher offer, although it includes an expiration date of December 31, 2016.

If you're eager to get the process started of earning Preferred Rewards status and triggering the highest payout on the Travel Rewards credit card, then go ahead and get started. But if you're not in any hurry, then it may be worth waiting for that higher signup bonus to come around again. Even if you just deposit $100,000, the higher bonus pays out $250 more than the standard one, which it would certainly be nice to have in your retirement accounts happily compounding away.

Conclusion

I'm a long way from having $100,000 in my retirement account, so I won't personally be taking advantage of this deal any time particularly soon. But in this era of cheap and plentiful, but unbonused, manufactured spend I do believe earning 2.625% in travel rewards on all purchases is one of the best opportunities widely available — to those who can afford it.

Booking Southwest flights with Flexpoints and Ultimate Rewards

I previously wrote up my experience booking a Hyatt all-inclusive resort in Jamaica. That left the question of how to get there. While I'm not ready to be seduced by Southwest, I waited to pull the trigger a bit too long and the price difference between the nonstop Southwest flight and one-stop options on real airlines shrank enough to convince me to give them a shot, despite my reservations.

Chase Ultimate Rewards points and US Bank Flexpoints can be used to book Southwest flights

Southwest famously doesn't participate in the public Global Distribution System that real airlines use, which is why their fares don't show up on ITA Matrix, Google Flights, and online travel agencies (Google Flights will show you Southwest routes, but not fares).

But the Chase Ultimate Rewards travel center and US Bank Flexperks Travel Rewards travel contractor can book Southwest fares over the phone.

Redeeming Chase Ultimate Rewards points for travel on Southwest

To make an Ultimate Rewards redemption on Southwest call 866-951-6592.

Like all Ultimate Rewards travel redemptions, points are worth 1.25 cents each for travel on Southwest, and you can use any number of Ultimate Rewards points against the purchase price and pay the remainder in cash. After transferring points to Hyatt to pay for our stay in Jamaica, I didn't have quite enough Ultimate Rewards points left to pay for my partner's ticket, so I redeemed my entire Ultimate Rewards balance and paid the remaining amount with my Chase Ink Plus card, which should earn 2 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar if the purchase codes correctly as a Travel Center reservation.

Theoretically I could have redeemed my Ultimate Rewards balance for a cheaper Southwest fare, then cancelled that flight and used the value towards the ticket I really wanted while paying the difference with the card of my choice. Since this was my partner's ticket and as far as I know she doesn't even have a Rapid Rewards account, I decided to keep it simple and just book the tickets I really wanted.

After feeding the Ultimate Rewards agent the dates and flights I wanted, she came back with a price about $90 cheaper than the fare available online. I had heard of this happening before, so told her to go ahead and make the reservation. After giving her all of my partner's information and my credit card information, and waiting on hold for a while, she came back and told me that flight was not available.

After going back and forth a few times, it turned out what she really meant was that that fare wasn't available, which didn't surprise me, and she was ultimately able to book the fare I had found online.

The call took a total of 45 minutes.

Redeeming US Bank Flexpoints for travel on Southwest

To redeem Flexpoints for travel on Southwest call 888-229-8864. The "Rewards Center" US Bank uses is not open 24 hours a day, but has pretty reasonable hours, something like 7 am to 11 pm, Monday through Saturday (I didn't catch their Sunday hours, but they were closed at 10:50 pm Eastern on Sunday).

After taking down my trip details, the agent explained that in order to book international travel on Southwest he had to call them, get a fare quote, put the reservation on hold, and then return to confirm the fare and itinerary with me. He asked me if there was a particular fare I was expecting, which seemed like a common sense precaution to make sure we were looking at the same flights and dates. It was unclear to me whether the same procedure is required for domestic travel on Southwest.

While the Southwest Anytime fare I booked for my partner was still available for about $900, a Business Select fare was also available for $950. Since I was redeeming Flexpoints, I knew that either itinerary would cost 50,000 Flexpoints and I told the agent to look for the Business Select fare. He was happy to do so and, after putting me on hold for 25 minutes or so, returned with the same fare I had found online.

Since Southwest flights can't be booked online, he also waived the $25 phone booking fee.

The call took a total of 44 minutes. If it seems strange that the call took almost as long as my call with Chase did even though the agent was able to accurately find the correct fare on his first try, the reason is the two lengthy holds he placed me on while calling Southwest.

Adding your Rapid Rewards number

Neither agent asked for a Rapid Rewards number to add to the reservations, and I didn't ask since I was getting pretty bored of waiting on the phone. However, both agents provided the Southwest confirmation number, which made it easy to pull up the reservations on Southwest.com. The Flexperks Rewards Center also provided an "agency" confirmation number they use internally — be sure you get the Southwest confirmation number as well.

Strangely, I was unable to add my Rapid Rewards number to my reservation while logged into Southwest.com. After logging out, however, I was able to pull up my reservation and manually add my Rapid Rewards number, and the reservation immediately appeared in my account.

[updated] Automate Twitter American Express offers the (really) easy way

[updated 1/6/2016: this technique is working again.]

[updated 12/30/15: this technique is no longer working.]

[updated 11/30/15: update the RSS feed your Twitterfeed points to to this URL.]

[updated 8/2/15: apparently a number of people didn't read the Devil's Advocate post I linked to closely enough, and did not follow the instructions there, so I'll repeat the relevant ones here. When configuring your Twitterfeed account:

"You’ll also want to change a few settings by clicking on that 'Advanced Settings' link at the bottom. This will open a whole slew of options, but you only need to adjust two of them. Unclick the 'Post link' checkbox so that it’s empty, and change the 'Post Content' option to “description only.'"

By doing this, you won't be mentioning my Twitter account every time you tweet out an Amex Sync offer.

Thanks.]

Hat tips go to William Charles, Devil's Advocate, and Amit Agarwal at Digital Inspirations for this post.

Introduction

In the last few weeks there have been a flurry of posts about methods of automating enrollment in American Express offers available through Twitter.

All the methods have one thing in common: they require you to open separate Twitter accounts for each American Express card you have, and sync each Twitter account to a single American Express card, as described here.

One method, described by William Charles at Doctor of Credit, is to set up an additional, separate account with the service IFTTT for each of your newly linked Twitter accounts, then retweet each tweet from the Twitter account @OffersBot that includes the hashtag "#available".

That's a pretty good method, but involves a lot of brute force and a lot of new IFTTT accounts that you'll only ever use for a single purpose.

A second, more elegant method, described by Devil's Advocate, involves:

1. Setting up a single IFTTT account linked to a "master" Twitter account that tweets out all available American Express offers;
2. Creating an RSS feed of that Twitter account using the technique described by Amit Agarwal;
3. Then linking all your "slave" Twitter accounts to that RSS feed using Twitterfeed.

However, since the RSS feed created in step 2 is public, there's actually no need for you to create your own.

Feel free to use my RSS feed to automate your American Express offers

I set up one of my Twitter accounts as a "master" account, which all of my other American Express-linked Twitter accounts automatically retweet. You can use it too!

To be clear, you'll still need to set up unique Twitter accounts for each one of your American Express cards.

But once you've done that, you can skip to creating a Twitterfeed account and using the URL of my RSS feed, as described by Devil's Advocate in this post (skip down to "Option #3: Twitterfeed."

Once you've opened a Twitterfeed account, use the following URL as the "Blog URL or RSS Feed URL:"

https://script.googleusercontent.com/macros/echo?user_content_key=N_k_NWvLE-yMX85cDVGchXEJ1AWmYB-Id1fkw7MKPMd1IbYDyg568VEjW-JDjrzjEOwCYGopqhEBPk7bZMUWqkAYnwADx9pDOJmA1Yb3SEsKFZqtv3DaNYcMrmhZHmUMi80zadyHLKCzniYmIAKERg17xiLfYcbFU4hYwYLUc2VoAPxoDu5zV7-AlymaS3_oxWSqwvZphMa1UvnaGu-CRLuzKH9hWLZv2DJBNgH3uNGbUlc-DMMiftPKuzvYGGE2o00lmP9351dL7y6l43CLNy40VzKAMHpU&lib=Mn4xCJMdCZdQdN_YOKukP6Lfh5YOtzaZT

Then follow the rest of the steps Devil's Advocate lists, and you'll be all set.

One note: Devil's Advocate doesn't make clear that you need to repeatedly sign in, validate, add, and sign out of each of your Twitter accounts while still within "Step 2" of the setup process. It's time-consuming, but not too hard as long as you have all your Twitter passwords handy.

Conclusion

I had fun hacking together my automated Twitter sync machine, but I understand that not everyone has the time and patience to set up their own. Hopefully those readers will find this streamlined method easy enough to implement.

Note that if you choose to do this you are giving me and, vicariously, @OffersBot, control over your American Express-linked Twitter accounts! This is another excellent reason to never, ever use your actual personal or professional Twitter accounts for American Express offers, although an even better reason is that it drives me, and everyone else you know, absolutely crazy.

Quick hit: activating Sam's Club gift cards

Back in June I wrote about my super-boring strategy to take advantage of an American Express Offer for You of $20 off $20 or more spent at Sam's Club.

It turned out to be anything but boring: only today was the last of my $50 Sam's Club gift cards activated. Here's the story, and some advice on how to proceed if you've been having trouble with your own gift cards.

Activating Sam's Club gift cards is supposed to be easy

When $50 Sam's Club gift cards are shipped, you receive two e-mails, confusingly with almost identical subject lines:

• Your UPS shipping confirmation and tracking number is in an e-mail with the subject line "Your SamsClub.com order has shipped‏;"
• The link to activate your Sam's Club gift cards is sent almost simultaneously, and has the subject line "Your Sam's Club Gift Card has Shipped‏."

If you don't know that Sam's Club gift cards require activation in the first place, you might be forgiven for not even opening the apparently-duplicate e-mails.

Guilty.

Here's what my inbox looked like:

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As you can see, half are actual shipment notifications, and half are activation codes.

The activation process is unreliable

Sometimes clicking on the activation link works. Sometimes it doesn't. Sam's Club is aware of the problem.

When cards won't activate, you need to call

To have your cards manually activated, call the number on your receipt (888-537-5503) and select menu options 3, 5, and 7, in that order. You'll be connected very quickly (within a few seconds) to a representative, who will ask for your order number, shipping and billing address, and the gift card number.

The gift card number they need is the number underneath the silver strip

Sam's Club phone representatives have apparently never actually seen Sam's Club gift cards, and every single representative I spoke to asked me for "the number on the back of the card." If you look at an actual gift card, however, you'll immediately see that there are 3 "numbers on the back of the card," and not one representative knew which number they needed to send an activation request.

It turns out it's the gift card number located under the scratch-away silver strip.

If at first you don't succeed, call, call again

My orders were shipped between June 3 and June 5, and were just finally activated on July 6 and July 7. That's a long time, and I wasn't sitting idle; I was calling every 2-3 days in order to find out the status of the activation request. In fact, I didn't make any progress until I had the phone representative open an actual support ticket, which finally seemed to set the gears in motion, and my cards were all activated within 5-6 days after that.

Conclusion

At the end of the day (or, in this case, the end of a month of waiting), I got a few hundred dollars of household supplies from Walmart at a generous 70% discount through this American Express Offer for You, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat, even knowing how much of an aggravation it would turn out to be. Walmart sells a lot of useful things!

I hope this post will reduce any readers' aggravation if they find themselves going through the same process, now or in the future.

Using US Bank Flexpoints for hotel stays

Flexpoints, US Bank's proprietary rewards currency, are famously most valuable when redeemed for airfare: they're worth between 1.33 and 2 cents each, which makes the US Bank Flexperks Travel Rewards card an (almost) unlimited 2.66% to 6% rewards card, depending on the flights you ultimately redeem your Flexpoints for, as long as you're sure to spend exclusively in the card's bonus categories.

In addition to flights, Flexpoints can also be redeemed for hotel stays, and if Flexpoints are the points you happen to have while booking a trip, they may be worth redeeming. There are a few nuances to doing so, however, which you should know before getting started.

Prices are after-tax

This may go without saying, but before calculating the number of Flexpoints required for a stay, US Bank adds the taxes and fees for the reservation.

What didn't occur to me until I started researching this post is that the Flexperks Travel website presents the total cost, including taxes, up front, which is information that is typically hidden on both online travel agencies and the websites of hotels themselves. Instead of having to click all the way through to the reservation screen to see how much you'll actually be paying for a stay, you can search using the Flexperks portal and see the total cost of your different hotel choices presented on one screen:

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Redemption values are lower

While you can get up to 2 cents per Flexpoint in value when redeeming for paid airfare, Flexpoints are only worth up to 1.5 cents each when redeemed for hotel stays. However...

Redemption thresholds are lower

Flexpoint redemptions for airfare start at 20,000 Flexpoints, for flights costing up to $400. When redeemed for hotel stays, you can redeem as few as 10,000 Flexpoints for stays costing up to $150, and in 10,000/$150 intervals thereafter. While your value per Flexpoint is lower, if you're Flexpoint-rich and cash-poor, it could be a great way to get value from large, unused balances.

Redemption prices are based on the total cost of your stay

In other words, while a one-night, $200-after-taxes reservation costs 20,000 Flexpoints, a two-night, $400-after-taxes reservation costs just 30,000 Flexpoints, since the total cost falls within the $301-$450 band.

I assume my astute readers will see where this is going: a way to goose the value of your Flexpoints on longer stays is break down your stay into multiple, shorter reservations to test different permutations of your reservation with "breakpoints" that bring each component reservation as close to the maximum allowed value as possible.

Another trick is to book the most expensive room that doesn't bump you into a higher price band. In other words, rather than booking a $200 stay for 20,000 Flexpoints, see if there's a bigger room or one that includes breakfast or parking, that won't raise your total cost above $300.

Stays probably won't earn points or elite-qualifying nights and stays

The Flexperks Travel portal is "powered by Orbitz," so unlike with airline redemptions, you probably won't earn points on your hotel stays, and they won't count towards elite status. You may or may not receive your elite benefits, depending on the elite program's policies. [Side note: I understand there are ways to get around these restrictions. I don't know any of them.]

While that doesn't sound ideal from a travel hacking point of view, you can also use the opportunity to stay in boutique hotels you don't get a chance to enjoy if you're usually too busy redeeming hotel points or chasing hotel elite status.

Conclusion

Unlike some bloggers, I choose not to pretend to live in a universe full of "ideal" redemptions. Instead, I choose to live in the real world, where points lose value the longer they go unredeemed. In that world, every trip presents a choice between spending cash that could be invested, used to pay off debt, or spent on all the other expenses of daily life, or spending points that have already been acquired, whether advisedly or not.

If you find you're consistently redeeming your Flexpoints for less than the opportunity cost of acquiring them (2% or 2.22% in cash back or statement credits, for example), then you should at least think about earning fewer of them. But don't let the perfect $799 airfare redemption be the enemy of the perfectly adequate $599 hotel redemption.

Quick hit: free money from American Express and Marriott Hotels

I don't write about (or take advantage of) deals like this very often anymore, but this one is easy enough to be worth a quick mention.

If you registered in time for the current American Express "Offer For You" at Marriott Hotels, you can get a $50 statement credit when you make a single purchase of $200 or more at Marriott Hotels (excluding all their other brands: "The Ritz-Carlton®, EDITION®, AC Hotels by Marriott®, Autograph Collection®, JW Marriott®, Renaissance Hotels®, MOXY(TM) Hotels, Courtyard®, SpringHill Suites by Marriott®, Fairfield Inn & Suites by Marriott®, Protea Hotels(TM), Residence Inn by Marriott®, TownePlace Suites by Marriott®, Marriott Executive Apartments®, Gaylord Hotels® and Marriott Vacation Club®").

If you have a local Marriott Hotel (or if you'll be traveling near one before December 31, 2014) you should be able to buy a $200 Marriott gift card at the reception desk. Then use TopCashBack to click through to Cardpool.com and earn an additional $8 per $200 card, on top of the $176 Cardpool will mail you as a check. Earn $34 profit per registered American Express card (I have 5).

Cautious as I am, I'll be buying one $200 gift card first to make sure the statement credit posts properly. If it doesn't, I do have an upcoming Marriott stay which I can pay for with the gift card, rather than the points I was planning to use. That's less than ideal, but since Marriott Rewards points are seldom worth even a cent each on award night redemptions, I don't consider it a great sacrifice given the potential upside of the experiment.

Naturally, I'll report back once my statement credit posts (or doesn't).

Moving credit lines between American Express accounts

There are many reasons someone might want to move a credit line between accounts. Perhaps the most common situation is when closing a card to avoid its annual fee; rather than seeing your total available credit decrease by the amount of the card's credit limit, you can transfer all but (typically) a nominal sum to another credit card issued by the same bank.

Alternatively, if you have a large credit line on a non-rewards-earning credit card like the Chase Slate from your pre-travel-hacking days, then you might decide to transfer the credit line to a more lucrative card also issued by Chase.

Each bank has a different procedure for this operation. In my experience, I've been able to transfer all but $2,500 from my Chase credit cards when closing them, and I've done that both over the phone and through the Secure Message Center without any difficulty.

Bank of America, on the other hand, in my experience requires a hard credit pull when transferring credit lines – even though they're not extending any additional credit!

American Express has fiddled with their procedure over the years, but since I just did this, I thought I'd share the method that worked for me today.

What cards are eligible?

American Express's basic rule is that a card must be open for at least 12 months before you can transfer that card's credit line away from it. In theory, credit lines can be transferred to a credit card almost immediately after the card account is opened.

I can now report from personal experience that the 12 month clock does not reset when you upgrade a credit card: I upgraded my Hilton HHonors Surpass card less than 12 months ago, but was able to reallocate credit away from it today.

Additionally, credit lines cannot be reallocated from business credit cards to consumer credit cards. Any other combination is theoretically possible using the online system: from consumer to business, between business, and between consumer credit cards.

Avoid the phone and online agents

I twice attempted exactly the same procedure that was successful today, once over the phone and once through the online messaging system, but was unsuccessful both times. Both times I believe the agents attempted to reallocate the credit lines from my (new) Blue Cash card to my HHonors card, instead of the other way around. I may have simply had incompetent agents helping me both times, or they might all be equally poorly-trained.

So for the sake of your sanity, use the online system if possible.

How it works

From your American Express home page, click on "Profile" near the top of the screen, then "Manage Credit Limit:"

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From there, look for "Transfer Available Credit to Another Card," and click "Start:"

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From there, select the card you want to transfer your available credit limit from:

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And the card you want to transfer your available credit to:

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Once you confirm the request, you'll be immediately notified whether the request was successful or not, and your available credit limits will almost immediately reflect the change (they say it can take up to 15 minutes).

Initializing Iberia Plus Avios accounts

Last month I mentioned that I was trying to figure out how to "initialize" my Iberia account. Now that I've succeeded, I can share my experience.

What are Avios?

For most hotels and airlines we use in the United States, a loyalty currency is almost indistinguishable from a loyalty program. It doesn't occur to anyone that there's a difference between the Delta Skymiles loyalty program and an individual Delta Skymile.

Avios work slightly differently: Avios are the rewards currency of three different loyalty programs: British Airways Executive Club, Iberia Plus, and the Avios travel rewards program.

So just like you can use Euros issued in France to buy bratwurst in Vienna, you can use your Avios for rewards through any of the three programs.

However, as the people of Greece recently discovered to their chagrin, just because countries use the same currency doesn't mean they can't impose border controls. That's exactly what Iberia has done, and smuggling Avios past those controls is the subject of this post.

Why Iberia?

While British Airways and Iberia charge the same number of Avios for flight redemptions through either program, Iberia charges much lower fuel surcharges for award redemptions on their own flights than those booked using Avios in British Airways Executive Club club accounts.

Here's British Airway's Avios calculation for a non-stop flight between Madrid and New York's JFK airport:

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At the request of a very generous reader, this picture features a circle

Here's the same route priced out using Avios in an Iberia account:

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At the request of a very generous reader, this picture features four arrows

What's the problem?

In a perfect world, that's all you'd need to know. By choosing "Combine my Avios" (find it under "Manage my account") on British Airways' website, you'd be able to save yourself hundreds of dollars on your Iberia award flights by booking using Iberia Plus instead.

Unfortunately, the world we live in isn't perfect yet, and you're not allowed to transfer Avios into your Iberia account until it's been open for 90 days and has at least one other (non-"Combine my Avios") transaction.

What's the solution?

In response to my original post a number of readers reached out with suggestions on how to "initialize" my Iberia account:

• e-Rewards redemption. This is what I ultimately did: I redeemed $25 in e-Rewards credit for 750 Avios in my Iberia account. That transaction initialized my (over-90-day-old) account, and I was then able to successfully transfer Avios from British Airways to Iberia using Avios.com as the Points Guy describes here. This worked for me since I already had about $24 in e-Rewards credit, so I just had to flunk a few surveys in order to earn the additional $1 in credit. I initiated my transfer on May 29, and the Avios were credited to my Iberia Plus account on June 2;
• Membership Rewards transfer. In the comments, Grant not-very-helpfully (I don't have Membership Rewards points) pointed to his post on transferring Membership Rewards points to Iberia Plus in order to initialize an account;
• Melia Rewards transfer. Another reader reported being able to transfer the 2,000 point signup bonus with the MeliaRewards program to Iberia. I wasn't ultimately able to do this — as the reader pointed out, the 2,000 bonus points aren't supposed to be eligible for transfer. However, if you do ever stay with a Melia-affiliated property, or earn Melia points through some other activity, you will be able to transfer the points you earn to Iberia Plus.

Conclusion

Iberia has great award availability and relatively low fuel surcharges on their own flights; that can be a powerful combination when trying to decide how to fly to or from Europe using Avios, while Avios can be one of the easiest loyalty currencies to earn since British Airways Executive Club is a transfer partner of Chase's Ultimate Rewards points.

JFK-MXP // PRG-NRT mistake fare/fuel dump still available

If you've been under a rock for the last 24 hours, you may have missed news of a fuel dump that broke into public last night.

Background

Fuel dumping is one of the more arcane arts of travel hacking; it involves configurations of flight legs which cause the fuel surcharges normally associated with an itinerary to "drop off," leave only the (usually much lower) base fare in place.

There are a plethora of these tricks, and they're reproducible. Most travel hackers I know, myself included, don't bother with them for the simple reason that they're typically only good for specific routes or carriers; if you aren't interested in flying that route or carrier, they're little more than a party trick, although a very neat one.

Today's fuel dump

What made today's revelation (starting yesterday evening in this FlyerTalk thread, continuing today on Twitter here and here, among other places) interesting was that it was for a huge range of dates (I found it on basically all mid-week-to-mid-week itineraries) and between destinations that were conceivably interesting to a lot of people: the first leg from several major US cities to Milan, Italy, and the second leg from Prague, Budapest, and other European cities to many destinations in Asia.

How to find it

A few moments ago I was still able to find a $257 fare using this trick; how long it will last is anyone's guess. Here's how to find your own trick fare:

1. Use Priceline.com to conduct a "Multi-Destination" search.
2. For the first leg, search for a US city served by Alitalia (it seems to be Alitalia coding on the first leg that triggers the error, whoever the operating carrier is). JFK and LAX reportedly work, although I haven't been able to reproduce any fares out of LAX. Use Milan's MXP airport as the destination. As I said above, mid-week departures seem to return the lowest fares.
3. For the second leg, use a European city served by Alitalia, KLM, or Air France with a destination in Asia. Mid-week dates return the lowest fares.
4. Keep searching.

For further suggestions, start with the FlyerTalk thread where people are reporting their successful reservations.

Example

Here's a $257 flight using JFK as the US origin and Shanghai as the Asian destination:

View fullsize

Act now...

Priceline seems to give you until midnight on the day after booking to cancel airline reservations. Even if you're not sure about your plans yet, consider doing what I did: book several options, then talk it out with your family or friends and see which, if any, of the options end up working for you. While apparently this trick has been around for a while, I do not expect it to last long now that it's out in the wild.

...but be careful

For the time being I would not associate your frequent flyer number with any of these reservations, especially an account with the operating carrier. Instead, consider crediting your miles to a partner mileage program, like Alaska Airlines for flights operated by Delta.

New(er) changes to Walmart point-of-sale systems

Background

Just a few weeks ago, I noted that the point-of-sale (POS) software had been updated at my local Walmart, such that I selected any cash back amount before entering my pin, instead of after. Reader Serion presciently advised me in the comments:

"My WM got the update you're talking about a few weeks ago. However, they just got ANOTHER update ~2 days ago. With this update, it won't allow them to split debit payments. Everytime they key in $500 debit, the system beeps and says transaction type not allowed. Has anyone else ran into this. Know any way around it? (It'll allow you to run a single $500 debit purchase w/o a problem)"

That update has now been rolled out to my Walmart, and while it is somewhat annoying that they keep changing the procedure (and making us retrain their cashiers), I'm happy to report that we can still conduct all of our favorite transactions. Here's how.

Old system: cashier goes first

With the old POS software, after the final total was calculated for your purchase, the cashier had the option of typing in a split-tender amount on the physical keypad located to the right of the screen.

After typing in the amount, he or she would press the physical "debit" button, also located on the right side of the terminal.

Then, the customer could swipe a debit card, select the amount of cash back desired, if any, and type in their PIN.

This procedure could be repeated up to 4 times total (3 times if loading a Bluebird card).

New system: customer goes first

Once your Walmart receives the updated POS software, the process is reversed.

Now, after the final total is calculated for the purchase, the customer can swipe a debit card, select a cash back amount, and enter their PIN.

After the PIN is entered, the customer-facing keypad will read "Waiting for Cashier," and only then can the cashier type in the amount to be charged to the swiped debit card and push the "debit" button, again using the physical key located on the right side of the screen.

In fact, the cashier can type in the amount of the split tender before the customer swipes a debit card – what triggered reader Serion's repeated error was the cashier pressing the "debit" button before he had swiped his debit card and entered his PIN.

This procedure can still be repeated at least 4 times (that's how many swipes I did this morning).

Conclusion

The new POS software has been reported to have something to do with making Walmart registers compatible with chip-enabled credit and debit cards. I don't know anything about that – my Walmart registers are most decidedly not compatible with chip-enabled cards, but already have the new software.

In any case, I was fortunate enough, because they know and trust me, to be able to do multiple laps with my cashiers until we figured out the pattern that worked. Since my readers may be dealing with less cooperative cashiers, I want them to know how to get through this process as painlessly as possible.

However, you should still expect some confusion, frustration, and delays the first few times you go through this process with each new cashier.