Unleash your manufactured spend: Part 4

This post was supposed to go up yesterday, but I'm moving apartments this week and yesterday got a little out of hand. So, my apologies for that. There'll be a wrap-up post this evening and then next week we'll return to our regularly scheduled programming.

In today's entry in my series on the ability to pay credit card bills using PIN-based debit and gift cards at Walmart (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), we're leaving theory behind and I'm breaking down my own plans to maximize this technique in my own miles and points strategy.

First, a little background. As someone who constantly ridicules Walmart's model of "low prices, no training, starvation wages," immediately before discovering this technique I was running just 5,000 per month through Walmart, with just two trips per month (unless I had an urgent need to generate a lot of spending quickly, in which case I could buy additional money orders). On a typical visit, I would make 3 deposits to my Gobank account: a $1,000 US Bank Visa Buxx swipe, a $500 Nationwide Visa Buxx swipe, and a $1,000 MyVanilla Debit swipe. By loading my Buxx cards with my PayPal Debit MasterCard, which was funded with PayPal Cash cards, my net cost for $2,519.75 in manufactured spend (per visit) was $12.18, or 0.48 cents per dollar ($11.85 in PayPal Cash fees, $7.90 in Vanilla Reload Network fees, $7 in Visa Buxx load fees, one $0.50 MyVanilla transaction fee, and a $15.07 rebate for using my PayPal Debit MasterCard). Since I manufacture almost exclusively in bonus categories – the exception being the Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard, which doesn't have bonus categories, but earns 2.22% cash back on all transactions – this put my cost per point in the low tens of a cent.

Meanwhile, I would load my Bluebird account online with $1,000 using Vanilla Reload Network reload cards on each of the first five days of the month.

As I suggested yesterday, PIN-based billpay at Walmart led me to rethink my entire miles and points strategy. The point isn't that it's cheaper than loading a Gobank account – on the contrary, it's more expensive. I I were going to manufacture the same amount each month as I have been, I'd be crazy to use billpay instead of Gobank. The point, rather, is that at a slightly higher cost per dollar of manufactured spend, it liberates my entire Gobank and Bluebird loading budget for use with gift cards.

Now, with the same Visa Buxx and MyVanilla Debit spending pattern I was using before, I can directly pay my credit card bills at the Walmart Customer Service center (see Tuesday's post for cost per dollar analysis). Then, I can load $3,500 in gift cards to my Bluebird and Gobank accounts at any register in the store. Using a card that bonuses grocery store spend, like the American Express Hilton HHonors no-annual-fee and Surpass cards (5 HHonors points and 6 HHonors points per dollar spent at grocery stores, respectively), the American Express Premier Rewards Gold card (2 flexible Membership Rewards points per dollar spent at grocery stores), or even the US Bank Flexperks Travel Rewards card (2 Flexpoints per dollar, worth up to 4 cents when redeemed for paid airline tickets), I can literally double my monthly manufactured spend while only slightly increasing my cost per point.

Of course, this does entail additional trips to Walmart and additional risks. Since Bluebird has a $1,000 daily load limit, I can't load $2,500 per visit as I do with Gobank. To use giftcards to max out my Bluebird load limit, I'd have to make 5 visits a month – not likely! But 4 visits per month, one per week, seems eminently reasonable.

Meanwhile, I'll incur additional risk by moving $4,000 in Vanilla Reload Network reload card loads from Bluebird over to my 3 MyVanilla Debit cards. Since Walmart Billpay is actually cheaper than bank teller cash advances, at least for some transactions ($1.50 for American Express and Discover bill payments, compared to $1.95 for cash advances), I'll stop doing large cash advances, which will hopefully protect me when I start making larger swipe transactions with the cards.

And that's how I'll be turning $10,000 in manufactured spend into $19,000 in manufactured spend on Walmart visits. I'll pay a slightly higher cost per point, but the value of the points I earn will outweigh the higher costs 5-10 times over.

Check back tonight, when I'll offer my concluding thoughts and provide some valuable data points so you know what to expect when you make a Walmart bill payment.

Unleash your manufactured spend: Part 3

On Monday, I published a post outlining the details of a long-standing but little-known travel hacking technique: using PIN-based debit cards to make credit card payments at Walmart Money Center and Customer Service registers.  Then on Tuesday I compared the potential cost per dollar (CPD) of manufactured spend you can achieve using various PIN-based debit products.

In the days leading up to this week's series, I promised "a new, game-changing hack which will double or triple the amount of manufactured spend" you can generate each month. But when the details were revealed, they were met with a shrug from many of my readers. I'm not here to judge – I'm here to provide you with my ideas, analysis, and experiences in the world of travel hacking. But the indifferent reaction did start me thinking about the following question:

What do you do when you find out about a new travel hacking technique?

The natural impulse when a new technique like Walmart billpay comes along is to think "how can I add this to my existing system?" And there is a perfectly natural answer: buy PIN-based Visa prepaid debit cards, preferably at a merchant that gives a category bonus (like supermarkets with the American Express Hilton HHonors and Surpass cards), and liquidate those cards at your local Walmart Money Center or Customer Service center.

I would argue that that's the wrong impulse, and that's part of what has led to a lot of frustration among people who've tried using this technique and found it to be more trouble than it's worth. Indeed, it sounds like a special kind of hell buying Visa gift cards in sets of four, taking them to Walmart, asking an underpaid, undertrained Walmart cashier for a $1,998.12 bill payment – and then asking to pay using four $500 gift cards! It's no surprise that people experience a lot of resistance and heartburn if that's their unloading strategy.

But remember the features of the products you've already been exploiting for months: Bluebird allows you to load up to $1,000 per day and $5,000 per calendar month in Vanilla Reload Network reload cards OR register loads at Walmart – and those loads can be done at any Walmart register (I've even done them at the small register at the end of the self-checkout aisle).  Gobank allows up to $2,500 per day in PIN-based debit loads at Walmart. While you can load $1,100 twice using a MyVanilla Debit card for a total cost of $1.00, you can also load $500 5 times, at 5 different registers, for free using PIN-based gift cards.

Even better, if your local Walmarts have Money Center kiosks (mine don't), you can load your Bluebird and Gobank accounts there, without even interacting with a cashier. 

Then you can use your MyVanilla Debit cards, or other high-limit PIN-based debit products to make single, large, credit card bill payments at the Customer Service desk or Money Center without any fuss: no split transactions, no anonymous gift cards. The same goes for your US Bank and Nationwide Visa Buxx cards (but don't forget the $800 rolling 7-day purchase limit with Nationwide Visa Buxx).

I'm not recommending this, or any other, specific loading and unloading strategy. What I'm recommending is that rather than just stacking new techniques on top of your favorite existing techniques, think about your miles and points strategy holistically in order to get the most out of each horrible, soul-crushing, but shockingly lucrative trip to Walmart.

With that said, I'm dismounting the soapbox! Check back tomorrow, when I'll share my plan going forward, integrating Walmart billpay into my own miles and points strategy, and on Friday I'll share some additional data points that I hope readers will find useful.

Unleash your manufactured spend: Part 2

Well, yesterday's post sure got a reaction out of my readers, both long-time and first-time, and I can't say I'm surprised: it was an "unblogged" technique that a lot of people have been using to manufacture spend for months, or longer, and they were understandably concerned about anything that might signal an end to that. I strongly recommend taking a look at the comments to that thread, since in addition to people scolding me there are some valuable observations by readers correcting details and making observations based on their own experiences.

I want to single out commenter Brandan who pointed out that "it says on the FlyerTalk post you linked to that it's possible to have Best Buy Chase as the payee for a Chase credit card (and reduce the bill pay fee to $1)" and commenter Jewsus for pointing out that he can pay his American Express credit card using the "next business day" service for $1.50, not $1.88 as I had posted (the 3 business day service costs $1). Thanks guys. I don't have every credit card and I haven't made payments to all the credit cards I do have, so there's a lot of information about specific issuers that I'm not going to be able to report firsthand.

Cost per Dollar (CPD) of manufactured spend: my analysis

Since this technique has a very high limit (up to $8,999 or $9,999, according to various reports) but a flat cost, the cost per dollar of manufactured spend you pay is going to vary depending on the size of your payments. For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to confine this analysis to four payment amounts, where applicable: $500, $1,000, $1,500, and $2,000. Hopefully this will illustrate the potential return of this technique, and you can repeat the calculations for your own preferred payment amounts. Here are my calculations, in increasing order of CPD.

Bank Debit Cards

This is the cheapest option for earning rewards, but is also inherently limited by the amount of money in your checking account. Further, Bank of America and Suntrust, the two banks which issue rewards-earning debit cards that pay rewards on PIN-based transactions, are understandably sensitive to so-called "perk abuse," and you risk having your checking account closed by your bank for "excessive" use of this technique.

Personally, I have made $1,000 Gobank deposits using my Bank of America Alaska Airlines debit card and the miles have posted normally, so I'm not worried about Walmart bill payments around that level. Your miles may vary. 

Since there's no fee for using your bank balance to fund a PIN transaction, your cost per dollar of manufactured spend is just $1.00 or $1.88 (or $1.50 – see above), divided by the size of your transaction (note that the Suntrust Delta Airlines debit card earns 1 Skymile per dollar, while the Bank of America Alaska Airlines debit card earns 1 Mileage Plan mile per 2 dollars): 

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This is the same CPD calculation you should use for free Chase gift cards, if they're available in your state. 

Visa Buxx

The Nationwide and US Bank Visa Buxx cards have slightly different limits and fees: the Nationwide card allows 2 loads per month of up to $500 each, at a fee of $2, while the US Bank Buxx card allows 4 loads per month at a cost of $2.50 each. Both cards allow your balance at one time to be up to $1,000, but the Nationwide card has a 7-day rolling limit of $800 in purchases. For the purposes of this chart, I've pro-rated Nationwide's $4 load fee so $3.20 is "charged" to your Walmart bill payment when you make an $800 payment:

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PayPal Debit MasterCard

The PayPal Debit MasterCard is loadable using PayPal Cash cards, which can still be purchased using a rewards-earning credit card at some – but far from all – vendors. In addition to its 1% cash back function when you sign for a purchase or use it online, the PayPal Debit MasterCard also functions as a PIN-based debit card. Your daily purchase limit may vary: mine is $3,000.

In this case, in addition to the bill pay transaction fee, you'll also pay $3.95 for each reload card, with up to $500 in value each:

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MyVanilla Debit Cards

Loading a MyVanilla Debit card using a Vanilla Reload card costs the same as loading a PayPal Debit Mastercard. However, there's another $0.50 transaction fee charge on every purchase made with the card, slightly raising your cost per dollar of manufactured spend:

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Gift Cards

There are a lot of different PIN-based debit gift cards on the market today, and the price per card can vary between $4.95 and $6.95. For the sake of these calculations I'll use $5.95 as a "typical" cost per $500 gift card. You should adjust the calculation depending on the cards you have available in your area:

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Conclusion

There's a reason that I use "Cost per Dollar" analysis rather than "Cost per Mile/Point" analysis: I don't know what credit cards you carry, and I don't know how you value your miles and points.

I carry a ThankYou Preferred card that earns 5 ThankYou points per dollar at drug stores, and I can use those point to pay off my student loans for pennies on the dollar. That makes the ability to unload Vanilla Reload Network cards wildly valuable to me, even if I have to pay as much as 1 cent per dollar (earning "only" an 80% discount on my student loan payments). If on the other hand you're earning 1 Ultimate Rewards point per dollar spent at drug stores, you may be much less interested in liquidating Vanilla Reload Network cards at volume.

On the other hand, you may have an American Express Hilton HHonors Surpass card, and have some upcoming award trips planned where you'll be getting over half a cent per point in value. In that case, paying as much as 1.23 cents per dollar at a supermarket – 0.205 cents per point – means over a 50% discount on your hotel stay.

This series will continue tomorrow with some reflections on how this technique – and these blog posts – have affected my views on travel hacking, and I'll conclude on Thursday with my thoughts on how I'll personally be taking advantage of this technique in the future.

Unleash your manufactured spend with Walmart billpay: Part 1

First of all, I want to thank all of my readers for their patience for the last few days while I've been hinting at today's post. The reason I couldn't post earlier was not just to build buzz, but to make sure that I had personally tested every part of this technique. I've now done so, and I'm pleased to report that it's real, and it's spectacular.

Second, to the best of my knowledge the technique I'm about to describe has never been blogged about openly before, which I expect to change soon. However, it is not the result of my work alone, so before I begin I want to acknowledge the people who set me on the path to discovering it: Jerry in the comments to this New Girl in the Air post; Nathan at the very end of the comments to this post; this PointsChaser post; and of course above all this slow-burning FlyerTalk thread which was the first place to report a number of the indispensable elements that make the technique work. I'm deeply indebted to all those sources for the basic elements of this technique; any errors are of course mine alone.

Having said that, let's get started. 

Walmart allows you to pay credit card bills using any PIN-based debit card

How it Works

Walmart Money Center registers and, in locations without a separate Money Center, Customer Service registers are integrated with the CheckFreePay bill pay network. At any such register, you can ask to make a credit card bill payment and use any PIN-based debit card to pay the bill and the associated fee.

You can use up to 4 PIN-based debit cards per bill pay transaction, while paying a single transaction fee.

Credit and debit cards are issued by banks: Chase credit cards are issued by Chase, American Express credit cards are issued by American Express, Bank of America credit cards are issued by Bank of America. However, each card is also linked to a payment network: Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover.

The single most important thing you have to know in order to take advantage of this technique is that when you pay your credit card bills at Walmart, you must make the payment out to the payment network, not the issuing bank.

So even though your Chase Sapphire Preferred Visa Signature card and your Chase Ink Plus MasterCard are both issued by Chase, to pay your credit card bills at Walmart the payee for the Sapphire Preferred will be "Visa" and the payee for the Ink Plus will be "MasterCard."

What it Costs

This section is based only on my experiments at my local Walmart store locations: your experience may differ. 

There are two price points in the CheckFreePay system at Walmart: $1 "3 business day" payments and $1.88 "next business day" payments. Unfortunately, not every credit card payment network has both payment speeds enabled. Here are the results of my experiments:

• Visa: Next business day only ($1.88)
• MasterCard: Next business day only ($1.88)
• American Express: Next business day ($1.88) or 3 business day ($1)
• Discover: Next business day ($1.88) or 3 business day ($1)

So if you want to make a credit card payment to a Visa credit card at my local Walmart, you must pay $1.88: the $1 payment option is not available. This may vary by store location or employee. 

Why it Matters

Ever since the Federal Reserve issued new regulations forcing prepaid card issuers to allow their cards to be used as "true" PIN-based debit cards, we've been in a very exciting time for travel hacking. For example, Chase allows up to $2,600 in free gift card purchases per Chase credit card, per rolling 30-day period. Likewise, many grocery stores (a common bonus category) allow you to purchase $500 Visa and MasterCard gift cards at a typical cost of $5.95-$6.95.

Besides gift cards, in many parts of the country it's still possible to buy Vanilla Reload Network reload cards at drug stores like CVS, and PayPal Cash cards at 7-11 store locations that are processed as gas stations. 

The problem in this era of virtually unlimited manufactured spend is liquidating prepaid cards once you've purchased them.

Bluebird is a free option, loadable at all Walmart registers using PIN-based debit cards up to $1,000 per day and $5,000 per month, but those loads count against the same $5,000 calendar month limit as Vanilla Reload Network cards.

Gobank is another great option I've extensively covered, but while it's free to load Gobank accounts at Walmart up to $1,100 per transaction and $2,500 per day, it's a Green Dot product that's subject to shutdown if you exceed undisclosed monthly limits or if your loading pattern is deemed "unusual."

PayPal has a $4,000 rolling 30-day load limit using PayPal Cash cards, but unloading your account can cause problems since PayPal is notoriously sensitive to abusive behavior.

All of those problems have now gone away: you no longer need an intermediate product to liquidate your prepaid cards.  Instead, you can bring up to 4 PIN-based debit cards per bill pay transaction to your local Walmart and at a cost of $1 or $1.88 send the card balances directly to your credit card.

The Risks

There are 3 primary risks to this technique that I want to be perfectly clear about up front.

First, there's the risk of having an account shutdown. There are many reports of MyVanilla Debit cards being shutdown without warning, and it's still unclear what loading and unloading pattern is safest. I don't have an inside line on MyVanilla Debit's fraud prevention algorithms, but I believe cash advances are probably the riskiest method of unloading the cards, because of the high limits and fixed $1.95 fee. Large Walmart transactions are probably a close second. So while this is a great technique for liquidating MyVanilla Debit balances, you still should be careful about spacing your loads and unloads out over the course of the month. And of course, even being careful can't guarantee that your account won't be closed.

Second, there's the risk that Walmart will consider your payments suspicious activity. There are lots of reports in this thread of Walmart employees being prompted to record customers' Social Security numbers, home addresses, and other personal identifying details. Those requests seem to be triggered by credit card payments over $2,000, although the exact level that triggers scrutiny isn't clear. Many people are made uncomfortable by disclosing this sensitive information to Walmart tellers. It appears the best way to avoid doing so is to keep your bill payments below $2,000, although this will raise your cost per dollar of manufactured spend.

Finally, when it comes to Walmart there's always the risk of employee incompetence. This can take a number of different forms. Of course, an employee may simply not know how to make these bill payments. Alternatively, there are reports that some store locations demand that you physically bring your most recent credit card statement into the store. Further, some store locations refuse to allow bill pay transactions to be funded by gift cards (cards that don't have your name embossed on the front). Finally, some employees may feel uncomfortable with multiple, high-value transactions, and simply refuse to help you. Be aware that this is not corporate policy: you've just found an incompetent employee, or a store location with an over-vigilant store manager. Visit another location or return at a different time.

These are manageable risks, but they do exist and you should be aware of them before beginning to use this technique. As always, I recommend starting slowly, using money that you can afford to be temporarily without if something goes wrong, and watching your credit card statements carefully to make sure that each payment posts correctly.

Conclusion

This is a very basic overview of this technique. It works and it can increase your volume of manufactured spend while only slightly increasing your cost per point.

Tomorrow, I will provide my analysis of the volume and cost per dollar of manufactured spend that you can achieve using this technique, and I'll compare it to some other popular techniques.

Later in the week I'll discuss some of the most lucrative opportunities this technique unlocks and share my own plans to use it going forward.

If you've already been using this technique, please share your experiences in the comments. How long do your CheckFreePay payments take to post? Do they post at the beginning or end of the business day? What problems have you had dealing with Walmart employees, and how have you resolved them?

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Do this now: IHG 3rd third promotion

[updated 7:57 pm: thanks to commenter Adrian for pointing out that Mommy Points is not earning IHG Rewards points, but airline miles. Her haul is still somewhat lower than the other bloggers (e.g. 4,000 airline miles versus 25,000 IHG Rewards points for "Win big"), but not by nearly as much as this post suggested]

Some hotel loyalty programs run seasonal promotions, some run quarterly promotions, but this year IHG Rewards (the Club formerly known as Priority) is running a thirdly promotion: you can earn bonus points for reaching certain milestones between September 1 and December 31, 2013.

You need to register for the promotion here  to find out which milestones you've been targeted for. A number of bloggers have posted their targeted milestones, including: One Mile at a Time, the Points Guy, Mommy Points, View From the Wing.

Here's a quick chart I threw together to compare the various reports (including my own), so you can see how your targeted promotion compares:

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As you can see, Mommy Points needs to work harder to get on IHG's good side, while View from the Wing is the "big winner" here. [see correction above]

To the best of my knowledge, I've never stayed at an IHG/Priority Club property, but I have been a member forever. It's hard to imagine what else I have in common with the Points Guy!

Register now, before you forget. 

Now I've seen everything: PayPal accounts restored

Somebody smarter than me is going to have to explain this one.

I reported earlier this week  that one of my favorite hacks had been abruptly shut down when PayPal closed both my business account (which had a linked 1% cash back debit MasterCard) and my personal account (which I was using to funnel PayPal Cash cards to my business account). By calling into PayPal I was able to withdraw my remaining funds to a linked checking account, and I moved on.

That is, until Thursday afternoon, when I received the most remarkable e-mail: 

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And then just one minute later:

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I immediately checked, and the first e-mail was sent to my personal account's linked address as well. Having been given this reprieve, what do I plan on doing with it? What do you think?

But this time, I'm taking some simple steps to minimize my risk going forward:

• I immediately applied for an additional 1% cash back debit MasterCard for my second, personal account. No more sending money back and forth between my PayPal accounts.
• I'm going to empty my account exclusively with my debit MasterCard, primarily by buying Vanilla Reload Network reload cards at CVS. This will reduce my cost per dollar of manufactured spend to 0.57 cents (0.07 cents after taking Plink rewards into account).
• And obviously, I'm going to empty my account as quickly as possible after loading it. 

Besides the possibility of buying PayPal Cash cards at 7-11 store locations, what I'm most excited about is renewed access to Kiva. Now that I have a US Bank Cash+ card, I'll be happy to earn $100 in cash on the first day of every quarter, plus as many Flexpoints as I have short-term liquidity.

Remember to check in on Monday and all next week, when I'll be describing a new technique that will radically accelerate the points-earning potential of even the most casual travel hacker, and giving detailed analyses of the possibilities unlocked by that new technique. You don't want to miss it.

The curious case of USPS money orders

Before I get to today's post, I want to say that I am back from Europe, and there is a LOT of travel hacking to catch up on. There's a fair amount of hacking that can be done wherever you are in the world (a post that is in the works), but many techniques require being physically present in the States: CVS hasn't expanded to Europe yet!

Most excitingly, there's a new, game-changing hack that I have now confirmed works and which will double or triple the amount of manufactured spend that even a casual travel hacker is able to generate each month. On Monday I'm going to lay out the basic details of the hack, then provide more information and analysis throughout the week leading up to the long weekend. I hope that all my readers and especially my always very spirited commenters will weigh in with their thoughts on the pros and cons of this new technique. So that new technique is coming Monday.

Today I thought I would share the results of my research into a question that has interested me for almost as long as I've been travel hacking: what's the deal with USPS money orders?

Rewards-Earning Debit Cards

The disappearance of rewards-earning debit cards is a well known and much-observed phenomenon. The story goes that back in the days of the finance bubble, before banks came under stricter regulatory and legislative scrutiny, banks partnered with airlines to issue co-branded debit cards, much as they issue co-branded credit cards today. Merchants were forced to enter into agreements with the credit card networks that required them to accept credit cards and debit cards on equal terms, while paying wildly different amounts depending on the card used by their customers. In other words, while it made a big difference to the merchant whether you were paying with a high-cost, premium card like a Chase Sapphire Preferred or a low-cost non-rewards card, the merchant had to accept them on equal terms. Debit cards were just another piece of that ecosystem.

After the 2007-2008 financial crisis, when there was renewed interest in financial regulation, retailers brought the following problem to the attention of Senator Dick Durbin: while credit cards involve a credit risk to the card issuer (the risk that the customer will default on his debt), debit cards don't have that credit risk, since the money is instantly debited from the customer's bank account. But merchants still had to pay the card issuers not just for the cost of running the card network, but also for the (non-existent) default risk! So Senator Durbin introduced his amendment to the Dodd-Frank financial reform act, which set debit card swipe fees at a low, fixed level. That's the law of the land today.

USPS Money Orders

Like lottery tickets, USPS money orders have always been for sale only by cash or debit card: you have to use cash to buy cash equivalents.  In other words, you can't walk into a post office and buy $1,000 in money orders for $1.60 using a rewards-earning credit card (not that people haven't tried).

However, the existence of rewards-earning debit cards created a problem, which persists today: should a bank award miles for buying a money order, when the cost per mile may even be lower (for example, 0.32 cents per hyper-valuable Alaska Airlines mile using the Bank of America Alaska Airlines debit card) than the price the bank itself pays when it buys those miles from the airline?

This old Ron Lieber article in the Wall Street Journal takes the view that basically, it's the bank's problem. Which it certainly is – until the customer gets caught. Buying and depositing money orders on the scale required to make this technique worth your time is certain to be detected by your debit card issuer. That means you'll need to open additional bank accounts, and diligently make sure that you meet the requirements of each of those accounts to waive monthly account maintenance fees. Moreover, one of my banks takes over a week to clear money order deposits, which makes it almost impossible to turn around the money quickly enough to show a clear profit. I've got better things to do.

PIN-based prepaid debit cards

Naturally, the next solution to this puzzle is to use, instead of using a rewards-earning debit card, a PIN-based prepaid debit card which you've loaded using a rewards-earning credit card. Take the US Bank Visa Buxx card: you can load it with $1,000 at a cost of $5. If you could then unload that $1,000 balance at a cost of $1.60, you'd pay a total of 0.66 cents per dollar of manufactured spend – not bad at all.

Likewise, unloading a MyVanilla Debit card at a cost of $2.10 ($1.60 money order fee, $0.50 transaction fee), would give you a total cost of 0.99 cents per dollar in manufactured spend. A bit on the high side, but terrific if it increases your volume substantially.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work. 

When you buy a USPS money order, not only are you required to use a PIN-based debit card, but the transaction is processed differently than when you buy a box or envelop. The card issuers know what you're doing. The US Bank Visa Buxx card flatly doesn't work: I have never had any success buying USPS money orders in any amount (any commenters with a different experience are of course welcome to chime in on this point).

MyVanilla Debit cards do work, in the sense that they allow you to complete the money order purchase transaction. But when you check your online statement, you'll find that instead of a $0.50 transaction fee, you've been charged the $1.95 cash advance fee, bringing your cost per dollar of manufactured spend from 0.99 cents to 1.13 cents.

And that's everything I know about USPS money orders: they're more expensive than Walmart money orders, you're radically restricted in the kinds of cards you can use, and they arouse suspicion with your card issuer. That isn't to say there's no room for them in anyone's point-earning strategy; that's a decision you obviously have to make for yourself. But I don't bother using them in my own.

Best rate guarantees: a waste of time?

One of the biggest challenges I had when writing my eBook, The Free-quent Flyer's Manifesto, was the question of how to deal with hotel loyalty programs. I don't think it's any secret that "frequent guest" programs are far more complicated than they need to be, and the reason is obvious: by increasing the amount of time required to understand all the nuances of their loyalty program, each chain hopes to discourage defections to their competitors – once you've mastered Hilton's program, you'd be crazy to throw all that work away and stay at a Marriott! As a consequence, it can be difficult even to figure out how many points you'll earn on any given stay.

My favorite example of this is Hilton's "earning style," where you can select "Points and Points," "Points and Variable Miles" or "Points and Fixed Miles." In order to maximize your points haul, you would have to decide before every stay  which earning preference will reap the most valuable rewards.

Over on my hotel rewards page, you can see how I've attempted to cut through the noise and provide a simple calculation of what I call "point density:" the rate at which you earn hotel points, taking into account your elite status and whether or not you charge your room to a co-branded credit card, and the rate at which you redeem those points. Unfortunately, even this isn't 100% complete since I take into account only "base" points, not the bonus points you earn if you select, for example, "Points and Points" as your Hilton "earning style." If you haven't checked it out yet, take a look and tell me what you think.

All of this brings me to one of the most frustrating elements of the hotel booking experience: the best rate guarantee. When you book a room through an online travel agency, the property kicks back a big chunk of your rate to the agency. That's how sites like Expedia pay for their own loyalty programs: they share part of their commission with their users. It's also why reservations made through online travel agencies typically don't earn hotel rewards points.  The third leg of this stool is the "best rate guarantee," whereby the hotels promise to match a lower rate you find through other booking channels.

Just for reference, here's a rundown of the best rate guarantee programs of the chains I follow: 

• Starwood Preferred Guest: Best Rate Guarantee
• Hilton HHonors:  Our Best Rates. Guaranteed
• Marriott Rewards:  Look No Further Best Rate Guarantee
• Hyatt Gold Passport:  Best Rate Guarantee
• IHG (Priority Club):  Best Price Guarantee
• Club Carlson:  Best Rates Guaranteed

It sounds great, right? You pay the lower rate, get an additional discount or, at IHG properties, a free night, plus earn elite status credit and hotel rewards. Well, I've filed a lot of best rate guarantee claims over the years, and as far as I'm concerned, it's a waste of time.

Don't get me wrong: the people who are good at finding eligible rates are VERY good at it. You can find almost 2,000 successful reports from Marriott alone in this thread over at Flyertalk. But these guarantees cost the hotel chains real money, so it's not surprising that they are experts at finding ways not to honor them.

Here's an example from just the other week: as I mentioned in another context, I was planning on spending my last night in Prague at the Courtyard Marriott Prague Airport across the street from the terminal. Instead of redeeming points, I thought it would be interesting to see if I could get a better rate using Marriott's Look No Further guarantee. I started on Kayak, and immediately found a much lower rate, one that's actually still available as I write this.

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As you can see, a site I'd never heard of, Olotels, is offering a rate that's much lower than that offered through Marriott directly, or the other agencies which use Marriott's inventory.

Obviously, Marriott didn't honor my Look No Further claim, or I wouldn't be writing this blog post! Here's the relevant part of their response:

According to the Terms and Conditions of Marriott's Look No Further(SM) Best Rate Guarantee, the guarantee does not apply to pre-paid rates that involve a voucher (including electronic vouchers) for a hotel stay outside of the United States and Canada.  According to our review, we have determined that a travel voucher will be issued for the accommodations with which your comparison was made.

This is all perfectly correct from the point of view of the Look No Further program, but it doesn't change the crux of the matter: whether it's a "travel voucher" or not, a lower room rate is actually available : It's not like you'll show up to the hotel and they'll make you sleep on the roof.

So that's why I've more or less given up on best rate guarantees. I book so few paid stays, preferring to use my points either for free award nights or even "cash and points" redemptions, that staying up-to-date on the terms and conditions of all the relevant programs is a project that is just not worth my time.

For a different perspective, Mommy Points wrote up a number of techniques that she has been able to use successfully for best rate guarantee claims with Club Carlson.

Do this now: Starwood's fall promotion

Registration for Starwood Preferred Guest's Fall promotion is now open.  You'll earn double Starpoints on paid stays between September 1 and December 15, 2013, and 2,500 Starpoints for every 5 paid nights during the same period, up to 10,000 Starpoints after staying 20 paid nights (award nights and Cash & Point nights do not count). Unfortunately, once again there's a long list of non-participating properties.

Register now, before you forget. 

Has affiliate blogging gotten worse?

I might just be jet-lagged, sleep-deprived and cranky, but I've grown increasingly annoyed over the last few weeks by many of the travel hacking blogs I subscribe to, and I'm curious whether the situation has actually gotten worse, or whether I'm just becoming more sensitive in my old age. One thing is clear: affiliate link-driven blogging is bad blogging.

Back on the 11th I saw this headline on Gary's View from the Wing:  You Really Don't Have an American Express Bluebird Yet? Bluebird is pretty much the simplest product out there: you load it, either with Vanilla Reload Network reload cards or a miles-earning debit card (like Bank of America's Alaska Airlines debit card). Then you unload it using an ATM, bill pay, or a bank transfer. So why was Gary posting 776 words (yes, I checked) on this product, and why was he using that obnoxious tone? Of course: they've started offering referral credit. How do I know? Because on the 13th and 14th, the Points Guy posted his referral links as well.

For me, the worst offender lately has been Frugal Travel Guy's August countdown of what they're calling the Top 30 Credit Cards. Take a look at that page and you'll see what I'm talking about. While they claim to have "scrutinized and judged" on the basis of "initial signup bonus, category payouts, card perks, and point values," they don't actually provide any of that analysis. Instead, you get a one paragraph summary and an affiliate link. That's bad blogging.

For me, good blogging means first and foremost ideas, analysis, and experiences.

Ideas

For a long time, Frequent Miler was the thought leader in this space. He sought to understand the nuances of various products and find new ways to exploit them. Not all of his experiments are successful, but his site is a great resource for outside-the-box thinking. Examples from my own blog are my PayPal Debit MasterCard hack and possible uses of Plink.

The problem with affiliate-driven blogging is that if you're getting referral credit for everyone who signs up for the America Express Hilton HHonors Surpass card, you can't tell people,

You should be using this card to buy $500 gift cards at grocery stores, earning 3036 HHonors points at a cost of $5.95, or 0.195 cents each, then unloading the gift cards for free onto a Bluebird or Gobank card at Walmart.

In other words, you can't say the one thing that people getting the card actually need to know. 

Analysis

Analysis means understanding that not every card is right for everyone, and taking seriously a framework that helps people decide which cards are right for them. This is where Frugal Travel Guy's list of top 30 credit cards becomes really egregious. Take a look at the top 5:

1. Ink Bold Business Charge Card

2. Ink Plus Business Card

3. Chase Sapphire Preferred Card

4. Starwood Preferred Guest Business Card

5. Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card from American Express

No one could seriously suggest that a single person should carry all three of the "top 3" cards: the Ink Bold and Ink Plus have the same category bonuses, so unless you actually spend $100,000 at office supply stores every year, you'd be crazy to carry both. 98% of hackers would be better off with either a no-annual-fee Chase Sapphire and one of Ink Bold or Ink Plus, or a Chase Sapphire Preferred and a no-annual-fee Ink Cash.

With my point density charts, I try to provide actionable analysis on which hotel programs you should be using to maximize the rebate value of the points you earn on paid stays.

Experiences

This is the area where travel hacking blogs may have degraded the least. A good blog should provide actual experiences with each technique so readers know what works, what doesn't, and what to expect when they try the same techniques.

Jason Steele got a lot of people into trouble over at the Points Guy by recommending AccountNow for manufactured spend. Of course it turned out that AccountNow was a disaster waiting to happen, and that left a lot of people with a lot of money tied up in what was essentially an elaborate scam. It should be no surprise that AccountNow offers referral credit.

Most travel hacking bloggers post trip reports, and while I normally skip them, I'm glad they're there as a resource I can go back to and check later, when planning my own trips.

On my blog, I share the actual nuts and bolts of various travel hacking tools, which too often are shrouded in mystery and superstition. For example, to the best of my knowledge I'm still the only person to report that US Bank doesn't verify the "teen" identity information provided when registering for a Visa Buxx card. That's actionable information that can help you manufacture an additional $2,000 per month in spend at a cost of $10. Likewise, I reported that American Express doesn't bonus spending at 7-11 store locations, even ones that are recorded as gas stations.

Conclusion

This post isn't intended to be a self-satisfied claim that I'm doing everything right and all other bloggers are doing everything wrong (even if it feels that way sometimes). 

Instead, I'm genuinely curious: have travel hacking blogs recently become even more focused on generating credit card signups, and less focused on providing ideas, analysis, and experiences, or have I just become more sensitive to these ridiculous posts that serve as vehicles for affiliate links?