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

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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:

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.

Guest post: Deposit money orders by smartphone

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Today I'm very pleased to present a guest post on a topic that I think my readers will find as fascinating as I do: depositing money orders using your smartphone, instead of at the counter or using a bank's ATMs. For more like this, check out Doctor of Credit's site here.

List Of Bank Accounts That Allow Deposits Of Money Orders By Smart Phone

by Doctor Of Credit

I asked on Twitter whether I should post a list of bank accounts that allow MO deposits because a lot of people have been asking me for such a list. Originally I was just replying to those e-mails with this information, but FQF suggested that I share it. I asked him if he'd like to host the post and he said yes, so here goes!

We've divided this list into two sections, nationwide banks and local banks. The local bank section also lets you know of any joining requirements. It's important to remember that a lot of these accounts come with fees (most of which are avoidable) so keep that in mind before opening an account. Tip: Leave the receipt attached to your MO to increase the chances of it being accepted. This won't work for all applications, but it should work for most. 

Warnings about MO's & bank accounts:

  • Always keep copies of everything you do and get receipts where possible. This way if something goes wrong you have a paper trail to help rectify the situation.
  • Start small and only do amounts you are comfortable with having frozen, in case of a shut down or dispute.
  • Check that the bank is FDIC insured or has NCUA insurance if it's a credit union.
  • Spread your money orders around different accounts.
  • If you sign up for a new bank account be wary of monthly fees and early account closure fees (most banks charge this if you cancel your account within the first
  • Some banks will do a hard credit pull when you open a new account, all banks will do a ChexSystems inquiry.
  • Too many ChexSystems inquiries in a short time frame can result in a fraud flag or similar being placed on your ChexSystems account. This will make it difficult to get accepted with other banks/lenders that check ChexSystems.
  • It's also a good idea to familiarize yourself with structuring laws to ensure you're not violating them.

Nationwide Banks/Credit Unions

Works

  • Alliant: Very quick to shut down accounts doing any sort of volume. Usually available the same business day, sometimes held for one business day if submitted after 3PM CT.
  • Discover: Funds take two days to post, no known limits although the ToS does state they reserve the right to add these limits in as they like. People often have issues with MoneyGram MO's, Western Union MO's will work fine.

  

  • Simple: Allows 15 photo deposits per month and a maximum of $3,000 per deposit. First five money orders are limited to $2,000. For the first 30 days there is also a 9 day hold applied to MO's, after that they should post instantly.  Recently started sending e-mails to people asking the source & purpose of the money orders. $200 of the money order is released the following business day and the remainder the business day after that. They also tend to exclude people with too many ChexSystems inquiries (generally if you have more than 4 in the past year you'll be denied by Simple).
  • CitiBank: Maximum of $500 per month for the first six months and then $1,500 per month. Application seems to have a lot of trouble dealing with some MO's.
  • Everbank: Funds should be available immediately, no known limits.
  • Schwab: The limit that applies will depend on your check deposit limit. This is different from individual to individual. You can find this limit by navigating to the "Deposit" screen, it'll be under the "Amount" field. Most people will find they either have a $1,000 or $10,000 limit based upon how much funds they are holding with Schwab. Their app has issues with differentiating between the background of a MO and the actual writing on the MO, which means they can't accept all MO's. MoneyGram MO's seem to struggle, whilst WesternUnion MO's work better.
  • PenFed: Funds are made available immediately, no known limits.
  • USAA: Money posts instantly, no known limit ($12,000/month is the maximum I've seen). The application seems to struggle reconigizing some MO's, for best results use a black background and decent lighting. If you're still having issues you can use their Deposit@Home product.
  • Wells Fargo: Daily limit of $1,000 and 30 day limit of $3,000 for the first 180 days, after 180 days this limit is automatically increased to a daily limit of $2,500 and a monthly limit of $5,000. These restrictions are per account, not per person meaning you could use a savings & checking accounts to double these limits. Funds should be released the following business day. A lot of people seem to have issues doing MO deposits with Wells Fargo, this seems to be largely dependent on where the MO was purchase.

Doesn't work

  • Ally
  • Bank of America: Used to work but this was shut down on February 23rd, 2014
  • Barclay Savings Account: ToS specifically states MO's are not allowed with remote deposit.
  • BB&T
  • Bluebird: ToS specifically states no MO's.
  • Capital One 360/ING direct
  • Etrade
  • Fidelity Investments
  • PNC: Some have reported this working, but more reports of it not working.
  • Serve: ToS specifically states no MO's are allowed.
  • SunTrust
  • Vanguard

State Specific Banks/Credit Unions

Works

  • DCU: [Requires membership]
  • LMCU: Ensure the back of the MO is signed, otherwise the app will not recognize it [Must live, work, worship or attend school in Michigan's lower peninsula].
  • Patelco CU [Must live, work, worship or attend school in one of the following California counties: California counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, or Sonoma].
  • Security Service FCU: Funds available immediately [only available in OH, UT & CO. Other requirements apply].

Doesn't Work

Some banks also have the ability to accept MO's via a mobile application but they charge a fee for doing so. These banks usually have a more feature rich offering with less limits and limitations (and better scanning technology) but the fees makes them a non-feasible option for most people, KeyBank & US Bank are two well known issuers that charge for this service.

As always, your own mileage may vary so if you have any other data points please let us know in the comments - I hope you found this post helpful. 

Will blogs over at Doctor of Credit. If you're going to sign up for a new bank account, you might as well sign up for one that gives you a bonus.

Will compiled this list which shows a complete listing of bank account bonuses. It can be filtered by bonus amount, hard/soft pull, credit card funding, direct deposit requirements, monthly fees, early account termination fees and expiration date. Don't forget to follow him on twitter as well. 

P.S from Will, if you haven't already I'd recommend signing up for a subscription to Free-quent Flyer. He drops a lot of nuggets of wisdom not shared elsewhere and it only costs you a minimum of $2 a month. You can sign up in the side bar.

In which I let my readers down

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On Wednesday of last week a reader tipped me off to a Staples promotion that was being discussed in this FlyerTalk thread. Basically, a portal coupon that probably shouldn't have worked with Visa gift cards was working for Visa gift cards, allowing people to buy $200 gift cards for $191.95.

I was able to place 4 orders before the coupon code I was using started consistently returning errors, meaning I bought $800 in cash equivalents (plus my credit card rewards) for about 4% off of face value. I know a lot of people went a lot bigger, but I had literally just moved and was placing my orders in the midst of the chaos of settling in here, so after I got 4 or 5 errors in a row, I gave up on my valiant effort to put Staples out of business.

I don't regret not placing more orders, since I feel like I did fine. But I do regret not blogging or tweeting about it. That was basically a judgment call, which in retrospect I think I got wrong. There were three factors in play, and I put too much weight on the first two and not enough weight on the third:

  1. My reader communicated the tip to me privately. While he didn't ask me to keep quiet about it, that's always my presumption unless a reader tells me to share a tip according to my discretion. The FlyerTalk thread was light on details and had conflicting information, so it wasn't the kind of source I felt comfortable pointing to unequivocally for this deal.
  2. The deal was clearly a technical error in how the coupon code was being implemented by Staples' order processing system. It was possible that by blogging about the error it would be fixed more quickly, and orders that had already been placed using the coupon code might even be cancelled. Blogging about it would not only not help my readers, it would also hurt anyone who was already taking advantage of the deal.
  3. It was an inherently time-limited deal. If anything, it was most like the United award glitch from last year, where all award tickets passing through Hong Kong priced out at 4 MileagePlus miles each. While those of us who booked tickets for later in the year had our reservations cancelled, those who booked close-in tickets (within a week, I believe) had them honored. For such time-limited deals, I think there's a presumption that the more people who get in on it, the better. This was one of those deals, and it should have been shared as widely as possible so as many people as possible could take advantage of it.

There you have it. I make judgment calls like this all the time, and I like to think I get more of them right than wrong. But I definitely don't get them all right, and I think this was one of those.

What do you think?

What's a Travelocity hotel gift card?

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Moving house is always a stressful experience, but as a travel hacker there are particular advantages and disadvantages to moving to a new community.

The disadvantages are obvious: back in New England I had a group of well-trained cashiers at all my local haunts. That streamlined my daily routine and saved me time and stress convincing each cashier to try transactions that I already know will go through.

However, there are advantages to a move as well. For example, my routine in New England was limited to the small set of stores within walking distance of my apartment. The amount of money I was spending on a daily basis might arouse suspicion, and the longer I continued using the same store locations, the more likely a cashier was to start to connect the dots.

The biggest advantage is the one I wrote about here: a new locale means new store types, different products, and new opportunities.

I'm already excited by some of the options available in my new community, but today I want to write about a product I spotted just yesterday that may or may not be lucrative for some readers: Travelocity hotel gift cards.

$25 off 2-night stays

Like all good scams, Travelocity hotel gift cards are needlessly complicated. The card I found at a local gas station cost $25, and offered $50 off stays of two or more nights, as long as the price before taxes was $150 or more. In the ideal use case for these gift cards, you would get a $25 discount on a two-night stay that cost exactly $150 before taxes. Assuming taxes of 10%, you'd pay $140 for a $165 stay, for a discount of about 15%. Naturally, the more expensive the day, the smaller your discount will be.

Since you have to book your stay through the Travelocity Incentives website, you won't earn hotel points or elite night and stay credits for your reservation. Since hotel stays are by far the least efficient method of earning hotel points, this isn't the end of the world, but be aware of the issue.

Worth it?

While at first glance a $25 discount, even given the stay and price requirements for use of these cards, seems like a no-brainer, especially for non-chain properties or stays at chains you don't pursue status with (Best Western, anyone?), there is an additional problem: once you're willing to forego hotel rewards by booking through an online travel agency, you have other options.

For example, the Welcome Rewards program of Hotels.com rebates 10% of your pre-tax hotel cost in the form of a free night after 10 nights booked through them (with the value of the free night capped at the average nightly rate for your 10 paid nights). For many stays, that rebate will be worth more than the $12.50 per night discount offered by Travelocity on stays of exactly two nights.

If you're willing to work a little harder at it, Priceline's Name Your Own Price engine can still offer huge discounts on opaque bookings (where you don't find out the hotel until you pay). 

Conclusion

While it may have limited appeal for the reasons given above, I wanted to bring these gift cards to my readers' attention for those cases when, while making a two-night reservation, you realize the nightly rate happens to be exactly $75. In such circumstances I'd strongly consider popping down to the gas station and picking up a Travelocity hotel gift card.

T-Mobile Visa Prepaid Card

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Last weekend in Charlotte, a reader pulled me aside and asked, "Why haven't you written anything about the T-Mobile prepaid card?"

I tried to explain that here on the blog I report my own experiences, so that they can inform the efforts of my readers to achieve their travel goals. Since I don't have a T-Mobile prepaid card, I don't have any value to add to what my readers already know about the product.

The reader was not impressed with my explanation, so here we go.

Applying for the card

You can sign up for a T-Mobile Visa Prepaid Card online. It costs $4 to enroll, unless you're a current T-Mobile customer, in which case it's free.

Additionally, there's a $5 monthly maintenance fee each month in which you don't load at least $500 to the card.

Loading the card

If you load your T-Mobile Visa Prepaid Card with more than $300 using a Reloadit pack (so-called "retail" loads), the fee for purchasing the Reloadit pack is refunded to your card, making the card free to reload. If you can purchase Reloadit packs using credit cards, this means it's completely free to manufacture spend at any merchant that allows such purchases.

There are a number of other ways to load the card, none of with are particularly interesting: you can load cash at T-Mobile store locations or at Visa ReadyLink reload merchants.

Unloading the card

The T-Mobile Visa Prepaid Card has a built-in bill pay feature.

Don't use it.

The relevant FlyerTalk thread is full of reports of people having their accounts frozen or closed for exclusively using the built-in bill pay feature. Instead, use this card like you would any PIN-enabled debit card product: pay bills through Evolve Money or at Walmart, buy money orders, or pay off your Citi credit cards over the phone.

Conclusion

The T-Mobile Visa Prepaid card seems like a great tool, but only if you have access to Reloadit cards that can be consistently purchased with credit cards.

Additionally, the large number of reports of account freezes shutdowns would make me wary of scaling it up very fast, since if your account were closed you may lose access to the funds on the card for days or weeks.

Update: Emerald loads at Walmart

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Back in April I reminded my readers that under the right circumstances, it might be worth loading HR Block Emerald cards at Walmart, claiming that paying $3.74 per $999 load could be justified if your earning rate were high enough.

Since then, I've run several experiments with my trusty new Suntrust check card, and found that things aren't quite as rosy as I had hoped.

The terms and conditions

As I wrote in the comments to that earlier post:

"[The $999 load limit] is my belief based on the Emerald T&C's:

'The maximum amount of cash value you may load to your Card each day is $999.99.'

And this Green Dot website (among others): https://www.moneypak.com/page/rapidreload

'The cashier will swipe your card and add cash directly to your card (up to $1,000 at Walmart as long as you do not exceed the card load limits). A service fee of $3.74 applies.'

Unfortunately, I appear to have been overly optimistic.

My experience

My first attempt was to load $996 at a regular Walmart register. The register beeped and alerted the cashier that the maximum load was $500. I loaded that amount, and the cashier told me that if I wanted to load more than $500, I needed to do it at the Customer Service desk, which also functions as the Money Center at that Walmart location.

On my trip to Walmart today, I started off at the Customer Service center and had the same experience: I couldn't load more than $500 at a time. This Walmart, however, had a separate Money Center, and I asked the cashier there if she could load more than at the Customer Service center. She told me the limits were the same at both counters.

Since I had already loaded $500 I couldn't try and load another $996 today anyway, because of HR Block's daily load limits.

Conclusion

While it's certainly possible to conjecture that higher loads might be possible at the Money Center at Walmart locations that have both a Customer Service desk and Money Center, I'm personally inclined to doubt it.

My preliminary conclusion is that in fact the Emerald can only be loaded with up to $500 at a time, at a cost of $3.74.

What does that mean for us? Paying 0.748 cents per Skymile is pressing against the upper bound of what you should consider worth paying. Yes, Skymiles can be redeemed for 1 cent each against the revenue cost of Delta tickets, and when booked in First Class, such Pay With Miles tickets even earn Skymiles and Medallion Qualification Miles. If you book a lot of paid First Class tickets, this is a decent way to get a 25% discount on those reservations.

In general, however, I wouldn't consider this an opportunity worth scaling as long as there are so many other, cheaper ways to generate the same number of miles.

I fly Delta because flying United is very stressful

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Let me start off by apologizing to any readers who have contacted me in the last few days that I haven’t managed to respond to yet. I will get to everyone eventually, but I have had even less time than usual as my life has been consumed by wrapping up my responsibilities at work and planning my move.

Now that I’m safely ensconced in first on my last leg of the night, I have time to share today’s mini-travel-hacking saga.

My apartment is totally empty

If you’ve been following my adventures on Twitter, you know I had a lot of problems unloading my (very nice!) furniture at laughably low prices. Finally I broke down and sent out a blast e-mail to my company listserv offering it for free, and instantly had a dozen or so people willing to take it off my hands. The couple that ended up emptying my apartment even gave me some cash for the furniture, which I thought was nice of them since I’d offered it for free.

Ground stop in Chicago

On my way out the door to head to TF Green International Airport, I checked the status of my flight to Chicago and saw that it was both delayed 2 hours and cancelled. Quite an achievement, as I’m sure you’ll agree.

Crisis mode

United had already rebooked me on a two-stop itinerary arriving late tomorrow night, which didn’t work for two reasons: I’m going to a concert tomorrow night in my destination, and my apartment is totally empty, so I had nowhere to sleep (see above).

There were no more Delta flights out of Providence tonight, but I checked Boston and there was a 6:47 flight to Detroit which would allow me to connect on to my final destination.

I called United and was told there was a 45-minute wait to speak to an agent. While on hold, I quickly signed into my Alaska Airlines account and – incredibly – found there was low-level award space on the entire ex-Boston itinerary. Unfortunately, Delta still only allows round-trip award reservations – and that applies to reservations made through Alaska – so I booked a return flight in September at the low-level as well.

While still on hold with United, I packed up the last of my suitcases and headed out the door to the train station. When I finally reached an agent, I quickly explained the situation and asked him to book me on the same Delta flight I’d already made my award reservation on. He was happy to do it, but had to call in to Delta's reservations line, which meant another 10-minute hold.

Finally, he came back on and said he’d made my reservation on Delta and gave me a new Delta confirmation number.

On the train

Alaska allows free cancellations within 24 hours of booking on award bookings, so I refunded that ticket immediately just in case Delta cancelled one or both reservations as a double booking. Then I added my Delta Skymiles number to the new, paid reservation and selected my economy comfort seats.

One benefit of being rebooked onto a different carrier on the day of travel is that you’re typically booked into an expensive, last-minute fare bucket, in this case a full-fare economy “Y” fare. That meant that if there were any first class seats available on my Delta flights today, I’d be virtually guaranteed an upgrade as a Platinum Medallion, and also pick up a rack of bonus Skymiles and Medallion Qualifying Miles.

And indeed, my upgrades cleared first at the gate for both my flights today.

Things to follow up on

For reasons I can’t begin to understand, I decided to pay for my checked bag on United online at check-in, instead of at the airport. I never do this, so cannot begin to imagine why I thought it would be a good idea — it never is.

That means United now has $25 of my money that I’m going to have to request refunded, call, e-mail, and tweet about until they give it back, because they are just terrible about refunds.

Additionally, I’ll request original routing credit for my United itinerary, which they’ll hopefully credit to my Aegean Airlines account. While I’m fairly sure they’ll go along with that, this is one I’m not willing to go to the mat over, since while Star Alliance Gold is a fun travel hacking goal, to get the most benefit from it I would then subsequently have to fly United, and ensuring the original routing credit would require more interaction with United than I’m willing to commit to.

Conclusion

Since we're about to take off, here are my take-aways from today's little adventure:

  • Never pay for your checked bags online. Why would you?
  • Keep your eye on developing situations, like the today's radar-tower fire in Chicago.
  • Be proactive: know your options and book refundable backups, if necessary.
  • Ask the ticketing carrier to book you on other airlines, if they can get you where you're going.
  • Don't forget to add your frequent flyer number to the new reservations.
  • And ask for original routing credit from the ticketing carrier.

Charlotte DO in review

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First things first: our gathering, celebration, awards ceremony, conference, and party in Charlotte this weekend was incredible.

Now go read these takes on the event from around the blogosphere:

Smaller is better

I shared my frank disillusionment with the organization and presentations at the Seattle Frequent Traveler University two weeks ago. That event had over 400 attendees, while I believe the Charlotte DO had just a touch over 100, including presenters.

And even though I felt like I was constantly meeting readers, both long-time and first-time, I still didn't get a chance to meet everyone in attendance!

The smaller event and more relaxed atmosphere really contributed to making this a terrific relationship-building event for the attendees.

Travel hacking is alive and well

My overwhelming takeaway from the Charlotte event was that among the attendees, there was absolutely none of the sense of despair you sometimes see when reading reactions to, for example, the loss of Vanilla Reload Network reload cards at CVS.

These were not people who were lamenting the end of manufactured spend, these were people who were incredibly excited about the constantly expanding opportunities to see the world, visit friends and family, and make money using the techniques described here and elsewhere.

But discretion is important

I've tried to have a pretty consistent philosophy regarding the kinds of things I'll write about explicitly here on the blog, versus things that are better shared privately or through my subscribers-only newsletter. Basically, if a technique involves a publicly available, commercially offered service, I'm willing to write about it publicly.

For example, Walmart bill payments are available at, as far as I know, every Walmart in the country and there's a big sign behind the Customer Service or Money Center counter advertising the service. So I didn't have any compunctions about sharing the "missing link," the payees you have to designate in order to pay credit card bills at Walmart store locations.

Likewise, Evolve Money is trying hard to increase their market share in the bill payment space. So I wasn't burning any tricks by sharing my experiences and ideas for using their commercially-available service to pay bills online using debit cards.

On the other hand, when an airline has a long-standing and reproducible glitch that allows tickets to be priced differently than they should be (and from my understanding these glitches are legion across many, many airlines), I won't write about it publicly since writing about it instantly starts the clock ticking on the technique's demise.

There is no room for envy in this game

You are not playing against any other member of the community when you manufacture spend, book tickets, or sign up for credit cards. You are only playing against yourself (and the referees).

When people hear about the levels of manufactured spend being reached by others, their first, natural reaction is envy: why aren't I earning as much as they are?

And the answer is simple: they have a different credit history, different credit limits, different risk tolerance, different geographical restrictions, different ethical boundaries, and different knowledge.

And that's totally fine. It would be deeply weird (and not a little suspicious) if we all had exactly the same spend patterns, at the same merchants, all year every year. Instead, we're all different, and that's one of the things that makes it hard to pin any one of us down (our relatively small numbers help, too).

Ignore exhortations to more, more, more

Which brings me to one unpleasant reaction I had to some of the things people said in Charlotte, almost identical to my reaction to the FTU Seattle presentations: it is a sad but true fact that among certain participants in our hobby, there really is a palpable feeling of condescension or disbelief at members of the community who do less. Whether it's travel less, manufacture less, earn less, sign up for cards less, or whatever.

And it's wrong.

I have a vivid memory of one of the Seattle FTU presentations when a speaker (whose identity I'll protect since he really was out of line) asked:

"Who has signed up for an Citi Executive / AAdvantage 100,000 mile card? Who has signed up for two? Three? Why not?"

And that's the kind of attitude we, as responsible, mutually-dependent members of a community, should be shunning. Some people in Charlotte were uncomfortable that they were manufacturing just $25,000 per month. In other words, earning just one free round-trip domestic flight per month. What if you manufactured half that, just $150,000 per year, a mere two roundtrips to Europe? That is an amount of travel that is out of reach of huge swaths of the American population, not to mention the global population.

One of the great things about this game is that we aren't playing against each other, and I think it would benefit a lot of people to keep that in mind whenever possible.

Conclusion

I'll conclude with one note that came up repeatedly in Charlotte and comes up consistently in the comments to this blog.

There are two kinds of discretion: there's discretion aimed at keeping deals alive, and there's discretion aimed at keeping people out.

To the best of my ability, I'll try to exercise the former kind of discretion, but I started this blog in order to share with readers the incredible opportunities that exist out there, and I'll continue to do so until I can't afford to pay both my rent and my website hosting fees. In other words...

Support the site!

Charlotte preview: Miscellany

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Since I'm currently trying my best to move out of my current apartment, this will probably be my last full blog post before our get-together in Charlotte this weekend. Unless I change my mind. Do follow me on Twitter for live updates from the event, and because Twitter's fun.

This week, I explained how I used Vanilla-reloadables, Visa Buxx, and PayPal My Cash cards to manufacture the bulk of the $43,000 that ended up counting towards the manufactured spending competition I participated in this March. In addition, I did manufacture some spend in new or different ways than usual, and want to share some of that information here.

Staples Gift Cards

I hate the whole gift card racket, and resisted joining in it for a long time. A lot of people say they like spend they can manufacture sitting at their computer, but not me: I prefer to go out and buy something physical that I can keep track of and be responsible for depositing, liquidating, etc. The whole idea of relying on the US Postal Service or UPS for a smooth cycle of spend is antithetical to me.

But, it is very lucrative.

So in March I continued my experiments with Staples $100 gift cards, purchased using my US Bank Club Carlson Business card, which gives 1% cash back on Staples purchases over $200. Ultimately I ended up liquidating those gift cards by paying actual bills using Evolve Money, rather than turning them back into cash.

American Express Gift Cards

I also made my first American Express gift card purchases. I really dislike the whole rigamarole of clicking through portals, checking and double-checking address information, and then having to wait with bated breath to find out whether my order was even approved. If it is, terrific, I get to wait around at home so I can sign for the cards when they finally arrive.

But, it is very lucrative.

So I began experimenting with those, and ended up earning some points and cash back that way as well, although the long turnaround time made it next-to-useless for the purposes of the competition itself.

Alaska Airlines debit card

We found out earlier this year that the Bank of America Alaska Airlines debit card would be retired on May 31 (3 weeks left!). While I did have the card, and was already using it casually, the news that the card would be going away really inspired me to get as much value from the card as possible while it was still around.

I had previously split my Walmart activities between money orders and bill payments more or less randomly, depending on my mood and whether I had an upcoming payment due date. But in March, I resolved to push every single dollar of Walmart bill payments through my rewards-earning debit card, and ended up earning over 17,000 Alaska miles during the month, worth $265 at Frequent Miler's fair trading price of 1.56 cents each.

Unfortunately, as I explained during the competition, virtually none of those miles ended up counting towards my final score, since for any given dollar of "bankroll" remaining at the end of the day, I'd be better off counting credit card spend instead of debit card rewards.

Conclusion

The March manufactured spending competition was a very rewarding experience for me: it helped me raise my game, inspired me to try out some techniques I had only read about before, and introduced me to a lot of great bloggers off the beaten path.

Now I'm really looking forward to meeting some of those bloggers and many of our readers in Charlotte, where I hope to learn a whole lot more!

Charlotte preview: PayPal

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Besides the Vanilla-reloadable and Visa Buxx cards I talked about earlier this week, the remaining bulk of my manufactured spend in March was through PayPal My Cash cards.

Like Vanilla Reload Network reload cards, PayPal My Cash cards cost $3.95 each and could be purchased at many CVS locations. Unlike the Vanilla Reload Network cards, My Cash cards can only be loaded directly to a verified PayPal account.

Load Limits

You can load up to $4,000 per month to a PayPal account using My Cash cards, as long as you abide by the following limits:

  • $500 per calendar day, which resets at 12:01 am EST;
  • $4,000 per rolling 30-day period, which resets at 3:01 am EST.

And yes, this does create the situation where your daily load limit may have already reset but your monthly load limit has not. While with Bluebird you could stay up until midnight (or 9 pm on the West Coast!) to load because the limits reset simultaneously, with PayPal you may as well go to bed and load your account in the morning.

Account Limits

There are three "types" of PayPal account: personal, premier, and business. PayPal's rules allow one personal account and one of either the premier or business account type to be verified using a single valid Social Security number.

If you attempt to verify a business account when you already have a premier account, or verify a second personal account, or any other prohibited combination, PayPal will helpfully inform you of this restriction.

Unloading PayPal

If you ask 4 bloggers, you'll receive 5 answers to the question "what's the best way to unload a PayPal account?"

Here's mine: every penny I load using PayPal My Cash cards, I unload using a linked PayPal Business or Personal Debit MasterCard.

That's one extreme position, and I don't ask anybody to agree with me that it's the right one. However, it does have a number of advantages within my own strategy:

  • $10 per month loading Bluebird: the PayPal Business Debit MasterCard gives 1% cash back on all non-PIN transactions, including online Bluebird debit loads;
  • Allows large and "round" transactions: instead of making $1998.12 bill payments or buying $999.30 money orders, I can use my fourth Walmart swipe to both unload my PayPal account and round off those transactions.
  • And since the funds come from my PayPal account, I don't have to worry about "orphan" amounts on my debit cards – it's my money and it'll still be there when I need it next.

Category Bonuses

One of the best things about PayPal My Cash cards is that it's still possible to purchase them at merchants that give category bonuses. For example, many 7-11 store locations are coded by Visa and MasterCard as gas stations, and some still allow My Cash purchases.

Earlier this year I discovered a local gas station chain that sells My Cash cards and is coded properly by American Express, as well. Unfortunately, they quickly sold out and it's unclear to me whether they'll restock before I move!

These localized opportunities do still exist, and you'll need to experiment in your own neighborhood to see if you have access to any of them.