How my thinking has "evolved" on the costs of manufactured spend

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One principle I've always tried to adhere to on this site is transparency with my readers. That's why I periodically share my income from book sales, referrals to services like Uber, PayPal subscriptions, and so on, and why the comment sections are always open on my blog posts. When I'm wrong, my readers don't hesitate to tell me — and judging by the comments I get, I'm wrong a lot!

I was pondering all this today in the shower when I realized there's a key concept about which my thinking has really evolved in the almost-2-years I've been writing online. That concept is how to think about the cost of individual techniques for manufactured spend and the total cost of a manufactured spend strategy.

To show what I mean, it helps to look at an early post I wrote, in which I described buying PayPal My Cash cards with a rewards-earning credit card and then liquidating the funds using a PayPal Debit MasterCard that earns 1% cash back. It's a perfectly accurate post — but I was totally, utterly, and completely wrong.

What I described was a way to earn as much as possible from a single dollar of manufactured spend on a rewards-earning credit card. I described it as "driv[ing] down your cost per point." With the benefit of 21 more months experience manufacturing spend, that's the key point I've changed my mind about.

Make it up in volume

Rather than focusing on the cost of individual techniques, these days I prefer to think about the costs of my manufactured spend strategy holistically. To give a trivial example: my American Express Hilton HHonors Surpass and Blue Cash cards both bonus charges at gas stations and grocery stores. A quantum view of the two cards would lead me to insist on manufacturing spend at grocery stores (paying an extortionate $5.95 per $500 Visa prepaid debit card) exclusively with the Blue Cash card, netting $19 per card, and at gas stations with the HHonors Surpass card, earning around 3000 HHonors points for $3.95, or about 0.13 cents each.

But that's nonsense. At the end of the day, the amount and cost of my grocery store and gas station manufactured spend is determined by my ability to liquidate the spend, not by the cards I use at each store.

These days, I use what might be called a "lump of MS" strategy. I generally know at the beginning of each month what my goals are in terms of both bonused and unbonused spend: I'm going to spend a certain amount of money at grocery stores, gas stations, drug stores, office supply stores, etc., and put a certain amount of bonused spend on certain cards. As long as I'm sure to hit my targets for each card, I'm totally agnostic about which cards I put "cheap" spend on and which cards I put "expensive" spend on.

Unbonused spend is even simpler, since by definition is has to be much cheaper than bonused spend to be worth engaging in. If I'm due to load a Visa Buxx card, for example, but discover that my Barclaycard Arrival+ card is already maxed out, I'll instead make the charge to a card like Ink Plus. While I'm earning less per dollar, I think of my non-bonused spend, like my bonused spend, as having a fixed monthly cost. All I need to do is make sure at the end of the month I've hit all my spend targets, and I can sleep well at night.

Conclusion

I don't expect this post to revolutionize any reader's strategy. But in the interest of the transparency I prize here, I wanted to explain to anyone who stumbled across my post from last February that I was doing it wrong, and hopefully keep others from making the same mistake!

Why everyone's talking about the Diners Club Card Elite

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Back in September I was the first blogger to observe that the new Diners Club Card Elite, which earns 3 Club Rewards points per dollar spent at "grocery stores, supermarkets, drug stores, pharmacies and automobile fuel service stations when you pay at the pump," allows points transfers, according to Flyertalk, to Starwood Preferred Guest at the not-totally-unreasonable rate of 1250 Club Rewards points to 750 Starpoints.

Personally, I don't pay $300 annual fees, so I was a bit surprised to find that the Diners Club Card Elite was one of the most popular topics of conversation last weekend in Phoenix. That convinced me to take a second look at the card's value proposition.

Finding the right comparison

In my first back-of-the-envelope calculation, I compared the Diners Club Card Elite to the "old" Blue Cash, which turned out to be an unfortunately timely comparison, given the wave of Blue Cash shutdowns (and PayPal warnings!) that occurred in October.

It turned out that most folks I spoke with in Phoenix were actually comparing the Diners Club Card Elite not to a straight cash back card like Blue Cash, but rather to the American Express Starwood Preferred Guest card, which earns 1 Starpoint per dollar spent.

This comparison is complicated by the fact that the Starwood Preferred Guest American Express and Diners Club Card Elite earn points, while their annual fees have to be paid in US dollars. What we need is a common point of measurement, which is happily provided, as usual, by the Barclaycard Arrival Plus MasterCard.

Since the Starwood Preferred Guest American Express earns just 1 Starpoint per dollar, and has no bonus categories (besides SPG properties themselves), anyone who is willing to manufacture spend on the card is already implicitly giving their Starpoints a value of at least 2.2 cents each by foregoing the same amount of spend on the Barclaycard Arrival Plus MasterCard.

Since the Diners Club Card Elite, in its extremely common bonus categories, earns 1.8 Starpoints per dollar spent, a user will break even when she spends, in bonus categories, that amount of bonused spend which generates the $235 difference in the annual fees between the Diners Club Card Elite and the Starwood Preferred Guest American Express.

That break-even amount, remarkably, is just $13,352. At that level of spend, a user will generate 40,057 Club Rewards points, which can be transferred to 24,034 Starpoints, or 10,682 more than with the Starwood Preferred Guest American Express. As shown above, those points are worth $235, the difference in the two cards' annual fees.

Conclusion

On this blog, I always try to go where the numbers take me, leaving at the door as much prejudice and superstition as possible. And that's what the numbers say: at quite low levels of bonused spend, the Diners Club Card Elite generates enough "excess" Starpoints to justify paying the annual fee, assuming you do, in fact, value Starpoints at 2.2 cents or more each.

But this analysis requires two big caveats. First, there are other cards which bonus grocery store spend, like the American Express Preferred Rewards Gold and Hilton HHonors Surpass, and the US Bank Flexperks Travel Rewards cards. Ironically, the $300 annual fee of the Diners Club Card Elite will pay the annual fees of all three of those cards ($175, $75, and $49, respectively). And that's a big problem with paying high annual fees: it's not that it's impossible to recoup the annual fee in value – of course it's possible. But it requires a commitment to doing so, at the expense of other points you may want or need over the course of the year.

The second caveat is that any comparison with the American Express Starwood Preferred Guest or Barclaycard Arrival Plus is inherently misleading, since those cards earn at the same rate regardless of the merchant, while the Diners Club Card Elite requires cannibalizing already-bonused grocery or drug store spend.

Unless, of course, your "old" Blue Cash card has already been shut down. In that case I think there's a clear argument for moving drug store spend, a cheap and plentiful, but now rarely-bonused, merchant category, to the Diners Club Card Elite.

Reflections on #WestCoastDO

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If you follow me on Twitter you know I spent this past weekend in Phoenix at the second gathering organized in large part by Matt at Saverocity, who was also the motive force behind March's friendly Mile Madness competition.

Before I get to my own thoughts, here are a few reviews/reflections/follow-ups I've already seen around Twitter (I'll update this list if I see any more – or just search for the #WestCoastDO tag):

The Schedule

One difference between this event and the Mile Madness DO in Charlotte is that Matt and his team decided to move the focus of the event from the schedule of presentations to creating a productive social environment. In this he was hugely successful.

The event for me started Friday evening, at the evening wine reception in the lobby of the venue hotel. It seemed like almost everyone arrived Friday, in order to spend as much time with like-minded folks as possible. I met lots of old and new friends, and had a lovely dinner in the hotel's restaurant. After dinner lots of folks lingered in the resort's huge patio and bar area and chatted until the small hours.

On Saturday the event proper started, late enough that we could get a few hours of sleep and still have a decent breakfast, although there were still lots of bleary eyes at 10 am. The presentations and panel discussion were lively and wide-ranging. A few stood out:

  • Frequent Miler gave an updated version of his manufactured spending presentation, including his latest research on the Target REDcard.
  • Marathon Man's presentation was a breath of fresh air. It's no secret that he and I have a pretty fundamental difference of opinion (he wants fewer people to manufacture spend; I want people to manufacture more, better, and smarter). But it seemed like his "old" Blue Cash shutdown may have made him just a touch less cock-sure of the purity and genius of his worldview. Or he may have just still been feeling the previous night's festivities. Either way, I thoroughly enjoyed his presentation.
  • Big Habitat (see above) shared his philosophy, techniques, and calculations for buying and reselling merchandise in order to generate miles and points. He's one of the best.
  • Bengali Miles Guru gave a rollicking walkthrough of his year renting dozens of cars for no good reason, and indeed for no reason whatsoever, and the lessons he learned.

Saturday evening the festivities continued, including a quick trip to a nearby shopping mall, dinner, and more time on the Firesky patio with friends old and new.

Sunday morning, I barely pulled myself out of bed in time to run out and buy an American Express for Target card, a tool that had been missing from my arsenal for far too long!

The Conversations

While the presentations were great, the real heart of the event was the conversations we had all day over breakfast, lunch, dinner, drinks, and around the beautiful (and, importantly, warm!) fire pits the hotel conveniently provided.

In the travel hacking community, there's a fact that's both simple and powerful: everyone knows something you don't know. That's why whenever anyone accidentally calls me an "expert," I'm reminded of Matt's beautiful post on the subject. In a room with 150 other travel hackers, I know for a fact there are (at least!) 150 things I don't know. Some of them may be smaller things (how to beat the lines in Vatican City – thanks Tom!), and some of them may be bigger things (how to beat the rental car racket), but I don't know any of them.

Of course, the groundwork for these conversations was laid weeks and months in advance. If you're interested in attending a conference like this, I feel it probably doesn't make much sense to just show up and hope for the best. Join online communities like The Forum, follow and interact with folks you respect on Twitter (or Facebook, I guess – I don't use it), leave comments, ask questions, share datapoints. It's a community, after all, and the more engaged you become in it, the more you'll get out of it.

The Thanks

Finally I want to thank everyone who made the event so special. I truly didn't want it to end, and it wouldn't have been the same without you. So thanks to Dean, Matt, Ivan, Kenny, Cindy, Nancy, Kunal, Scott, Eric, Tom, Annie, Aegt, all the presenters, and everyone else I managed to speak with! We'll have to do it again soon.

Statement credits are worth (much) less than cash

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I've written several times in the last few weeks about hacking Marriott elite status using the Chase Marriott Rewards Premier Visa card, and received a number of e-mails and comments suggesting the Ritz Carlton Visa card might be a better option, allowing cardholders to earn Platinum, rather than Gold, status after $75,000 in annual spend.

In response to those comments and e-mails I tend to say the same thing: I don't pay $395 annual fees, and I don't recommend that my readers do either.

When affiliate bloggers promote cards like the Chase Ritz Carlton Visa and American Express Platinum cards, they usually repeat the tired canard that the hefty annual fees ($395 and $450, respectively) are discounted by the annual airline statement credits the cards offer. The usual approach is to point out that since airline gift cards are reimbursed at face value, you're "actually" paying $200 (American Express Platinum) or $300 (Chase Ritz Carlton) less per calendar year than the annual fee would suggest.

The problem with that argument is that a $50 American Airlines gift card (the usual example) is worth much less than $50.

Travel hacking means never paying retail

Using only the most trivial examples, redeeming US Bank Flexpoints, Chase Ultimate Rewards points, or Barclaycard Arrival+ miles for paid tickets allows you to purchase redeemable- and elite-qualifying-mile-earning revenue tickets at a fraction of face value.

Indeed, if you fund Kiva loans with a US Bank Flexperks Travel Rewards card, all you have to pay for your revenue tickets is the time value of your money and the risk of your Kiva loans defaulting (which can be substantially mitigated against by carefully choosing your loans and diversifying your loans across borrowers and countries).

Don't let annual fees lock you into paying retail

Using $50 American Airlines gift cards to purchase your revenue tickets means foregoing the opportunity to redeem alternative, cheaply-acquired rewards currencies for them. In other words, it means paying the full face value of your airline tickets.

When you pay a $395 annual fee for the Chase Ritz Carlton Visa card, and receive back a $50 American Airlines gift card, you shouldn't mentally deduct the full $50 from your annual fee as a rebate. Rather, you should deduct only the amount you would have paid for $50 in American Airlines air travel:

  • if you redeem free Flexpoints for your travel, that amount is $0;
  • if you redeem Arrival+ miles acquired at 0.29 cents each, that amount is $14.50;
  • if you redeem Ultimate Rewards points acquired at 0.47 cents each, that amount is $18.80;
  • and so on.

In no case is that amount $50, so you can't justify deducting a full $50 from your annual fee in your mental accounting.

Conclusion

Credit card annual fees have to be paid with cold hard cash, while the supposedly dollar-denominated annual benefits they provide can only be redeemed in restricted and restrictive ways. While annual benefits like companion tickets can sometimes justify paying annual fees, there are vanishingly few scenarios where paying annual fees over $100 is justified.

If I can make as controversial a claim as is supported by the evidence, even the American Express Delta Platinum credit card, with its $195 annual fee and companion ticket awarded on each account anniversary, only makes sense (compared to redeeming Arrival+ miles) if you can consistently redeem the companion ticket for flights costing more than $672 – the value of the Arrival+ miles you could manufacture with the same $195 in disposable income – or if you can use the Medallion Qualifying Miles earned with the card to achieve Platinum or Diamond Medallion status.

Do this now: double points with Hilton HHonors

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Registration is now open for Hilton's winter "Double Up" promotion, whereby you can earn double points between November 1, 2014 and January 31, 2015, starting with your second stay.

I love staying with Hilton, but naturally make almost all my reservations using HHonors points. I have one "Points and Money" and one award reservation during the promotional period, so it doesn't look like I'll be earning any double points during this promotion.

Whether you plan to take advantage of the promotion or not, be sure to register now, before you forget, and find the list of non-participating properties here.

US Bank Visa Buxx address changes

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Obviously, I change addresses somewhat more frequently than your average worker bee. Back in May I moved to the Upper Midwest from New England, then in August my partner and I finally moved into our own place together. That's a lot of address changes to keep track of, but I do my best.

One thing common to all Visa Buxx cards is that the profile address on file with your Buxx card must match the billing address of any credit card used to fund the card. With the Nationwide and TD Go Buxx cards this doesn't pose much of a problem: when your credit card's billing address changes, you can easily sign into your Buxx account and update your profile address to match it.

The first time you attempt this with a US Bank Visa Buxx card, you'll find it equally easy. But if you change your billing address again shortly afterward, you'll see that the option to edit your profile address has been disabled, as indeed I discovered when I moved for the second time and became unable to fund my Buxx card.

I've been logging into my US Bank Visa Buxx account a few times a week for the past few months, and finally today discovered that the option to edit my profile address had reappeared. I checked my records and found that the last time I'd edited the address was 3 months ago, almost to the day.

Conclusion

Your Visa Buxx profile address must match the billing address of any card you use as a funding source. While Nationwide and (formerly) TD Go both allowed you free reign to edit your profile address, my experience indicates that US Bank allows additional profile address changes only after a 3-month period has elapsed.

I'm setting off this afternoon for a long Halloween weekend, so anticipate delayed response times until Monday. Hopefully a few days off will allow me to take a more nuanced view of all the changes currently taking place when I return on Monday.

Deciding between low fees and bonus categories

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Several months ago, around the time I moved West and decided to try my hand at blogging and travel hacking for a living, I made a sort of philosophical decision that I would only manufacture spend in bonus categories, except for the few very, very cheap options still available, where I would continue to manufacture non-bonused (but hopefully valuable!) spend.

For example, while US Bank and Nationwide Visa Buxx loads cost $2.50 and $2.00, respectively, for loads up to $500, I'm willing to earn a mere 2% or 2.22% cash back on that spend, but for gas station, drug store, and grocery store spend I decided to direct that spend exclusively towards cards that featured above-average earning rates.

That's a perfectly reasonable decision but, being me, I've long wanted to expose it to a bit more thorough analysis and make sure it's rational as well. This is that analysis.

Bonus categories

There are quite a few bonus categories which typically generate the most interest among travel hackers, including gas stations, drug stores, grocery stores, and office supply stores. Each of these might feature a variety of price points: $3.95, $4.95, or $5.95, and a variety of associated discounts, like the Visa Savings Edge 1% discount at Staples.

Non-bonused spend

In addition to bonus categories, there are a number of manufactured spend techniques that don't generate bonus category rewards, but cost somewhat less than spend in those bonus categories. For example, I've been flogging AAA Visa gift cards and the assortment of Visa Buxx cards for as long as I can remember. The fees for what we might call "generic" techniques tend to fall between $2 and $3 per $500 in manufactured spend.

Points-only earning

For spend on cards which generate only points, this analysis is relatively easy (although not as easy as it looks – more on that below). If your bonus category earns a higher multiple than the ratio of bonused category costs to non-bonused costs, you'd naturally be better off manufacturing the spend in a bonus category.

To provide a trivial example of this, the US Bank Flexperks Travel Rewards Visa card earns 2 Flexpoints per dollar spent at gas stations (or grocery stores – wherever you spend the most each statement cycle), and 1 Flexpoint per dollar spent everywhere else. If you're manufacturing spend exclusively for the value of the Flexpoints (redeemable for up to 2 cents per point on mileage-earning airline tickets), you're (almost) always better off earning 1,008 or 1,010 Flexpoints for $3.95 or $4.95 (plus liquidation costs) rather than earning 503 points for $3 (ditto), since you're paying just 33-66% more for 100% more Flexpoints per dollar.

High-spend bonuses

Next, there are cards where you're interested in manufacturing a certain amount of calendar or membership year spend, but which don't feature bonus categories or which have points that aren't worth manufacturing for their own sake.

This category is defined by products like the American Express Delta Platinum and Reserve cards, which offer bonus Medallion Qualifying Miles and redeemable Skymiles at the $25,000/$50,000 and $30,000/$60,000 spend levels, respectively, in addition to the Medallion Qualifying Dollars waiver offered to all American Express Delta co-branded credit card holders who spend $25,000 or more per calendar year across all their Delta co-branded credit cards.

Since these cards don't have any bonus categories, if you just want to meet those high-spend thresholds there's no reason not to meet them as cheaply as possible.

As another example, I've recently written about using Chase Marriott Rewards Premier cards to achieve Marriott Rewards Gold elite status. Since Marriott Rewards points are worth less than one cent each under most circumstances, you'd be crazy to cannibalize any of your valuable bonus category spend meeting that spending requirement, but might consider moving some of your cheaper spend towards the Premier card, as I in fact have.

As I've documented extensively, $3,000 spent on the Marriott Rewards Premier credit card would cost not just the $18 spent on PIN-enabled Visa gift cards, but also the $60 or $66 in foregone cash back you'd earn by putting the same spend on a 2% or 2.22% cash back card. It's fairly insane to buy 3,000 Marriott Rewards points for $60, but it becomes more understandable if you intend to use the elite-qualifying night to achieve Marriott Gold elite status – after all, even $66 is a pretty cheap mattress run for elite status.

Mixed-purpose cards

And now we've come to the crux of the issue: how do we treat cards that have both bonus categories and spend thresholds?

Here another example comes in handy: how much does it cost to achieve Hilton HHonors Diamond elite status using the American Express Hilton HHonors Surpass card?

Well, the card awards Diamond elite status after $40,000 in calendar year spend, so:

  • At $3 per $503, Diamond elite status costs $238;
  • At $4 per $504, Diamond elite status costs $317;
  • At $5 per $505, Diamond elite status costs $396;
  • At $6 per $506, Diamond elite status costs $474.

This straightforward accounting fails, however, because the first entry is in a non-bonused category, earning just 3 HHonors points per dollar, or 120,000 points total, while the other three entries earn 6 HHonors points per dollar (gas, gas, and grocery, respectively), or 240,000 points over the course of $40,000 in manufactured spend.

At each of our bonused price points, the marginal 120,000 HHonors points each cost:

  • $4: 0.07 cents;
  • $5: 0.13 cents;
  • $6: 0.2 cents.

Hilton HHonors points get a bad rap from a lot of folks in the community, but it's ludicrously easy to get 2-5 times more value than that from even the most typical Hilton redemption.

Liquidity has value

Finally, there's one point that's not exactly fashionable to mention: liquidity. Liquidity, in the sense I mean it, is the ability to turn available credit limits into cash, that can be used (preferably through a mileage-earning debit card) to pay off existing credit card balances, while also earning credit card rewards on the initial transaction. That has value. And, most importantly, it has value independent of the value of the miles generated by the initial transaction.

Consider a travel hacker with just two credit cards and $10,000 in credit card debt: the Hilton HHonors Surpass American Express card ($0 balance, $11,000 credit limit) and the US Bank Flexperks Travel Rewards Visa ($10,000 balance, $10,000 credit limit).

A straightforward analysis of the type I gave above would suggest that the user would be better off manufacturing $10,000 on the HHonors Surpass card exclusively in bonus categories, earning 60,000 HHonors points. The problem is that for many users in many parts of the country, manufacturing that much spend in bonus categories is hard. Grocery stores and gas stations often have restrictive policies preventing large purchases, while non-bonused-category merchants can be more accommodating.

In this case, using the HHonors Surpass card at a non-bonused merchant can, while generating fewer miles per dollar, produce the liquidity necessary to pay off the Flexperks Travel Rewards card in time to avoid interest charges and liberate the card's credit limit for spend in that card's own bonus categories.

Most travel hackers will tell you you're crazy to play the game while carrying credit card balances, which eat up any rewards you could possibly earn from your activities. I'll tell you that's only true if you're paying interest on your credit card balances. Liquidity is what makes it possible to not just carry credit card balance, but profit from them, and it's worth considering in any analysis.

Update: Marriott bonus nights and application timing

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Two weeks ago I wrote up a technique for achieving Marriott Gold elite status through manufactured spending that's slightly more convoluted but much cheaper than the straightforward method described by Frequent Miler. That post drew a lot of terrific comments from readers, and since I know many readers get my posts by e-mail or in RSS readers and may not have checked out that follow-up conversation, I want to provide a quick update.

Three moving parts for Marriott elite status

The hack I described takes advantage of three facts:

  • Elite status, once earned during a calendar year, is good for the remainder of that year and the entire following calendar year;
  • Elite-qualifying nights earned in excess of your earned status are rolled over and count towards the following calendar year's elite-qualifying night total;
  • The Chase Marriott Rewards Premier credit card gives 15 elite-qualifying nights per year.

By noting all three of these facts, I realized that it's possible to spend your way to Gold (not Platinum) elite status every two years, instead of attempting to requalify for Gold status by earning 50 elite-qualifying nights each calendar year.

The (not so) fatal flaw

Unfortunately, my commenters noted a potentially devastating problem with this plan, based on a nuance of the Premier credit card's bonus nights: the 15 elite-qualifying nights are not credited at the beginning of the calendar year, but rather together with the card's anniversary statement each year! Since my hack depended on using the bonus nights to qualify every other year, in the "requalification year" cardholders have to make do with Silver elite status until their anniversary month arrives.

Timing Marriott Rewards Premier credit card applications

In other words, if you are interested in this trick, the absolute worst day for your anniversary statement to close is December 31: you get just one year of Gold elite status every two years.

On the other hand, the best possible day for your anniversary statement to close is January 1: in this case, the trick would work exactly as I originally described.

Personally, my anniversary statement is in April, so I'm closer to the winning end of that spectrum. Some readers complained that their anniversaries are in October, which strips a lot of the value from the technique.

If you already have the Premier card, but have a bum anniversary month, I don't see any easy way to get on board with this technique. Canceling the card and reapplying (without a signup bonus) would be a tough credit pull to justify.

But if you don't already have the Premier card and are interested in getting it someday, make that day early in January!

US Airways anniversary miles (and affiliate bloggers acting shamelessly)

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I've long said that the only question that mattered - and the one that was being studiously ignored by affiliate bloggers - about the Barclaycard US Airways MasterCard is what will happen to the card's anniversary miles.

Applications for the card before the US Airways-American Airlines merger was completed offered 10,000 Dividend Miles that post on each account anniversary. Affiliate links released since the merger, that is to say, the applications you see on sites like Boarding Area and The Points Guy, have not included those anniversary miles.

Meanwhile, "zombie" applications continued to be available which did offer the 10,000 anniversary miles, and which were studiously ignored by bloggers who were paid for those referrals.

The difference matters because, while the newer applications tend to have higher up-front signup bonuses, those anniversary miles can make the card worth keeping after the first year, especially since Barclaycard is notoriously generous about giving annual fee waivers upon a quick phone call.

It has now been confirmed by Barclaycard that those of us who applied under what I call the "and every anniversary thereafter" version of the offer will continue, for now, to receive our anniversary miles.

Affiliate bloggers have no shame

I get things wrong sometimes. That's not something I relish, but it's something I've come to terms with, and when I do, I admit my mistakes, accept criticism, and try to mend my ways.

When affiliate bloggers get things wrong, they write gleeful posts ignoring their humiliating mistakes, which has never been demonstrated as clearly as their reactions today to the news that they have been screwing their readers for months by linking to inferior, non-anniversary US Airways offers.

Remember I shared a working link to an "and every anniversary thereafter" offer on April 30, 2014.

Here's a Mommy Points post on April 30, 2014 linking only to the non-anniversary version of the offer. And here was her priceless reaction to today's Barclaycard announcement:

Note the word "My" in her tweet: her card will award her 10,000 bonus miles because when it comes to her own cards, she looks out for her best interests. Of course, when it comes to her readers she also looks out for her own best interests.

Likewise on April 30, 2014, The Points Guy wrote up the same offer, again without linking to the "and every anniversary thereafter" offer (an oversight we proceeded to debate on Twitter).

After the announcement today, he wrote blandly that "current cardholders will continue to receive the annual 10,000 Dividend Miles." This is, of course, not strictly true, since anyone who followed his advice and signed up using a non-anniversary application will not receive the anniversary miles.

Finally, again on April 30, 2014, the same day I conveniently provided a link to the "and every anniversary thereafter" offer, Gary Leff wrote up his affiliate link without mentioning the existence of the other application.

And – prepare yourself – his post today celebrates the anniversary miles he'll continue to receive, without acknowledging that he deliberately kept his readers in the dark for months about how to earn them.

Conclusion

I don't think a person who needed a quick influx of US Airways miles would necessarily have been wrong to privilege a 40,000-mile offer that charged the $89 annual fee up front over a 30,000-mile, waived-annual-fee offer that offers anniversary miles.

But the shameless promotion of money-making links, the shameless concealing of other, potentially better offers, and then the inevitable denial that that's exactly what took place, does drive me nuts. It shouldn't, but it does. And today's examples were among the most egregious I've seen in some time.

Post-script

Incidentally, it would be interesting to know whether those who applied under the no-anniversary-miles version of the card application received the same e-mail confirming the continuation of anniversary miles. It doesn't seem likely, since Barclaycard has relatively good IT in my experience, but I think there's a non-zero possibility Barclaycard incorrectly classified at least some of those applications. So if you recently applied for that offer, leave a comment and let me know if you've heard from Barclaycard regarding anniversary miles.