Credit cards I'm eyeing for my first round of applications in years

Longtime readers may know that I don’t chase signup bonuses in the way a lot of travel hackers do. This is not because I have anything against signup bonuses, it’s just not something I’ve found to be a good use of my own time and energy. I vastly prefer occasionally picking up cards that I intend to keep more or less forever, either because of their recurring benefits (companion tickets and free nights certificates, for example) or because I have a plan to work them into my manufactured spend strategy.

The one place where signup bonuses are truly irreplaceable is for large expenses that can be paid for with credit cards, especially in unbonused merchant categories. For example, if you have a $60,000 tuition payment you can make with multiple credit card transactions, then even with the highest-earning 3% cash back credit cards your maximum payout is just $1,800. Using the same bill to trigger multiple signup bonuses can easily earn several times that in value, or even in cash.

I anticipate some very large expenses coming up which can be paid across multiple credit cards, which gave me the impetus I needed to put together a round of applications. I settled on a combination of cards that have been missing from my manufactured spend game and cards with recurring benefits and signup bonuses that I’m confident I’ll be able to redeem quickly.

Here are the cards I’m planning on signing up for, and the order I’ll apply in. I’m well below Chase’s so-called 5/24 policy, so I shouldn’t have trouble being approved for those cards, but to stay on the safe side I’m starting with Chase and then working through banks with less convoluted eligibility rules.

Chase Freedom Flex

I have 3 classic Freedom cards and one Freedom Unlimited, but I’ve never had a Freedom Flex so I should be eligible for this signup bonus of 20,000 Ultimate Rewards points after $500 in spend.

The signup bonus is a sweetener but the real reason I want this card is so I can finally product change my 3 remaining Freedom cards to Freedom Flex cards. This is primarily a credit line management issue: I can already earn 3 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar at drug stores with my Freedom Unlimited, but to stay on Chase’s good side I don’t spend more than my credit limit on that card each month. The Freedom Flex also earns 3 points per dollar at drug stores, so having four of those cards will increase the total amount of drug store earning I’m comfortable doing each month, and give me four cards with Chase’s quarterly rotating bonus categories for a total of $6,000 per quarter in bonused spend when promising categories are available.

Chase Ink Business Preferred

For me this is a pure signup bonus play, and I’ll earn 100,000 Ultimate Rewards points after spending $8,000 on the card.

The card does earn 3 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent on “shipping purchases,” “advertising purchases made with social media sites and search engines,” “Internet, cable and phone services,” and “travel” but none of those categories are essential to my earning strategy right now, so unless and until the situation changes in the next year I’ll plan on cancelling the card before my next annual fee hits.

Bank of America Alaska Airlines Business

I’m a huge fan of Alaska Airlines and the Companion Fare that comes with their credit cards, but I’ve never actually held one in my own name before. This card has a 75,000 mile signup bonus after $4,000 in spend, plus a Companion Fare the first year and on anniversaries.

The card does have a potential manufactured spend angle in the gas and shipping categories, where it earns 2 Mileage Plan miles per dollar, but I think I’m unlikely to try to aggressively manufacture Alaska Airlines miles that way in the near term.

American Express Gold

I’ve never had a card in the American Express Membership Rewards ecosystem, so my plan is to use this card as my entry point. The signup bonus is for 90,000 Membership Rewards points after $6,000 in spend, and the card also earns four points per dollar spent on groceries and restaurants.

American Express has taken some action to limit abuse of those bonus categories. Venmo payments stopped triggering restaurant bonus spend some time ago, and gift card purchases at grocery stores have also been targeted. I’m fairly confident I’ll still be able to take advantage of one or both of these bonus categories, but if not I’ll simply transfer the signup bonus out and close the card in a year.

Barclay Wyndham Rewards Earner Business

This is a bit of an outlier for me, in that I don’t remember the last Wyndham property I stayed at and have no immediate plans to stay in another one any time soon. Nonetheless, I’ve allowed myself to be convinced by the chorus of cheers for this card that cheap Wyndham points are an outstanding way to book Vacasa home rentals.

This signup bonus offers 100,000 Wyndham points after $15,000 in spend on the card, and the card earns 8 Wyndham points per dollar on gas station spend.

There are a lot of nuances I’ll need to work my way through in practice, but the basic principle of these Wyndham-Vacasa rentals is that points are worth “up to” 1.85 cents each when redeemed for stays that cost exactly $250 or $500 per Vacasa bedroom. The card thus earns up to 14.8 cents per dollar spent at gas stations, when points are redeemed for their maximum value on Vacasa rentals.

More and more of my annual trips are to see larger groups of friends and family, and we often find that renting big houses and condos is the best way to spend the most quality time together. I’m not certain that Wyndham-Vacasa rentals are going to be the perfect solution to that booking puzzle, but I’m willing to give it a year or two to find out.

Conclusion

Across all five cards, I’ll have a total minimum spending requirement of $33,500, which is right in the ballpark of my upcoming credit card expense. Once triggered, I’ll have what I reckon as a conservative $4,150 in miles and points, or a 12.4% return, in addition to the miles and points earned on the spend itself.

That return is so attractive that it’s understandable why, for some people, signup bonuses and travel hacking are synonymous, and there’s no need to touch other tools. Even though that’s not how I choose to play the game year-round, I still know that a big expense you can pay with credit cards is also a big opportunity.

Quick hit: free HotelSlash membership

AutoSlash is getting into the hotel game with a new search product, appropriately called HotelSlash. After poking around on it for half an hour I didn’t see anything special about it (like Venti and a thousand similar sites, it’s just a way to pass along some of the commission paid by hotels as savings to customers), but having alternate search engines can sometimes be unexpectedly lucrative, so you may as well sign up now while it’s free using promo code “FREE4LIFE”.

They claim they’ll start charging membership fees at some point, which they say they have to do to offer prices below the “publicly” advertised ones.

Two increased (and one crashed) signup bonuses that caught even my attention

Long-time readers know that I don’t have much interest in signup bonuses. Obviously if there’s a card you want, it’s better to apply when the bonus is high rather than low, but that’s not something in your control. I vastly prefer to focus on what I can control: where to allocate spend, which points to earn, and when and where to redeem them.

But a few signup bonuses passed across my desk recently that got even my jaded attention.

Hilton Honors no-annual-fee and Surpass 180,000/200,000 bonus points

Hilton Honors points are not each particularly valuable. Unlike World of Hyatt points which can be redeemed at relatively low numbers for even the most luxurious properties, you need a lot of Hilton Honors points to do anything interesting.

This is one of the general reasons many people consider Chase Ultimate Rewards Points more valuable than American Express Membership Rewards: despite the occasional transfer bonus, the ability to both earn bonused Ultimate Rewards points and transfer them one-to-one to a program like World of Hyatt makes the program attractive to folks who aren’t interested in chasing signup bonuses.

However, while Hilton Honors points are worth less, they aren’t worthless, and there are still fun things you can do with them, especially if you have a lot of them.

While some of our finest scholars have attempted to determine the correct value of Hilton Honors points, I think it’s worth turning the question around: how little would Hilton Honors points need to be worth to make these offers worth applying for? At just 0.3 cents per point, 200,000 Hilton Honors points are worth $600.

You may ask, “why would anyone redeem Hilton Honors points for 0.3 cents each?” but that exactly proves my point: an absurdly low per-point valuation still gives you a pretty high total valuation for these offers.

You can see the current personal referral offers I have on my Support the Site! page, although as far as I can tell the referral offers simply reduce the referee’s points by the amount received by the referrer, so if you don’t want to support this site, just apply through one or more incognito windows, as Frequent Miler describes here.

A final consideration is that Hilton points are relatively easy to consolidate, so it’s possible for partners to refer these offers to each other and then consolidate the points in a single account in order to take advantage of benefits like free breakfast, lounge access, and 5th-night-free award redemptions.

Chase Ink signup bonuses

A second signup bonus arrived by e-mail, with Chase suggesting I invite my fellow business owners to apply for the Ink family of cards. I’ve carried a Chase Ink Plus card more or less forever, but don’t recall the last time I saw a 100,000 Ultimate Rewards point signup bonus.

If the Hilton Honors Surpass card has a $600 minimum value, 100,000 Ultimate Rewards point have a $1,250 minimum value just by booking airfare or hotels through the portal.

Obviously transfers to Hyatt, Southwest, or Chase’s other airline partners can double or triple that value.

Chase World of Hyatt cratered bonus

Unfortunately, Chase flipped the script when it came to the World of Hyatt credit card and has radically reduced the value to new applicants. Instead of offering 60,000 points after spending $6,000, they’re now offering just 30,000 World of Hyatt points after $3,000 in spend, and then 2 points per dollar after that up to $15,000 in spend during the first 6 months.

This is supposed to look to civilians like a 60,000-point offer, but we know better than that.

Quick hits: rollovers (hitting); awards (waiting); Chase targeted offers (missed me so far)

There are quite a few current and expired offers floating around right now that I want to put in one place to make it easy for readers (and me) to keep track of.

Hyatt elite night and Delta Medallion Qualifying Mile rollovers

Your 2020 Hyatt elite nights are not technically being rolled over into 2021. Rather, as long as you register by January 15, 2021, all the elite nights you earn between October 1, 2020 and February 28, 2021 “count twice:” once in the year they’re earned, and once in 2021. I don’t have any travel planned before the end of February, but since the only three Hyatt nights I earned in 2020 were at the end of December, the promotion effectively allowed me to roll those nights into 2021. Those 2021 nights have already posted to my Hyatt account.

For the past few years, Delta has allowed their Medallion members to roll over any MQM in excess of their elite status requirements into the following year. This year, they’re rolling all MQM over from 2020 to 2021. I earned a few thousand MQM by putting spend on my American Express Delta Platinum Business card last year, and they’ve already posted as 2021 MQM.

I am probably not going to pursue status in either program in 2021, but if you are, your elite qualifying nights and miles should be appearing shortly.

Hyatt $4,000-spend free night award

As I wrote in November, Hyatt credit cardholders were able to stack two promotions to great effect at the end of 2020:

• Earn 3 World of Hyatt points per dollar spent at grocery stores, up to $1,500 per month, during each of November and December, 2020.

• Receive a Category 1-4 free night award when you spend $4,000 on your card between October 27 and December 31, 2020.

That made it a no-brainer to manufacture $4,000 on the card in negative-cost grocery store spend during the spate of great Giant and Safeway promotions. My bonus points posted as expected with my December Hyatt credit card statement, but I just squeaked under the wire meeting the $4,000 spend threshold on December 30, 2020, and my free night award has not yet posted. I’m not terribly worried about it yet, but I’ll be keeping a close eye on my account until the award night posts.

Chase co-branded card offers

If you have any Chase co-branded credit cards, check them to see if you’ve been targeted for bonus earnings at grocery stores, gas stations, drugstores, or when meeting spend thresholds in the first quarter of 2021.

My only co-branded Chase credit card is the legacy Hyatt card, and I’ve been unable to register using the dedicated Hyatt link or the generic link. Since I’m going to be forced into an upgrade on January 11 my hope is registration will open for me then and I’ll still have plenty of time to meet the bonus spending threshold by March 31, 2021.

Conclusion

Finally, I try to keep my Hotel Promotions page relatively up to date both for my own reference and for the use of readers, so pop over there to make sure you’re registered for the several Hilton and Hyatt promotions that have been extended into 2021, and to check if your hotel loyalty accounts were targeted for any current promotions.

Register for Hyatt free night earning opportunity (and other Chase grocery offers)

There’s a great opportunity right now for Chase World of Hyatt and legacy Hyatt cardholders, so I want to remind readers to register for both offers (and some other available Chase offers) before registration closes on one of them tomorrow.

The Chase Hyatt Double Feature

I guess these offers were sent out by e-mail, but if you’re like me, you trash most of the e-mails you get from banks sight unseen. Fortunately, you can still register for both even if you don’t have access to the e-mail’s one-click link:

• Earn 3 World of Hyatt points per dollar spent at grocery stores, up to $1,500 per month, during each of November and December, 2020. Register here by December 31, 2020.

• Receive a Category 1-4 free night award when you spend $4,000 on your card between October 27 and December 31, 2020. Register here by November 30, 2020.

The fact you can register for both of these offers means spending $4,000 on your Hyatt card at grocery stores is worth up to 25,000 points, or 6.25 points per dollar. Since your actions should be driven by your marginal benefit, the deal is even more enticing than that, since you’ll earn 3 points per dollar on your first $1,500 in grocery spend in each month, but a free night award worth up to 15,000 points for your last $1,000 — the equivalent of up to 15 points per dollar if you precisely meet the $4,000 spend threshold.

Don’t sleep on other Chase grocery offers

The legacy Hyatt card is the only co-branded card I have with Chase, but if you have others head over to Frequent Miler’s compilation of the registration links. Negative-cost grocery store manufactured spend is everywhere right now, so you may as well put the spend on cards that are bonusing at least some grocery store spend, especially if you can leverage the card’s other potential benefits.

The most obvious candidates are the Southwest card’s earning of 5 points per dollar, earning which counts towards next year’s companion pass, and Marriott’s Boundless card, which grants Gold elite status after spending $35,000 during the calendar year. If United is one of your frequent Ultimate Rewards transfer targets, then you should likewise treat earning 5 MileagePlus miles per dollar as the equivalent of 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar — a good earning rate on negative-cost manufactured spend!

A decent strategy for the Chase IHG Rewards credit cards

I’ve played around with the IHG Rewards program over the years, for example when I dutifully filled out my 94 index cards (and won a Bose home stereo system), but the program isn’t of much interest to me, given that I earn enough Hilton Honors and Ultimate Rewards points to cover the majority of my travel. Earning IHG Rewards points on an ongoing basis just doesn’t make much sense for me.

That being said, everyone’s situation is different, and you might find IHG Rewards to be the best program for your own needs, whether because your company uses them as a preferred travel provider, because you’ve been shut down by American Express, or simply because IHG has the properties you want to stay at in the destinations you want to visit!

If that’s the case, you may want to take a look at the Chase IHG Rewards Premier card.

Reminder: (almost) never buy or transfer IHG Rewards points directly

In addition to being a 1:1 transfer partner of flexible Ultimate Rewards points, you can also buy points with cash for 1 cent each, or slightly less if you click through to Points.com from a cashback portal like TopCashBack, which is currently offering 2% cash back, lowering the cost per point to 0.98 cents.

If you transfer flexible Ultimate Rewards points, of course, you’re paying the equivalent of at least 1.25 cents per point, since that’s the cash value each Ultimate Rewards point could be redeemed for through the travel portal.

Meanwhile, IHG Rewards sells an unlimited number of points year-round for around 0.6 cents each, using the “Points + Cash” workaround. At the first property I checked (Kimpton : RiverPlace Hotel in Portland, OR), IHG was willing to sell me 20,000 points for $115, or 0.58 cents each.

The only time you’re better off buying points outright is during 100% bonus sales, when the price mechanically falls from 1 cent to 0.5 cents per point. Such sales do come along periodically (there was one in December, 2019), but I abhor buying points at all speculatively, so would never recommend buying points you don’t have an immediate plan to redeem.

A good IHG Rewards Premier signup bonus

You can currently sign up for the IHG Rewards Premier card and receive 140,000 points after spending $3,000 within 3 months. From the above, we know that this bonus would otherwise cost between $700 and $812, depending on whether the points would otherwise be bought at 0.5 or 0.58 cents each. Back out the $89 annual fee (not waived the first year) and you get a final value of the signup bonus of $611-$723.

This isn’t the highest signup bonus offered by Chase, but if you have already received, or are otherwise ineligible for, Chase’s more valuable Ultimate Rewards signup bonuses, this is a perfectly respectable value for a signup bonus.

The fourth-night-free benefit may supercharge the value of the signup bonus

Both the IHG Rewards Premier and Traveler (no-annual-fee) cards allow you to receive each 4th night free on an unlimited number of points-only award stays (i.e., excluding stays booked with free night certificates).

It’s worth taking a moment to consider how much more valuable a 4th-night-free benefit is than the 5th-night-free benefit offered by Marriott and Hilton to elite members. First of all, every 5-night award stay still includes a free night, which is to say, the IHG Rewards benefit includes the maximum benefit offered by the Marriott and Hilton programs. Then, in addition, every 4-night award stay also includes a free night. Finally, 4-night stays are substantially more common and more flexible than 5-night stays. At the most basic level, it’s the difference between getting 4 free nights or 5 free nights out of every 20 you stay.

If, and only if, you plan to redeem your signup bonus for stays in 4-night increments, then the value of the bonus therefore rises from 140,000 to 186,667 IHG Rewards points, or $933-$1083 (less the $89 annual fee).

Flipping the numerator and denominator shows that with the card, your breakeven year-round imputed redemption value on 4-night stays falls to 0.44 cents per point (or 0.38 cents per point if purchased during 100% bonus periods).

Product change after the first year

After the first year, the IHG Rewards Premier card doesn’t offer any benefits except an annual free night certificate that can be used at properties costing up to 40,000 points. Since the certificate can’t be used as part of a 4th-night-free points stay, it has a maximum value of $232, if and only if you plan on a one-night stay at a 40,000-point property (and are able to find award availability there). I’ve heard and seen too many horror stories about people scrambling at the last minute to find something — anything! — to do with single-night award certificates to ever recommend paying an annual fee for one.

However, the no-annual-fee IHG Rewards Traveler credit card also offers a 4th-night-free on points stays. Therefore, the ideal strategy would be not to cancel the Premier card, but to request a product change to the free Traveler card, permanently raising the value of your IHG Rewards points by up to 33%.

So, what are IHG Rewards points worth?

I’ve been focused so far on the cost of IHG Rewards points. But of course, it’s possible to pay more for something than it’s worth. The final question when deciding whether to proceed is by far the most important one: what are IHG Rewards points worth (and even more important, what are they worth to you)?

With so many properties closed or offering fire-sale prices on rooms, it’s hard to run even a half-assed scientific test of the redemption value of IHG Rewards points, except to say that they seem to fall in a pretty narrow band between 0.45 and 0.7 cents. Using the values we calculated above, that gives a redemption value of the signup bonus of up to roughly $1300 (if the entire 140,000 point signup bonus is used on 4th-night-free stays at a redemption value of 0.7 cents), or as little as $630 (if the signup bonus is redeemed on stays of 3 or fewer nights at the lower bound of redemption value).

Meanwhile, if you’re able to consistently redeem IHG Rewards points for 0.7 cents or more, consistently buy them for 0.5 cents, and consistently redeem them on four-night point stays, then with the no-annual-fee Traveler card you’ll receive an ongoing discount of about 46% off the relevant stays.

Not great, but not bad for points that you can buy and redeem from the comfort of your own home. If you have more money than time, or if you really hate manufacturing spend, then there are certainly folks out there for whom this deal makes sense.

Do this now: activate 3rd quarter bonus categories and register for hotel promotions, plus double Flexpoints on dining

With the third quarter already upon us, it’s time to make sure you’ve activated your third quarter bonus categories. In addition, there are a slew of hotel promotions currently available, plus a new US Bank Flexperks Travel Rewards promotion that lasts through the end of the year.

Register for them all now, before you forget.

Chase Freedom

Earn 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar on up to $1,500 spent at gas stations and on “select streaming services.” The “select streaming services” are a pretty transparent attempt to get cardholders to change their default payment method on the assumption most people will be too lazy to change it back in October. Before changing your payment method, be sure to check the eligible services, since some popular video streaming services are excluded (HBO Now and CBS All Access didn’t make the cut, for example).

Gas station manufactured spend isn’t as easy as it used to be, but some stores continue to allow OneVanilla Visa cards to be purchased with credit cards. Gas stations also run periodic promotions for the purchase of merchant gift cards, which you can either spend or resell.

Obviously, some people simply buy gas at gas stations, and whether $1,500 per card is a lot or a little gas depends on your own driving habits.

Activate the quarterly bonus for each of your Freedom cards here.

Discover it

Earn 5% cash back on up to $1,500 spent at restaurants and PayPal. The terms state that “PayPal qualifying purchases are those made through the PayPal wallet online, when you send money to Friends and Family via PayPal using your Discover Card, and point-of-sale transactions using PayPal Here.” That means the easiest thing to do is just make a $1,457 transfer funded with your credit card. After eating the $42.57 in fees, you’ll end up with $32.43 in profit for a few seconds work.

Some smaller merchants use PayPal Here as their point-of-sale equipment, but I’m not aware of any national chains that use PayPal Here and sell gift cards.

Log into your account and activate your bonus earning here.

Citi Dividend

If you didn’t reach $6,000 in annual bonused spend during the second quarter at drugstores, you can earn 5% cash back for purchases with airlines or car rentals. Plane tickets and car rentals can be expensive, so this may be a good opportunity for reimbursed business travelers, depending on what other cards you have available to pay with.

Activate your bonus cash back earning here.

US Bank Cash+

Earn 5% cash back in two bonus categories of your choice, and 2% cash back in one category of your choice. The options change slightly each quarter; log in here to see the current choices and to activate your bonus earning.

Hotel Promotions

I’ve never understood the rhythms of hotel promotions, which don’t seem to consistently follow the calendar year or the seasons, so I was pleasantly surprised to see while updating my Hotel Promotions page that all the programs I follow currently have promotions available for registration.

For hotel stays I rely primarily on Hilton and Hyatt, due to the ease of manufacturing spend on my Hilton Ascend and Ink Plus credit cards. The Hilton promotion is unlikely to yield me more than a few thousand bonus points since I mainly book award stays, but the Hyatt promotion is targeted explicitly at award stays, so I’ll be happy to earn 10% of my redeemed World of Hyatt points back through September 2, 2019.

All the promotions besides Hyatt and IHG require two or more stays before earning any bonus points, which more narrowly targets the high-value business travelers these promotions are presumably designed to attract. Whether that describes you or not, don’t forget to register for all the promotions you’re eligible for.

Double Flexpoints at restaurants

I receive so many e-mails from US Bank about this or that James Beard award-winning chef that I usually skim past them in my inbox, but I’m glad I stopped to read this one: US Bank Flexperks Travel Rewards cardholders can register to receive 2 Flexpoints per dollar spent at restaurants through the end of 2019.

I don’t know if this shows US Bank considering a different earning structure for the card in the long term, but if you eat out often and have a Flexperks Travel Rewards card, be sure to register for the promotion here.

When it rains it pours: ending the first quarter on a high note

Earlier this month I’d started to notice that some of the promotions that had popped up fairly regularly in the past hadn’t shown up recently. No sooner did I wonder whether we were in for some dramatic shift in the rewards landscape…than the promotions reappeared. Here’s a quick rundown.

$10 off Office Depot/OfficeMax Visa gift card purchases of $300 or more

This promotion has taken many forms over the years, but it’s always worth cleaning out your local stores if you have a Chase Ink Plus or Ink Cash card earning 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar at office supply stores. In previous years, this was stackable with eBates in-store cashback, making the deal even sweeter, but Office Depot/OfficeMax are not currently available for in-store cashback with eBates.

The current promotion runs through March 16, 2019.

3x fuel points on Visa gift card purchases at Giant, Stop&Shop, and Martin’s

Between March 15 and 21, 2019, Visa gift card purchases at Giant and their related brands will earn 3 fuel points per dollar spent on Visa gift card purchases, which usually do not earn fuel rewards.

The various Giant-related brands handle fuel rewards quite differently, so the value of this promotion depends on where you live, how much you drive, and how many friends you have to share your fuel rewards with.

Personally, I don’t own a car and typically only drive when on vacation, and I’ve recently run into trouble trying to redeem my fuel rewards points at Shell stations outside my “home” region. Since I spend maybe $200 on gas per year, this doesn’t bother me much, but if you are planning to hit this promotion hard make sure you understand how your local grocery affiliate and gas stations handle fuel rewards.

Don’t sleep on first quarter bonus earning

Don’t forget about any 5% bonus earning cards you haven’t maximized this quarter. For example, I hold two Chase Freedom cards earning 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent at drugstores this quarter, but I still haven’t actually done the spend simply because I’ve been putting off thinking about liquidation strategies. If you’re like me, you should get your act together, figure out a liquidation strategy, and go max out your bonus earning. When you do, make sure you’re maximizing third-party rewards as well.

The Discover it grocery store bonus category is even easier to maximize (and stack next week with fuel rewards for folks with access to Giant-affiliated brands!), so if you’ve been using that as an excuse to put it off, well, you’re out of excuses!

Bonus: register for hotel promotions

I’m a little bit lazy about keeping it updated, but I also don’t bombard you with pop-ups every time you open the page, so be sure to check out my Hotel Promotions page to make sure you’re not missing out on any rewards for the hotel stays you’re already paying for.

Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt, and IHG all currently have promotions open for registration.

Do this now: link your JetBlue and Delta accounts to Lyft

Last month I wrote about Lyft’s partnership with the Ebates app, which allows you to earn $1 in Ebates cash back each time you start a Lyft booking through the Ebates app. It struck me at the time, and still strikes me, as a bit silly, but it works perfectly, and given that my rides are typically less than $10 it functions as a discount of over 10% per ride.

I want to flag two additional earning opportunities that can be stacked on top of that $1 discount.

Link Delta and JetBlue accounts to Lyft

By navigating to Lyft’s Connected Services page, you can link both your Delta SkyMiles and JetBlue TrueBlue accounts. Each program also has a dedicated signup page, https://www.deltalyft.com/ for Delta and https://www.lyft.com/jetblue/first for JetBlue.

Earning with each program works slightly differently, but there’s no restriction on earning with both programs and combining them with the Ebates discount:

• you earn 1 Delta SkyMiles per dollar spent on Lyft and 2 SkyMiles per dollar spent on “airport rides;”

• you earn 30 JetBlue TrueBlue points per “airport ride.”

Additionally, if you enter the promo code “SKYMILES10X” in the Lyft app, you’ll earn 3 SkyMiles per dollar on all rides and 10 SkyMiles per dollar on airport rides through December 25, 2018.

As a word of warning, I entered the SKYMILES10X code before linking my SkyMiles account and only earned 1 SkyMiles per dollar on my latest ride, so to be on the safe side, I’d suggest linking your SkyMiles account before entering the promo code into the app. Alternately it may be that the bonus points will post later, as the terms state “Miles may take two (2) weeks or more to be awarded to Delta SkyMiles accounts.”

Link Fuel Rewards just in case

On the Lyft Connected Services page you also have the option of linking your Shell Fuel Rewards account to Lyft. At first I thought this might be interesting since Fuel Rewards is also the program linked to Giant, Stop & Shop, and Food Lion grocery stores, where you can periodically earn bonus fuel points for Visa and MasterCard gift card purchases.

However, it appears the Fuel Rewards benefit is for Lyft drivers, not passengers, and you need to give 10 rides in 3 months to activate Silver status with Lyft’s Accelerate program and receive an additional 5 cents off per gallon through Fuel Rewards (7 cents per gallon for Platinum drivers).

If you’re already in Lyft’s system as a driver, that should be a no-brainer, but it’s probably not worth doing for civilians unless you buy a lot of gas. But if you do drive a lot, or are simply curious how Lyft works from a driver’s perspective, it still might be interesting to try.

Everyone's a Radisson thinkfluencer now

Radisson Rewards seems to have hired a new marketing agency, and they’re trying to make a splash. Last week I got a funny e-mail from an “Associate” at Wye Communications, that began:

“I’ve been keeping up with your [coverage / blog posts / updates] and thought you’d be interested in sharing a new rewards offer from Radisson Rewards with your readers.”

I’m not sure if the Associate was supposed to pick just one of the three options in square brackets or if she was supposed to send out the e-mail as is.

Then just yesterday I got another e-mail from a “Manager” at Wye addressed, “Hi Points Chasers!” about an increased signup bonus which promptly made its way to all the mainstream blogs. I guess I’m flattered to be included?

Double elite stay credit when booking “premium” rooms

The first thinkfluencer e-mail I got was about an elite status promotion Radisson is running through December 28. The offer is for double points (base points, I assume) and double elite-qualifying stays and nights when you book a paid, premium room using the promotion code “RRDBLDBL.”

There are three moving pieces to elite status with Radisson Rewards:

• if you hold the US Bank Radisson Rewards Premier Visa Signature Card ($75 annual fee) or Radisson Rewards Business Visa Card ($60 annual fee) you get automatic Gold status, which offers no benefits (besides a higher earning rate on paid stays);

• Points + Cash and Award Nights both count towards elite status qualification;

• Platinum status requires 60 elite qualifying nights or 30 elite qualifying stays, and gets you a limited breakfast benefit.

Since award stays count towards elite status qualification, if Radisson Rewards is your primary hotel loyalty program, you might have accumulated quite a few elite qualifying stays and nights, so you might be within striking distance of Platinum status if you have some more paid travel before December 28.

So if you do have paid travel, and are within striking distance of Platinum status, would it be worth booking a premium room in order to trigger this promotion? The good news here is that you don’t need to book a very premium room. As long as the property considers it a premium room, it qualifies. For example, at the Radisson Blu Aqua Hotel in Chicago I found a “2 Beds-Balcony” premium room for $159 before taxes, the same price as a $159 “King Bed” standard room.

However, Radisson properties are also always offering a range of booking discounts, especially in low business travel seasons like December, so you can probably find discounted prices too low to justify booking a full-price premium room. For example, the Radisson Blu Aqua is currently running a “flash sale” with rooms starting at $119 before taxes.

Thinkfluencers-only increased signup bonus for Radisson Rewards Premier Visa Signature Card

The second e-mail I got was for an increased signup bonus for the US Bank Radisson Rewards Premier Visa Signature Card. It’s a publicly available offer, but you do have to apply through a special URL, since it won’t show up if you navigate to the application through either US Bank’s or Radisson’s website.

The offer’s for 100,000 Radisson Rewards points after spending $2,500 on the card within 3 months (50,000 points after first purchase, which is the same as the standard offer).

For me, Radisson Rewards has a bit of neither-fish-nor-fowl character to it. Their credit cards make it easy to earn huge numbers of points, and their Category 7 properties still cost just 70,000 points per night (105,000 points for premium room awards), or $14,000 in unbonused credit card spend. You can earn an additional 3 nights at any Radisson Rewards property in the United States per cardmember year by spending $30,000 on the card, and you get 40,000 anniversary points with the Premier and Business credit cards.

But then you have to stay at Radisson Rewards properties, and that’s where the going gets tough. If you want to spend 5 nights at the Category 7 Radisson Blu Aqua in Chicago or Cassa Hotel NY 45th Street in Manhattan, then $30,000 in spend and a $75 annual fee works out to something like $135 per night. If you stay at lower-category properties, then of course your points go further, but your free night certificates are worth correspondingly less.

That’s why ultimately Radisson Rewards feels like a bit of a stunt. If you travel enough that you’re guaranteed to redeem your points and certificates each year, then it’s a perfectly fine addition to a credit card portfolio: get your $30,000 in spend done at the beginning of each year and then stick it in the sock drawer until your next anniversary. Likewise if you’ve been banned from American Express and Chase, you might not have many great opportunities to earn hotel points, so the fact that the card is issued by US Bank is a concrete material advantage.

But unless you find yourself consistently visiting places where Radisson Rewards offer a superior value to Hilton or Hyatt, or on the flip side if you travel so much that those balances need to be preserved for their highest and best redemptions, I don’t see any compelling reason to add Radisson Rewards to a travel hacking practice.