Complete list of all 77 Zillions/Zifts bonus gift card redemption options

[edit 10/12/2024: added a correction to the conclusion]

Earlier this week I wrote about the return of my favorite Just4U promotion: bonus points on “Online Exchange” cards, which can be redeemed online for a variety of electronic gift cards, which can then be used or resold. If resold, the loss you take on the face value of the card is the price you pay for a stack of Just4U points and the value of the cards in credit card spend.

Since the last time this promotion came around, I noticed some new card designs at Safeway branded with various combinations of the words “Zillions” and “Zifts.” These cards are, like Online Exchange, issued by Pathward, N.A., and distributed and serviced by our old friends at InComm financial services. I heard these cards were earning bonus points during the current promotion (ending Saturday, October 12, 2024), so I popped over to Safeway to pick one up and see how they work.

The two designs in my store were a “Zillions” card with a variable load amount up to $500 and a fixed value card that offered $105 in value for $100. Neither card, however, listed the merchants for whose gift cards the value could be redeemed, and the redemption website ZillionsGift.com infuriatingly does not list them until you enter a valid redemption code, so for the sake of my beloved readers I picked up a fixed value card and found out for myself.

The first thing I found out was that these cards are not earning the full 10 Just4U points per dollar under the current promotion; I earned just 800 points for my $100 card. My lightly-informed speculation is that the promotion is coded to add 8 points per dollar for a total of 10 points per dollar, since most gift cards earn 2 points per dollar year round. Since these cards are new, they may not be coded to earn that base 2 points per dollar, so during the current promotion they’re only earning the promotional 8 points. Again, that’s just my speculation based on many years of taking advantage of promotions like this. It may be a regional or brand difference instead; find out for yourself and let me know!

Complete list of fixed-value Zillions of Zifts gift card redemption options

Having acquired a redemption code, I plugged it into the redemption portal. Here are the current options for redemptions (they say these are subject to change and I don’t doubt them):

• adidas ($5 - $500)

• Aerie ($5 - $500)

• Aéropostale ($5 - $500)

• AMC Theatres ($5 - $200)

• American Eagle ($5 - $500)

• Applebee’s ($5 - $500)

• Baby Depot at Burlington ($10 - $250)

• Baker’s Square Gift Card ($5 - $500)

• Banana Republic ($10 - $500)

• Bass Pro Shops ($5 - $500)

• Belk ($25 - $500)

• Blaze Pizza ($5 - $250)

• Bob Evans Restaurants ($15 - $500)

• Build-A-Bear Workshop ($5 - $500)

• Cabela's ($5 - $500)

• California Pizza Kitchen ($5 - $500)

• Carters & Oshkosh ($5 - $500)

• Paramount+ ($25, $50)

• Chart House ($10 - $500)

• Chico’s ($10 - $500)

• Chili’s Grill & Bar ($5 - $100)

• Chuck E. Cheese ($5 - $250)

• Columbia Sportswear Company ($5 - $500)

• Dickey’s BBQ ($5 - $500)

• Domino’s ($5 - $100)

• DSW ($5 - $500)

• Famous Dave's ($5 - $250)

• Fanatics ($5 - $500)

• Fandango ($25, $50)

• GNC ($10 - $250)

• GolfNow ($25 - $250)

• H&M ($5 - $300)

• IHOP ($5 - $200)

• KingsIsle Combo Card ($10, $20)

• Kirkland’s Home ($5 - $250)

• Krispy Kreme Doughnut Corporation ($5 - $200)

• L.L.Bean ($5 - $500)

• Lane Bryant ($5 - $500)

• Main Event ($25, $50)

• Maurices ($5 - $500)

• McCormick & Schmick’s ($10 - $500)

• Michaels ($5 - $500)

• Mix It Up ($5 - $200)

• MLB Shop ($5 - $500)

• Morton's The Steakhouse ($10 - $500)

• NBA Store ($5 - $500)

• NFLShop.com ($5 - $500)

• NHL Shop ($5 - $500)

• O’Charley’s ($5 - $500)

• P.F. Chang’s ($10 - $500)

• Rainforest Cafe ($10 - $500)

• Regal ($5 - $100)

• REI ($10 - $500)

• Saks Fifth Avenue ($5 - $500)

• Saks OFF 5TH ($5 - $500)

• Saltgrass Steak House ($10 - $500)

• Smashburger ($5 - $500)

• Smoothie King E-Gift Card ($10 - $100)

• Soma Gift Card ($10 - $500)

• Spa & Wellness Gift Card by Spa Week ($5 - $500)

• Sportsman’s Warehouse ($5 - $500)

• Stitch Fix ($5 - $500)

• Texas Roadhouse ($5 - $100)

• TGI Fridays ($5 - $500)

• The Children’s Place ($5 - $500)

• Ulta Beauty ($5 - $500)

• Under Armour ($5 - $500)

• Village Inn Gift Card ($5 - $500)

• Vudu ($25 - $100)

• White House Black Market ($10 - $500)

• Xbox Digital Gift Card ($15, $25, $50)

I did some spot checks on this list and found that CardCash buys Adidas gift cards for 80.5% of face value and Columbia gift cards for 82% of face value, which is relevant when deciding how much you’re willing to pay for your Just4U points.

Variable load cards have different options

When I first grabbed the bonused fixed value card I was hopeful that the variable cards would have the same list of merchants, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. Listed on the front of the variable cards are several merchants missing from this list:

Conclusion, and warning

[correction: I did not realize Bloomingdale’s cards have to be mailed in to CardCash, eliminating that as a liquidation option. The next best Gift of Choice card I’ve identified is Nordstrom Rack, which pays out 81.5% on CardCash.]

It’s good to stay on top of new gimmicks as they come along in this game, but for now these cards appear to be strictly inferior to the older “Gift of Choice” cards, at least if your plan is to liquidate them to cash through reselling. Both brands have an option that pays 82% on CardCash (Columbia in the case of Zillions/Zifts, Bloomingdale’s in the case of Gift of Choice). It’s true the $5 bonus on $100 Zillions cards increases your payout by a free 5%, but if Gift of Choice cards earn 10, 12, or 14 points per dollar then the higher rewards swamp the effect of the lower payout. If the rewards earned on both types were identical, on the other hand, then the 5% bonus would be decisive.

Finally, a word of caution: since I redeemed my $105 card this morning I have not received any communications from them, neither confirming the redemption nor, even more importantly, actually sending me the Columbia gift card I ordered. I can look up my order in their system, which has my correct e-mail address and the correct details for the order, so it hasn’t been lost, but it hasn’t found its way to me.

As always, if you can’t be without money as long as it takes to fight to get it back, then don’t spend it on travel hacking!

Quick hit: Hyatt Milestone 2K Next Stay Awards don't stack, but do post on award stays

I’ve been plugging along earning top-tier Hyatt Globalist status through manufactured spend on the Chase World of Hyatt credit card, and recently hit the 30-night and 40-night milestones in quick succession. With no obvious reason to choose the other options, I selected the 2K Next Stay Award for each milestone.

As long-time readers may remember, I used to live in Madison, WI, and return several times a year to visit old friends there. I usually stay at the Hyatt Place Madison/Downtown, a Category 3 property that costs 9,000-15,000 World of Hyatt points per night. At the lower end of that range, that’s a terrific value for World of Hyatt points transferred from Chase Ultimate Rewards. At the higher end, it’s a great value for Category 1-4 Free Night Certificates earned on the Chase World of Hyatt credit card.

What I didn’t know was whether both my 2K Next Stay Awards would be triggered by a single stay. Fortunately, I had two stays planned (with the week in between spent on Madeline Island, the largest of Lake Superior’s Apostle Islands).

As it turned out, each of the two stays triggered a single 2K Next Stay Award. This ended up working fine for me given my travel plans, but the awards do have expiration policies to be aware of: they have to be selected (the other options at each of the 20-night and 30-night milestones are two club access awards and $25 FIND experience credits) and then used within the specified time periods, so unless you already have plans to visit a Hyatt House or Hyatt Place, or a property with a club, there’s no point in selecting your awards prematurely. Just set a calendar reminder to make sure you pick something!

Finally, note that the 2K Next Stay Awards did post on both my stays, despite being booked entirely with points and free night awards. This wasn’t surprising (Hyatt treats award stays as “eligible stays” for virtually all their promotions) but it was important to me to verify and pass along.

At the 40-night and 50-night Milestone levels I assume I’ll pick the 5,000 bonus point awards unless I see suite availability for an uncoming trip; I can use the free Guest of Honor award at the 40-night level to get club access if an upcoming stay has a club, although that’s not typical for the domestic properties I stay at.

My successful experience replacing an Incomm Visa prepaid card

There is, by all accounts, an epidemic of fraud striking prepaid debit card retailers across the Western United States. I’ve had the remarkable good fortune of never encountering a tampered prepaid debit card in the wild. So when I needed an Incomm prepaid debit card replaced this month, I jumped at the opportunity to find out how the process works in practice.

Fraud has become a huge problem, but not my problem

If you visit manufactured spend forums you quickly find an ocean of complaints about gift card fraud. Not the “elder abuse” fraud that newspapers love to write about, but genuine larceny: card packaging is opened, the details of the card are swiped, then the card is repackaged so that when an unsuspecting customer activates the card, the balance is quickly drained by the fraudsters. I don’t have a representative sample but it sounds like there are at least some stores on the West Coast where almost every card seems to have been tampered with.

This was not my problem. My problem was that I messed up the magnetic stripe on a card. In other words, user error. Since the balance was still there and I had the card details, I could have liquidated the card online for a tax payment, or to reload my Amazon balance, but instead I called up Incomm to see what the process was to replace the card.

Incomm prepaid card Replacement process

When I realized my error, I first called the number on the back of my Visa prepaid card (833-322-6760). During that call, which according to my phone lasted 17 minutes, I provided the usual card information, as well as the prepaid card’s “serial number,” which is located on the bottom right quadrant of the back of the card, as well as on the card packaging. The phone representative also asked for my name and address. Finally, he asked me to send “copies” of the receipt, the front and back of the prepaid card, as well as my government ID, to “consumed@incomm.com”. I took photos of the documents using my phone on my dining room table.

I first sent the documents on Friday, December 1, 2023, and on Monday, December 4, I received an e-mail from the same address asking for copies of the front of the card and the receipt again. I immediately submitted new pictures.

On Monday, December 11, I received a new card via USPS first class mail. That card had to be activated over the phone, which according to my phone records took 1 minute. I had the option to set a PIN over the phone or use any 4 digits on the new card’s first use, like a normal Incomm prepaid debit card. The card could be and was immediately liquidated through one of my usual in-person channels.

Conclusion

Obviously I wasn’t going to freak out over holding a card for 10 days instead of my usual 90 minutes, but despite my story being anti-climactic there are some obvious lessons you may need a refresher on if you’ve gotten lazy in your manufactured spend routine:

1. Keep your cards, receipts and packaging together. You can use filing cabinets, ziplock bags (guilty) or anything else you like, but if you get a fradulent or defective card you will want to be able to pull everything out at once without having to triple check card numbers and your purchase dates and times. Any unforced errors you make are going to slow down the replacement process.

2. Act quickly. In the case of tampered cards this is more important, but even if you mess up your own card, Incomm isn’t going to replace it until you contact them. Set aside 20 minutes and pick up the phone.

3. Don’t float more than you can afford to. I got stuck with $500 in the ether for 10 days, which didn’t bother me because it was a short period and a reasonable amount. If I’d just bought $10,000 worth of cards and needed them all replaced before my next credit card bill was due, I’d have been sweating a lot harder!

Gift of Choice, the new (to me) restricted gift card product

Last week I had the opportunity to try a brand of “merchant-restricted” gift cards I hadn’t used before: the “Gift of Choice” cards sold by Safeway and “powered” by The Gift Card Shop. This gimmick, the merchant-restricted gift card, is has come around repeatedly over the years.

Five Back Visa gift cards are a way to earn a 5% rebate at certain merchants, including at Bed Bath & Beyond, a formerly-ubiquitous shopping mall staple that used to sell a variety of home goods, but also PIN-enabled Visa prepaid debit cards, leading to a negative-cost manufactured spend technique.

Happy Cards used to be physical gift cards that were (supposedly) limited to use at the merchants specified on the card. Judging by the website they seem to have mostly abandoned that model and now sell codes you exchange online for merchant gift cards.

That’s precisely the model used by Gift of Choice: you buy some flimsy cardboard packaging, scratch off some codes on the back, and redeem them for the digital gift card of your choice.

The Deal: 10 Just4U points per dollar

During the promotion last week, you would earn 10 Safeway Just4U points per dollar spent on Gift of Choice gift card codes, obviously in addition to any rewards you normally earn on grocery store purchases.

I normally value Just4U Rewards (100 points) at “about” $2.78 each (my valuation has increased since I wrote this post for a variety of reasons), so on a $500 Gift of Choice purchase (50 Rewards) I earn a rebate of about $139. I also save the $5.95 I’d pay to activate a $500 Visa prepaid debit card, while earning the same credit card rewards (minus the rewards on the $5.95 activation fee, natch).

Gift of Choice sells their redemption codes with a variety of merchants listed on the front, although I believe you can redeem the cards for any of their supported merchants regardless of the specific version you buy (I can’t check anymore because I’ve already fully redeemed all the cards I purchased, which deactivates their numbers). You can also split the value of the Gift of Choice code into multiple different merchant gift cards, and you don’t need to redeem the full value all at once, so you can spend it down over time.

The gift cards you receive after redeeming Gift of Choice codes are “real” electronic gift cards: you can check their balance online and spend the cards directly at the merchant, and gift card resellers shouldn’t have a problem with them, as long as they accept electronic gift cards.

I bought a Gift of Choice version listing Lowe’s as a redemption option, and redeemed my $500 codes for $500 Lowe’s gift cards. CardCash offers $412.50 in cash for $500 Lowe’s gift cards, or $457.88 in Hotels.com gift cards. Since I book most of my non-points stays through Hotels.com, those gift cards are worth almost the same as cash to me, and that’s how I liquidated the cards, paying $42.12 for at least 9,100 Alaska Airlines miles, or a maximum of 0.46 cents per mile.

Obviously, if you can actually use a gift card at a participating merchant, then your value proposition will look even better, and there are some moderately useful merchants in the system. If you grab fast food regularly, you can stock up on Taco Bell, Domino’s, and Subway gift cards. If you are in the market for athletic wear, Columbia, Under Armor, and Athleta are options; they sell some expensive stuff, and a 28% discount is nothing to sneeze at.

An intriguing possibility is to redeem your Gift of Choice codes for Xbox gift cards. My understanding is that these cards, in addition to games and loot crates and whatnot, can also be spent on Microsoft devices. I have no idea what the current state of the market is, but when consoles were in short supply ambitious resellers spent a lot of time buying and selling them, which may be a way to liquidate Gift of Choice cards at face value or for a profit.

The curious case of the code format

If and when this deal returns and you decide to pursue it, you’ll notice something right away I may as well mention now. I’ve been referring to Gift of Choice redemption “codes” throughout this post, because that’s how the system is supposed to work: you scratch off a little aluminum panel to reveal a series of numbers you redeem online.

But those numbers are actually formatted as a 16-digit “card number” starting with 4, a 3-digit CVV code, and a 4-digit expiration date. In other words, they’re formatted as a Visa card, and the card number satisfies the Luhn algorithm. The specific 6-digit BIN identifier (465568), according to numerous free and disreputable online services, is registered to a Swiss private bank, for whatever that’s worth.

What does this mean? I have no idea — I already explained how I liquidated my cards. But if someone is out there liquidating Gift of Choice cards online at face value as Visa cards, they’re not shouting it from the rooftops. The funniest possible case would be if they can be used as Visa cards, but only within Switzerland. Still, I have no reason to believe they can be used as Visa cards at all.

Don't sleep on the American Express Hilton Surpass $5,000 threshold bonuses through June 30, 2021

For obvious reasons since early last year I’ve been focusing my manufactured spend on cards earning cash back or rewards easily converted to cash or paid travel, and slacking off on the few remaining co-branded credit cards I carry. That allowed it to completely slip my mind that the American Express Hilton Honors Surpass card has been running a fairly compelling deal, for 10,000 bonus Honors points each time you spend $5,000 on the card, up to 100,000 points when you spend $50,000. If all of your Surpass spend is in the card’s 6-points-per-dollar categories, that works out to 8 Honors points per dollar each time your cumulative spend reaches a $5,000 threshold.

The offer ends June 30, 2021, but it’s well worth checking how close you are to the next threshold and seeing if any additional local gas station or grocery store bonuses make it worth closing the gap. Speaking from personal experience, I received a “Thanks for using your Amex Offer” e-mail as soon as a purchase put me over the $5,000 threshold, so you shouldn’t need to wait or worry about whether your purchase has triggered the threshold bonus.

In my experience Hilton Honors points are consistently worth about half a cent each, which makes this a 4% rebate at gas stations and grocery stores, with the potential for outsized return at specific properties and when using the 5th-night-free benefit on award stays.

Finally, if you plan on meeting the $15,000 annual spend threshold to receive a free weekend night certificate (and if you aren’t planning on meeting the spend threshold you shouldn’t be carrying the card and paying its annual fee), then it’s obviously better to meet that spend threshold while the same spend also counts towards the extra bonus point threshold. Free night certificates and bonus points: two great tastes that taste great together.

Safeway versus Giant: Value, Scale, and Timing

As so often happens in the grocery store rewards game, when it rains it pours, with both Safeway and Giant currently offering big bonuses on the purchase of “Happy” brand gift cards. This family of gift cards can be loaded with up to $500, and each sub-brand can only be used at specific merchants, where they are processed as credit cards. They can be easy or difficult to turn into more universally accepted prepaid debit cards depending on the merchants you have convenient.

Safeway versus Giant: Value

Through April 10, 2021, the purchase of Happy gift cards at Safeway will earn 8 Just4U points, while their purchase at Giant/Stop&Shop/Martin’s stores will earn 8 Flexible Rewards points. As the name suggests, Flexible Rewards points are more flexible than Just4U points, since they can be redeemed down to the penny for almost anything in the store. If you’re able to redeem them at scale, however, Just4U points are somewhat more valuable: if you can redeem your entire balance of Just4U Rewards for their maximum value you can get over 1.3 cents per point, or a 10.56% rebate on the purchase of Happy gift cards (plus any credit card rewards earned on the purchase), and you can take advantage of the Just4U double dip to even redeem some of them against otherwise-forbidden goods like liquid dairy products.

In other words, if you have equally convenient access to both stores, and can maximize the value of your points in either program, you should treat 8 Just4U points as “somewhat” more valuable than the same number of Flexible Rewards points.

Safeway versus Giant: Scale

If you don’t have the time or inclination to maximize the value of Just4U points, then Flexible Rewards are clearly superior. Capped monthly rewards redemptions and quick expiration make it pointless to earn more than a few thousand Just4U points. You could easily maximize the value of the entire Safeway promotion in a single trip and just one or two Happy gift cards. Exploiting the higher value of Just4U points requires a disproportionate level of planning, networking and attention to detail, while maximizing the value of Flexible Rewards points requires nothing more than doing your shopping as usual, scanning your card, and walking out with free groceries.

Safeway versus Giant: Timing

The two factors above should do 100% of the work for 90% of listeners. Do you have access to both Safeway and Giant stores? If not, your decision has been made for you. Are you a detail-oriented control freak or do you just want to score some free groceries? If the former, Safeway’s your store; if the latter, Giant’s for you.

There’s one final consideration I want to put out for the remaining 10%: even if you are comfortable maximizing the value of Just4U points, you may want to consider hitting Giant first, and waiting until May 1 to take advantage of Safeway’s offer.

That’s for two reasons. First, Giant’s offer ends earlier, on Thursday, April 29, while Safeway’s runs through May 10, 2021 (as long as you add the offer to your Just4U accounts while it’s still available in the app and online).

The second reason is more pedantic: Just4U points expire at the end of the month in which they’re earned. That means points earned between now and April 30 will expire at the end of May, while points earned between May 1 and May 10 will expire at the end of June (for the clipping of rewards that will themselves expire at the end of July). Especially if you’re already exhausted your April redemption opportunities, waiting until May 1 to begin refilling your Just4U balance will give you a lot more time to ultimately redeem your points.

Conclusion

Obviously if you don’t drive much or spend much on groceries there’s not necessarily any reason to try to maximize both of these promotions, and it’s perfectly reasonable to keep life simple by focusing on just one (or neither). But these are at least some of the factors you should consider when weighing grocery store bonus rewards against one another.

Maximize just 4 U points by pulling forward redemptions across regions

A couple weeks ago I wrote about my first experiences redeeming Safeway’s just 4 U rewards points and described how by triggering more than one reward with the same purchase, you can create a negative balance that can be spent on items that aren’t normally eligible for redemption.

That’s a great way to increase the value of just 4 U points by making them more flexible, but it doesn’t help with the program’s biggest shortcomings: limited redemption opportunities and quickly expiring points. For example, in March the most rewards I could redeem on groceries was 43 (representing 4,300 just 4 U points). Before this month I didn’t look at the program very closely, but assuming that’s standard, it means there’s never any reason for an account to earn more than 4,300 points, on average, each month.

When big earning opportunities come along, like the current offer for 8 points per dollar spent on Happy gift cards, you might almost reach that threshold with just a single purchase! Furthermore, not all redemptions are created equal. If you’re trying to redeem a full 43 rewards per month, you’re probably going to end up with stuff you don’t want or can’t use.

Fortunately, there is a workaround that allows you to redeem more of the highest-value rewards each month. The technique is relatively simple, but the underlying logic is a bit strange.

Albertsons is a sprawling behemoth

You probably know that as a grocery store conglomerate, Albertsons was stitched together over decades from over a dozen regional chains. In many places this was an extremely disruptive process; in my hometown when Albertsons acquired Safeway they were required to spin off our existing Safeway stores into a new local “chain,” a process I’m sure was repeated countless times across the country.

Albertsons retained many of the regional brands they acquired, presumably because they have some nostalgia value for local customers, but eventually rolled out the just 4 U program to most of them. So there’s an Albertsons just 4 U, a Jewel Osco just 4 U, a Safeway just 4 U, etc.

Here’s where it starts to get tricky: instead of consolidating all their stores into a single program, or consolidating each brand’s just 4 U program into its own rewards silo, Albertsons consolidated stores by region. Here’s a somewhat outdated regional map posted by user diburning on FlyerTalk in January, 2020:

View fullsize

Many, but not all, of these regions and brands are inter-operable, but in a very peculiar way. What Albertsons seems to have done is, for every inter-operable store region, create a dummy rewards account corresponding to each inter-operable customer account. There’s nothing unusual about this from a programming point of view: they don’t want two people to be able to enroll with the same login credentials, or list the same telephone number, in two different regions sharing the same backend, and they don’t want users to have to delete one account and create another when they move from one region to another.

As a result, if you have a “Seattle” Safeway just 4 U account, you also have a “Nor Cal” Safeway just 4 U account, and an “United” Albertsons account, and a “Houston” Randall’s account. The most important thing to remember at this point is that these accounts exist simultaneously. You don’t close one and create another when you change your preferred store location.

However, when you change your preferred store location between regions, you are “logging out” of one region’s program and “logging into” the other region’s. When you do this, two things will happen:

• all of your clipped just 4 U earning coupons will appear unclipped.

• all of your clipped just 4 U rewards will disappear.

But this is only because you are looking at your account in a different region. Switch back to your original store location and your coupons will still be clipped and your rewards will be safe and sound. Needless to say, this can be quite scary the first time it happens to you, so I encourage you to try it yourself to make sure you believe me.

However, one thing will not happen when you switch between regions: your just 4 U points balance and unredeemed rewards will still be available for redemption in the new region.

Multiply your monthly high-value redemptions by shopping in different regions

What this means is that you can redeem “excess” just 4 U rewards by shopping in different regions the same month. For example, if I earn 4,400 just 4 U points in March, I would ordinarily only be able to redeem 22 rewards in March for $29 off groceries, then 22 more rewards in April. But if I am able to shop in another inter-operable region in March, I can redeem those 22 April rewards again for another $29 discount. Scaling this technique allows you to vastly increase the number of just 4 U points you can redeem each month, reduces the risk of them expiring unredeemed, and therefore mechanically increases their value.

Obviously to a certain extent this depends on the accessibility of different regions. The more you travel to different regions, the more opportunities you have to redeem your points for the highest-value rewards. Note, however, that you can also “redeem at a distance” by clipping rewards in other regions and then simply sharing the phone number linked to your account with anyone you want to give free groceries to, or “earn at a distance” by having other people enter your phone number after you’ve clipped a coupon in their region.

Conclusion

To the extent that you’re able to scale this technique in order to drain your just 4 U rewards exclusively for the most valuable “basket” rewards, the cash value of just 4 U points asymptotically rises towards 1.32 cents each. This is good to know not because it’s a particularly high value, but because it allows you to quickly and easily evaluate the attractiveness of any given just 4 U deal. Earning 8 just 4 U points on $413.90 in Happy gift cards, for instance, yields approximately $43.71 in rewards, and you can simply compare that return against your liquidation costs to determine if the deal is worth pursuing.

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!

Grocery store rewards datapoints at the end of a lucrative few weeks

The last few months have seen a more or less continuous stream of offers supercharging the value of grocery store manufactured spend:

• Between September 4 and 10 Green Dot cards earned 5 points per dollar at Giant/Martin’s/Stop and Shop;

• In quick succession Safeway offered $10 off $400 in Visa, MasterCard, and then again Visa gift cards;

• Then Giant stepped up and offered triple points on Visa gift cards, double points on MasterCard gift cards, and 10 points per dollar spent on Happy gift cards;

• And in the meantime, Safeway began offering 8 points per dollar spent on Happy gift cards (and unlike Safeway’s Visa and MasterCard offers, the coupon can be used an unlimited number of times on a single account).

Giant versus Safeway (1): Giant

Obviously a lot of people live in areas with convenient access only to Safeway or to Giant/Stop and Shop/Martin’s stores, so the decision of which offers to focus on has been made for them, but I do want to draw attention to a few important nuances for folks with access to both programs.

Giant’s program is the simplest, with points redeemable for either groceries or gas in 100 point increments, Each 100 points is worth $1 in groceries or a $0.10 per gallon discount on gas at participating service stations (i.e., worth $1 when filling a 10-gallon tank, $2 when filling a 20-gallon tank, etc).

Importantly, when redeeming points for grocery rewards, you do not need to redeem them or spend them in a single transaction, and you can make multiple redemptions in order to “fill up” your grocery rewards balance. As long as you shop at Giant at least every few months, this drastically reduces the risk of breakage, since you can fill up and spend down your grocery rewards balance however you choose.

Finally, there are three quirks of the Giant program that are worth being aware of:

• First, in my experience grocery rewards cannot be used to pay for alcohol (this presumably applies to tobacco products as well, though that’s just a guess);

• Second, they can’t be used to cover any taxes on the transaction. In my experience this creates the kind of bizarre situation where if you just buy fresh produce (untaxed here) then your grocery rewards can be used to cover your entire purchase, but if you throw in a pack of toilet paper (taxed here), you’re left owing some trivial amount on the transaction. Unless they’re getting a steep discount on interchange fees, it’s hard to imagine they’re paying Visa less than $0.20 on a $0.20 credit card charge. Obviously that’s not my problem, but it’s a reminder not to leave your wallet at home if you plan to purchase taxable items with grocery rewards. Your grocery rewards balance also can’t be used on gift cards.

• Third, purchases that are fully covered by grocery rewards do earn additional flexible rewards points. This isn’t normally a big deal since unless you’re a caterer or something you probably aren’t earning more than a dollar or two a month in rewards from your regular grocery spend. Nonetheless, Giant does periodically offer bonus point earning on the purchase of various items, and the fact that you can redeem grocery rewards while earning additional flexible points may over time modestly increase the overall return on your manufactured spend.

It sounds obvious because it is, but also remember that when Giant is offering bonus points on gift cards with activation fees, the fees themselves do not earn bonus points, while when they offer bonus points on gift cards without activation fees, like the recent Happy gift card promotion, the entire value of the card earns bonus points.

Safeway versus Giant (2): Safeway

I started with Giant because their program is simpler, but obviously there are some times when and some people for whom Safeway is the only game in town, so it’s worth doing a quick look at “just for U” as well, if only by way of comparison.

While Giant flexible rewards points can be converted directly into grocery rewards, Safeway adds an intermediate currency: each time you earn 100 just 4 U points, they’re converted into what they call “Rewards.” Your Rewards balance can be “passively” redeemed by using it at participating gas stations (as with Giant, 100 points/1 Reward is worth $0.10 off per gallon), or “actively” redeemed for groceries (the equivalent of Giant grocery rewards).

Here’s the finicky part: 1 Reward (100 just 4 U points) is not consistently worth $1 off groceries, which makes it slightly more complicated to directly compare Giant and Safeway promotions. Take, for example, the current Giant promotion for 10 flexible rewards points per dollar spent on Happy gift cards, and the current Safeway promotion for 8 just for U points per dollar spent on the same cards. We know the purchase of a $500 Happy gift card will earn 5,000 flexible rewards points, worth $50 off a future shopping trip, while the purchase of the same card at Safeway will earn just 4,000 just for U points, worth 40 Rewards.

Redeemed one at a time, those 40 Rewards could be used for $40 off a grocery bill. But Safeway allows the redemption of multiple Rewards at increased value: 7 Rewards can be redeemed for $10 off, meaning 35 rewards can be redeemed for the same $50 in groceries, and the remaining 5 redeemed for another $7. The Safeway promotion is actually slightly more lucrative at the margin, despite the lower earning rate!

Obviously promotions at the two chains don’t always overlap, so it’s not like you always have the choice between more and less lucrative versions of the same promo, but when they do, make sure you’re calculating your return properly.

Finally, a few more notes on Safeway’s program:

• Unlike Giant’s flexible rewards which allow you to flexibility build up and spend down a grocery rewards balance, Safeway Rewards redemptions are of the traditional coupon form of “$10 off your next purchase of $10 or more.” This is a time-honored method of encouraging customers to buy more than necessary in order to “make sure” their purchase triggers the coupon, but as long as you’re buying stuff you need at prices that are fair I don’t see any great harm in it.

• Safeway’s terms exclude using Rewards for the purchase of “all fluid items in the refrigerated dairy section—including fluid dairy substitutes,” and states that “[s]ales tax payments and redemption value deposits are not purchases and are not eligible to earn points.” While I’m sure the tax and bottle deposit terms are enforced, I do not believe the exclusion of refrigerated liquid dairy products is, although if anyone knows for sure feel free to leave your datapoints in the comments.

• Finally, Safeway Rewards can be redeemed for one-off free items. These are mostly generic or own-brand items (3 Rewards can be redeemed for a free 24-ounce “Signature Cafe Soup”) with value that mostly falls in line with the value when redeemed for groceries (the same 3 Rewards are worth $4 in groceries), but you might see some interesting high-value redemptions rotate through: 4 Rewards can be redeemed for $7 in the Meat Department, which gives a significantly higher value per Reward even than the maximum redemption of 7 Rewards for $10. But those high-value one-off redemptions are relatively rare, and maximizing your Rewards in multiples of 7 will typically be the most efficient way to redeem them.

Conclusion

Although I’ve jokingly referred to travel hacking over the years as a kind of extreme couponing, until this year I really never bothered to learn anything about the actual practice of couponing. Hell, I did most of my grocery shopping at places like Whole Foods that don’t even offer coupons!

But then we stopped traveling, and then I lost my job, and it turns out I was right all along: everything I ever learned about getting free travel applies equally well to getting free groceries!

On a more serious note, for folks who do have the ability to earn more in free groceries than they’ll ever want or need (while earning travel rewards on the side, of course), there are a lot of organizations, from food pantries to diaper banks, that are seeing more demand for their services than anytime since the Great Depression. In ordinary times those organizations benefit more from the cash donations they can use to buy deeply discounted goods from wholesalers, but most of them also accept in-kind donations, so it’s well worth considering calling around a few local organizations to see what they need most, and whether you can get it to them for free, whether it’s through Safeway, Giant, or whatever grocery store rewards program is operating near you.

Revisiting the Bumped App

Back in November, 2018, I wrote about a then-new app called Bumped which awarded fractional shares of stock when using linked credit cards at participating merchants. Over the last few weeks as I sorted through every bank, brokerage, and loyalty account to update my address, I discovered that Bumped not only survived, but I had also forgotten to unlink several of my credit cards and had accumulated a tidy stash of $10 or so in fractional shares.

In a comment to that original post, reader ABC pointed out some important limits on earning: $50 in rewards per purchase and $250 in rewards per brand, per year. Oddly, these limits are not disclosed in the current (May 2019) customer agreement. Instead, you can find them by clicking through to each brand in the “Loyalties” section of the app.

In any case, having essentially discovered $10 in change under the cushions, I thought I’d share some additional thoughts with my beloved readers.

Use Bumped for reimbursable expenses at pharmacies

Even if you have health insurance, you might still be on the hook for hundreds or thousands of dollars per year in pharmacy expenses. If you have a pre-tax flexible spending account at work, or a health savings account connected to a high deductible health plan, you may have the ability to pay for your prescriptions with your own credit card and then request reimbursement from the health plan.

Both CVS and Walgreens participate in Bumped, and offer a 1% payout (on all merchandise, not just pharmaceuticals), so this technique might allow you to receive your normal credit card rewards, an additional 1% in the form of company stock, and then pay for the charge with pre-tax money.

Use Bumped for deductible or reimbursable business expenses

The Kroger “family” of grocery stores, and Walmart and Target stores (classified as “superstores”), are also in the app at the 1% rewards level. While all three stores sell PIN-enabled prepaid debit cards, if you assume the folks at Bumped have an eye out for abusive behavior, you may still be visiting those stores to source toys for your reselling business, or produce for your catering company, or baked goods for office birthday parties.

The point is simply that when someone else is footing the bill (for reimbursable expenses) or subsidizing your expenses (for deductible expenses), then directing your spending towards merchants that offer you personal rewards is an easy way to come out (even further) ahead. Some Kroger and Walmart stores even sell gas at competitive prices, and Bumped may make it worth directing your reimbursable or deductible gas spending towards those stations.

Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and T-Mobile are also options at a 0.5% reward level, so if your employer reimburses you for some or all of your mobile or internet expenses, that’s another easy opportunity to come out ahead.

Use Bumped to steal from venture capitalists

One option that never would have occurred to me if it hadn’t been laid out explicitly in the customer agreement, is abusing returns. For example, by spending $5,000 at Walmart, you can earn the maximum $50 per-purchase quantity of Walmart stock. After executing this procedure 5 times, you could then sell the stock, withdraw the proceeds, and return the $25,000 in merchandise. The other obvious candidates are Sam’s Club and The Home Depot (where you need to spend $10,000 per transaction, given Home Depot’s lower earning rate of 0.5%).

I think this behavior would certainly get your account closed, and may result in them pursuing some kind of legal action against you. On the other hand, we’re talking about making off with a maximum of perhaps $1,000, which is so much lower than the cost of filing a lawsuit or arbitration claim it’s hard to imagine them trying very hard to get their money back.

It’s not for me, but I’m also not going to judge anybody who tries to pull off this little stunt.

Conclusion: what do you do with the stock?

Obviously if you’re making some kind of huge play on Bumped, whether because you despise venture capitalists or you just don’t think the company will be around much longer, then you should pull your money out as soon as possible. If you plan to continue using the program as intended, then I actually think you’re better off leaving the money in your companies’ shares.

This is for a very boring reason: since you receive your shares for free, they are (correctly) treated by Bumped’s brokerage house as having a “cost basis” of $0, and the entire amount of your sale proceeds is treated as a capital gain. This is not a big deal in terms of its tax burden, but it has the capacity to grossly complicate your life or that of your financial advisor or tax preparer, especially if you transacted in any of the same companies in your non-Bumped accounts. In other words, a savvy tax-loss harvest in one account can be offset by a thoughtless sale in another.

Within the Bumped app, dividends seem to be properly paid and reinvested, so as long as you’re earning anything less than $50-100 per year in rewards, I would simply let them ride. In 20, 30, or 50 years, you might be looking at a few thousand dollars, or you might be looking at $0, but at least the rewards were free and you didn’t cause yourself any unnecessary tax headaches in the meantime.