Random News: Amazon AMEX Offer, 6,000 Bonus Hilton HHonors Points, Apple Pay at Walgreens, and Accidental Chime Card Hack

Good evening everyone, I know this offer was mentioned 10+ hours ago, but I wanted to make sure to share it: Amazon AMEX Offer provides a $15 statement credit after making a $15+ purchase on Amazon.  #freemoney.  Unfortunately, none of my AMEX cards have this offer, I guess AMEX doesn’t love me after all.  Shawn @ Miles to Memories received this offer on 6 out of 7 of his AMEX cards. #luckyguy

In other credit card news, I received a targeted offer for my Citi Hilton HHonors Reserve Credit Card.  I can earn 2,000 bonus points for each stay until February 28, 2015, up to 6,000 points.  This offer is nothing special, but if you have this credit card, you should have received a similar (maybe better?) offer in your inbox.  Hilton Points are worth about 1/2 a cent, so this offer is a big yawn in my book.  Good deal if you had upcoming Hilton stays already planned though.

Today, I finally got to try Apple Pay at Walgreens and it worked perfectly.  I was able to buy a PayPal My Cash Card using my iPhone 6. #revolutionary.  Some people are wondering if paying with Apple Pay will interfere with the bonus shopping categories.  We will find out soon enough.  My hunch is Apple Pay will not interfere with bonus shopping categories.

Lastly, I was at my favorite CVS this morning turning a bunch of $200 Visa and MasterCard gift cards (thank you Office Depot AMEX Offer) into PayPal My Cash Cards.  Today, I learned the hard way that you can only swipe 6 credit/gift cards per transaction at CVS.  After swiping 6 gift cards, the POS system would not allow me to pay with any other payment method.  We had to call over the store manager and void the entire transaction and subsequently return the funds back to the gift cards.  Uh oh, this sounded like a headache waiting to happen.  Fortunately, I learned an interesting thing about my Chime Card today.  My Chime Card had $76 on it and I was planning on draining the card at CVS.  After using the card as part of my failed 6 card purchase, I received the email notification that I had earned $5 cash back.

After the 6 card purchase was voided, I used my Chime Card again.  I unloaded the card, but this time, my Chime Card had $81 on it.  Strange…

Looking at the transaction details from the Chime Card app, the $5 cash back posted at 8:11AM.

But the actual $81 charge didn’t go through until 8:17AM.

The last time Chime Card had a deal with CVS (August 20), the purchase and the cash back posted at the same time.  The above situation is interesting.  It looks like the cash back posted on the authorization, not the posting of the charge.  So it seems that you can get in front of the cash back if the purchase is voided after the charge is authorized.  I’m not sure this makes much sense to anyone else, but thought it was worth sharing.  If you want to learn more about the Chime Card, please read this post.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.  Have a great evening everyone!

P.S. For those of you at the OC Meetup, my Alaska Airlines status just got updated.

P.P.S. If anyone is thinking of signing up for the Chase Freedom or Chase Sapphire Preferred anytime soon, please consider using my Chase refer a friend link on my Credit Cards page.  Thank you.