Author Archives: Grant

About Grant

Grant is an expert in frequent flyer miles, hotel loyalty points, credit card rewards, and cash back deals. He also has a pretty cool travel blog. Find him on Twitter @travelwithgrant.

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Roy’s Restaurants: $130 in Gift Cards for $75 (Stack AMEX Offer + GC Deal)

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(Hat Tip to my Friend Kal for letting me know about this deal)

Good afternoon everyone, if you are a fan of Roy’s, I have a great gift card deal for you.  Roy’s has a few restaurants around Arizona, California, Florida, Maryland, and Texas (all locations).  My parent’s love this restaurant and I thought it would make for a great Father’s Day gift.  If you purchase $100 or more of Roy’s gift cards between now and June 30, you can get a $30 promo card (details below).  That is a great deal, but the deal gets better when you stack this offer with an AMEX Offer for Roy’s: $25 off $100.  But finding that AMEX Offer is tricky, unless you use the Local Offers search that I covered this morning.

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Use AMEX Offers to Search Local Deals & Find Great Restaurants

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Good morning everyone. During our Memorial Day Weekend stay at the Andaz San Diego, my girlfriend and I were having a hard time figuring out which restaurant to go to for dinner. We didn’t have a car, so I wanted to find something close by that we could walk to. I decided to check AMEX Offers to see if there were any restaurants nearby that were offering a deal through AMEX Offers.

I opened the AMEX app and went to my American Express Business Platinum Charge Card (the only American Express card I brought on the trip – mainly for SFO Centurion Lounge access and SAN Airspace Lounge access). I clicked on the Offers icon at the bottom of the screen and then clicked the Nearby Offers link.

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My Air Canada Aeroplan Award Booking Mistake

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Good morning everyone, I hope you had a great Memorial Day Weekend.  I had a great time in San Diego, walking around the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, drinking at Stone Brewery, and visiting the USS Midway.  Over the weekend, I also started planning my Eurotrip around southeastern Europe.  I made a really silly / stupid award booking mistake, and I want to share it with my readers so you can learn from my mistake and not make the same mistake.

After doing some award searching, I found this award ticket on Air Canada for 37,500 Air Canada Aeroplan miles.  The price was higher than the 30,000 United Airlines miles, but I am trying to save my Chase Ultimate Reward Points and I had a stash of Air Canada Aeroplan miles that I wanted to redeem.

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Credit Card Benefits Goldilocks Zone: Too Popular vs. Underutilized

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Good morning everyone, happy Friday.  I hope you have exciting Memorial Day Weekend plans.  I will be exploring San Diego with my girlfriend and staying at the beautiful Andaz San Diego.  Enough about me, let’s talk credit cards.  This thought has been on my mind for the last few weeks, but sparked my interest with Thursday’s post about the Citi Prestige Credit Card trip delay policy, changing from 3 hours to 6 hours (effective July 29).

It seems that some credit card benefits are too popular (like Citi’s trip delay policy or Chase’s price protection) that the credit card companies are losing money paying out claims or inundating the services that process these claims.  With several services that will automatically file price protection claims on your behalf (like Earny and Paribus) or automatically file trip delay claims on your behalf (like AirHelp and GetService), it’s no surprise that credit card companies are reducing or eliminating these credit card benefits.  (I don’t use any of these services.)

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United Airlines Buy Miles Mystery Offer: Up to 100% Bonus Miles (Ends Today – May 24)

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Updated at 10pm PT on 5/10: It looks like some readers are getting up to 100% bonus offers from United Airlines.

Good afternoon everyone.  United Airlines has a great buy miles promo currently running through May 24.  It is a mystery offer, so depending on your account, you may see an offer for up to 75% bonus, or you might see a higher or lower offer.  I checked my family’s United Airlines account and 75% bonus was the highest offer I saw, but it is possible that there are higher bonuses too.  If you are a few hundred / thousand United Airlines miles away from redeeming for an award ticket, it might be a great idea to buy the remaining United Airlines miles.  This promo runs for 2 more weeks and ends on May 24, so you have 2 weeks to decide.  If you want to see other buy miles and hotel points promos, click here.

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