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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Reminder: San Diego Travel Meetup at Park & Rec (Saturday, April 29 @ 12pm)

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Good afternoon everyone, happy almost weekend!  I just wanted to remind those of you in the San Diego area that I will be in San Diego this weekend and partnering with the San Diego Churning Meetup group.  I spoke with Eddy, the organizer of the meetup, and we are very excited to do a joint meetup on Saturday afternoon.  The meetup is at Park & Rec, a cool bar in University Heights.  They only serve drinks there, but there are a few restaurants nearby (Bahn Thai, Soltan Banoo Restaurant & Plumeria Vegetarian) that we can order food and bring back to Park & Rec.

  • Where: Park & Rec, 4612 Park Blvd, San Diego, CA 92116 (Google Maps)
  • When: Saturday, April 29 @ 12-2PM

San Diego Meetup Park Rec Google Map

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AMEX Offer Best Practices for Adding Offers to Multiple Cards & My Offer Tracking Spreadsheet

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Good morning everyone, happy Friday.  I am heading down to San Diego this weekend, but before I go, I wanted to talk about AMEX Offers and how I handle them.  For starters, I have 4 personal American Express credit cards in one account and 4 business American Express credit/charge cards in another account.  For the business cards, I have a primary business card and an employee card (both the business and employee cards are in my name).  All in all, I can add AMEX Offers to 8 cards: Old Blue Cash, Blue Cash Everyday, AMEX Everyday, AMEX Everyday (Dad’s card – I am an authorized user), Platinum Business, Green Business (no annual fee employee card for Platinum Business), SPG Business, and SPG Business (employee card).

AMEX Offers are great, but they become even better if you can leverage/multiply that great deal across all your American Express cards.  In this post, I will show you how I add the same AMEX Offer to multiple American Express cards and how I track all the AMEX Offers in my AMEX Offer Tracking Spreadsheet (download link included below).  If you follow this guide, you will be an AMEX Offer expert in no time.

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PSA: Stuck in PayPal Verification Loop? Try Several Small Orders

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Good morning everyone, I hope your week is going well.  There have been a ton of eBay gift card deals from PayPal Digital Gifts (PPDG) and SVM from the last few days and I have purchased $2,700+ worth of gift cards in the last 3 days.  Inevitably, I get stuck in the infamous “PayPal Verification Loop” where you need to verify/confirm your identity before you can pay with your PayPal account.  If you are not buying thousands of gift cards per day, you should not see the “Verify Your Account” message.

PayPal Verification Loop Payment Option Unavailable (2)Unfortunately, if you do see the message, you will need to verify your identity before you can pay with PayPal.  The easiest option is to confirm via text message where PayPal sends you a text asking if you are trying to complete a purchase of $XXX.XX and you respond with “1”, which means yes.  Yes, yes, yes, a million times yes!!

PayPal Verifcation Loop Text Messages

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Booking my First 5x Membership Reward Points Flight on AMEXTravel.com Using American Express Business Platinum Charge Card

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Good morning everyone, I hope you all had a great weekend.  I spent the weekend up in Rohnert Park (in Sonoma Wine Country) with my girlfriend. I started this post a few weeks ago after I booked my first flight using my American Express Business Platinum Charge Card on amextravel.com to earn 5x Membership Reward Points on paid flights.  I was waiting for my credit card statement to close and for the bonus points to post to my Membership Rewards account, but I forgot that there is a 1 month delay between when points are earned and when points post to my Membership Rewards account. Instead of waiting another month for the bonus points to post, I decided to publish this post now.

If you are not working on the $300 travel credit from the Chase Sapphire Reserve or $250 travel credit from the Citi Prestige, earning 5x Membership Reward Points on paid flights beats earning 3x Ultimate Reward Points with the Chase Sapphire Reserve, 3x Citi Thank You Points with a Citi Prestige / Premier, and 2x Arrival Points with the Barclays Arrival+.

Anyway, I received a Google Flights alert for a flight I was tracking from New York to Iceland.  The price had fallen and I wanted to book the flight before the prices rebounded.

Google Flights JFK-KEF Icelandair

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Warning: HSN Canceled & Refunded my $50 eGC Order Days After $10 AMEX Offer Statement Credit Posted

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Update 4/21 8am PT: The $10 statement credit was reversed as well.

Good morning everyone, I have a warning to share about HSN.  This morning, I received an email from American Express telling me that I received a $50 merchant credit (aka refund) from HSN.  That was weird since I purchased a $50 HSN eGift Card from them a few days earlier and already received my $10 statement credit for completing their AMEX Offer ($10 off $30).

HSN AMEX Merchant Credit

Here are my last 3 transactions from HSN on my American Express Old Blue Cash Credit Card:

HSN $50 Refund

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