Tag Archives: American Express

Complete List of British Airways Avios Routes from the Bay Area (SFO, OAK, and SJC)

Posted on January 21, 2015 by Grant. 35 Replies

Let me start off by saying that British Airways Avios are awesome. If you fly short, non-stop flights, British Airways Avios cannot be beat. I’ve written a few posts about British Airways Avios in the past:

With that said, I have been asked a few times about the current 40% Transfer Bonus to British Airways from American Express Membership Rewards that is ending on January 31. To me, this is probably the best Membership Reward transfer bonus I have seen in the last 2 years.

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How to Close your American Express Serve Card

Posted on January 20, 2015 by Grant. 33 Replies

If you ever decide to switch from your American Express Serve Card to a Bluebird Card or Target Redbird Card, you will first have to close your American Express Serve Card. Follow this tutorial and your Serve Card will be closed in a few minutes. The first thing you need to do is log into your Serve online account and click the profile link.

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New AMEX Offers: Hilton $50 Off $250, 1-800-Flowers, FTD, Teleflora, and Others

Posted on January 20, 2015 by Grant. 9 Replies

Good morning everyone, here are 7 new AMEX Offers that showed up in my American Express account last night. The first is a great deal at Hilton Hotels and Resorts. Spend $250 or more and receive a $50 statement credit. If this offer works similar to the Marriott AMEX Offer and the Courtyard AMEX Offer, you should be able to go to a Hilton Hotel and buy a $250 gift card and receive the statement credit on your purchase. I have not tested this personally, but if anyone does, please let me know in the comments below.

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American Express Uses Level 3 Purchase Data on Staples Orders

Posted on January 17, 2015 by Grant. 30 Replies

(Hat Tip to Alex in the comments)

Good afternoon everyone, you can file this post into the category called “things I don’t think are good news.” Let me explain… When merchants process your credit card, a certain amount of data is sent to your credit card company. The amount of data is divided into 3 levels, with level 1 sending the least amount of data and level 3 sending the most data. When you buy an airline ticket, the airline reports your purchase as level 3, since you can see the details of your itinerary on your credit card statement. Since level 3 data is costly to the merchant processing your credit card payment, most merchants only send level 1 data. Fast forward to a few days ago…

It looks like Staples.com (maybe Staples too) is sending level 3 data to American Express (possibly other credit card companies as well). How do I know Staples.com is sending level 3 data to American Express? Looking at my last 2 purchases at Staples.com, I can click on the details of the transaction and see “VISA 200 GIFT CARD” as the note. That is exactly what I bought using that American Express credit card. If you look at the second image, you can see “SOUTHWESTGIFTCARD 100 EMAIL DELIVER” as the note on a different American Express credit card. I looked at a few other purchases made on other American Express credit cards and it looks like only level 1 data from CVS and Safeway.

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