Tag Archives: American Express

a woman with blonde hair and a green shirt

My Best Practices for New Credit Cards and Sign Up Bonuses

Posted on by . 4 Replies

Good afternoon everyone, I hope your week is going well.  I recently completed the minimum spending requirement for 4 different credit cards (My October 2020 Credit Card App-O-Rama Results) and wanted to share my best practices for new credit cards and sign up bonuses.  I currently have 32 credit and charge cards open and have had 90 other cards since I started travel hacking in 2011.  To the best of my knowledge, I have never missed a credit card sign up bonus by not completing the minimum spending requirement.  Feel free to use all, some, or none of my best practices with your next credit card.  For this post, I am going to use a fictitious credit card as an example to illustrate some of the pitfalls to avoid.

ABC Credit Card has a sign up bonus of 50,000 points after spending $3,000 in 3 months with a $95 annual fee.  You apply for the credit card on January 1 and your application is pending.  Your application gets approved on January 5 and your new credit card arrives on January 15.  You activate your new credit card on January 18.

Credit Card Tidying and Organization

When your new credit card arrives, I recommend activating it immediately.  Then set up online access to view and track your purchases.  If you get paid monthly, you may want to change the bill due date to a date that is more convenient for you (unfortunately, this may not be possible until after the first statement closes).  For simplicity, I like to have all my credit card statements close around the same date, so that I do not need to remember several different credit card due dates or statement closing dates.

If you are concerned about accidentally making a cash advance purchase, call the credit card company and ask to lower your cash advance limit to $0.  If you were approved with a small credit limit and have other credit cards from the same credit card company, ask if they can transfer some of your credit limit over to your new credit card.  If you want to receive your statements electronically, sign up for electronic statements (I will explain why below). Continue reading →

a woman with blonde hair and a green shirt

My December Credit Card Retention Calls: 2 out of 4 Successes ($300 Statement Credits Total)

Posted on by . 18 Replies

Good afternoon everyone, I hope you had a great weekend.  I called about retention offers on a few different credit cards today and wanted to share my results.  Please make sure to scroll to the bottom of this post and read my tips on making retention calls.  I took a page out of Frequent Miler’s playbook (My $575 phone call (complete in 20 minutes)) and called about these 4 credit cards:

  • Chase Hyatt Credit Card ($75 annual fee posted December 1)
  • JPMorgan Chase Ritz Carlton Visa Infinite Credit Card ($450 annual fee posted July 1)
  • Chase Marriott Bonvoy Premier Plus Business Credit Card ($99 annual fee posted May 1)
  • American Express Business Platinum Charge Card ($595 annual fee posted December 2)

Since the old Chase Hyatt Credit Card is product changing to the new Chase World of Hyatt Credit Card on January 11, 2021, I decided to call Chase and ask about a retention offer.  This is a huge ask that I knew was never going to fly, but I tried anyways.  I told the Chase rep that I was planning on closing my old Hyatt credit card and was going to apply for the new World of Hyatt credit card in a few weeks since I could earn up to 50,000 World of Hyatt Points with the new sign up bonus.  Instead of going through the process of closing one card and applying for the other card, I asked if Chase could provide some bonus World of Hyatt Points to forgo the sign up bonus.  Nope, that was not possible.  At that point, I asked the rep to close that credit card and transfer the credit limit over to another Chase personal call.  I am 0 for 1 at this point, onto the next call.

a credit card with a blue background

Continue reading →

a woman with blonde hair and a green shirt

My October 2020 Credit Card App-O-Rama Results

Posted on by . 4 Replies

Good morning everyone, happy Veteran’s Day!  At the end of October, my wife and I decided to do a credit card app-o-rama.  We have a few large bills to pay over the next few months (property tax, home insurance, holiday shopping, etc.) so we decided to apply for a few new credit cards to earn some miles and points.  Laura applied for 1 personal credit card (Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Credit Card) and I applied for 3 business credit cards (Bank of America Alaska Airlines Business Credit Card, American Express Delta SkyMiles Gold Business Credit Card, and Barclays Wyndham Rewards Earner Business Credit Card).  In today’s post, I will cover the Alaska Airlines Business Credit Card and the Delta Gold Business Credit Card application process.

I made sure to temporarily unfreeze our credit reports for a few days during the application process and we applied for all of these credit cards on October 25, so some of the offers may have expired or changed since then.  The Alaska Airlines Business Credit Card sign up bonus was for 40,000 Alaska Airlines Miles, a $200 statement credit, and the annual companion fare.  We need to spend $2,000 in 3 months and pay the $75 annual fee.

a screenshot of a credit card

Continue reading →

a black and red logo

How to Activate Free Grubhub+ Membership using Lyft Pink Membership

Posted on by . 8 Replies

Good afternoon everyone.  Today, Lyft announced that Lyft Pink members now have access to a free Grubhub+ membership.  If you have a Chase Sapphire Reserve Credit Card, you already have access to a free membership of DashPass from DoorDash (not to be confused with Grubhub+ from Grubhub) and a free Lyft Pink membership.  In this post, I will walk you through the steps to activate your free Grubhub+ membership by using your Lyft Pink membership.  To get started, sign into your Lyft app, click the 3 bars in the upper left corner and then click the Lyft Pink button.

Continue reading →

a blue sign with white text

Changes to American Express Credit Card Terms (AMEX Send Account, Cash Advances, AU AF Refunds, Bye El Al & More)

Posted on by . 16 Replies

Updated 10/7/2020 at 12pm PT: El Al Israel Airlines just sent out this email to their members letting them know that their American Express Membership Rewards partnership is ending on December 31, 2020.  A screenshot of the email is included below.

Good morning everyone, I hope your weekend is going well.  2 months ago, I wrote Changes to American Express Credit Card Terms (Bye Ameriprise, Third Party Purchases, Foreign Currency & Cash Advances).  Like clockwork, American Express likes to make regular monthly updates to their credit card terms.  I was reviewing my recent American Express credit card statements this morning and spotted a few changes that I thought you might like to know about.  Some of these changes raise some questions or do not provide exact answers, but I will do my best to decipher and interpret the changes.  If you have differing thoughts / opinions about how to interpret these changes, please let me know in the comments section.

To get started, I reviewed all the recent credit card statements on all my AMEX cards and decided to use screenshots from my American Express Gold Card since it covered all the changes.  Most of these changes affect several other AMEX cards.  Here is a brief overview of the upcoming changes (AMEX Send Account, cash advances & additional card annual membership fees), but I will go into more detail on subsequent screenshots.

a close up of a document

Continue reading →