Tag Archives: Cash Back

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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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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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PSA: Book 2 One Way Flights on Southwest Airlines & Direct Message them on Twitter

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Good morning everyone, I hope you all had a great weekend.  The Easter Bunny took a liking to me and gave me a small box of See’s Candy, but enough about me and my love / addiction to sweets.  A few days ago, I needed to make a change to an existing Southwest Airlines reservation, but I booked it as a roundtrip flight (San Francisco to San Diego).  I wanted to change my trip so that I would be able to fly from San Francisco to San Diego, but return from Orange County and fly into Oakland (I know we have all done that a few times, right?).

Long story short, when you want to change a roundtrip Southwest Airlines flight, you cannot change the departure and arrival cities for a leg of your reservation.  I could probably change the return flight to fly San Diego to Oakland, but that wouldn’t work for me.  I also couldn’t cancel just the return flight either.  Lastly, if I canceled the entire reservation, I would end up paying much more since my outbound flight from San Francisco to San Diego had gone up in price since I originally booked the flight.

Luckily, I have a secret weapon when it comes to making complicated changes to Southwest Airlines reservations… Twitter direct message.  Unlike Ben who wrote Why I Don’t Bother With Airline Customer Service Via Twitter Anymore, I have gotten great customer service from Southwest Airlines, Virgin America, Alaska Airlines, and JetBlue (among many other companies).  I have sent direct messages to Southwest Airlines in the past and they were always very quick to respond and always provided great customer service.  In this instance, I clearly explained that I wanted to cancel the return flight but keep the outbound flight intact.  A few minutes later, my direct message was seen and my reservation was updated.  I then had a travel credit available which I used to book my return flight from Orange County to Oakland.  The entire process took about 20 minutes.

Southwest Airlines Direct Message 4-11-2017

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Award Booking Services are like 21st Century Travel Agents

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Do you ever use a travel agent? Maybe that’s a silly question to ask miles and points people, but maybe not! I came across a blog piece written by Christine over at Frugal Travel Guy. She points out that there are several situations where it’s “prudent and even beneficial” to use a professional. And I agree. I have two cousins who are long-time travel agents and are dedicated to their clients, but you know what I found out? Neither of them knew much at all about miles and points.

Christine’s reasoning for using travel agents got me thinking, and so much of what she said also pertained to using a miles and points award booking service like Juicy Miles. So let’s take a closer look at 4 reasons and see if you should EVER use an award booking service.

1. An event that’s too important to leave to chance is a good reason to use an award booking service. Special occasions are, after all, special. I’d say getting to safari locations, big events where you need multiple seats, and honeymoons, certainly qualify. I’m not saying getting multiple awards seats is always easy, but I’d certainly suggest that a professional has a bird’s eye view into whether or not that’s even possible given your miles/points, destination, and dates. Continue reading →