Tag Archives: Gift Cards

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Reminder: Front Range Travel Hacker’s June Meetup (Sunday, June 4 @ 12-2PM in Denver, CO)

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Good morning everyone, happy Saturday!  If you are in Denver tomorrow (Sunday, June 4), you are in luck.  I will be in Denver this weekend to attend a Front Range Travel Hackers Meetup.  There will be a few other Boarding Area bloggers in attendance too.  The meetup is free to attend, just show up on time and be ready to talk miles and points.

  • Where: Breck on Blake, 2220 Blake St, Denver, CO (Google Map)
  • When: Sunday, June 4, 2017 from 12-2PM

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If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.  Have a great weekend everyone!

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Front Range Travel Hacker’s June Meetup with Several Boarding Area Bloggers (Sunday, June 4 @ 12-2PM in Denver, CO)

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Good evening everyone, happy Friday!  If you are in the Denver area on Sunday, June 4, you are in luck.  I will be heading to Denver that weekend and spending some time with a few of my fellow Boarding Area bloggers.  My friends Nigel and Bill run the Front Range Travel Hackers Meetup Group and they have organized a great meetup for that Sunday afternoon.  There will be a few Boarding Area bloggers in attendance and maybe a few last minute additions as well.  The meetup is free to attend, but please join the Meetup group and RSVP to the event so they know how many people to expect at the restaurant.

  • Where: Breck on Blake, 2220 Blake St, Denver, CO (Google Map)
  • When: Sunday, June 4, 2017 from 12-2PM

a screenshot of a email

I will post a reminder post a day before the Meetup.  If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.  Have a great Memorial Day Weekend everyone!

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USPS Lost my VirtualPostMail Package Full of Gift Cards & Credit Cards

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Buenos dias everyone.  A few months ago, I wrote about VirtualPostMail, the service I use to receive, scan, and forward my physical mail. I typically have them collect items for me over the course of a few weeks, and then I select the items I want to keep and have them shipped to wherever I’m going next. Since I was heading to Washington, DC for work last week, I asked VPM to mail a package to my post office box in Washington, DC a few days before I was going to arrive. This package included several important items:

  • My replacement AT&T Access More Credit Card (since someone tried to hack my account)
  • My new Discover It Credit Card in a different design
  • My Amazon Prime Store Credit Card
  • 1 $50 Hotels.com gift card from Amazon
  • 2 $50 Petco gift cards
  • 6 iTunes gift cards from Staples (3 x $100 and 3 x $50)
  • 2 sets of Cabela’s gift cards I purchased from SVM on eBay
  • My Hyatt Explorist welcome packet
  • My new Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance card
A screenshot of 12 envelopes of various sizes from my virtualpostmail dashboard

Will I ever see these envelopes?

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My First Trip to Europe Using Miles & Points (Denver, Houston, Manchester, Dublin, Paris & Frankfurt)

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I started this post while I was in Dublin on a ten day trip around Europe, but I never found the time to finish it. Probably due to the fact that I was walking 7-10 miles a day checking out the sites! I primarily used miles/points to book the majority of the travel and lodging, which is detailed below.

My first flight was from DEN (Denver) – HOU (William P. Hobby/Houston) on SW (Southwest) as a positioning flight, which I paid 7.6k miles for, and $5.60. The retail price was $127, so I averaged 1.6 Cents Per Point (CPP), which is pretty average for SW. I Uber’d to IAH (George Bush Intercontinental/Houston) for around $40.

Southwest Plane

Southwest flight from Denver (DEN) to Houston (HOU)

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My Recent Citi Forward & Premier Credit Card Retention / Targeted Spending Offers

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Good morning everyone, I hope you had a festive Drinko Cinco de Mayo yesterday.  A few weeks ago, I called Citi to convert my Citi Prestige Credit Card into a Citi Dividend Credit Card.  During that call, I asked the rep if it were possible to convert my Citi Forward Credit Card to another Citi Dividend Credit Card.  She checked the card’s offers and told me that no product change / conversion offers were available.  Undeterred, I asked if she saw any other offers on the credit card and she read off a few retention / targeted spending offers.  After going through all available offers, I accepted an offer for 3,000 bonus Citi Thank You Points after spending $300 in the next 30-90 days (I don’t remember the exact number of days, since I was planning on completing the spending requirement the following day).

To complete the spending requirement, I loaded / reloaded my Amazon gift card balance with $301 using my Citi Forward Credit Card.  A long time ago, the Citi Forward Credit Card used to offer 5x Citi Thank You Points at restaurants and bookstores (including Amazon).  But unfortunately, on June 4, 2016, Citi changed the earning rate of the Citi Forward Credit Card from 5x to 2x at restaurants and bookstores, thereby reducing my spending on the card from a lot to $0.

Fun fact: The rep mentioned that as long as there is a purchase once every 25 statement cycles (~2 years), Citi will not close the credit card for inactivity.

Reload Amazon Gift Card Balance

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