Black Friday! No, not the busiest shopping day of the year, but the day AMEX Serve sent out mass account closure emails with the subject line “Termination Of Funds Loading Capabilities on Your Serve® Account.” My account was flagged due to “observed unusual usage patterns.” I will explain what I was doing below, but here is what my email looks like:
Good evening everyone. I received an email from Club Carlson today alerting me that I could redeem my beloved forgotten Club Carlson points for gift cards. I decided to check it out and see how good or bad the deal was. Spoiler alert: it is bad, really bad. You can go directly to the gift card page by clicking here and signing into your Club Carlson account.
Once you get to the gift card page, you are presented with a few retail gift cards in various denominations ($10, $15, $25 and $50). I did the math below and the results are not pretty. Continue reading
Good morning everyone, hopefully you had a fun and safe New Years Eve. January 1 marks the beginning of Q1 and the new Chase Freedom categories are now live (gas stations and local commuter transportation). According to Travel Codex: “Local commuter transportation includes the following ride share services and nearly any public transit agency: Uber, Lyft, Sidecar, Taxis, Local and suburban passenger commuter train and subway fares (excl. Amtrak), Local commuter tickets, and Local commuter ferry tickets.”
Good afternoon everyone, I hope you enjoyed my insightful/crazy ramblings in Travel Predictions for 2016 Part 1: Airlines and Hotels. If you liked that post, you will surely love my crazy predictions about credit cards and MS. Full disclosure, I wrote most of this post on my iPhone standing in front of a dryer at my local laundromat, so the train of thought might be kind of strange. I apologize. Without any further ado, let’s get started!
Chase – with the loss of Amtrak and the addition of Singapore Airlines in 2015, I think we will see some more changes to Chase’s transfer partners in 2016. I think we will see some more international airlines added (like the Citi Thank You Points program). A few guesses? Air Canada, Qantas, Air China, and Lufthansa (insert your favorite international airline). Chase Ultimate Rewards will continue to transfer 1:1 to all programs and there will be no transfer bonuses. I think there will be a newsworthy announcement for the Chase Sapphire Preferred, maybe adding free Gogo WiFi like the US Bank FlexPerks Credit Card or perhaps a new 3x category to compete with Citi Premier/Prestige Credit Cards. What about our beloved Chase Ink Bold/Plus Business Cards? I am worries that the 5x category might change to something less lucrative or the yearly cap might be lowered. I also predict Chase will launch a completely new travel rewards credit card in 2016. Maybe the Airbnb/Uber Credit Card? Lastly, I hope Chase loosens up on the 5/24 rule or completely eliminates the rule altogether. Continue reading
Good morning everyone! This post is a public service announcement that is probably way overdue, but better late than never. If you have been following Doctor of Credit, Frequent Miler, or Miles to Memories over the past 1-2 months, you are probably aware of all the gift card (and egift card) deals that have been announced this holiday season. Every gift card deal usually has a stated limit on the number of gift cards you can purchase. The best deals usually have a limit of 1, whereas the less popular deals have a higher limit of 3-5 gift cards.
In this post, I will show you why it is better to purchase every egift card individually, rather than all at once. The data in this post is solely based on my experience purchasing egift cards from PayPal Digital Gifts, an automated service where you can purchase egift cards directly from PayPal on eBay. In the example below, I purchased a $100 eBay egift card for $95 during one of their sales. I bought and paid for the below eBay egift card on 12/23 at 10:22pm PST.
Quick tip: you can roll your savings by purchasing an eBay egift card with a previously bought eBay egift card. Keep rolling the $5 savings every time there is a new eBay egift card deal.
Help a blogger: I would greatly appreciate your support if you use my eBay affiliate link to purchase anything on eBay, just click the eBay logo in the sidebar. Thank you!
