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Just a thought…what would happen if you made a purchase on a credit card, paid the card off, closed the card, and then went in to reurn the item purchased?
Would the refund be made in cash? or to another credit card?
AlohaStephen: I’m not sure what would happen. It probably depends upon the store. Personally, I’m not a big fan of schemes that require returning stuff so I’ve never tried anything like this.
I bet most stores would issue you store credit. I have heard from friends that were recently married that Bed Bath & Beyond will give cash for returned merchandise (it was on their registry though).
May I suggest that the last post on the story be “And the cat said The End.”?
Gary Steiger: Great idea!
FWIW – Netflix and UA are running another 4000 point signup bonus if you signup with the MP Visa. I’ve been able to do this for both myself and my wife. Might be something to get in on before our MP numbers change to the CO style (and maybe we can do it again afterward)!
tgienger: Thanks for the tip!
right now amex open is giving a $50 statement credit for $150 of spend at their partners. i’m out of the country at the moment so i’ll prob buy $150 in office max gc’s. can i later use those in office max to buy other gc’s?
arye: Where do you see this special with Amex OPEN? Did you get a targeted email from them? I don’t think that you’ll be able to use an OfficeMax gc to buy other gcs. A better bet might be to go through the Ultimate Rewards Mall and buy $150 worth of Barnes & Noble gcs for 10X points. If you get the physical gcs, you could then sell them. I wrote a post recently about buying Ultimate Rewards points for 1.05 cents each using this technique.
i didn’t think it was targeted, but it was an email addressed to me, so i guess it might be. it’s also only on valid on select partners, office max, microsoft store, epson, dun & bradstreet and iron mountain. hence the thought to go with office max gc’s. is there any way to find out of it’s targeted?
arye: Interesting! I can’t find any info about this promotion, so I’m assuming it is targeted. Is there any chance you could email the offer to me so I can take a look? Of course, don’t do it if it contains any of your account information.
What value would you put on Hilton Honors Diamond status? I had a thought I would like to share. Let me know if I am missing something. Official Payments is an approved vender thru AMEX. As you probably know they process tax payments, (local, state, fed, real estate, personal property tax etc.) Their fee is 2.35%. If I were to pay 40k in taxes at the 2.35%= $940. By doing so gets me 120k HH points with the Surpass CC. Diamond Status! $940/120k = .0078 CPM Might be a bit more than .0048 but what value would you put on Diamond. I do no business travel so it would be the only way I would ever qualify for the highest level of any hotel. Hope my math and thought process is correct.
Jethro: Yes your thinking and math appear to be correct. The value of Diamond status depends completely on how much you would make use of it. If you stay often in mid to high end Hilton hotels, then the room upgrades, free breakfasts, etc can be quite valuable. When you stay at lower end properties, Diamond status isn’t worth as much. The other factor is the question of whether Diamond is really worth that much more than Gold status. Gold is already pretty good and Hilton makes it incredibly easy to get. Personally, because I wouldn’t expect to benefit from Diamond very often, I wouldn’t do a scheme like this unless I could get the price of points down to about .5 cents each. The Diamond status perk would be the payoff for the effort and the points would lead me to essentially break even.
By the way staples GC are out of stock online…..
Visa GC at staples online i mean
mike: keep trying. They’ve been out of stock before, but they eventually do restock.
I recently bought $2000 of discount gift cards from cardpool to get my citi thank you bonus. Unfortunately all the gift cards I bought were originally purchased with a stolen credit card. I returned the gift cards after my bonus points had posted. My returns have now cleared but my bonus points are still there! Do you think there is a delay before they remove them or are they mine to use?
John W: Oh, boy, that’s a problem. How did you learn that the cards were purchased with a stolen credit card? Anyway, it’s great that Cardpool gave you your money back! The challenge for you is whether to put another $2K on your card, just in case, or to just hope that the points will stay. Right? Personally, I would probably take the gamble and hope that the points stay, but it really depends on how bad it would be for you if the points get taken away.
I tried buying new gift cards with the discounted ones and I was told they were all flagged by American express as stolen. I wonder if I redeem my 50,000 bonus and then it gets “taken away” in the form of negative points, will I be able to replace it with only $2000 in spending?
Heads up for Sun/Mon, there are a couple of upcoming free after rebate items at staples – upcoming weekly ad is online.
Trend Micro Internet Security 1PC sku 368176
copy paper sku 135855
pastel paper(s)
HP photo paper sku 809757
Might have to pay sales tax – all items eligible for free shipping. If you don’t want the stuff – ship to a charity in a tax-free area?
Steve: Thanks for the heads up!
I am trying to buy a laptop from Staples using my Ink Bold, but I was wondering that if I go through the Ultimate Rewards mall and click on Staples.com and order something using “in store pick-up” that shouldn’t affect my 4x UR points and 5x Ink Bold points, right?
nazgul: Yes, that should work. I’ve done in store pickup with Sears before and still received my UR mall points.
I am wondering if anyone has any experience with Amazon Payments. Ideally I would life to xfer $1000 to my wife (and have her do the save to me) to help meet my CC spend. Any input on this being good or bad would help. We are using the Amex Delta Card.
Steve: Yes, you can use Amazon payments to pay your wife, but I wouldn’t recommend having her pay you back through Amazon payments. When Amazon thinks someone is scamming them like that they’ve been known to close accounts.
Thanks – closing the account would obviously defeat the point. Are there any other sites where this would work or is it something that is generally better to not do? For me it seems like easy miles for simply moving money from my CC to Amazon to bank and back to CC. Do you know if this is something Amex frowns on?
Steve: I’ve never heard of Amex objecting to Amazon payments. To them it should just look like any other purchase. You can also look into using a service called Venmo. A lot of people use Amazon payments and Venmo to add spend to their credit cards, but if you do either you need to be very careful as you can get shut down if it looks like you’re trying to scam the system (which you are). A better approach is to go out to eat with a bunch of friends. You pay the entire bill and have your friends pay you back using Venmo and/or Amazon payments. That is what those services are for.
you’re a Delta guy, so you might want to know about this:
http://www.americanexpress.com/deltaplatinumnew
personal and business Delta Platinum AMEX – signup bonus is 35k miles + 10k MQM after $2,000 in 3 month spend.
Steve: Thanks! I added the link to the Preparing for Miles page
Will you be doing any lab experiment using Amex Membership Rewards in the near future?
ko: Yes! I have one in progress right now and will post about it tomorrow. Are there any particular experiments you would like to see?
There’s a healthy thread at FW about Chase shutting down AARP 5% cash back cards for folks buying GCs at grocery stores. It seems to be happening with some frequency. It might be a good idea to look into whether this could happen with UR cards, and if so whether it makes sense to transfer UR to another account to keep them safe.
Bangkokiscool: Thanks for the heads up. I’ll look into this.
Well it looks like Staples is putting a lock down on the 10 rebates per item. While the rebate fine print still says “Limit 10 rebates per name/address/household”, staples.com will only allow 1 FAR item to be purchased at a time. I suppose you could still do 10 separate purchases of 1 item each, but that adds a lot more hassle and potential issues with receiving all 10 rebate checks back in the mail.
I am missing some credit on UR Mall. Where do I go to request missing miles?
Michael H: you can call the customer service number on your card, or you can log into chase.com and submit a private message.
FM,
Heads up. I am at the Staples site right now and it would appear that the Trend Micro rebate is more than the purchase price. My “Save” is larger than the screenshot in your post. When I go to checkout it shows the $33.95 price.
Your Exclusive Savings
Reg : $39.99
Save: - $6.74
Now: $33.25
Rebate: -$35.00
Price after rebate: FREE
It appears that the new 5% savings are being applied at checkout rather than on a monthly basis. In this instance, there is no additional cash double dip. Makes for slightly fewer points but WTH, it’s still free.
See message #37.
I can’t find any limit on the number of copies you can buy, it just says “**While supplies last. May not be valid in combination with other offers. Offer subject to change. No cash/credit back”. Where did you find the 10 copy limit?
Also see the teaser for the boxed CD set. Total savings of $41.74
Customers who viewed this item also viewed:
Trend Micro Titanium Antivirus + 2012 (1-User) [Boxed CD]
Your Exclusive SavingsYour Exclusive Savings
Reg : $39.99
Save: - $6.74
Now: $33.25
Rebate : - $35.00
Price after rebate: FREE
Reg. $39.99
Final Price: FREE
Each
Total Savings: $41.74 See Details
Dennybob: That’s amazing! It doesn’t show up that way for me, so maybe only people who are targeted for 5% see this?
Hi FM, now that we get 15 points/$ with Ink at Office Depot, see anything interesting there?
I spent a little time looking but they mostly seem overpriced and the rebates are the old-school mail-in kind.
What about this deal: http://www.staples.com/McAfee-AntiVirus-Plus-2012-1-User-Download/product_398471
It looks very similar to the other downloadable Trend Micro soft rebate posted a few days ago. Do you know how many copies we can purchase and still get the rebate?
Greg Z: I haven’t had a chance to look into it yet. One approach is to search SlickDeals and FatWallet for Office Depot deals.
FYI
I got the 5% cash back fro upromise portal to staples. Seems like its working, although it says pending but it’s showing up.
Mow: Thanks for the update! Can you actually get your cash back from uPromise or only use the cash for college?
@FrequentMiler So I was digging through some shopping portals and I found that right now British Airways e-Store is offering 12 points per $ at Drugstore.com. Scouring through the terms and conditions it doesn’t mention anything about not being valid on gift cards. Do you think this would be legit? Or any way of dropping this info in a post and seeing if anyone is willing to be a guinea pig? They offer Safeway cards for $100 and I have been told before that Safeway cards can be used to buy anything in store, including Visa/Amex cash cards, so essentially you could buy 4 of these $100 cards, pay $5 each for shipping, then convert in-store to cash cards and get 4,800 miles for 20 bucks, enough for a one-way flight. Thoughts?
“Special Terms: Vision Direct purchases, Prescription orders, and orders from third party sites are not eligible for rewards.”
You can request a check, so no it doesn’t need to be used soley for college, also mentioned on the uPromise webpage. However they only send payments every quarter, so 4 times per year.
marriott.com is down, 8:45 PM EST
it’s back, 9:14
How fast does Topcashback.com pay out? Three different merchant purchases are still pending, two are from February.
ArizonaGuy: Unlike other cash back sites, once your cash back goes from pending to final status, you can withdraw your cash at any time. How long it takes to move from pending to whatever, I think is based on the merchant/affiliate network not TCB. That’s my understanding anyway. In other words, I don’t know.
Just got a postcard from staples telling me that my rebate will not be honored from the purchase of 10 trend micro on 4/7/12
It states that I had “product limit exceeded”
Is there anything I can do to not lose my $350?
Dayswim: Did you buy more than 10 of that specific product & rebate number? If not, you should be able to get your rebate. Some people accidentally submitted the rebate more than once and so received scary postcards like that, but still got their rebates. Have you checked the status of your rebates online via the rebate center?
Hi, Were you successful in getting rewards points for using Kohls cash back on purchases made through ultimate rewards mall back in November. If so how and through what contact. I tried with Chase credit card services but they say since I did not use a card they cannot help, but there is no contact number for ultimate rewards mall. I am still trying to get my credit card purchases properly credited.Thanks
ashley: Yes, I called Chase customer service repeatedly until I found a rep who was willing to help me. She credited the points to me.
Is there a way to see all of your posts chronologically? When I used the archive button, it only lists the posts back to mid-April.
matt: I admit it’s pretty hard to do. Under Archive, click on the triangle next to “2011″, then click on the month you want to see. Then, scroll to the bottom and click “previous”. I’ll talk to the tech guys about this…
Hi FrequentMiler,
Back in February I took advantage of the 36x avios BA/Nordtrom promotion where I made some pretty big purchases. Three months later my avios are still showing as declined. After many emails to the BA shopping portal, all they keep saying is that they are in the process of verifying that my purchases arent fraudulent. At this point I dont know what else to do. I am thinking of just giving up and returning all the stuff I bought. Any suggestions/advice as to what to do? Thanks.
choporifico: I don’t have any magic words of wisdom for you here. If I were you I’d probably cut my losses and return everything.
Yeah enough is enough. Ink bold here I come
Through my business, I pay a variety of freelancers through PayPal every month. Unfortunately, PayPal doesn’t seem to permit you to use a credit card to send money if you have a bank account set up.
I’ve been leaving thousands of points on the table the past couple months, and it’s killing me to see all these lost opportunities. Any idea on how to get a credit card in the mix? I thought of having PayPal invoices sent to an email address not affiliated with my PayPal account. Because you’re not logged in, you can then pay with a credit card; however, this is not as convenient for tracking. Is it the only way, though? Anyone worked with PayPal in this way?
Chris: I think I’ve read ways to trick PayPal into allowing credit cards for those payments, but you’ll have to pay a transaction fee that might wipe out most of the benefit.
Quick question: I missed the Daily Escapes discounted Marriott Cards. What’s the best place to buy them to earn points (I don’t really care what kind). Please note: I do not have an INK card. I do have a Sapphire, AMEX, Citi cards. Almost everything but the INK
THANKS IN ADVANCE! I love your site and wish you the best of luck blogging.
jen: You have a few options without the Ink. If you have a business Amex, you could buy $100 or more worth of Marriott cards at an OfficeMax and you’ll get 5% cash back from OPEN Savings. Another option is to go to Marriott.com through the UR Mall and buy them with your Sapphire Preferred. With SP, you’ll get 2X for travel plus whatever the current UR mall rate is for Marriott. If the points don’t post automatically, you’ll have no problem calling Chase to get them credited since they’ll see the transaction on your account. Another option is to find the best current point options for Sears and buy Sears gift cards. Then go to Kmart to buy marriott cards using the Sears cards. It’s quite a bit more work than the other options so I wouldn’t really recommend it unless Sears jumps up to 10X again. Another option is to go to GiftCardGranny and find the best current deal available. Those are the ideas I can think of anyway.
Awesome, thanks for getting back to me so quickly!
I have read through various threads and understand how to purchase gift cards and exchange them for Visa/master/amex gift cards…
However, I will be soon travelling to Asia, and was interested in purchasing tickets with the exchanged visa gift cards, that way I will also get airmiles by purchasing flights. However, most of the visa giftcards max out at $200. So I wouldn’t be able to pay for the flight with just “one” visa GC.
My question is..any possible way to merge several visa gc’s? or use mulpitle visa cards to pay for a flight through Orbitz?
Thank you everyone for your time, hope all that made sense.
hungryformiles: That is tricky. If you can find a travel agency that sells gift cards you might be able to buy lots of gift cards from them and then use multiple gift cards to pay for your trip. Another option is to get the permanent Amex prepaid card I wrote about earlier. Use your visa gift cards to buy reload packs and then load up to $2500 on the Amex. See my post titled “One card to rule them all“. Note that you will lose some of the value of your cards that way, though, because each reload pack has a $3.95 fee.
First, love your blog. I have used tons of your tips and am banking tons of points on my Ink card. My question is can you buy say Home Depot cards on Plastic Jungle with a prepaid Visa. They don’t take AMEX so my prepaid AMEX is out. But a Visa should work. Say I bought a $500 prepaid Visa. Then I could get 7% off my HD cards plus 4% at topcashback and 2,500 UR points for the $500 card from office supply store X. I would loose the $5 on the Visa but that’s NBD. Just wondering if you knew if this worked. Or if my logic was off.
Also, IDK if this has been covered but you can double dip with iTunes. Buy a GC at Staples or wherever and load onto iTunes. Go through UR mall and get rewards mall points for purchases. This makes iTunes 9X.
I posted this in the “One Card to rule them all”, please delete the other one if you want.
I learned a lot from this blog so here is what I did.
bought $200 gift cards from Staples through UR and using Ink Bold…10X (you can just use the reloadable Amex as well but you will 5X from this step)
Use those Visa gift cards to buy Dell gift Cards through UR…5X plus for every $300 in gift cards, Dell gives $50 in the form of a e-gift card
Use the UR again and buy the laptop which is on sale for students $699…5X and you get $200
Can i use the reloadable amex card to make amazon payments?
chum: I haven’t tried it, but yes there’s no reason it wouldn’t work
Dee Tee: Thanks, this is awesome info! Can you explain one part to me? How were you able to buy $300 in gift cards at once when using 2 $100 Visa gift cards from Staples? Most vendors only allow one credit card for any purchase. Also, have you seen all of the Dell points actually post?
Just a note of caution on the “One Card to Rule Them All” strategy: if you have a problem during the redemption process, then you might as well pray to whatever God you believe in, because he/she/they can probably help you more than the “Vanilla Reload Network” folks. InComm, the company behind the “Vanilla Reload Network”, is clueless, incompetent, and borderline fraudulent. They claim to have “no way” to track money once it is (allegedly) sent to American Express. Currently tracking 3+ hours of my life gone forever, dealing with their sorry excuse for “customer service”.
You were warned.
I just wanted to say I love your blog and your gift card concepts. You are a genius in this area! No other blogger compares on this subject! So I’ve decided to feature you on my site. I’ve given you a whole section. You can view it here:http://milesmomma.com/gift-card-churning/
Hope you like it! Let me know if you’d like any other info put in my section and I’ll be happy to update it.
Thanks again! I’m earning so much because reading your blog!
Miles Momma: Thanks!
Mike: These products are new so it won’t surprise me if there are some early glitches. I’m very sorry about what happened to you!
Can you send me a referral link to plastic jungle. I would like for you to get the $5 bonus for me signing up.
PerryPlatypus: Do you mean a referral to TopCashBack? http://www.topcashback.com/ref/frequentmiler. Oh, I see now. Here is the PlasticJungle link: http://plasticjungle.extole.com/a/clk/4bHsml Thanks!
I’m trying to reach a spend level with Delta Amex in order to earn an MQM bonus, and my upcoming 3 week European vacation provides the opportunity for some spending. However, I refuse to pay Amex’s 3% foreign transaction fees by using my DL card abroad. I wonder if I can get a prepaid Visa or Visa gift card, load it with funds from my DL Amex, and avoid foreign transaction fees by paying in Europe with the Visa prepaid/gift card. Any recommendation for a Visa prepaid/gift card? (I know Amex offers a prepaid Amex card without foreign trx fees, but acceptance of Amex abroad is iffy at best, so I’d like to avoid using an Amex there.)
Rick: Great question. Yes, I was going to recommend the prepaid Amex until I read the second part of your question. Maybe do that anyway so as to have that option in places that do take Amex? For Visa gift/prepaid cards, I’m not sure which ones, if any, can be used internationally. Anyone else know?
i first had the personal club carlson account and number, and signed up for the 50k radisson offer, then from same email, i emailed club carlson to allow me to register for biz account and i was approved with a biz number. later i faced problem trying to sing in with biz number and email as it said i am already registered. the happen cos i gave them same email address for both personal and biz account. i logged on and changed the email address of personal account to a new email i never used and kept and registered the previous email of personal account to the biz account.
whne i log in, it doesnt say BUSINESS, but both my personal and biz shows same thing like this
Sam ******
6************
Club Carlson member
0 Gold Points®
As of May 17, 2012
Yesterday , i emailed club carlson to match my personal account to gold status after showing them my priority club plaitnum status and i received no email.
i used the cc biz number to sign up for radisson50k points and i got confirmation email, sadly it was same email for both personal and biz before i changed the email of personal account.
I hope nothing goes wrong later
I would like to apply for SPG Preferred Card through your link. However, I noticed on the http://spgamex.com/ link the annual fee is $45 vs. your link of $65 annual fee after one year. Which is correct??
Sheila: Thanks! The SPG card used to be $45 (several years ago), but it has been $65 since. Spgamex.com must be a very old out of date page.
FYI – just noticed on top cash back they no longer give cash back at Giftcards.com
I’m not surprised as I have had several transactions with them where I sold Lowe’s gift cards anand they all traced at zero. Keeping my fingers crossed I will still get my cash back as it was still saying 4% when I sold them. Any experience with this?
D Olsen: you should be fine. If you don’t see cash back pending after a week, then open a ticket with Topcashback.
I am intrigued by your postings regarding putting all spend on the Amex prepaid card (with reload packs purchased at Office Depot). The only problem is that I don’t spend enough on credit cards to take advantage of the full $50k/year.
If I were to use the prepaid card on rent using WilliamPaid (online rent service), I’d take a 2.45% hit on each transaction. For example, if I spend $30,000 on rent during the course of a year, I’d pay $735 in WilliamPaid fees plus $237 for the prepaid reloads, which equals $972. However, I’d be up 150,000 in UR points, which equates to .65 cents/point.
Do you think this is worth it? Thanks in advance.
Is having too many authorized users on a card inviting trouble from Chase?
I was thinking I would give my near family members a copy of the Chase Ink Bold card and Chase Sapphire Card to help me meet the spending thresholds. Is having 4 authorized users on each card a good idea?
Stacey: Is it worth it? Absolutely. 150,000 UR points are worth, at minimum, $1500 in cash, but you can get much more value than that. Is it a good idea? Well, that depends. If you are a bad credit risk or Chase otherwise suspects you of abusing the perks of the Ink card, they might close down your accounts. You’ll have to judge based on your own situation whether this will be safe for you.
Asen: Great question. Unfortunately, I have no idea.
hey bro, saw this 100k points from BOA, i have no diea what boa points are , good for and their value, can you take a look at this?
https://www.bankofamerica.com/credit-cards/products/bankamericard-travel-rewards-credit-card.go
kt: This deal is for 10K points not 100K. It doesn’t look too exciting to me. There are much better deals available. See my best credit card offers page.
Hi, you know how you said that we were effectively buying points for 2 cents every time we make a purchase on a credit card. But isn’t that only valid in the States. If we go to Canada, the max cashback card that we have is 1%. So doesn’t that alter the fair trading prices of all the points your page?
If also granted Gold match by Club Carlson for PC Plat + SPG Gold and I get their Business status , how do I get my wife to stay with me at Radisson LHR at the single rate – a Gold benefit for europe? thanks
fosij: Good point! I’m far less familiar with Canadian credit card options so if it’s true that your best alternative is a 1% cash back card, then you’re right that the relative cost of buying miles through credit card spend is much lower. So, if you can earn valuable points or miles through credit card spend in Canada, that’s probably a better bet for you than 1% cash back.
Barry: I don’t know. I’d recommend contacting Club Carlson to ask.