With the announcement of Chase extending their infamous “5/24 rule” to extend to all co-branded and business cards, there has been a lot of discussion about what to do in the interim before the rule takes effect and what to do after the hammer falls. For those who are unfamiliar, the 5/24 rule is that Chase will not approve you for a card if your credit report shows more than five new accounts in the last two years. This was designed to weed out applicants who ‘churn’ their cards for the signup bonuses without adding meaningful value to Chase as customers.
Page 21 of 32
I’ve been enjoying the benefits of being an American Express Platinum cardholder in the last few months due to being added as authorized user to Esther’s Ameriprise American Express Platinum card (thanks Esther!) The Centurion Lounges and concierge service have been great! Today I discovered a couple new benefits while flying out of Toronto Pearson (YYZ)
I’m on a lightning trip through New York, Toronto and Boston this week, strategically avoiding all the Super Bowl craziness going on in San Francisco. I’m flying currently to Boston from Toronto Pearson. I gave myself a decent amount of time to get through immigration and security, but thankfully, my American Express Platinum card made that even faster! First, Global Entry got me through immigration and customs extremely quickly, skipping that entire line. Next, I run into a pretty long security line. But what’s this I see? Apparently, through a program called Cloud 10, American Express has partnered with Toronto Pearson to bring benefits to certain American Express cardholders. And tada, there was a completely empty special security line specifically for Platinum and Centurion cardholders. Thus, the entire process of immigration, customs, and security took me a grand total of 7 minutes.
Via Point Me to the Plane, Air New Zealand business class from SFO, LAX, and a bit less so out of IAH are widely available to fly nonstop to Auckland (AKL). I was able to find a good amount of availability from SFO for the next few months.
It doesn’t look like continuing awards from AKL to Australia on Air New Zealand are very open though.
Via View from the Wing, JAL First class space is also widely available between Tokyo and Sydney from March to December this year.
Recently, a co-worker of mine asked for help booking his family’s summer travel to London. Searching for himself, his wife, and three kids, the price he had found (despite building in flexibility on both ends of the trip) was $14,000 for 5 people.
….for economy.
Summer travel to Europe is expensive. London travel is even worse, because it always has a steady flow of business travelers.
Given that my co-worker had a fairly tight set of constraints on his trip, the traditional sources of flexibility we look for — changing dates, changing locations — weren’t going to be sufficient in this situation. Add to that the fact that he needs five tickets, and we had a challenge on our hands.
I was livechatting Discover tonight to follow up on some 5% category and Apple Pay issues from Q4, and at the end the representative asked if I had any other questions while I had her there. I took the opportunity to ask for any spending promotions. I didn’t expect anything other than maybe a lower APR, since one of my favorite blogs, Doctor of Credit, had not reported anything recently.
To my surprise…
Last week, Citi announced it was lowering the public offer for the Citi Thank You Premier to 40k points after meeting minimum spend requirements. This is obviously sad but probably expected given that it brings the bonus in line with the standard bonus for the Chase Sapphire Preferred.
Two days ago, Miles to Memories reported a back-door way to get the 50k Citi Premier offer to appear. Well, after some googling around, I found the front door:
EDIT: This method still isn’t working perfectly for people. I suggest trying the normal registration page, and then calling in to get your code if things are still failing. The US call center claimed that they can’t register new accounts over the phone.
As posted earlier, Atitalia is offering a status match to elite members of various other frequent flier programs.
Unfortunately, when I tried to register, I just repeatedly received a mysterious error “Error in Service.” There have been reports of the registration successfully completing even with this error, so check your email. I unfortunately did not get this email.
I know better than to mess with the Devil(‘s Advocate), so I figured out a different tagline for this post than my previous one. Still pretty reminiscent, but it gets the point across…
Anyway, I tried a couple of experiments with authorized user cards in order to see if I could stretch out my paltry, 1 year 3 month average age of accounts. In particular, one experiment I tried was seeing if I could force Amex to backdate my Member Since date (not the account opening date, which was discontinued) by adding myself as an authorized user on my parents’ account and then somehow parlaying that into backdating on my cards that were opened before the rule change (hint: this failed miserably).
TopCashback is offering bonus cashback on your next purchase by 2/5/2016, with minimum purchase of the bonus cashback amount. eBay is included. I’m personally going to buy some AirBnB gift cards through PayPal Digital Gifts as that’s a great way to get a discount on AirBnB stays. This offer is targeted and may vary by person. I personally was offered $10 cashback.
Via The Points Guy, Alitalia is currently offering a status match from Oneworld, Star Alliance, and other carriers like Alaska through January 31, 2016. Just send an email to StatusMatchMilleMiglia@alitalia.com with your full name, MilleMiglia number and a copy of your frequent flyer card that you are matching from. Your new status will be active until March 31, 2016, unless your status was valid through then, then your status will be valid until March 31, 2017.Unfortunately, I seem to be unable to register a MilleMiglia account right now as their site is erroring out.
I haven’t paid for a Southwest flight, yet I’ve flown tens of thousands of miles with them.
All my travel has been free. Or at least very close to it. The points took me maybe an hour to earn (via a credit card) and cost $99 for the initial annual fee. The voluntary deboard (VDB) vouchers I’ve earned ($392 and $456) were earned on flights that I paid for with points and another voucher.
Free has its costs
© 2024 DEM Flyers
Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑