A $9 Audi A4, Great Bridge Group cuts me off, and yet another Best Buy update

HOW TO RENT AN AUDI A4 FOR $9: Running With Miles has a nice tip about how to rent an Audi A4 for only $9:

For a limited-time, Silvercar is running a promotion for new customers that gives $50 off the rental price. This obviously makes renting for one-day the cheapest option but can also help if you rent for mult-days as it will reduce the overall price by $50. Here are the details:

• Website – silvercar
• Promo Code: AFF-FTD
• Must book by 06/30/2014
• Only for new customers

The bad news is that you can only do this in Austin, Houston, Dallas, LA, or San Francisco. Read RWM’s full post for more details.

GREAT BRIDGE GROUP CUTS ME OFF: A few days after giving me yet another Amazon gift certificate, Great Bridge Group sent me the following email:

Dear Great Bridge User –

We would like to thank you for your participation in our panel. As part of our ongoing efforts to extend the benefits of the Great Bridge community to new users, from time to time we must create space in our limited panel by deactivating some of our existing accounts. Your account has been selected for deactivation.

All unpaid rewards that your account has earned as of today will be paid to you in full within the next five business days. After today your account will no longer remain active, and we will no longer collect transaction information associated with this account.

Fair enough–Great Bridge Group isn’t a charity. I’m very pleased with my experience with them, and although their payouts aren’t as good as when I signed up, I’d still recommend them for anybody looking to juice their credit card rewards with minimal effort.

GOOD PRESS FOR PFD: The world is starting to catch on to the PFDigest phenomenon. Over on Military Frequent Flyer, PFD was named to the extremely prestigious Andy’s Top Ten Websites He Follows list. As Andy puts it:

This blog has stuff that no other blog has, and I read every post.

Thanks Andy! That’s pretty much the most awesome thing anybody could say about my blog, and I appreciate it.

Also on the PR front, Travel Enthusiast was kind enough to include me in her November Bookmarks feature. Incidentally, that Bookmarks post had an interesting comment by my esteemed colleague Matt on the bitcoin phenomenon:

As I mentioned in the posts though, it isn’t something to invest in half heartedly- the big guys are running $20K mining rigs that are custom built from ASICs. If you look on eBay now they are actually auctioning off rental time on these units.

I don’t know about you, but I find it fascinating that you can make money by renting time to mine for virtual currency.

BEST BUY STILL TINKERING WITH REWARDS?: I recently reported that Best Buy had reduced the bonus reward points for Elite members. And they have, but I hadn’t seen this graphic before…

The explanation from Best Buy:

All card members get 5% back in rewards (2.5 points/$1 spent) on every Best Buy® purchase with standard credit. Elite Plus members get an additional 1% back in rewards (3 points/$1 spent) for a total of 6% back in rewards with a My Best Buy™ Credit Card.

That’s certainly good news! Commenter HikerT made some good points in a recent thread:

Is the BB card really getting you 2.5 points? Or just 1.5 additional BB points on top of the 1 BB points you would still earn if you used a different CC at BB? Compare to using 2.2% Arrival to buy AMEX GCs to use at BB to buy GCs. Would you rather have 2.2% Arrival + 2.25% TCB or 1.5 BB points? Even if you are Silver Elite I’d still say is not worth the cash back give up, not to mention you can do better buying BB GCs in the secondary market (~6% + credit card rewards).

This change tilts things a little more in favor of the Best Buy card, though whether the card is worth it of course depends on your preferences. If you’re elite plus, the Best Buy card is getting you an additional 1.75 Best Buy points (i.e. 3.5%) instead of 1.5 points (3%).

REMINDER: In case you missed my Saturday post, the Wyndham card sign-up bonus has increased to 45,000 points. Not my cup of tea, but it may be worth your while if you’re looking to top-off a frequent flyer account, or if you really like Howard Johnson hotels.