Free gas money! Free Amazon shipping! Free credit card numbers!

PASSIVE CREDIT CARD INCOME: I just noticed this on the Upromise site:

UPROMISE GAS REWARDS

Fuel up for college! Earn 1 cent for college per gallon of gas purchased at Exxon and Mobil stations when you buy a total of 20 or more gallons in a calendar month.

One cent per gallon isn’t a lot, but all you have to do is register your credit card once and you’re done–hence, passive credit card income. If you regularly go to ExxonMobil stations, it may be worth it.

FREE AMAZON PRIME MEMBERSHIP, SORT OF: Read the Travel With Grant article for instructions. Thanks to TBB–correction, the kinder, gentler TBB–for linking to this one.

FREE (AND LEGAL) CREDIT CARD NUMBERS:

NOTE: There are some good arguments about why this is possibly a very bad idea–please see this post and the comments.

Thanks to ValueWalk for making me aware of GetCreditCardNumbers.com, a site that generates random credit card numbers. This can be useful in situations where a credit card number is required on a site but no purchase is required–for, say, a free trial–but you don’t want to give out one of your precious credit card numbers.

You can generate Amex, Visa, MasterCard, and even Diners Club and JCB. Ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause for the Internet!

GOOGLE LAUNCHES TANGIBLE PREPAID CARD: Enough of this new-fangled epayments stuff! Google wants you to spend money the old-fashioned way: with plastic.

You can request a card here.

RETURN OF THE SON OF THE REVENGE OF THE BRIDE OF THE CHASE AARP CARD: I’m a little bit late with this one, but one of my all-time favorite financial services stories just keeps going! You may remember the epic “unlimited” 5% cash back promo offer on the Chase AARP card from a few years back–detailed in this lengthy FWF thread–and you may remember its inglorious end when Chase started closing people’s accounts and stealing their points.

Travel Troubleshooter Chris Elliott doesn’t take too kindly to point-stealin’ banks, and when a wronged customer came to him, he was happy to help. Here’s the request for assistance:

I recently applied and received a co-branded credit card from Chase and AARP. The card had an introductory offer of 5 percent (cash back) for the first six months of card usage. I used the card and earned 201,780 points. Every single charge was legitimate, and I have receipts. Furthermore, every single charge was authorized by Chase.

This week, I logged into my online account to find my account was closed and I would not be getting the points accrued the last fiscal month of activity. I called Chase and they told me because the card was not “used as intended” they had closed my account.

I have a personal checking account and a business account with Chase. My Chase bank manager tried to help and hit a brick wall, figuratively speaking. I also asked AARP to help me, but they haven’t been able to do anything either.

I believe Chase closed the account so they would not have to pay 201,000 points, which are worth about $2,000. I am considering taking this to court. Can you help me?

The end result, as per Elliott:

I contacted Chase on your behalf. It declined to comment on your case, but contacted you and cut you a check for $2,400, the approximate value of the points you lost.

So the customer got even more points than he earned! Lesson learned: when a large company screws you over, contact the media, preferably a large outlet. Big companies hate bad publicitiy. (Thanks to Alcibiades at FWF for posting this article in the AARP thread!)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME: I just realized that my one-year blogging anniversary passed a week or so ago while I was on blogging paternity leave. The blog’s grown quite a bit from the days when I was literally writing for myself, and I’m pleasantly surprised to still find myself here after a year. My goal when I started was to publish regularly for a year and see what happened, and here I am. As always, it’s pretty cool that total strangers actually read this thing, so thanks to all of you!