FREE MONEY FROM BEST BUY AND CAPITAL ONE: In case any of you happen to hold a Capital One Best Buy credit card: we received a flyer notifying us that we can get a $75 gift certificate if we spend $1,500 on my card before Dec 31. That’s 5%, and keep in mind you’re already getting 2% for using the card, plus an additional 2% if you purchase at BB, plus an additional 1% if you’re a Silver member buying at the flailing electronics merchant. Which brings you to 10%. BB sells Kindle cards, which can be used at Amazon. Last time we checked, they still sold prepaid Visa gift cards, valued up to $200 with a $6 activation fee, so take 3% from your net if you go that route. Last month we were able to use a BB reward certificate to buy Kindle gift cards, so we would guess they would work for the prepaid Visas as well, though YMMV. Always read your junk mail!
NOT LINKED IN TO REALITY: Somebody calling himself “Christopher Elliott” has published a misguided article at linkedin.com saying that frequent flyer programs are a scam and should be banned. Perish the thought! There’s a mini-industry of people beating the FF programs at their own game, and it’s open to anybody with an internet connection and some time to read. Maybe start here or here, Chris? View From The Wing has a more extensive evisceration.
DISCOVER CARD ROUNDUP: Frequent Miler, one of the best bloggers out there, details some of his experiments with the Discover More card. Do gift card purchases get cash back? Do purchases made with gift cards get cash back? Stay tuned… Discover is offering 2% cashback on Black Friday purchases to some customers, YMMV. Log in and sign up. And as poster mvkkreddy points out over at Fatwallet, Discover is already giving 10% cashback on Sears purchases through their portal, plus 5% as part of their quarterly promotion, so the 2% brings you to 17% cashback—not too shabby.
CAVEAT EMPTOR, ESPECIALLY IF THE EMPTOR GETS A REALLY GOOD DEAL: (H/T: FW) Man buys car. Dealership screws up, prices it several thousand too low in the paperwork. Dealership wants man to pay up. Man refuses. Dealership has man arrested and jailed. Dealership apologizes for attempting to have police enforce its whims. Dealership wants man to dismiss $2 MM lawsuit.
NAMIN’ AND SHAMIN’: Meanwhile, somebody over at flyertalk wants to publicly shame bloggers for publicizing good deals, mistake fares, and ways to game our great nation’s financial system. 20 pages of hilarity has ensued. Our plan to is generate some angry traffic to this blog by publishing which banks let you fund accounts with a credit card. J/K, FT, RELAX! (For those of you not in the know, CC account funding is an easy way to generate points/miles with your credit card, but people—including us—are understandably secretive about which banks allow this)… Speaking of flyertalk, folks there have reported that CVS and sometimes Walgreens will let you buy Vanilla Reloads with a credit card. YMMV, so try, try again… Bank of America is apparently offering gift cards to random people upon their online banking logout. Some people have reported getting the offer after 5 or 10 tries. Slickdeals is all over it, because hey, free gift cards.
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