HOW TO EARN 44 POINTS PER DOLLAR AT SEARS: Frequent Miler reports that there’s some sort of triple witching hour confluence of promos going on right now to holders of the proper credit cards. If you have a Chase United card and a Chase Freedom card, you can get a relatively safe 32X or a possible 44X if you’re brave and a possible double dip works. [Read more…]
Money on sale: 15% off!
FREEBIES: U Can Fly Free 2 helpfully points out that OfficeMax is selling money at a discount on Friday. Specifically, $15 off a $100 Visa/MC giftcard. You’ll lose a little of that when you pay the activation fee, but still… Want more discounted money? You can get a $20 credit when you use your Amex to make a $200 purchase at Best Buy (follow the link for instructions). If you can’t find any Visa GCs there, you can at least get a kindle GC and use that for future Amazon purchases. And as long as we’re linking to slickdeals, here’s the scoop on how to get a free $20 credit at Shutterfly. Their photobooks are actually pretty nice, so give it a try. And don’t forget your free 8×10 at Walgreen’s and an easy $5 Amazon MP3 credit. Finally, it looks like registration is still open for Amex Shop Small Business Saturday. This gets you $25 per Amex card (min $25 purchase) at a whole bunch of places. And since Amex gives different account numbers for authorized users, that’s actually $25 for every user on an account. Look here to find eligible retailers near you.
TRAVEL: Deals We Like has a summary of Black Friday travel deals. The benefactors: Loews Hotels, Club Med, Hotels.com, Travelocity, Expedia, and Orbitz. They’re not technically Black Friday, but I would also add the Jet Blue and Virgin America discounts covered by The Points Guy, to this list… Hack My Trip explains why you should be using awardwallet.com to track you rewards and loyalty programs. I use it, I’m a big fan, and you should be using it too even if you’re not a big traveler.
HATS OFF TO YOU, GOOD SIR: Somebody over at Bogleheads laid out in detail exactly how they cleared $7K in credit card bonuses this year.
Free money with your Capital One Best Buy card!
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.
Recent Comments