Nationwide Visa Buxx offering $5 bonus in December

I'll be generous and assume that my readers already have a Nationwide Visa Buxx card, since it's an easy way to generate $1,000 in monthly spend on any Visa or MasterCard every month at a cost of $4.

That being the case, check your e-mail for an offer to receive $5 in extra cash when you load $50 to your Visa Buxx account by December 31, 2013. Unfortunately, the Terms and Conditions are too vague to tell clearly whether loading more than $50 will qualify for the $5 bonus, or if you need to load exactly $50.

This matters since if you only earn the bonus when you load exactly $50, you're barely coming out ahead (since you'll pay $2 for the $50 load and another $2 for the subsequent $450 load), while if you earn the bonus when you load any amount over $50, then the $5 will pay for 2 and a half $500 loads, a free month of manufactured spend!

The bonuses are supposed to post by the end of January, so presumably we'll find out for sure by then.

Have a Hilton Amex? Do this now

[edit: I was just about to start a countdown for how long it would take for this promotion to show up on some of the less scrupulous blogs, when I saw that seconds before I published, over at Milepoint gconnery posted the same thing. Well played, gconnery, well played] 

American Express has been quietly running a promotion for the past few weeks that I only noticed today. If you register your American Express Hilton HHonors or Surpass credit card, you'll earn an additional 6 HHonors points per dollar spent on your "room rate and charges to your room" at Hilton properties within the United States (excluding Puerto Rico and other US territories, possessions, and minor outlying islands) from November 20, 2013 to February 28, 2014, up to a maximum of 15,000 bonus HHonors points.

Interestingly, there is nothing in the Terms and Conditions excluding stays you've already completed, as long as you paid for those stays with your registered American Express co-branded credit card.

As a reminder, the no-annual-fee Hilton HHonors American Express typically earns 7 HHonors points per dollar spent at Hilton properties, and the $75 annual fee HHonors Surpass card earns 12 HHonors points per dollar. With this promotion, you'll be earning 13 and 18 HHonors points, respectively, per dollar spent with each card (although this 6 point bonus only applies to room rates, not taxes and fees).

Since there's a narrow and remarkably consistent band of value of HHonors points between 0.33 and 0.5 cents per point, this promotion is worth between 2% and 3% in additional value, bringing your total haul for a dollar spent at Hilton properties to 4.29%-6.5% and 5.95%-9% in value for each card.

Whether you anticipate taking advantage of it or not, be sure to register now, before you forget.

Perfect storm of signup bonuses

I was writing this post yesterday but my blogging software wasn't behaving, and Mommy Points beat me to the punch! Go read that post, but here's the quick and dirty: there are a number of too-good-to-miss signup bonuses available right now, so if you've been waiting for the right moment for a credit card application cycle, this is the right moment. Here are the cards I would apply for today (no affiliate links here, obviously):

• Bank of America Alaska Airlines Visa Signature, 50,000 miles after $1,000 in spending. Arguably the most valuable traditional airline miles, and inarguably the highest offer ever made for this credit card. This is the time to get it.
• Barclaycard Lufthansa Miles & More World MasterCard, 50,000 miles after $5,000 in spending.
• Chase British Airways Visa Signature, 100,000 miles after $20,000 in spending within the first year. A high spending requirement, but also the highest this offer has ever been. After spending $20,000 on the card, you'll have earned 125,000 Avios, or 6.25 Avios per dollar (the card earns 1.25 Avios per dollar on non-bonused spending).
• Citi Platinum Select / (American Airlines) AAdvantage World MasterCard, 50,000 miles after $3,000 in spending.

These are all best-in-class offers, and it's vanishingly unlikely that they'll all be simultaneously available again in the near future. If you wanted to add an American Express card into the mix I'd probably go for a Starwood Preferred Guest personal or business card, unless you're in the hunt for Delta Platinum or Diamond status, in which case you could apply for a personal or business Delta Platinum American Express. I'm not thrilled with any of the Membership Rewards signup bonuses currently available, unless one of my readers can point to something better than the 25,000 point signup bonus for the Premier Rewards Gold card.

Quick hits from around the web

Here's my roundup of news from around the blogosphere. Take note:

• Citi lets you redeem your ThankYou points for 0.75 cents each;
• Chase has announced their 2014 Freedom bonus categories (pretty much the same as last year, minus drug stores). My page has been updated with the new categories for your reference;
• Some American Express cards allow you to earn 5,000 bonus points for referring people (the signup bonuses seem the same as usual);
• If anyone you know doesn't have Hilton Gold status, you can gift it here for $49 (or buy it for yourself). I had to log in to Milepoint to see the gift page;
• TSA Precheck is now open to anyone willing to pay an $85 fee and visit Indianapolis for induction;
• Rent an Audi for $9 (plus taxes, I assume) using Silvercar;
• Earn EQM in Mileage Plan on all Alaska airline partners starting January 15.

Now you know (almost) everything I do.

Are Club Carlson points worth 1 cent each? Sometimes.

I've been fortunate enough this year to be able to more or less sit out the signup bonus carousel. Sure, I applied for a few new cards in April when I had some upcoming travel needs, but besides my 2% cash back Fidelity American Express and 2.22% travel rewards Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard, I've been focusing on getting the most out of my 5% cash back Citi ThankYou Preferred card. Now that I'm in the home stretch of my promotional period, my thoughts have naturally turned towards finding a new "workhorse" card for next year: a card which earns points or miles that are more valuable than the average of 2.1% cash back I earn with the cards I mentioned above.

One obvious choice is the Citizen's Bank 5% cash back offer, which lasts for the first 90 days of card membership. I happen to have a Citizen's Bank checking account where I receive some direct deposits, which hopefully would weigh favorably in their calculation of my credit limit, so it's certainly possible I could earn $2000-$3000 in cash during the promotional period.

There's a long thread on the FlyerTalk forums about the Wells Fargo version of this offer, which lasts for 6 months instead of 90 days. Unfortunately, those applying without a Wells Fargo checking account have found themselves with credit limits so low that it's difficult to imagine getting much value from the card.

On the other hand, I already have a Club Carlson Business Rewards Visa that gives me 5 Gold points per dollar spent on all purchases and – crucially – the last night free on award reservations of 2 or more nights. Thanks to that "last night free" benefit, the conventional wisdom is that the points are best used on award stays of exactly two nights. That's all well and good as far as it goes (I spent 2 nights at the Radisson Blu Aqua in Chicago in November, which cost me around $75 thanks to this card), but it's also fairly restrictive: sometimes you want to stay in a city for more than 2 nights, sometimes you don't want to move between properties every 2 nights, and some cities only have 1 Club Carlson property in the first place.

That being the case, I thought it would be useful to do a speculative analysis of the value of a Club Carlson point across various hotel categories and lengths of stay. I might have my next workhorse card in my pocket already!

Before I share the results, a couple of quick points:

• I assumed that you can manufacture spend at an average of 0.75 cents per dollar. If that's low for you (for example, if you primarily use MyVanilla Debit cards you might be paying somewhat more for that portion of your spend) then this analysis would have to be adjusted slightly;
• There's no easy method of selecting a value to use for a single hotel night. Price is almost always misleading, since there are hotels so expensive that you'd never pay to stay there (and hotels too horrible to pay any price for). I picked what seems to me a sensible compromise: the most I could ever conceive of paying for a hotel room is $250, and the least is $60, so I applied a linear regression between those numbers for a "hypothetical value" of one night at each category of Club Carlson property. This method isn't perfect and there's no substitute for researching the actual properties you want to stay at.

Here's what I came up with:

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This follows the pattern you'd expect: when you stay 1 night at any property, you don't get to take advantage of the "last night free" benefit, so your value per point is just the hypothetical value divided by that category's point cost. Then your value per point is maximized when you stay exactly 2 nights, since that serve as a 50% discount on the cost per night. Finally, the more nights you stay, the less your free night decreases your average value, until it is just a 16% bonus on your points' value when you stay 7 nights.

As I mentioned, this analysis is very sensitive to assumptions, especially our assumptions about the value of a free night, so I want to suggest an alternative approach: at what hypothetical value per night is a dollar spent on the Club Carlson Business Rewards Visa worth less than a dollar spent on the Barclaycard 2.22% cash back Arrival World MasterCard? Since the Club Carlson Visa earns 5 Gold Points per dollar, we'll need to get less than 0.444 cents in value per point to justify using the Barclaycard instead. Here are those "break-even values:"

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Strictly for the sake of comparison, here are some midweek refundable (AAA) rates at Category 5 and 6 Club Carlson properties I pulled up, including tax (since taxes and fees are included on award redemptions):

• Radisson Blu Aqua Chicago, mid-February, Category 6: $207.88
• Radisson Blu Alcron Hotel, Prague, mid-March, Category 5: $123.61
• Radisson Blu Hotel Champs Elysees, Paris, mid-April, Category 6: $524.42
• The May Fair, London, mid-May, Category 6: $596.31
• Radisson Martinique on Broadway, New York City, mid-June, Category 6: $292

This analysis has its limitations of course: you need to know in advance that you're traveling to cities with Club Carlson properties, for example, and the properties have to be convenient to the part of city you intend to visit. That's far from always the case. However, I know of no other card that offers such consistent value above that earned by a cash back card. To put it another way, while you may get more than 2.22 cents per value out of your United miles, you only get that value when you redeem for last minute domestic travel or premium-cabin international trips. A dollar spent on a Club Carlson Business Rewards Visa, on the other hand, is worth over 2.22 cents on stays of virtually any length at virtually any Club Carlson property.

Finding myself 1,582 MQM short (and making it up)

I mentioned all the way back in June that I was planning on making Delta Platinum Medallion this year thanks to the 200% MQM I'll earn on a First Class ticket operated by Alaska Airlines this Christmas. Oddly, while only "full fare" First and Business class tickets earn 200% MQM on Delta-operated flights, Alaska Airlines only has one First Class fare class, and that fare class earns 200% MQM on Delta, even when it's only trivially more expensive than Coach (as it was on this itinerary).

Then, the unthinkable happened: I decided to spend New Year's Eve in Portland, Oregon, instead of flying back to New England on December 30. Crucially, that meant my final first-class leg, PDX-BOS, would be credited to the 2014 program year, instead of the 2013 program year. That would leave me 1,582 Medallion Qualification Miles short of Delta Platinum Medallion, which is the best Delta Medallion status, since it gives you unlimited free award changes and redeposits, allowing you to grab low-level award seats as they become available.

I'm never one to shy away from a spontaneous vacation, but unfortunately I needed to fly on paid tickets in order to earn MQM, which meant I needed to think strategically. I thought I'd walk through my decision-making for my readers, in case they find themselves in a similar situation.

The Options

When trying to piece together a last minute mileage jaunt like this, you need to evaluate all the options. There are three important dimensions to look at right away.

• Are one-way tickets more expensive than round-trip tickets? If not, you can use different methods to buy each ticket, as I ended up doing in this case.
• Are first-class tickets (much) more expensive than economy tickets? I only needed 1,582 MQM, which thanks to the 500-mile minimum on Delta works out to 4 segments. If, however, I'd needed 2,582 MQM, then I could book my tickets in First Class and with the 50% class-of-service bonus those same 4 segments would earn 3,000 MQM.
• What kinds of points do you have available? This is obviously key if we're trying to earn these miles as cheaply as possible.

The Solution

It turned out that for the flights I had in mind, one-way tickets were half the price of round-trip, with each direction costing about $180 in economy.

On the flights I was looking at, first-class tickets were only about $100 more in each direction.

Finally, I had about 16,000 ThankYou points left over after my last student loan rebate redemption, and those points can be used at full value (1 cent each) for travel reservations made through the ThankYou booking tool. I also had a $50 Delta transportation voucher from a broken reading lamp a few trips ago.

With all that in mind, here's what I ended up doing:

• Ticket #1: Since I didn't have enough ThankYou points to cover the entire $180 ticket, I spent just 15,500 TY points, leaving me with $25 to pay with my Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard, which will allow me to redeem my Arrival miles against the purchase.
• Ticket #2: I used my $50 transportation voucher against the $180 ticket and paid for the remaining $130 with my Arrival MasterCard.

After redeeming my Arrival miles against the purchases, my total cost for this roundtrip will be about $81.38: $23.75 for the ThankYou points and $57.63 for the Arrival miles (assuming I'm paying 0.75 cents per dollar in manufactured spend). That's a no-brainer for Platinum Medallion status, which also comes with a Medallion Choice Benefit (I picked the 20,000 bonus miles last year).

An Alternative

Interestingly, since First Class tickets were only slightly more expensive than Coach, there was another solution: I could redeem my Skymiles for 1 cent each against a First Class "pay with miles" ticket, which unlike economy redemptions do earn MQM and redeemable Skymiles. I have enough Skymiles that I could have redeemed them for the entire cost of one or both tickets. I considered doing this, but there are a few reasons why I decided not to go that route:

• Delta transportation vouchers can't be used in conjunction with a "pay with miles" redemption, and just like miles and points, the least valuable travel voucher is the one you don't use;
• ThankYou points are worth a maximum of 1 cent each, while Skymiles are worth a minimum of 1 cent each. I can use my Skymiles for premium-cabin international trips, while the best alternative use of my ThankYou points is for student loan rebate checks, where I'm also getting 1 cent in value per point.

And that's how I'm going to earn Platinum Medallion for (probably) the last time, before switching to Alaska Gold MVP+ at the end of next year and earning hyper-valuable Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles instead.

Finding the limits of Barclaycard Arrival miles

Barclays Bank Delaware is an odd institution. They offer a number of co-branded credit cards with second-tier travel providers (Lufthansa Miles & More, US Airways Mileage Plan, Wyndham hotels, etc.) and a flagship travel rewards product, the Arrival World MasterCard. I've written extensively about the Arrival card because – during the first, fee-free year – it functions as a 2.22% cash back card when you redeem your miles against travel purchases. If you can manufacture spending at 0.75 cents per dollar, then you're getting a 2/3 discount on paid, mile-and-point-earning travel purchases.

As an indicator of how seriously I take this card, since I signed up in April I've redeemed 114,600 Arrival miles (40,000 of which I earned as a signup bonus, of course), and I've got about 9,000 in the bank for more upcoming redemptions. That means I've spent about $42,000 on the card, which interesting puts me right above the level ($40,050) where this card is more lucrative than a 2% cash back Fidelity American Express card, after paying the annual fee (see this post for more info).

Over the course of those redemptions, I have run into a few problems that I thought would be useful to share with my readers.

Purchases Must be $25 or More

This is a simple one, but it's a "problem" I ran into almost immediately. Purchases that are otherwise eligible but are less than $25 won't be available for redemption in your Rewards tab. That means it can be useful to think strategically if you plan to redeem your Arrival miles. For example, instead of buying a $10 commuter rail ticket on the MBTA here in New England (not eligible), you can buy a "pack" of 10 $10 tickets for $100 (eligible). You won't save any money buying in bulk, but you can earn yourself a nice discount when you redeem your miles against the purchase. Likewise you can add value to a stored value subway card in increments of $25 in order to trigger award eligibility. Each redemption against a $25 purchase will get you 250 points closer to your next redemption, thanks to the 10% point rebate.

Eligible Purchases Not Available for Redemption

A few weeks ago I bought a bus ticket on Peter Pan Bus Lines, which conveniently came to just over $25. I waited a week or two for the purchase to appear as available for redemption, but it never did. Not being the "letting things go" kind, I called the number on the back of my card and asked what was going on. The customer service agent was extremely flustered and unprofessional, and almost before I could ask my question she blurted out "buses aren't eligible." This seemed wildly unlikely so I dug up my trusty copy of the Terms & Conditions for the card and found this useful passage:

You can use your miles to: (a) “pay for travel” (Airlines, Travel Agencies & Tour Operators, Hotels, Motels & Resorts, Cruise Lines, Passenger Railways and Car Rental Agencies) purchases made within the last 90 days as a statement credit, (b) redeem for cash back as a statement credit, (c) redeem for gift cards or (d) redeem for merchandise.

Conveniently, my Peter Pan bus ticket had been coded as "BUS LINES, CHARTERS, TOUR BUSES."

I tweeted @BarclaycardUS and over direct message they agreed to credit my account for the purchase, which I thought was nice of them, although they didn't promise to better train their front line phone staff, which would have been even better.

Travel Purchases not Eligible for Redemption

My favorite card to use for travel purchases below $25 is my Chase Sapphire Preferred, since it offers 2 super-valuable flexible Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent on travel (and dining). However, there's another category of travel expense that I'll be putting on that card in the future as well. Here's Chase's definition of travel purchases:

Merchants in the travel category include airlines, hotels, motels, timeshares, campgrounds, car rental agencies, cruise lines, travel agencies, discount travel sites (for example, Expedia® and Yahoo® Travel1), and operators of trains, buses, taxis, limousines, ferries, toll bridges and highways, and parking lots and garages. Please note that some merchants that provide transportation and travel-related services are not included in this category; for example, real estate agents, websites or owners that rent properties, in-flight goods and services, merchants within airports, and merchants that rent trailers, trucks, and other vehicles for the purpose of hauling.

As you can see, the definitions are pretty similar all the way through the word "trains." But then the Sapphire Preferred card suddenly gets wildly more generous! I don't ride in a lot of limousines, but considering both taxis and parking lots to be "travel" purchases is truly going above and beyond.

Most importantly for the purposes of this comparison, it's going above and beyond Barclaycard!

After paying for a few cabs last week, once again I didn't see the transactions appear in the Rewards tab of my online account. I assumed that I was running into the "Peter Pan problem" again, so I sent another Twitter direct message to the @AskBarclaycardUS account:

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Now on the one hand, I understand that it would be a bit much to expect a bank to just hand out statement credits to every customer who asks. That's not really the line of business they're in. In principle, they've got me on this one, since they enumerate eligible "travel" purchases and taxis aren't enumerated.

On the other hand, I want my readers (and Barclaycard!) to know that if this is their premium credit card product, they've got a lot of work to do before it'll be worth paying an $89 annual fee, let alone be able to compete with a product as great as the Chase Sapphire Preferred.

Round 2 of MyVanilla Debit shutdowns

Back on October 22, I laid out what I called "real talk" about MyVanilla Debit cards:

Since then the shutdown reports slowed down, and other opportunities opened up, so I decided to start using my MyVanilla Debit cards more aggressively. 

And my accounts are still alive and well.

...

MyVanilla Debit cards are still a very viable option for manufacturing relatively large amounts of spend each month. And if you've been shying away from them because of the shutdown reports, it might be time to start – carefully! – dipping your toes back in the water.

Just a few weeks later, I was sad to report that one of my 3 MyVanilla Debit cards had been shut down. It was closed after I had already emptied it down to $35, so it wasn't a big priority for me to get the account reopened or have the balance mailed to me.

My second MyVanilla shutdown is a different story entirely. On November 21, I loaded $2,000 in Vanilla Reload Network reload cards at home, then set off to Walmart to liquidate my balance using Walmart Bill Pay. By the time I got to the store about 30 minutes later, my account had already been frozen – with over $2,000 in it!

I called Incomm immediately, and was told that I needed to fax in a copy of my driver's license and Social Security card, and to call back the next day.

When I called back on November 22, I was told that they couldn't find my fax, and that instead I should email my documents to premium_fax@incomm.com, and call back an hour later to confirm they'd received them. I did, and they did. They told me the compliance department would get to my account within "72 business hours" (this is their idiotic way of saying 3 business days).

I took Thanksgiving week off, and didn't call in again until Saturday, November 30. Imagine my lack of surprise when the phone agent told me that my e-mail had been misfiled: someone had saved the file using my first and middle names, instead of my first and last names. Consequently, the compliance department had never gotten to it. After refiling my documents correctly, the agent promised that he would place it in a high priority queue and that my account would be resolved within "24 business hours."

Sure enough, by the afternoon of Monday, December 2 my account had been reopened, and I hurried to the bank to empty my account. So all told, I didn't have access to my money for about 11 days.

The Takeaway

Here are my preliminary conclusions based on my experience and everything I've read so far:

• Shutdowns can occur the same day as loads: you may not have time to empty your account before being shutdown;
• Some shutdowns are still being resolved without faxing in copies of the Vanilla Reload cards used to load the account. Others are not;
• I no longer believe there's a safe level or type of activity with MyVanilla Debit cards, at least not at the kind of volume that's worth risking shutdown;
• The staff at Incomm are excessively incompetent, and even if they are trying in good faith to help you, their incompetence could significantly delay the resolution of your shutdown.

My Activity

As in the case of my previous shutdown, I'm more than happy to provide the history of my loading and unloading activity on this account. As before "CA" designates a bank cash advance and "WM" means a Walmart bill payment:

• October 23: Load $1,000
• October 24: $1,000 WM
• October 27: Load $1,000
• October 29: $1,000 CA
• October 30: Load $2,000
• October 30: $2,000 WM
• November 5: Load $1,000
• November 6: $1,000 CA
• November 8: Load $1,000
• November 11: Load $1,000
• November 11: $2,000 WM
• November 18: Load $1,000
• November 19: Load $1,000
• November 19: $2,000 WM
• November 21: Load $2,000

So my total activity in the month leading up to my shutdown was:

• Loads: $11,000
• Cash advances: $2,000
• Walmart bill payments: $7,000
• Balance at account closure: $2,034.64

Do this now: Amazon.com credit from American Express

Hot on the heels of Small Business Saturday, American Express is offering another deal that you'd be crazy not to take advantage of: a $25 statement credit when you spend $75 or more by December 31, 2013, at Amazon.com on each American Express card you carry.

There are lots of ways to enroll in the promotion, including "syncing" your cards through Twitter or "adding the offer" to your card through your online banking account. The easiest, however, is to go to this page and enter your information for each unique American Express number you have.

Unfortunately it isn't possible to register for the promotion through multiple channels and earn more than 1 $25 statement credit: after "adding the offer" to my account online I wasn't able to then register through the promotion site.

On the plus side, while most of American Express's prepaid cards (like Bluebird) are not eligible for the promotion, Serve (the Bluebird-lite prepaid card product) is eligible. So if you or someone you know still has a Serve account, be sure to register that as well.

In which I (almost didn't) save Small Business Saturday

Whenever anyone approaches me about getting involved in travel hacking for the first time, I tell them the same thing: it's a game that takes patience, good organization, and above all attention to detail.

That doesn't mean I'm perfect though, and I almost blew it this weekend! As everyone with one or more American Express cards no doubt knows, the Saturday after Thanksgiving is "small business Saturday," a promotion in which American Express participates by giving (this year) $10 statement credits for purchases made at certain local merchants, as long as the purchase is at least $10. This is a great promotion, even though it's not as generous as in years past, when the statement credits were $25. I have 3 American Express cards: a Delta Business Platinum; no-fee Hilton HHonors; and 2% cash back Fidelity Investment Rewards card, and I was looking forward to buying some gift cards, or at least visiting at a local restaurant or bar and having the pleasure of American Express paying for it.

I spend Thanksgiving with a friend's family in Indiana, and imagine my chagrin when I discovered that I had left all three of my American Express cards at home.

I immediately started thinking about how to salvage the situation, but American Express requires that the purchases be made in-person. Sure enough, a gift card purchase made online at a local coffee shop didn't generate the "Thank you for Shopping Small" e-mail that indicates you've successfully triggered the promotional credit.

Well, I got back to New England at 11:15 pm, and got back home at 11:40 pm. Naturally, I grabbed my American Express cards and sprinted down to my local burger shack. By the time I got ahold of a manager who could sell me gift cards, I was down to the wire. But 3 gift cards later (11:57, 11:58, 11:59), I check my inbox and in a few seconds had received the 3 confirmation e-mails.

Small Business Saturday was saved. Did you get to take advantage of SBS?