In all fairness: a successful Marriott LNF claim

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Having written a perhaps-too-strongly-worded condemnation of best rate guarantees in the past, based on the fact that hotel chains are too slow to respond and are relentless in their quest to disqualify seemingly-eligible claims, I feel that I owe it to my readers to report on a successful "Look No Further" best rate guarantee claim I recently made with Marriott.

The Challenge

My mother e-mailed me a few days ago, saying that she had booked a cancelable, week-long reservation at a Courtyard Marriott in Portland, OR through Travelocity, since it was about $51 cheaper than the flexible rate she found on Marriott's website. She wrote me to ask whether she would earn points for the stay.

I told her she wouldn't earn Marriott Rewards points since the reservation was made through a third-party website, but that the amount she was saving was worth much more than the points she would earn on an eligible rate. Meanwhile, I sprung into action.

To make a Look No Further claim, I first made a refundable reservation on Marriott's website at the $169 (before taxes) Best Available Rate. After confirming the $118 Travelocity rate was still available, I then submitted a Look No Further request through Marriott's website.

The Problem

Looking through the cancelation policies for the two rates, I immediately noticed a problem. As I wrote to my mother:

The trouble is that that [Travelocity] rate has a cancellation of 4 pm February 7, while the “best available rate” at Marriott has a cancellation of 6 pm February 8. That’s the kind of difference that they typically use to deny a best rate guarantee claim.

So I told my mother to hold onto her Travelocity reservation while I waited to hear back from Marriott.

Success!

Imagine my surprise when about 5 hours later I opened my e-mail to see this message from Marriott:

We have reviewed your claim and have made the following modification to your reservation:

Rate: $88.72

That rate reflects the 25% discount Marriott gives on successful Look No Further claims.

Conclusion

I still think the best you can say for Best Rate Guarantees is that there's no harm in making a claim.

Be sure you make freely cancelable, non-prepaid reservations, and do your best to find rates that are as similar as possible with respect to room type and cancelation policies. Then, submit your claim and cross your fingers.

But don't rely on these guarantees being accepted, since there are still far too many ways the hotel chains can deny a claim, and you won't have any recourse if they do – except booking through the cheaper, third-party booking channel!

Reminder: manufacture $14,000 in spend per month

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I got a lot of great responses to my post on my miles and points activity in 2013, as well as my earlier post asking for reader questions. One thing that really surprised me was that some readers appeared to be a bit confused about just what techniques I use to manufacture the bulk of my spend.

So let me put this out there loud and clear:

Almost everyone in America can manufacture $14,000 in spend per month at a cost of 0.75-0.85 cents per dollar.

That's without even tiptoeing up to the line of what's "ethical." Some of us dance closer to that line than others, but the $14,000 is a pure gift from the banking industry of America to their clients.

Now, there are a few exceptions: the Pacific Northwest, for instance, has long been (almost) a dead zone for manufactured spend. I recently read that there will soon be CVS locations in and around Seattle though, so that drought might be coming to an end.

But in general, every person with a Social Security number can manufacture $14,000 in spend as long as they have access to:

  • "Participating" CVS store locations;
  • Walmart store locations.

Of course, if you have a partner with a Social Security number, you can double this total, plus add in techniques that require a second party (Amazon Payments, Venmo, etc.).

But virtually everyone can start with $14,000. Here's how.

Bluebird Loads

Each calendar month, every person with a Social Security number can load $5,000 in Vanilla Reload Network reload cards to their Bluebird account. It's then free to empty the account using Bluebird's bill pay function (or simply transfer the funds to your checking account).

  • Spend Manufactured: $5039.50
  • Cost: $39.50
  • Cost per Dollar in Manufactured Spend: 0.78 cents

PayPal Loads

During every rolling 30-day period, every Personal, Business, and Premier PayPal account can be loaded with $4,000 in funds using PayPal My Cash cards. Every person with a Social Security number can have one (1) Premier or Business PayPal account, plus one (1) Personal account. Additionally, all three account types can have a linked PayPal Debit Card. There is a $3,000 daily limit on purchases made with debit cards linked to PayPal Business accounts, and a $500 daily limit on purchases made with debit cards linked to PayPal Personal accounts. The cheapest liquidation option I know of (besides Square Cash, which will only work briefly) is $0.70 money orders from Walmart, which can have a maximum value of $1,000. I've used that value below.

  • Spend Manufactured: $8063.20
  • PayPal My Cash Cost: $63.20
  • Liquidation Cost: $5.60
  • Cost per Dollar in Manufactured Spend: 0.85 cents

Nationwide Visa Buxx

Finally, every person with a Social Security number can order a Nationwide Visa Buxx card, which is loadable with up to $1,000 per rolling 30-day period, and can also be emptied using Walmart money orders.

  • Spend Manufactured: $1,004.00
  • Load Cost: $4
  • Liquidation Cost: $0.70
  • Cost per Dollar in Manufactured Spend: 0.47 cents

Conclusion

These aren't the only – or even the best – techniques for manufacturing spend out there. However, they do form a solid backbone of manufactured spend that is open to all US citizens and (I believe) virtually all resident aliens, as long as they have a tax ID number. While I was very satisfied with my manufactured spend activity in 2013, my average monthly spend was just $15,813. Of course, I spent a month abroad, so I was manufacturing more than that while Stateside, and my manufactured spend was heavily weighted towards the end of the year, but my point is that my yearly total could have been almost matched by a person spending just a few hours a week taking advantage of the above options: 3 trips to CVS for reload cards, 8 trips to Walmart for money orders, and a few minutes spent online loading the Nationwide Visa Buxx card.

That $169,280 per year in spend is enough to trigger high-spend bonuses on the premium Delta American Express cards, the American Express Premier Rewards Gold, Citi Hilton HHonors Visa, or just earn 253,920 United miles using the Chase United Club card.

I'm not saying any one of those is the right choice (I'll be using my "old" Blue Cash card, personally), let alone of of them (the annual fees would start to add up), but I am saying this core volume of manufactured spend makes a lot of things possible. Even just using a 2% cash back credit card you might be able to pay a month's rent or two using your earnings from manufactured spend (a net profit of $2105.60).

Stay tuned for some common sense tips on how to keep your spending patterns from alarming your credit card companies (and your banks!).

Have a gambling habit? IHG Rewards Club is here to help.

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This is kind of...weird. But if, like me, you've picked up various IHG Rewards Club (i.e. Priority Club) points over the years and don't know what to do with them, they've created a fairly clever method to liquidate them for you. I played my 3 instant win draws today (75 points) and won a $15 iTunes gift card. I guess I'll get that new Beyonce album after all.

Do this now: Club Carlson first quarter promotion

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Between January 6 and April 13, 2014, you can earn 38,000 Club Carlson Gold Points after completing 3 paid (not Points + Cash) nights at any Club Carlson properties worldwide. You can only earn the bonus once.

While this is a lucrative promotion (as Frequent Miler shows here), I strongly doubt I'll participate, since I can manufacture 53,000 Club Carlson points for $83 (by buying 21 Vanilla Reload Network reload cards), rather than the $180 Frequent Miler moots in his post. But if you have some upcoming paid Club Carlson stays anyway, this is a very generous bonus.

Register now, before you forget.

2013 End-of-Year Accounting

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Yesterday I asked my readers what they're curious about in my 2013 year as a travel hacker and blogger, and got a ton of terrific questions.

Meanwhile, I've been counting beans and came up with the following data to share with my readers. There are a few things that need a little explaining, but first, the data:

That's a lot of information. There are a few obvious questions, but let me get the asterisks out of the way first:

  • * I redeemed all but a few hundred of my Ultimate Rewards points as transfers to my United Mileage Plus, Amtrak Guest Rewards, and Marriott Rewards accounts where I earned well over 1 cent per point in value. However, since they're technically redeemable for cash I thought they should be included here. Additionally, 40,000 of these points came from my Sapphire Preferred signup bonus;
  • ** I received a 10% rebate on my Barclaycard Arrival redemptions and received a 40,000 mile signup bonus;
  • *** Almost all my Flexpoints were redeemed for up to 2 cents each for flight redemptions. However, like Ultimate Rewards points, they can be redeemed for cash at 1 cent each, so I included them here;
  • **** Here's the really tricky stuff. For all the rest of my spending related to manufactured spend, I was able to just divide the total fees I paid by the cost of one "unit" of manufactured spend. For example, I paid $67.50 in manufactured spend fees to US Bank Visa Buxx. Since one load costs $2.50, I knew that I had manufactured exactly $13,567.50 in spend using that technique. At Walmart, there are 3 different price points for manufactured spend: $0.70 for $1,000 money orders, $1.00 for bill payments to American Express and Discover, and $1.88 for bill payments to Visa and MasterCard. While it may be theoretically possible for me to figure out how much I manufactured using each technique, in practice, I'm just not willing to go there, since I had so many split transactions: I would literally have to reconstruct every transaction of manufactured spend I made at Walmart this year.
  • **** Likewise, MyVanilla Debit transactions at Walmart cost $0.50, but cash advances at banks cost $1.95. It's knowable how much I spend on each technique, but it would simply be a nightmare putting in the work to find out.

Finally, my Bank of America Alaska Airlines debit card poses one final problem: if I buy a $1,000 money order with a MyVanilla Debit card, deposit it in my Bank of America checking account, then make a bill payment with my Alaska Airlines debit card, I earn 500 Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles. But what technique gets the credit for that? The credit card I bought the Vanilla Reload cards with, MyVanilla Debit, or should there an additional category for purely excessive profit (500 Alaska miles for $1.88)? That's not a question with a definite answer, so I'm not going to attempt to venture one here.

Conclusion

Frankly, it was a good year. I took a lot of risks, made a lot of money, traveled a lot of miles, stayed in a lot of great hotels (and one disaster!) and had a really good time learning from my readers.

I hope I helped my readers have a little bit more lucrative and little bit more interesting year than they would have had otherwise.

And I'm looking forward to an exciting new year!

Changes to Ultimate Rewards Mall earning

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Last April I wrote about one of my favorite double dips when purchasing paid airline tickets:

If you have a Chase Ultimate Rewards-earning credit card, you have access to the Ultimate Rewards Mall, which allows you to earn bonus Ultimate Rewards points on purchases made through online travel agencies, or OTAs.  You can earn 1 bonus point per dollar spent at Expedia, Priceline, or Orbitz and 2 bonus points per dollar spent at Travelocity or Hotwire.

Unfortunately, both Travelocity and Hotwire, the two online travel agencies I cited as earning 2 bonus Ultimate Rewards points per dollar, have decreased their earning rate to 1 point per dollar, at least through my Chase Freedom and Sapphire Preferred Ultimate Rewards portals (the different Ultimate Rewards portals can have different earning rates at the same merchants, although it isn't that common).

Whether this changes your flight-booking calculus depends on your situation:

  • If you book your paid tickets through Travelocity using the Barclaycard Travelocity Rewards American Express card, that's still probably your best bet since it earns a 6% rebate on purchases made through Travelocity, and the 1 Ultimate Rewards point is just icing on the cake;
  • If you don't have a Travelocity Rewards credit card, then you may want to book through Expedia, who operate their own rewards program. Unfortunately, that program is not very lucrative;
  • Finally, now that all the online travel agencies earn just 1 bonus Ultimate Rewards point, you may want to consider booking using the Ultimate Rewards booking engine. While you'll still only earn 1 bonus Ultimate Rewards point per dollar, you're much more likely to actually receive that point without having to fight Chase for it.

That last point is worth considering if you've had trouble getting bonus Ultimate Rewards points to post correctly, as I have occasionally in the past when clicking through to Travelocity.

Hacking is an chance to travel; travel is a chance to hack

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One of the most frequent e-mails I receive is from readers who complain to me:

"That technique sounds great, and it's too bad that CVS/7-Eleven/grocery stores in my area don't accept credit cards!"

Trust me, I feel for you! Over the last year 7-Elevens and grocery stores in my town have stopped accepting credit cards, which is a real pain since those are two of the most lucrative categories in which to manufacture spend, for example using Chase Ink cards for gas, the American Express Premier Rewards Gold for groceries, and US Bank Flexperks Travel cards for either.

Fortunately, what I do is more than extreme couponing. I'm a travel hacker, and that means the opportunity to regularly visit lots of different cities, where stores have different policies. There is no national policy on the acceptance of credit cards at 7-Eleven store locations, for example, so while it's becoming harder to find locations willing to accept credit cards, it's still possible, and it's still worth it.

For example, just in the last month while visiting Chicago and Portland, OR I was able to find 7-Eleven store locations that accepted credit cards for PayPal My Cash cards (I'm happy to share those locations by e-mail with anyone interested).

Likewise, while AAA offices here in the Southern New England division sell only American Express gift cards, in Chicago they sell PIN-enabled Visa gift cards you can use to buy money orders, make bill payments, or load prepaid cards at Walmart.

Now, I'm not saying you should visit Chicago just to pick up a few thousand dollars in manufactured spending. But I am saying it's worth knowing all the techniques that are available, even if you can't apply them on a day-to-day basis – you never know when your travels will take you to a city where they'll pay off, hopefully in a big way.

What are my readers curious about?

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I'm putting together a year-end summary of my mile-and-point activity, scouring my rewards accounts for data that might be interesting to my readers. So far I've put together a collection of data on the cost of my manufactured spend, my fixed-value points redemptions (i.e. Citi ThankYou student loan rebate checks), and airline and hotel redemptions.

But I can't help but think that there must be specific questions my readers are interested in. What do you want to see included in my year-end summary?

Here's a quick glance at some preliminary data:

  • Minimum measurable manufactured spend: $189,755 (for information on why I call this the minimum measurable MS, check back for the complete dataset);
  • Cash spent on manufactured spend: $1,554.70;
  • Maximum cost per dollar of manufactured spend: $0.0082 (0.82 cents per dollar)
  • Value of fixed-value and cash redemptions: $5,435.81;
  • Fixed-value and cash balances remaining at EOY: $1,041.89;
  • Annual fees paid: $259;
  • Minimum cash profit this year: $4,664.

So, what do you want to see included in my year-end summary?