Updates: REDbird, Plenti, my 90,000 point mistake, Ink 30K and 60K offers

27

I have a number of quick updates for today…

REDbird

As of May 6, 2015, Target no longer accepts credit cards for in-store REDbird reloads. For more information, please see “REDbird Post Memo Answers“, and “REDbird grounded. Now what?

One of my local Target stores (Carpenter Road, Ann Arbor) has stopped allowing credit card reloads, but all other area Target stores continue to allow it.  This has happened at several other Target stores around the country (Brooklyn, NJ, Chicago, etc.).  Some of these stores have stopped allowing credit card reloads.  Others have implemented limits that are more stringent than those allowed by the card.  Store employees like to say things like “this is a corporate wide policy”.  Rubbish.  A corporate wide policy may appear at any time, but when I last checked it hasn’t happened yet.

This is clearly an inconvenience for those who live or work close to those particular stores, but I don’t think it portends anything in particular about Target’s overall policy.

Plenti launches today, May 4th

Plenti is a new rewards program backed by American Express.  With this program, you can earn Plenti points from a number of different merchants, and then spend your points with any of these merchants too.  Current partners include AT&T, Exxon, Macy’s, Mobil, Nationwide, Rite Aid, Direct Energy, and Hulu.  I was fortunate attended a presentation from Plenti last week where I learned a couple of potentially useful tidbits:

  • Plenti points will be worth “at least” 1 cent each.  It seems that the usual way to redeem is for exactly 1 cent per point towards any purchase, but the “at least” phrase suggests to me that there will be special offers for better than 1 cent per point value.
  • There are plans to bring on more partners including some travel related.  No details on who, where, when.

Plenti is supposed to be live as of today.  You should be able to find details here.

Plenti_logo2

My 90,000 point mistake… resolved

I wrote previously about my mistake where I forgot to move my wife’s Ultimate Rewards points before I closed her Chase Ink Card account.  My goal was to try to resolve the issue through Secure Messaging, but I wasn’t getting anywhere through that channel.  I was finally resigned to the fact that I would have to convince my wife to get on the phone with Chase when another option presented itself.  I met with a Chase bank representative for another matter altogether and told him what happened.  He shot off an email to someone, somewhere and within a day or two our points were back and deposited into her Freedom account.  They didn’t even have to reopen my wife’s account to do so (as far as I know).  Whew.

Pulling a Jet is easier than it sounds

It turns out that its not so hard for 20 people to pull a 757 jet on a smooth, flat runway.  As expected, our team did not win, but we did have a lot of fun and we raised over $5,000 for the American Cancer Society.  I previously wrote about this event here: Delta’s jets don’t pull themselves.

Ink Plus 60K, Ink Cash 30K

As I predicted last week (see: Ink Plus 60K? Ink Cash 30K?), the Chase Ink improved offers did appear as expected for National Small Business Week.  You can find both offers here.  Note that Chase has become much more strict in the past year or so: it has become very difficult to get approved when your business generates very little income and/or has not been around long.

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