Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is almost done! The last two weeks Greg, Nick, and Stephen competed to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines. But who completed the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
I had been planning to publish the next installment of this series in July, but there have been so many recent changes that I decided to publish now…
Whether you need to increase credit card spend to earn a new credit card signup bonus, or to earn elite status, or simply to earn credit card rewards, it’s important to keep up with the latest news of what works and what does not.
Complete descriptions of techniques can be found on a separate page: Manufactured Spending Complete Guide. Many of the listed techniques aren’t technically “manufactured spending”, but it’s a convenient title. The complete guide is the resource to check when you have questions (and please let us know if more details are needed to answer your questions!). This post, meanwhile, is focused on just the changes. What significant changes have occurred since we last reported in? Read on…
Good and Bad Gift Card News
Good:
- Office Depot / OfficeMax is rolling out their new rewards program nationwide on July 1st. You’ll get 2% back in rewards for all purchases, including gift cards. When you combine 5X rewards by paying with your Ink Cash or Amex SimplyCash Plus card with the new 2% rewards, you’ll more than offset fees on $200 Visa or MasterCard gift cards. This will also be an excellent option for buying Amazon and other third party gift cards. The downside is that the 2% rewards can only be used to buy merchandise (not gift cards) from Office Depot / OfficeMax.
- Gift of College gift cards are now showing up at H-E-B and Fred’s stores. We should soon see them at Best Buy as well. More here.
- Food Lion now accepts credit cards for prepaid gift card purchases.
Bad:
- Five Back Visa Gift Card loses Lowe’s, Bed Bath & Beyond, and more. Another loss to the 5 Back program that we haven’t previously reported is Macy’s.
- GiftCardMall now has a $250 limit on Visa and MasterCard gift cards, but it is easy to design a workaround.
- Official Payments no longer accepting Visa gift cards as debit cards for tax payments (I hope this is a temporary glitch).
- Another Buxx deal is dead.
Plastiq Bill Payment News
All bad news here unfortunately…
- Plastiq rent and mortgage payments are mostly not coding as travel anymore. People have confirmed this to be true for both the Chase Sapphire Reserve and Citi ThankYou Premier. There have been mixed results with the Chase Ink Business Preferred. Details here.
- You can no longer make mortgage payments with Visa credit cards through Plastiq.
- Citi AT&T Access More card will no longer offer 3X for mortgage or rent payments as of July 22
- Paypal Business Debit Card no longer works as debit with Plastiq (e.g. now costs 2.5%)
Miscellaneous Other News
- The iBotta app was the last known way to earn portal rewards when buying third party gift cards on eBay. Unfortunately, that loophole has been closed.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
[…] of what’s new in the world of manufactured spending. We last posted an update in June (here). As always, you can find an up-to-date complete roundup of techniques for increasing spend here: […]
[…] is certainly nice, it requires a huge $7,500 in spend that might be challenging for some people (though probably not for our readers). That said, I think online booking of the 4th night free might be the biggest loss yet to the […]
[…] a 3% grocery category on the first $6K. And truth be told, we publish a monthly guide on how to increase credit card spend and get most of it back. I’m not too concerned about losing out on any rewards to meet this final […]
[…] Increase credit card spend (and get most of it back). What still works June 2017 […]
Any new DPs for loading VGCs onto Bluebird at Walmart? I tried two weeks ago, and the register recognized the VGC as “tender” which the cashier informed me was a gift card. The register rejected the load.
Note:BBP offer has NOT expired. Just because you’re not getting an affiliate kickback doesn’t mean you can’t post a current link, guys…
I changed the text to more accurately say that the affiliate offer has expired. Unfortunately the affiliate rules prevent us from posting a non-affiliate link in this specific situation (where an offer in the affiliate network is about to change). This should be a very short-term issue until the new offer is live.
OD/OM offers 3% for vip for a year after spending $500…too bad I don’t use office supplies.
Interested in the GCM $250 limit workaround as well. Thanks for the info!
Look at the exact wording he used, it was a play on words. You’ll figure it out. Don’t advertise it too much… it’s only a matter of time..
still did not get i?
Hi Greg — you wrote: “GiftCardMall now has a $250 limit on Visa and MasterCard gift cards, but it is easy to design a workaround.”
Knew about the limit, yet do tell re. the “workaround.” (or link us to a previous post/guide on this) Thanks.
Look at the exact wording he used, it was a play on words. You’ll figure it out. Don’t advertise it too much… it’s only a matter of time.
sigh, a “play on words”…..
Now I’ve got one of Greg’s legendary headaches….. distracting me from my real work, wondering what “secret” ya’all are so happily smug in keeping to yourselves…. Sour grapes.
Ah well, good for you. Any clues, riddles, Shakespeare even? 😉
The OM news is actually bad news. By making 2% rewards available to everyone, they lowered the instant discount on their once popular sale of vgc. This happened in preparation of the introduction of the rewards program for the masses. Some of us were already enjoying rewards and the $20 instant discount. The once better instant discount is better than rewards for buying store items later.
You seem to have missed the biggest MS news of the month: AMEX Gift Cards are not currently loading on Venmo. Might be an AMEX issue, might be Venmo. Either way, for people buying $3k AGCs, this is a big deal.
I debated whether to publish that, but it’s unclear to me at this point whether it’s a glitch or a permanent change. We’ll publish that info once it is clear.
Hey Greg, check this out, especially the last line:
http://milesperday.com/2017/06/deal-dead-liquidating-agc-venmo/
Unfortunately I think this may be it for AGC. Reddit giveth, and Reddit taketh away.
Like Greg said, we saw this yesterday. But it’s unclear as to what the issue is — if you read the Reddit thread, you’ll see that people are having their AGCs declined at Amazon, AT&T, one user tried to pay $20 towards the balance he/she owes on a cruise and it got declined — it’s not just Venmo. Hard to say whether it’s dead or Amex is just having a glitch.
This could definitely be a major blow for some people, but at 6x$3000 ($18,000) every 6 months, I don’t think this qualifies as the biggest MS news of the month. The loss of 3x on the AT&T Access More on giftcardmall definitely qualifies as the biggest MS news of the month 6x$15,000 = $90,000 potential over 6 months, or more if you utilize multiple accounts. Major, major loss.