In today’s episode we’ll discuss what’s up with Hilton gift cards, we’ll intensely debate Virgin Atlantic award charts, cover 2 different points millionaire promos, then finally, we’ll tell you how to earns tons of rewards through shopping portals.
Main Event: Rocking Shopping Portals for Huge Rewards
Watch here…
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Giant Mailbag
(01:29) – One reader reports on their success with the Southwest Companion Pass with just one of the Southwest business cards when it had the elevated 120k offer.
Read more about the companion pass here.
Card News
(04:29) – Chase Bonvoy Bold: now features Chase’s Pay Yourself Back benefit.
Crazy Thing: Citi!
(08:36) – Citi changed transfer rates to Flying Blue to 1.25 (temporarily)
Bonvoyed
(11:38) – Qantas devaluation Aug 5th
Check out our Complete List of Transferrable Points Partners here.
Awards, Points, and More
(18:30) – SAS Eurobonus Millionaire update
(22:49) – Chase Travel giving away 1 million Ultimate Rewards points to 10 winners
(24:12) – Virgin Atlantic still has award charts
(32:43) – Westgate Resorts now bookable w/ Choice Privileges
Main Event: Portals
(35:15) – Portal Overview
(43:00) – Our favorite shopping portals (starting with Rakuten)
(55:54) – Portal Myths
Learn more about common shopping portal myths here.
(1:12:08) – Stacking Opportunities
For more stacking ideas, check out The Art of Extreme Stackery | Ep231 | 12-2-23 here.
(1:13:43) – Learn more about card linked offers here.
(1:15:26) – Gift Cards
(1:16:32) – Learn more about buying gift cards at discount (e.g. Pepper) here: https://frequentmiler.com/instant-gift-card-deals
(1:18:05) – Super Stack Example
Question of the Week
(1:24:26) – What’s the deal with Hilton Gift Cards?
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Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie Yoder
It was nice to hear you guys disagree about something. Good to hear conflicting perspectives. I am surprised you didn’t cover bank account bonuses through Rakuten or Swagbucks. That is another great way to rack up some extra spending money.
I couldn’t find anything current on your website, but do you guys have a referral link for Cashback Monitor so I can throw a few bucks your way? Maybe add you links to individual portals, too?
Thanks for all you guys do!
Cash Back Monitor has a few major shortcomings. Here are two:
1. On a given portal, a specific store might have more than one multiple. For example, 2X on clearance items and 10X on all other items. For the purposes of CBM alerts, an alert will look to the 2X and will not trigger a 10X alert that you’ve set. I’ve missed many a point pop due to this.
2. When using the historical rate view, when more than one portal offers the same multiple, you’ll only see one listed . . . and it might not be the one you want . . . for example, you’re after Rakuten/MR points as opposed to pure cash back. There is not an ability to see the historical rate for a specific portal. That’s a hassle.
Have you given feedback to say that you’d like to see historical rates for specific portals? I wonder if that’s a feature they could add if people asked for it.
Nick is wrong
I’m with Greg on the Virgin Atlantic awards debate. The new system has the best of both worlds. Predictable pricing on saver seats gives the advantage of an award chart program but the ability to book any seat for a higher price gives the advantage of dynamic pricing awards. Kind of similar to booking Qatar using Alaska miles. Btw Nick the Kool Aid tastes good