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Just bought EQP to requalify for IHG Diamond through end of 2025! Since I usually buy miles for 0.5 cents, the $768 to buy 110,000 EQP was only a $218 premium, and I get Diamond again
Ran into the Mexican car insurance scam with Budget in Merida, Mexico 🇲🇽
Base rate was $18 USD a day, but if you didn't get the CDW costing minimum $85 USD a day, I had to put down a deposit of 330,000 MXN / $16,000 USD which obviously got rejected by all my credit cards.
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Just wanted to do a quick post for future reference. If you have a negative credit balance on one of your credit cards (i.e. from an overpayment or a huge refund that hit), most banks let you transfer that balance to another card you hold at that bank to decrease the balance owed on that card. I’ve done it with Citi and Chase.
I was chatting with Amex tonight to transfer a huge refund I got on one card to to 3 other Amex cards I have. Here is a quick breakdown of what I found:
Before I dive into what is (intentionally) a controversial topic, I just want to take a second to welcome all our new readers who found us through Doctor of Credit. We’re super excited to have you, and hopefully you’ll find that we have an interesting thing or two to share. And of course, I’d be remiss to thank all of our existing, long-time readers (dad, I’m talking to you) for supporting us and valuing our voices. As we close in on the anniversary of our starting the blog, I couldn’t be happier with how it has turned out, and I know Esther and Michael feel the same way. We’ve managed to break some deals, share some different perspectives on hacking, tell some funny stories, and extend our hobby with our friends in family. What more could we want?
As a follow up to the guide on how to get to Asia using your transferable points, Adam from The Jet Set Blog commented that he also had a comprehensive guide for Europe. He’s also planning to add guides for each major region, so I’d give him a follow.
I’ve got some reading to do! And now that I will have 100k extra MR points, Alitalia is looking like an increasingly attractive option for business redemptions.
This is the highest bonus we’ve ever seen on the card! It comes with all the normal benefits of the Amex Platinum, plus a few Mercedes-specific ones. Most importantly, however, it counts as a separate product under Amex’s once-per-lifetime rule.
The offer is a pretty standard $3,000 of spending within the first three months of opening the card. If you’ve been thinking of getting a Platinum card, I would jump on this, as the Business Platinum card bonuses typically have very high spending requirements, and good bonuses on the personal (non co-branded) card tend to be targeted and far between.
For those of you that have been following the blogosphere lately, you may have seen headlines like “Highest Offer I’ve Ever Seen” or “Best Amex Platinum Offer Ever.” When you click through, you are presented with the following (highly highly highly highly) targeted offer, first reported on r/churning on Reddit:
Yes, it is. But how does it actually work? There are two parts:
Update: Many people are reporting offers for 10,000 MR after $500 spend. Share your data points in the comments!
Saw this come up on all of my Membership Rewards-earning cards in my Amex account:
Note that it can only be used for hotel bookings (Esther and I have made this mistake before), and, it excludes Fine Hotels & Resorts as well, but it’s a pretty sweet deal if you have cash bookings coming up.
There’s a new trick to recover lost Amex offers if you forgot to do the multi-tab / multi-browser method. I was adding the Staples $25 of $100 Amex Offer to one of my American Express cards, when I realized I forgot to open up new tabs for the rest of my cards. I went to check the other cards, and indeed, the offer wasn’t there.
I was going to resign myself to missing out on the offer on my other cards, but then I noticed a comment from reader wwllmm on Doctor of Credit’s post, saying that you could get back offers you had lost with these steps:
Via reddit / various blogs, there are new increased signup bonus offers for both Hilton cards from American Express.
For the no fee card, the new offer is 75,000 points after $1000 in spending, compared to the normal 40,000 points after $750 in spending. The card offers 7x points on Hilton purchases, 5x at restaurants, supermarkets, and gas stations, and 3x everywhere else. It also offers Silver status in Hilton HHonors and Gold status if you spend more than $20,000 in a calendar year. I wouldn’t actually do this, or use the card for restaurants, supermarkets, or gas stations, by the way.
Just a collection of blog posts I found interesting from this week!
Access the old version of the Amex Offers website. American Express rolled out new version of the Amex Offers website a couple of months ago, but the new interface is much less convenient to see and add all your offers at once. Fortunately, the link to the old version of the Amex Offers website is still working! H/T Miles to Memories.
From Reddit via FlyerTalk, there are increased offers available for the following cards through incognito windows / private browsing.
American Express Gold Charge Card
25,000 Membership Rewards after $1,000 spend in first 3 months. Earns 2x Membership Rewards for purchases made directly with airlines, and US restaurants. 1x for everything else. $160 annual fee, waived the first year.
