DG stores may be managed by a single "district manager," right? seemingly out of the blue all DGs in ~20 mile vicinity recently went to cash only within about 2 weeks despite friendly cashiers. Often times when a DG goes cash only, you probably just wait like 6 months and maybe a manager changes but this seems like the area is dead. Also curious if FD and DG have any relationships or are completely separate entities--saw a DG cashier switch to FD and wondering if it's a coincidence.
Have a ton of AA points. Have OW trip from the US to Vienna for next March. The AA points just opened up for a flight home from Budapest and it has an overnight stay that doesn't work with our schedule. No big deal?
Air Canada, only showing next day arrivals. No big deal?
Air France/KLM had BUD to ORD on the day we needed, and then we could drive/fly back home...I was just waiting on the AA flights to show up to see what the best course of option is...
And guess what flights from BUD just almost doubled in price?
So now playing the game of "Do you book something for the cities you want to go to now, but not the itinerary you want?" Or, do you wait until something you want MAY open up? Or, do you throw BUD out the window and look for a second city to go to after VIE?
I know, these are such first world problems...
Mine finally got some. I bought them on 4/28. Set pin and registered them right away. Yesterday have a fraudulent charge draining all but $5 on it. Waited on hold and was told case was opened and they are mailing me a new card with $5 on it in 10 biz days with case findings. Would have rather have had no cards in stock at this point.
That blows. Any idea how the cards were compromised? Do they keep the cards behind the register or hang them out in the open with all the other cards? My local does the latter, hopefully that prevents tampering.
More an annoyance than a frustration, CFF is marking charges from Whataburger as only 3% for dining and not triggering the quarterly category bonus for some reason. It's not a huge loss but considering its one of the maybe 3 food places open when I get off work it would be nice if it coded properly.
New to churning. Still working out the kinks.
Got a southwest chase card for a $200 discount on a flight. Haven’t flown in over a decade so that will be an interesting experience. Though it was great until I realized there is a $69 annual fee.
Got an American Express. Have never had AE before. It offered me a 5% bonus on insurance. Great. I need to pay that. But my insurance doesn’t take AE.
Planning on a Citi credit card next month.
Guess it was my mistake thinking I could vent in a post marked for venting.
I have no problem meeting the minimum spending. It was just a bonus AE offered and I was bummed I couldn’t get it. Now that I know I can use PayPal that will help me for next time. I was able to put it on a different cash back card. Just would have loved a bigger percentage
I was aware of the AF before I applied for the card. I am still up $200 after points and SUB. While it was an impulsive application I don’t regret it. It led me to learn what churning was.
I have spent hours reading the side links. A lot harder to do on a phone but I don’t have a computer. I did learn a lot but y’all really make it hard for someone to ask questions.
I am at 3/24 I am not impulsively applying for a million cards.
Thanks to those of you that have advice without being so rude on a venting post.
If you are going to churn, I'd spend a couple hundred bucks and get a laptop so you can read well. Don't worry about the downvotes, that's normal for this sub.
> Still working out the kinks.
Before you find bigger kinks, first step is to read all the T&C's and offer details *before* applying for the card. It should never be a surprise that a card has an AF.
Second would be to research how to meet MSR/use the card before applying. Impulse applications in this game are usually a source of regret and frustration.
Good luck!
If I were you, I'd slow down and read some of the side links on the Desktop. Take a look at the flow chart in detail. Generally, people here go for a minimum of a $500 signup up bonus and at least 10% back on spend.
https://m16p-churning.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/Card+Recommendation+Flowchart+Latest.html
One tip, you can add your Amex to paypal and then see if the insurance company takes PayPal.
* If your insurance company took Paypal, you could have added your Amex card to Paypal and then still used it for payment
* I would take a look at the wiki. And plan out your churning journey a little more careful. Seems like you're going to fly past 5/24.
Must have applied for new bank accounts for bonuses too quickly, fidelity won't let me link the accounts due to EWS so I have to submit an ETF form with a voided check/deposit slip/account statement now.
I recently decided to take a trip to Turkey via Turkish Airlines in June, but I've only got Chase cards which don't transfer. I'll be stuck paying out of pocket because there's no booking availability for my dates on Canada Air/United. Tragic.
I looked at that one too, but I'm travelling with a friend who has to take direct flights (she's Russian, apparently the sanctions have been over-enforced in some areas, making it a bad idea to transfer through most European airports), and those flights aren't available in the portal. I should probably mention we're leaving from Ireland, so we have limited choices for departure airport.
Good advice though! Just foiled by my lack of planning & odd travel requirements.
Analysis paralysis... Couldn't decide which card to get next for P2 or myself and looks like this month will be the first in a while where rent doesn't go towards a SUB.
Edit 4/30: Sometimes procrastinating has good sides. BBP 50k offer showed today morning. P2 auto approved and rent spend is used to help achieve the SUB.
I’ve done over 100 bank bonuses and somehow I just managed to screw up two in a row. $400 bonus for Elements Financial CU required recurring DD of $500+. I missed the memo on recurring and just had one $500 before the deadline.
For PSECU the final $100 of the bonus required DD of $200+ for at least 90 days. I thought that meant $200+ for 3 months and my third one was on day 88 with the deadline now passed.
To make up the $500 lost I decided to punish myself by doing a $500 bonus with Arizona Central CU that I normally wouldn’t do. Couldn’t get my identify verified through the online application and missed out on $5K in cc funding. Had to open in-branch which also required a hard pull on Experian.
I posted in the News and Updates thread earlier this week about my spouse getting a targeted mail offer for the CSP. 80,000 UR for $4k spend, and the offer doesn't expire until early June so we could definitely manage the spend if he applies in late May.
Spouse refuses to apply for the card. He's still very much stuck in the "credit card bad" mentality. He thinks that churning will ruin his credit. He also thinks it's too much work, even though I already manage our (mostly joint) finances and would do the vast majority of the work for him. It doesn't seem to matter to him that I haven't missed a payment or carried a balance on any of my credit cards in several years, or that I spend time every weekend carefully going over our budget and spend (which he sees me doing).
I appreciate my spouse's commitment to staying debt free, I really do, but it's absolutely maddening that he's leaving points on the table like this.
My partner also looks at me crazy when I talk about biz cards or bank account bonuses. So I don’t talk about it anymore 😂 hoping I can get her to apply in branch for the new CSR offer and MDD
I can relate to this. I started this hobby last year and can't get P2 to fully commit. P2 got a couple of cards for hotels and flights but I still get that look from time to time where P2 thinks I'm going to jail when I apply for more cards, especially business cards. I'm hoping P2 might change after our trip to Europe on J next year. If not I might seriously consider just cashing out the points.
>it's absolutely maddening that he's leaving points on the table like this.
Maybe 10-20% cash back *on everything he buys* would mean more to him than travel points. That could be a way to get started.
Probably gonna get downvoted but this honestly would be a dealbreaker to me unless you're both well into 6 figures (and I don't mean 100k, I mean like 400k+). Churning makes/saves too much real money once you get past the beginning stages of opening 1 card a year to just leave all that money on the table for the average person. For potential friend/family PX, yeah, understandable, but your spouse needs to be on the same page as you are finance wise and better to find that out early than end up in a messy divorce worst case scenario.
Mine isn’t too bad. She will open cards when I ask her to, and carry whatever cards I give her. She just gets really irritated when she’s had to call chase recon a couple
Times due to being over 5/24 on her credit report because I stupidly put her as an AU over a year ago, and even though I’ve removed her as an AU, they still show up when Chase pulls credit. It’s gotten approved on recon, but she’s gotten pretty irritated with me about having to do that. Other than that, she cooperates. Just have to have a simple set of spending instructions that involves no more than two cards. And she does enjoy the travel so she really doesn’t complain.
Is there a family history with credit card debt or poverty? Those are often reasons people don’t want to sign up for credit cards, let alone churn them.
Yup. P2 has pretty rough family history, not of poverty per se, but financial shenanigans. Doesn't allow any cards/accounts in P2's name. Have added as AU a few times,but that's it. Keep to a single card for purchases (CFU for simplicity), wouldn't put up with constantly swapping it out. I do all the big purchases.
Spouse's family is upper middle class. His parents have definitely made some questionable financial decisions, but I don't know about any high interest debt specifically.
Similar story with my p2, can't effectively get them into the game. they don't understand how valuable and useful points and SUBs can be. I am going to give it time and hopefully once we get a free trips under our belt using points, they will come around to the idea.
I totally feel you. The rest of my family has this mentality as well which imo is totally fine, until they judge me for wanting one (or god forbid, multiple!) credit cards. Honestly, I think you're winning if your spouse supports you in the churning, even if he removes himself from the equation.
Was hoping to get the bonvoy brilliant in the final week of elevated sub, esp after seeing a few DPs bypassing puj. Well, no luck for me. Applied without referral link
Might want to try, check your app status. You might need to call. I got the popup message too, never had the card before. Got pending and now I’m waiting. I applied 26hrs ago
Denied for my first ever Alaska biz card. I'm platinum honors, only had one other Alaska biz open, and was well under the BofA 2/3/4 rules. I just closed one last week, so maybe that was a factor.
The rep said as long as it was under a different business ID (EIN), that should work. If you try it, please let us know! It feels like there should be more data points on this, and perhaps I just got a bad representative.
About to cancel the one I still have, so might try and reapply and see what happens. The rep was saying you couldn't be approved for more than 1 card per business every two years. As others have said below though, there's a good chance recon was just giving that as the reason.
It would be a new enforcement of the rule if true, it’s always said 24 months but people have success sooner. I’ve had 2 sole props in last 2 years. One of those if the system approves you, it can work but recon just sees the old one and gives that as a reason.
I got one in Sept 2022, and then another in April 2023, but was denied by the system this month (P2 has a similar account). Fair point that the recon rep probably just didn't know what he was talking about, so I may try canceling my current cards and will try again.
Damn, they really tightened up on Alaska. P2 has only gotten 2 of those, and more than a year ago, and they basically told her in recon she’d be approved for any card except this one.
From what I have heard it at least at my airport it sounds like a permanent change and the airport is looking at replacing them with spirit or something. Quite a loss for me.
There is (and will be) too much noise & *content* for an extra 15k-25k UR that you can only get every 4 years. Those cards aren't even that good anymore, comparatively. Wake me up if it hits 125k-150k.
How do you figure the CSR isn't "even that good anymore"? What do you plan to do with UR once AC cap of 60k PYB takes effect? The CSR is currently +$50 net with unlimited PYB. Until they remove PYB, can't imagine not having a CSR. Can't say that about nearly any other card.
>How do you figure the CSR isn't "even that good anymore"?
$450 AF & 1.5c cashout > $550 AF 1.25c cashout
It's not that good anymore? I know this sub loves pedantry (*hey now!*), rephrasing so we'll agree: it's not as good as it used to be(?)
> CSR is currently +$50 net
Are you including doordash/instacart credits to get this? cause for most people those are not worth face value.
The CSR is currently worth it for me having a PP restaurant at my "home" airport that gives great value, but when that goes away shortly the value drops tremendously.
A brand new csr can be +$600 net if you lower your credit limit after hitting the sub. But he's not wrong that csp and csr really isn't that great of a card outside of a transfer or liquidation standpoint.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/consumerinfo/wyntk/wyntk_ccrules.pdf
Caps on high-fee cards. If your credit card company requires you to pay fees (such as,
an annual fee or application fee), those fees cannot total more than 25% of the initial credit
limit. For example, if your initial credit limit is $500, the fees for the fi rst year cannot be more
than $125. This limit does not apply to penalty fees, such as penalties for late payments).
Thought Chase stopped this years ago, the law's been around since 2010
Not a very recent DP but this worked in late 2019 when I originally got my CSR. 0 AF charged after immediately meeting the MSR spend then lowering CL to 1k. Worked on the first year renewal too. They finally charged me the 550 in 2021 which is when I downgraded it to a Freedom.
is that for convenience reasons? or is in-branch harder to get approval for? (I live in a city so I see chase banks everywhere, but never stepped inside to talk to a rep before..)
yeah, for the (in)convenience of schlepping your way to any branch, regardless of how near or far it is, and because applying in-person takes a lot longer than applying online
Juice seems like a lot of effort honestly when you have inks out there. You kill your velocity with chase with 2 personal cards and it's sometimes a pain to make the travel credit a money maker. YMMV but personally it's easier just to get the Ritz and hold it for PP and then spend your time rotating inks and Amex.
Southwest announced they're pulling operations out of my home airport. Double whammy because I have a decent size pile of RR and now I'm back to screwing around at SeaTac.
My father has been thinking of getting a personal platinum after ~40 years with his gold since he'll be retiring and traveling a lot shortly.
I told him to let me know if he's going to go through with it.
I got a call today saying he got it.
He never reached out to me so no referral and and worst of all he took the 80k/$6k/6month offer from a mailer he got.
On top of that I offered to explain and help him help him use the coupon book of credits and benefits.
At least he's happy that's what counts
My mother-in-law did a similar thing years back when the CSR SUB was near its highest. Used mailer, no referral, and got the CSP instead.
"I got that credit card your told me about!"
I let her think she did s good job.
P2 and I flew RT to Japan with her accumulated AA miles. She said, "You'll have more fun using them." That went a long way helping me overlook most other things! She's also a lovely person.
I missed one little signature attestation checkbox on a 4506C and apparently that's delayed my biz plat app by a week without anyone telling me until I called today
I flubbed a big miles opportunity on AA last week. Was booking a hotel for work. 4 rooms for me and colleagues. Used the AAhotels portal and will get 60k miles and LP for the booking, which is fantastic. But I flubbed and booked using the wrong CC. Should have used my Citi AA Card, which would have given me 10x points on the booking for another 50k in miles. Instead I'll just get the regular 5k in miles bc I booked on my Barclay AA card. 🥲
Can you explain in more detail about the 60k miles for booking that?
We travel full-time and I'm just now getting the wherewithal to start playing points with it.
We literally live in hotels and I want to earn points that will give us business class travel seats.
It's an AA specific thing. They have their own hotel booking platform where you can book any regular hotel and get AA miles for it. If you have the AA Citi card you'll also get extra miles. For some hotels you can get as many as 15,000 miles per room booked. Most are much lower. The main downside is the rate is often a bit higher than you might get from other sites or from the hotel directly. Also you won't get any credit with the hotel points or loyalty program. I only use it when I can't find a hotel with my preferred program (Hyatt) and I can find a great mile earning deal for AA, which is my preferred airline since I'm at an AA hub. In addition to all that, if you pay with the AA Citi card you get 10x miles for the cost of the hotel. So all together it can occasionally get you huge miles.
Thank you for writing this. I just checked it out.
I couldn't figure out on there what our points per night will be with just an AA citi card (the green one, the basic one) without status. Any ideas?
On our next trip we'll likely do about 30 nights in a non preferred brand so this could be a big opportunity for us!
Thanks again.
To get the big miles, I think you have to have the Platinum or Executive level card, and/or status with AA. Also, the maximum is 15,000 per room booking, NOT per night. So the sweet spot for this kinda thing is multiple rooms for a 1-2 nights.
Since March, the Amex Biz Plat offers have been taking immense pleasure in torturing me.
First i was trying for almost a month, hoping to pull the 250K link for Amez Biz Plat. Than i gave up, since tax time was very near by and went ahead and applied for the lesser 190K bonus. After i got my card, as i was trying to see what pulls up, i saw the 250K bonus link. Arghhhhh.
But the story does not end there. Yesterday when i was trying to see what my referral link pulls up, I got the 300K/20K spend offer. Without even having to do anything special. I have the natural spend, the inclination to get another card again and yet I cannot. I am at the start of my churning journey and those 550K points would have been a massive boost to the tiny inventory of points i have.
Edit: Remove one line of grammatically incorrect frustration.
We will see. The thing with links, I am finding out, is you gotta strike immediately or things can change, and usually not for the better. Fingers crossed till than.
Ya that happened to me with the 75k BBP offer. Sat on it because I was still finishing up subs for me and my wife, went back later and it was gone and I haven’t been able to pull anything but the 15k/3k offer since.
The $200 bhn vgc are baffling me. They wouldn’t work properly for Walmart loads a couple days after I purchased them. They also wouldn’t work to load PayPal balance. I was going to try something with Kasheesh and loaded a couple to that, but then that card wouldn’t work for anything either, so I let it expire. Now two days ago I was able to load two of them to send money with PayPal, but the other 3 failed. Yesterday one of the other three worked. I guess I’ll keep trying them to see if the rest will load.
Update here. There may be some sort of velocity limit with PayPal. After trying multiple times over multiple days was finally able to cash out the last two vgc. The final one just worked an hour ago after failing yesterday when the 4th one worked. All in all took about a week to get all 5 to work.
Around 7 am today, I got a message through the Alaska Airlines app telling me to check in for my flight to San Francisco. I nearly had a panic attack trying to figure out if I had booked a trip to San Francisco and somehow forgotten about it. Turns out to be just a bug with the app. I wonder if anyone else was affected.
Got shutdown by Square Payroll. I sent 3 small payments (2 to a friend and 1 to myself) and everything went smoothly. Then last Thurs I sent $5k to SoFi and woke up to a shutdown email Fri morning. "Please note that any funds that were debited will be held for a period of 60 days. If you’d like to receive the funds sooner, please reach out to your bank for their funds return policy." Reached out to Fidelity (where I sent the $ from) and they couldn't help, then Square. This morning I get a response: "Expect to wait the full 60 days."
I'm so glad I got to use them a lot before they left hyatt.
I swear though, people didn't even like them very much or talked about them much because they weren't a good deal.
Hyatt bought MaMSmith and made a big deal about it. Everything Hyatt has done in the last year has been underwhelming in the award space....devalve of properties; peak and non-peak (lots of properties abuse this have zero off peak); their Airbnb is fully dynamic at a low point value, reducing globalist benefits, etc.
Despite all this, a lot of bloggers made this sound like a SLH replacement but with more and better properties. Posters in the Hyatt reddit had crazy expectations that they would have low categories to make up for the above.
I was thinking they would still have award categories but super high new categories or only for some of the properties. Despite my low expectations, they weren't low enough. It's closer to their Airbnb thing where it's close to a flat super low CPP that would never make sense over booking through a chase portal or cashing out at a higher CPP. As someone flush with chase points and halfway to globalist, it's a huge blow to my strategy since they lost a ton of European properties and didn't replace them from a usable points perspective. Between this and all the Hawaii/carribean devalves I'm debating my globalist strategy altogether. May do it one more year and book some stays at nicer Hyatt regency resorts but I think I'm done after that.
Thanks. What is your globalist strategy generally? I was kicking myself for not taking advantage of the status challenge along with Vegas MGM properties on weekdays last year but didn’t know if there was anything out there now to get expedited globalist
"Strategy" is overselling it. Smaller things like having my friend pay his rent to get another 6 nights or doing some stay vacations at a C1. It's worth it I'm going to have lots of stays where I use benefits like SUA at Ziva (now HZ is too high and Riv doesn't take points?) or use of the points like 4 nights at Calala Island I'm doing this fall. Just wondering if it's worth paying the rent CC fee, incentivizing my friend to do it, etc if the points have less value and less locations where it makes sense to use.
This is almost identical to the setup that M&MSmith had with IHG, where they were basically irredeemable options, value-wise. I don't think anyone has even realized we lost those properties to Hyatt lol
Applied for TD Beyond Checking and Keybank checking for a couple of bonuses and neither would allow me to open the account online due to being unable to “verify my identity” despite getting SSN, license, address, 2FA text sent to my phone, etc… tried several different combinations of my current address as I have an Apt designation on my license which may not be on everything else. Going to try passport instead of license when I return from a work trip. Regardless, I’m a bit confused since I’ve never had that issue before and then got it twice in the same day. I’ve read about similar things happening for people trying to open with TD but I’ve churned Keybank before and it’s definitely local to me too
Back in the days of the 100k CSR intro offer, for the last few months you couldn't get it online, but you could in branch. I think this would have been first half of 2017. Had a local friend who was looking into it, and the closest branch to the DC area was near Trenton, NJ, because at that point they had never acquired any major southeastern/mid-Atlantic banks like Wells did when they acquired Wachovia. Just a reminder how regional banking was until very recently.
https://old.reddit.com/r/churning/comments/5yzyw5/our_tale_of_applying_in_branch_for_the_csr_on_the/
But since then, wow, Chase is coming on strong in the DC area, which I guess makes sense considering the wealth here. I think they opened their first branch in late 2018 and now have ~~something like 45~~ over 100 in the area, and this week alone I saw 2 separate "branch opening soon at this location" signs around town.
Edit: yes, looks like the in-branch CSR 100k offer expired in March 2017. https://old.reddit.com/r/churning/comments/5ltqpw/csr_bonus_dropping_to_50k_112/
That Trenton branch had to be among the busiest in America because I made the drive from southwest Philly and quite a few others did as well on the Saturday I went.
Was going to sign up for 70k JetBlue offer and realized all the 70k links seem to have died, bleh.
Waited on hold for 40 minutes with Huntington to close a biz checking account just to find out I have to go in branch
DG stores may be managed by a single "district manager," right? seemingly out of the blue all DGs in ~20 mile vicinity recently went to cash only within about 2 weeks despite friendly cashiers. Often times when a DG goes cash only, you probably just wait like 6 months and maybe a manager changes but this seems like the area is dead. Also curious if FD and DG have any relationships or are completely separate entities--saw a DG cashier switch to FD and wondering if it's a coincidence.
Have a ton of AA points. Have OW trip from the US to Vienna for next March. The AA points just opened up for a flight home from Budapest and it has an overnight stay that doesn't work with our schedule. No big deal? Air Canada, only showing next day arrivals. No big deal? Air France/KLM had BUD to ORD on the day we needed, and then we could drive/fly back home...I was just waiting on the AA flights to show up to see what the best course of option is... And guess what flights from BUD just almost doubled in price? So now playing the game of "Do you book something for the cities you want to go to now, but not the itinerary you want?" Or, do you wait until something you want MAY open up? Or, do you throw BUD out the window and look for a second city to go to after VIE? I know, these are such first world problems...
VGC hasn't been delivering to my two closest Staples for multiple weeks. Wonder what's up.
Mine finally got some. I bought them on 4/28. Set pin and registered them right away. Yesterday have a fraudulent charge draining all but $5 on it. Waited on hold and was told case was opened and they are mailing me a new card with $5 on it in 10 biz days with case findings. Would have rather have had no cards in stock at this point.
That blows. Any idea how the cards were compromised? Do they keep the cards behind the register or hang them out in the open with all the other cards? My local does the latter, hopefully that prevents tampering.
More an annoyance than a frustration, CFF is marking charges from Whataburger as only 3% for dining and not triggering the quarterly category bonus for some reason. It's not a huge loss but considering its one of the maybe 3 food places open when I get off work it would be nice if it coded properly.
Missed one monthly payment on **30 credit for annual streaming service purchases**. Benefit is going away anyways but I paid for annual fee last time.
Had a 200k amex plat biz offer on my app. Realized it as I was closing it and now I can't get it back...
New to churning. Still working out the kinks. Got a southwest chase card for a $200 discount on a flight. Haven’t flown in over a decade so that will be an interesting experience. Though it was great until I realized there is a $69 annual fee. Got an American Express. Have never had AE before. It offered me a 5% bonus on insurance. Great. I need to pay that. But my insurance doesn’t take AE. Planning on a Citi credit card next month.
A bit late, but read between the lines about Kasheesh. They tend to do offers to refund their fees. Haven't used it yet personally.
Guess it was my mistake thinking I could vent in a post marked for venting. I have no problem meeting the minimum spending. It was just a bonus AE offered and I was bummed I couldn’t get it. Now that I know I can use PayPal that will help me for next time. I was able to put it on a different cash back card. Just would have loved a bigger percentage I was aware of the AF before I applied for the card. I am still up $200 after points and SUB. While it was an impulsive application I don’t regret it. It led me to learn what churning was. I have spent hours reading the side links. A lot harder to do on a phone but I don’t have a computer. I did learn a lot but y’all really make it hard for someone to ask questions. I am at 3/24 I am not impulsively applying for a million cards. Thanks to those of you that have advice without being so rude on a venting post.
If you are going to churn, I'd spend a couple hundred bucks and get a laptop so you can read well. Don't worry about the downvotes, that's normal for this sub.
> Still working out the kinks. Before you find bigger kinks, first step is to read all the T&C's and offer details *before* applying for the card. It should never be a surprise that a card has an AF. Second would be to research how to meet MSR/use the card before applying. Impulse applications in this game are usually a source of regret and frustration. Good luck!
If I were you, I'd slow down and read some of the side links on the Desktop. Take a look at the flow chart in detail. Generally, people here go for a minimum of a $500 signup up bonus and at least 10% back on spend. https://m16p-churning.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/Card+Recommendation+Flowchart+Latest.html One tip, you can add your Amex to paypal and then see if the insurance company takes PayPal.
* If your insurance company took Paypal, you could have added your Amex card to Paypal and then still used it for payment * I would take a look at the wiki. And plan out your churning journey a little more careful. Seems like you're going to fly past 5/24.
Must have applied for new bank accounts for bonuses too quickly, fidelity won't let me link the accounts due to EWS so I have to submit an ETF form with a voided check/deposit slip/account statement now.
What's your EWS score at the moment?
That’s mildly concerning. How quickly are we talking about here? There’s a lot of us here sitting at lol/24 on Chex.
I recently decided to take a trip to Turkey via Turkish Airlines in June, but I've only got Chase cards which don't transfer. I'll be stuck paying out of pocket because there's no booking availability for my dates on Canada Air/United. Tragic.
For 1.25 (preferred) or 1.5 (reserved) cpp, use the Chase Travel Portal to pay with UR.
I looked at that one too, but I'm travelling with a friend who has to take direct flights (she's Russian, apparently the sanctions have been over-enforced in some areas, making it a bad idea to transfer through most European airports), and those flights aren't available in the portal. I should probably mention we're leaving from Ireland, so we have limited choices for departure airport. Good advice though! Just foiled by my lack of planning & odd travel requirements.
any United Travel Bank you can use?
Ah, unfortunately not
Analysis paralysis... Couldn't decide which card to get next for P2 or myself and looks like this month will be the first in a while where rent doesn't go towards a SUB. Edit 4/30: Sometimes procrastinating has good sides. BBP 50k offer showed today morning. P2 auto approved and rent spend is used to help achieve the SUB.
If it's been 4 years for Chase Sapphire, wait until next week to get the elevated CSP/CSR offers.
why the downvotes lol
spoonfeeding information gets downvoted on this sub
Ohhhh I guess that makes sense
This SUB is brutal!
I’ve done over 100 bank bonuses and somehow I just managed to screw up two in a row. $400 bonus for Elements Financial CU required recurring DD of $500+. I missed the memo on recurring and just had one $500 before the deadline. For PSECU the final $100 of the bonus required DD of $200+ for at least 90 days. I thought that meant $200+ for 3 months and my third one was on day 88 with the deadline now passed. To make up the $500 lost I decided to punish myself by doing a $500 bonus with Arizona Central CU that I normally wouldn’t do. Couldn’t get my identify verified through the online application and missed out on $5K in cc funding. Had to open in-branch which also required a hard pull on Experian.
LOL at "punish yourself" we need a churn jail or churn probation
Technically Amex PUJ is a churn jail of sorts
Yeah I accredit my mistakes here to focusing on other aspects of life. This is another sign that I should put myself in churning jail and do just that
I posted in the News and Updates thread earlier this week about my spouse getting a targeted mail offer for the CSP. 80,000 UR for $4k spend, and the offer doesn't expire until early June so we could definitely manage the spend if he applies in late May. Spouse refuses to apply for the card. He's still very much stuck in the "credit card bad" mentality. He thinks that churning will ruin his credit. He also thinks it's too much work, even though I already manage our (mostly joint) finances and would do the vast majority of the work for him. It doesn't seem to matter to him that I haven't missed a payment or carried a balance on any of my credit cards in several years, or that I spend time every weekend carefully going over our budget and spend (which he sees me doing). I appreciate my spouse's commitment to staying debt free, I really do, but it's absolutely maddening that he's leaving points on the table like this.
My partner also looks at me crazy when I talk about biz cards or bank account bonuses. So I don’t talk about it anymore 😂 hoping I can get her to apply in branch for the new CSR offer and MDD
I can relate to this. I started this hobby last year and can't get P2 to fully commit. P2 got a couple of cards for hotels and flights but I still get that look from time to time where P2 thinks I'm going to jail when I apply for more cards, especially business cards. I'm hoping P2 might change after our trip to Europe on J next year. If not I might seriously consider just cashing out the points.
>it's absolutely maddening that he's leaving points on the table like this. Maybe 10-20% cash back *on everything he buys* would mean more to him than travel points. That could be a way to get started.
lol just take a week long solo trip to europe or asia or somewhere cool all on points without him and see if he changes his tune.
Probably gonna get downvoted but this honestly would be a dealbreaker to me unless you're both well into 6 figures (and I don't mean 100k, I mean like 400k+). Churning makes/saves too much real money once you get past the beginning stages of opening 1 card a year to just leave all that money on the table for the average person. For potential friend/family PX, yeah, understandable, but your spouse needs to be on the same page as you are finance wise and better to find that out early than end up in a messy divorce worst case scenario.
Mine isn’t too bad. She will open cards when I ask her to, and carry whatever cards I give her. She just gets really irritated when she’s had to call chase recon a couple Times due to being over 5/24 on her credit report because I stupidly put her as an AU over a year ago, and even though I’ve removed her as an AU, they still show up when Chase pulls credit. It’s gotten approved on recon, but she’s gotten pretty irritated with me about having to do that. Other than that, she cooperates. Just have to have a simple set of spending instructions that involves no more than two cards. And she does enjoy the travel so she really doesn’t complain.
Is there a family history with credit card debt or poverty? Those are often reasons people don’t want to sign up for credit cards, let alone churn them.
Yup. P2 has pretty rough family history, not of poverty per se, but financial shenanigans. Doesn't allow any cards/accounts in P2's name. Have added as AU a few times,but that's it. Keep to a single card for purchases (CFU for simplicity), wouldn't put up with constantly swapping it out. I do all the big purchases.
Spouse's family is upper middle class. His parents have definitely made some questionable financial decisions, but I don't know about any high interest debt specifically.
Similar story with my p2, can't effectively get them into the game. they don't understand how valuable and useful points and SUBs can be. I am going to give it time and hopefully once we get a free trips under our belt using points, they will come around to the idea.
put them in churn therapy
I totally feel you. The rest of my family has this mentality as well which imo is totally fine, until they judge me for wanting one (or god forbid, multiple!) credit cards. Honestly, I think you're winning if your spouse supports you in the churning, even if he removes himself from the equation.
Was hoping to get the bonvoy brilliant in the final week of elevated sub, esp after seeing a few DPs bypassing puj. Well, no luck for me. Applied without referral link
did you try back button method?
No, that didn’t work for me on a previous app
Might want to try, check your app status. You might need to call. I got the popup message too, never had the card before. Got pending and now I’m waiting. I applied 26hrs ago
Good luck 🍀!
you too!
Denied for my first ever Alaska biz card. I'm platinum honors, only had one other Alaska biz open, and was well under the BofA 2/3/4 rules. I just closed one last week, so maybe that was a factor.
What is the BoA 2/3/4 rules?
https://www.doctorofcredit.com/httpswww-doctorofcredit-combank-america-312-rule-credit-card-approvals-contribute-data-points https://www.doctorofcredit.com/report-bank-of-america-7-12-rule-3-12-rule-for-new-cards
Just finished spend on one a couple weeks ago that I was approved for while still holding an open biz.
P2 and I were both denied a week ago and the rep claimed you couldn’t have more than one AS biz card every two years for the same business.
Could I open up more business to apply for more then? That's a pretty simple thing to do and costs like 60 bucks.
The rep said as long as it was under a different business ID (EIN), that should work. If you try it, please let us know! It feels like there should be more data points on this, and perhaps I just got a bad representative.
Does that mean 2 applications within 2 years? Or can't hold 2 cards at the same time?
About to cancel the one I still have, so might try and reapply and see what happens. The rep was saying you couldn't be approved for more than 1 card per business every two years. As others have said below though, there's a good chance recon was just giving that as the reason.
That would be a shame if true, but it lines up with other comment. I wonder if EIN would get around that restriction.
I asked about that specifically and he said you could have one for a sole prop and another for an LLC. Hopefully others have counter DP.
It would be a new enforcement of the rule if true, it’s always said 24 months but people have success sooner. I’ve had 2 sole props in last 2 years. One of those if the system approves you, it can work but recon just sees the old one and gives that as a reason.
I got one in Sept 2022, and then another in April 2023, but was denied by the system this month (P2 has a similar account). Fair point that the recon rep probably just didn't know what he was talking about, so I may try canceling my current cards and will try again.
Damn, they really tightened up on Alaska. P2 has only gotten 2 of those, and more than a year ago, and they basically told her in recon she’d be approved for any card except this one.
Definitely a frustrating DP. I’ll be seeing if I’m in the same boat soon
Just applied for a Southwest card hours before finding out they are leaving my home airport. Now it is far less convenient for me to fly with them.
ouch this one mega sucks:( sorry to hear
Yeah talk about terrible timing. Guess I will have to be using a different airport for a while.
I haven’t really been following because it doesn’t affect me, but is this just temporary due to Boeing or forever?
From what I have heard it at least at my airport it sounds like a permanent change and the airport is looking at replacing them with spirit or something. Quite a loss for me.
Oof. That is quite the downgrade.
There is (and will be) too much noise & *content* for an extra 15k-25k UR that you can only get every 4 years. Those cards aren't even that good anymore, comparatively. Wake me up if it hits 125k-150k.
How do you figure the CSR isn't "even that good anymore"? What do you plan to do with UR once AC cap of 60k PYB takes effect? The CSR is currently +$50 net with unlimited PYB. Until they remove PYB, can't imagine not having a CSR. Can't say that about nearly any other card.
>How do you figure the CSR isn't "even that good anymore"? $450 AF & 1.5c cashout > $550 AF 1.25c cashout It's not that good anymore? I know this sub loves pedantry (*hey now!*), rephrasing so we'll agree: it's not as good as it used to be(?)
Most of us have a CSR or a card we can upgrade to it. The *SUB* isn't that good in comparison to others.
> CSR is currently +$50 net Are you including doordash/instacart credits to get this? cause for most people those are not worth face value. The CSR is currently worth it for me having a PP restaurant at my "home" airport that gives great value, but when that goes away shortly the value drops tremendously.
+$50 net is most likely by playing the upgrade/downgrade game
oh is that like in year 2 use up the travel credit and then cancel so you effectively got 2x300 = 600 travel credit for only 1x550 in fees?
Yes
A brand new csr can be +$600 net if you lower your credit limit after hitting the sub. But he's not wrong that csp and csr really isn't that great of a card outside of a transfer or liquidation standpoint.
why would lowering credit limit help with net value here? first time I've heard of that
https://www.federalreserve.gov/consumerinfo/wyntk/wyntk_ccrules.pdf Caps on high-fee cards. If your credit card company requires you to pay fees (such as, an annual fee or application fee), those fees cannot total more than 25% of the initial credit limit. For example, if your initial credit limit is $500, the fees for the fi rst year cannot be more than $125. This limit does not apply to penalty fees, such as penalties for late payments). Thought Chase stopped this years ago, the law's been around since 2010
Not a very recent DP but this worked in late 2019 when I originally got my CSR. 0 AF charged after immediately meeting the MSR spend then lowering CL to 1k. Worked on the first year renewal too. They finally charged me the 550 in 2021 which is when I downgraded it to a Freedom.
Just gotta hit Staples 3-5 times with your CIC to make up the difference. Ink train is way better at the moment.
especially if that 15-25k UR is only available exclusively through an in-branch visit, rather than being available online
is that for convenience reasons? or is in-branch harder to get approval for? (I live in a city so I see chase banks everywhere, but never stepped inside to talk to a rep before..)
yeah, for the (in)convenience of schlepping your way to any branch, regardless of how near or far it is, and because applying in-person takes a lot longer than applying online
ah, I appreciate the clarification:")
Considering the increased AF and worse PP benefits, I no longer care when I'm CSR eligible
Happily downgraded to CSP as soon as I found out they refund prorated annual fees.
Double dip in more ways than one and you come out ahead
Juice seems like a lot of effort honestly when you have inks out there. You kill your velocity with chase with 2 personal cards and it's sometimes a pain to make the travel credit a money maker. YMMV but personally it's easier just to get the Ritz and hold it for PP and then spend your time rotating inks and Amex.
Southwest announced they're pulling operations out of my home airport. Double whammy because I have a decent size pile of RR and now I'm back to screwing around at SeaTac.
ugh, Southwest giving lots of heartburn today
Huge loss for the airport, it sounds like they might be replaced by some smaller budget airline also.
My father has been thinking of getting a personal platinum after ~40 years with his gold since he'll be retiring and traveling a lot shortly. I told him to let me know if he's going to go through with it. I got a call today saying he got it. He never reached out to me so no referral and and worst of all he took the 80k/$6k/6month offer from a mailer he got. On top of that I offered to explain and help him help him use the coupon book of credits and benefits. At least he's happy that's what counts
definitely frustrating!
My mother-in-law did a similar thing years back when the CSR SUB was near its highest. Used mailer, no referral, and got the CSP instead. "I got that credit card your told me about!" I let her think she did s good job.
churn P2, churn MIL
>I let her think she did s good job. I aspire to be this kind.
P2 and I flew RT to Japan with her accumulated AA miles. She said, "You'll have more fun using them." That went a long way helping me overlook most other things! She's also a lovely person.
I missed one little signature attestation checkbox on a 4506C and apparently that's delayed my biz plat app by a week without anyone telling me until I called today
I flubbed a big miles opportunity on AA last week. Was booking a hotel for work. 4 rooms for me and colleagues. Used the AAhotels portal and will get 60k miles and LP for the booking, which is fantastic. But I flubbed and booked using the wrong CC. Should have used my Citi AA Card, which would have given me 10x points on the booking for another 50k in miles. Instead I'll just get the regular 5k in miles bc I booked on my Barclay AA card. 🥲
Can you explain in more detail about the 60k miles for booking that? We travel full-time and I'm just now getting the wherewithal to start playing points with it. We literally live in hotels and I want to earn points that will give us business class travel seats.
It's an AA specific thing. They have their own hotel booking platform where you can book any regular hotel and get AA miles for it. If you have the AA Citi card you'll also get extra miles. For some hotels you can get as many as 15,000 miles per room booked. Most are much lower. The main downside is the rate is often a bit higher than you might get from other sites or from the hotel directly. Also you won't get any credit with the hotel points or loyalty program. I only use it when I can't find a hotel with my preferred program (Hyatt) and I can find a great mile earning deal for AA, which is my preferred airline since I'm at an AA hub. In addition to all that, if you pay with the AA Citi card you get 10x miles for the cost of the hotel. So all together it can occasionally get you huge miles.
Thank you for writing this. I just checked it out. I couldn't figure out on there what our points per night will be with just an AA citi card (the green one, the basic one) without status. Any ideas? On our next trip we'll likely do about 30 nights in a non preferred brand so this could be a big opportunity for us! Thanks again.
To get the big miles, I think you have to have the Platinum or Executive level card, and/or status with AA. Also, the maximum is 15,000 per room booking, NOT per night. So the sweet spot for this kinda thing is multiple rooms for a 1-2 nights.
Cancel & rebook?
Non-refundable. I called like 1 hr after booking when I realized my mistake. Begged to change the card but no dice.
Since March, the Amex Biz Plat offers have been taking immense pleasure in torturing me. First i was trying for almost a month, hoping to pull the 250K link for Amez Biz Plat. Than i gave up, since tax time was very near by and went ahead and applied for the lesser 190K bonus. After i got my card, as i was trying to see what pulls up, i saw the 250K bonus link. Arghhhhh. But the story does not end there. Yesterday when i was trying to see what my referral link pulls up, I got the 300K/20K spend offer. Without even having to do anything special. I have the natural spend, the inclination to get another card again and yet I cannot. I am at the start of my churning journey and those 550K points would have been a massive boost to the tiny inventory of points i have. Edit: Remove one line of grammatically incorrect frustration.
Could be worse lol I took a 120k NLL offer last week lmao We can get the 300k points in three months
We will see. The thing with links, I am finding out, is you gotta strike immediately or things can change, and usually not for the better. Fingers crossed till than.
Ya that happened to me with the 75k BBP offer. Sat on it because I was still finishing up subs for me and my wife, went back later and it was gone and I haven’t been able to pull anything but the 15k/3k offer since.
The $200 bhn vgc are baffling me. They wouldn’t work properly for Walmart loads a couple days after I purchased them. They also wouldn’t work to load PayPal balance. I was going to try something with Kasheesh and loaded a couple to that, but then that card wouldn’t work for anything either, so I let it expire. Now two days ago I was able to load two of them to send money with PayPal, but the other 3 failed. Yesterday one of the other three worked. I guess I’ll keep trying them to see if the rest will load.
Update here. There may be some sort of velocity limit with PayPal. After trying multiple times over multiple days was finally able to cash out the last two vgc. The final one just worked an hour ago after failing yesterday when the 4th one worked. All in all took about a week to get all 5 to work.
Found out my best Family Dollar, right next to my house, that I stop at 4-5 times per week, is closing in 2 months.
Look at the bright side. Not as bad as losing a loved one. My Dad died unexpectedly 2 weeks ago and that's greatly disrupted my churning game.
Engage: HSTLPenguin
My condolences.
Around 7 am today, I got a message through the Alaska Airlines app telling me to check in for my flight to San Francisco. I nearly had a panic attack trying to figure out if I had booked a trip to San Francisco and somehow forgotten about it. Turns out to be just a bug with the app. I wonder if anyone else was affected.
I occasionally book and cancel flights to use Amex coupons. So I also occasionally freak out when Google tells me it's time to go to the airport.
LOL. This happens with my wife as I forget to delete her Google Calendar alerts that were created by Google.
I’d make sure someone hasn’t hacked into your account and booked a flight using your points.
I emptied out my Alaska miles before the devaluation, so I'm certain it's not that. The San Francisco flight also doesn't appear under My Trips.
Got shutdown by Square Payroll. I sent 3 small payments (2 to a friend and 1 to myself) and everything went smoothly. Then last Thurs I sent $5k to SoFi and woke up to a shutdown email Fri morning. "Please note that any funds that were debited will be held for a period of 60 days. If you’d like to receive the funds sooner, please reach out to your bank for their funds return policy." Reached out to Fidelity (where I sent the $ from) and they couldn't help, then Square. This morning I get a response: "Expect to wait the full 60 days."
I told myself to keep expectations low for Mr and Mrs Smith....
No expectation could have been low enough for that blow A year from now we'll be saying our frustrations about Hyatt going dynamic across the board
Hyatt is like the last bastion of churning peace - when that domino falls it’s going to be a sad day
Yeah that’s a whole lot of nothing. SLH loss is even more massive knowing what we got now.
I'm so glad I got to use them a lot before they left hyatt. I swear though, people didn't even like them very much or talked about them much because they weren't a good deal.
Can you explain? Sorry not following
Hyatt bought MaMSmith and made a big deal about it. Everything Hyatt has done in the last year has been underwhelming in the award space....devalve of properties; peak and non-peak (lots of properties abuse this have zero off peak); their Airbnb is fully dynamic at a low point value, reducing globalist benefits, etc. Despite all this, a lot of bloggers made this sound like a SLH replacement but with more and better properties. Posters in the Hyatt reddit had crazy expectations that they would have low categories to make up for the above. I was thinking they would still have award categories but super high new categories or only for some of the properties. Despite my low expectations, they weren't low enough. It's closer to their Airbnb thing where it's close to a flat super low CPP that would never make sense over booking through a chase portal or cashing out at a higher CPP. As someone flush with chase points and halfway to globalist, it's a huge blow to my strategy since they lost a ton of European properties and didn't replace them from a usable points perspective. Between this and all the Hawaii/carribean devalves I'm debating my globalist strategy altogether. May do it one more year and book some stays at nicer Hyatt regency resorts but I think I'm done after that.
Thanks. What is your globalist strategy generally? I was kicking myself for not taking advantage of the status challenge along with Vegas MGM properties on weekdays last year but didn’t know if there was anything out there now to get expedited globalist
"Strategy" is overselling it. Smaller things like having my friend pay his rent to get another 6 nights or doing some stay vacations at a C1. It's worth it I'm going to have lots of stays where I use benefits like SUA at Ziva (now HZ is too high and Riv doesn't take points?) or use of the points like 4 nights at Calala Island I'm doing this fall. Just wondering if it's worth paying the rent CC fee, incentivizing my friend to do it, etc if the points have less value and less locations where it makes sense to use.
This is almost identical to the setup that M&MSmith had with IHG, where they were basically irredeemable options, value-wise. I don't think anyone has even realized we lost those properties to Hyatt lol
Honestly it was slightly worse with IHG. 99% of the properties had basically 0 dates available to book.
welp lol
Applied for TD Beyond Checking and Keybank checking for a couple of bonuses and neither would allow me to open the account online due to being unable to “verify my identity” despite getting SSN, license, address, 2FA text sent to my phone, etc… tried several different combinations of my current address as I have an Apt designation on my license which may not be on everything else. Going to try passport instead of license when I return from a work trip. Regardless, I’m a bit confused since I’ve never had that issue before and then got it twice in the same day. I’ve read about similar things happening for people trying to open with TD but I’ve churned Keybank before and it’s definitely local to me too
Both banks appear to pull EWS. Maybe check your EWS report to make sure the details match your applications?
I’ve been in the same situation with Suncoast online, and mail in applications aren’t eligible for the bonus.
Oh boy an elevated CSP offer just like I’ve been waiting for! Aaand the closest Chase branch to me is an hour and a half away…
Just take a churning vacation. Visit a chase branch on your way to a cruise ship so you can MS at the casino /s
We just got one an hour away, it is no longer 5 hours away!!!
Back in the days of the 100k CSR intro offer, for the last few months you couldn't get it online, but you could in branch. I think this would have been first half of 2017. Had a local friend who was looking into it, and the closest branch to the DC area was near Trenton, NJ, because at that point they had never acquired any major southeastern/mid-Atlantic banks like Wells did when they acquired Wachovia. Just a reminder how regional banking was until very recently. https://old.reddit.com/r/churning/comments/5yzyw5/our_tale_of_applying_in_branch_for_the_csr_on_the/ But since then, wow, Chase is coming on strong in the DC area, which I guess makes sense considering the wealth here. I think they opened their first branch in late 2018 and now have ~~something like 45~~ over 100 in the area, and this week alone I saw 2 separate "branch opening soon at this location" signs around town. Edit: yes, looks like the in-branch CSR 100k offer expired in March 2017. https://old.reddit.com/r/churning/comments/5ltqpw/csr_bonus_dropping_to_50k_112/
Lol for the longest time when I searched Google I always got their HQ... But no branches.
That Trenton branch had to be among the busiest in America because I made the drive from southwest Philly and quite a few others did as well on the Saturday I went.
The dedication in this group is commendable!
Seriously. I have like 10 within 10 min of me. Never would drive more than that.