Deals We Miss The Most In The Miles & Points Hobby
They say never look back, just keep moving forward. While that is true for a lot of things in life I can’t help but wallow in regret and sadness every once in a while too. Plus, looking at what has worked in the past always gives us ideas on what may work in the future. A few months ago our Facebook Group moderator Ryan encouraged everyone to share the deals we miss the most in the miles and points hobby. It was fun to see which deals everyone missed most. It was interesting to see if they missed deals on the earning side or burning side of the coin. I figured I would share a couple I miss the most and then would share what the group put together. Please share the deal, or deals, you miss the most down in the comments. Let’s commiserate together on this beautiful Friday morning.
The 3 Deals I Miss The Most
Here are the 3 deals that still keep me up at night. Okay, a bit dramatic there, but these are the ones I enjoyed the most. They weren’t always the most scalable but I enjoyed doing them.
The eBay / Target Merry Go Round
This was my all time favorite deal, mainly because I love a good stack and it was something you did at home. There was a time when you could buy Target gift cards on eBay, often at 10% off, with an eBay gift card. You would earn a few percent back for the purchase on shopping portals plus up to 10% back from eBay bucks (our holiday gifts may have been good these years). But it didn’t stop there, you could then use those Target gift cards to buy eBay gift cards on Target’s website. And, if you had a Target RedCard you would get 5% off the purchase even when paying with a gift card. So you could just cycle the same money and turn it into loads of profits.
It wasn’t massively scalable but it was fun while it lasted. Over time you stopped being able to use eBay gift cards on other gift cards, then they stopped paying out portals and eBay bucks on gift cards and finally Target stopped giving the 5% discount when paying with a Target gift card.
Target Redbird
I am sure this one tops a lot of people’s lists. Especially early on when you could directly load the Redbird card with a credit card. It became slightly more tedious when you had to load with a debit / gift card but it was still easy money. It lasted a lot longer than I thought it would have too. Many people had 4-5 of these to increase their limits. Some were even selling accounts to people in states that didn’t offer them in store. It was pretty crazy.
Speedway Points On Vanilla Visa
This one has recency bias for sure since it just ended a few months back and gas is $5 a gallon and all that. For a year or more you could earn around $8 in Speedy rewards for buying a $500 Vanilla Visa gift card plus credit card points. The card came with a $6 fee but you were earning the $8 in points plus $20+ in credit card rewards. A very profitable, and scalable, play. Then earlier this year Speedway was giving double points when scanning your rewards card in the app. That jumped the value you were getting to $16 per card, pure insanity. As you can imagine, that lasted about a month until they caught on and stopped giving points at all on the card. The free gas train ended just as the price per gallon was skyrocketing.
The Deals Others Mentioned That They Miss
Here is a list of other deals / offers listed that people miss.
- PayPal Key – which was huge for a lot of people. Your imagination was your only limitation really.
- Self Referrals from Amex – these were never long for the world
- Bluebird – so many have been shut down but it is still going strong
- Kate Machine – made getting money orders at Walmart much easier. I was never lucky enough to have one in a store near me.
- 5X Membership Rewards for all MPX App gift cards
- Google Pay & Alliant 3% back
- Amazon Payments
- Stockpile free stock purchases with a credit card
- American Airlines mailers
- No annual fee the first year Ameriprise Amex Platinum
- PayPal cash cards
- Vanilla gift card reloads at Office Depot
- Loyal3 (no idea what this is lol)
- $200 roundtrip flights to Asia & Europe until Airfare Watchdog killed it
- Ebay gift card to Best Buy gift card to eBay gift card (similar to Target above)
- United points for cheap car rentals
- Wendy’s AirTran cup promotion (where people were dumpster diving for cups)
Final Thoughts
Man those were some amazing deals and there are still so many that weren’t mentioned that made it to an early grave. Having said that there are new opportunities coming out every single day it seems like, especially with all of these FinTech companies launching debit cards and programs.
Which deal was your all time favorite? Let me know down in the comments. I can’t wait to reminisce with you.
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I will date myself, but the AA free Starwood hotel certificates accompany airline redemptions.
I used a stack of them for the then-new NYC Starwood hotel for a week. Eastern Airlines fly anywhere for 21 days in one direction. Our family of five had an epic trip, and I still don’t know how my mother did pre-internet.
Sounds like an awesome trip!
SimplyMiles’s Conservation International 240X sale.
That was a great deal and I am shocked they actually paid it out
Sears & Toys ‘R Us allowed buying of gift cards with their gift cards. Both were easy to get at a discount (especially Sears). I mostly used the process for resale, but you could do straight MS easily.
I miss Geoffrey!
IHG priceless surprise promos where you have to send a mail to a specific address
That was such a crazy promo – good times
IHG Pointsbreaks deals for 5000 pts
Great one.
I miss those – especially when the 5K rooms were decent
I did really well on the United miles for Hertz rentals deal. My local Hertz office eventually stopped making me come in and just checked me in and right back out. The rental rates were in the $20’s so it worked out to around half a cent a mile and I got top tier rental status from it. I must’ve earned over 300k miles from the promo. I miss that one.
The Club Carlson second night free on awards with their credit card was pretty banging too.
The best single time win for me was the Cathay first class tickets for around $1300 from SGN to ORD. I got elite Alaska status through last year from that as well as getting my favorite first class experience.
I wish I was targeted for the United promo with Hertz. Millions of miles for cheap!
I figured this out by accident and have never see it written about, but there was a retailer where for YEARS you could buy their gift cards… using their gift cards… and they’d next-day them for free… and the portals would pay out! I did $4-5k a week for a couple of years before they shut me down and think I made something like 2-3 million miles in the process.
Awesome find Brooks!
The Mother of All Deals: the 240X AA-charity donation offer last December.
That was epic
I forgot the mention the old Kellogg’s AA 200-mile coupons from about 2002 to 2004. It was fun for a while although not super awesome. I did a quick google and found that the old offer page is still up and running at https://www.aa.com/content/images/eSummary/emails/Citi/Kelloggs200Citi.htm
Fun times.
Never heard of that one – awesome thanks
$1000 swipes at WM MC paired with Simon GCs.
Walmart had a great run
I discovered this by accident and it was never written about so I kept my mouth shut. Until recently you could buy things on Costco.com which accepted all cards, not just Visa. You could then return the items in store and the system couldn’t refund it back to your AMEX or MC so the store would give you cash. Now they can refund it back to original payment method.
That was written about a lot! People would buy multiple *diamond rings* on a weekly basis and get checks in return!
Ah, return fraud.
Actually, the infamous Mr. Pickles wrote about the Dostco return deal around 10 years ago.
Back when AA allowed a stopover on award tix, you could book a flight from Europe to USA in Business Class, then continue your trip months later in First to Hawaii.
Several years ago Best Buy had a promo with their branded credit card which worked out to something like 12% back in rewards but only on a single purchase. They also sold Visa prepaids during this time and Bluebird was still a thing so the prepaids could be easily unloaded. And at the time you could use BBY reward points for Amazon gift cards. I maxed out my credit card on a single purchase and that paid for Christmas gifts for a few years.
That is an awesome one. Sometimes those store cards pay off!
For me, I miss the Serve deal. I had 3 cards going and worked them easy. All gone in the first big cancellation wave.
Have you tried to get back in yet? I know some have had luck after several applications
I miss getting 5X URs.on PayPal Digital Gift purchases and with the SWYCH and GYFT apps.
I loved that too – especially with those PPDG deals that were easy to flip
My favorite: purchasing (many) rolls of dollar coins from the U.S. Mint, with free shipping, with whatever new credit card I was using to meet my initial spend for the points bonus. Fortunately the tellers at my credit union didn’t give me a hard time when I brought in boxes of dollar rolls to deposit. 🙂
I missed that boat by a few months 🙁
Oh yeah, and the Wendy’s promotion. I didn’t dumpster dive, but found someone who did and was selling the cups on Craigslist. I bought enough for roundtrips for myself and everyone in my family. The downside: when I also earned Lifetime top status with the airline that year, they reneged on the “Lifetime” part of it the following year.
That is awesome. If there is a deal there will always be someone willing to dumpster dive lol
US Air Grand Slam annual promo was my favorite. It was awesome when you could also get RT business awards to Europe for such a cheap price. I still have an active Blue Bird card but have no idea how to use it for anything. I thought it was a dead issue at this point. I also miss the IHG promos where you could register for 4, 6, 12 of them and get tons of bonus miles per stay, at they went toward loyalty levels unlike the new program.
US Air had some great promos for sure. RIP
After Southeastern Grocers (Winn-Dixie) went bankrupt a few years ago, there were tens of thousands of dollars in Winn-Dixie gift cards on CardCash at up to 25% off. [Maybe a creditor got paid in gift cards?] At the time, Winn-Dixie allowed purchases of *all* retail gift cards using their own gift cards. I was able to harvest a five-figure amount of Home Depot, Shell, eBay, Amazon, etc cards at a 25% discount, plus up to 5% back in Winn-Dixie rewards, which paid for my groceries for the next year. It was a beautiful thing while it lasted.
That is a once in a lifetime deal right there – nice work Tino!
Purchasing Sacajawea coins online from the US Mint, no fee, with a credit card, delivered by UPS. Then taken to your bank and deposited into your account to pay the c/c bill.
I would add the easy flipping of the Alaska Airlines cards. The easy bucket of points from Rakuten and giftcards, the loss of WM in the MS world.
BOA as a whole used to be so damn easy.