A Few Noteworthy Items For This Wednesday
Happy Wednesday. It is 111 degrees here in Las Vegas, which is too hot if you ask me. I have a few random items of interest to share with you.
Bonus AA Miles With SPG
American Airlines & SPG are offering a 20% bonus when transferring SPG points to Aadvantage. They already give a 5,000 mile bonus when transferring points in increments of 20,000. With the new bonus, 20,000 SPG points = 30,000 Aadvantage miles. The promotion runs through July 31, 2014.
While I do see this as a great deal, I probably won’t be participating since I am basically swimming in Aadvantage miles because of the AAExecutive card deal. Keep in mind if you do transfer the points, it can take up to a week for them to post. MileValue also has a really good analysis of the deal if you are interested in more information.
Update: View From The Wing points out the same bonus is available for US Airways as well.
$10 Off A Purchase Of $200 American Express Gift Card
American Express is offering a $10 credit on the purchase of $200 in gift cards. See my guide to Amex Sync (Amex Offers) to find out how to link multiple cards on the same online account. Additionally you can link your card to a Twitter account and get the offer by tweeting #AmexGiftCard.
You may be able to use a code to eliminate the purchase fees or shipping costs. Additionally American Express offers a free 90 day trial to their unlimited shipping service for new members. You can sign up when checking out. Some cash back portals such as BeFrugal pay cashback on purchases of these gift cards as well.
BeFrugal is currently paying the best rate at 3%, but keep in mind using a promotion code may invalidate any portal cashback. Getting the free shipping trial shouldn’t interfere with the portal payout.
Remember these cards do not have pins and thus cannot be loaded to Bluebird. You can use them for everyday spend or find ways to purchase Visa/MC gift cards with them. Frequent Miler put together a great FAQ about the gift cards. Liquidating them isn’t the easiest thing to do, but it wouldn’t be fun if it was easy. Right?
Bluebird & Serve Raise Daily Load Limits
Frequent Miler first reported yesterday that American Express has raised the daily load limit on both Bluebird & Serve cards from $1,000 to $2,500 (With a maximum of $1,999 per day at Walmart registers). Unfortunately the monthly limit is still $5,000 so this only helps to reduce the overall number of trips to Walmart. It is still a positive development.
If you are new to Bluebird, I have written a complete guide along with a tutorial of how to load your Bluebird card at the Walmart MoneyCenter Express kiosk.
Conclusion
With the weather being so hot, I needed a few decent news items and deals and these are better than nothing. I don’t think that you could go wrong with the SPG transfer bonus as long as you have a need for the miles. Also, the American Express gift card deal is definitely a moneymaker, but you must figure out how to liquidate them.
Finally, as someone who has to load Bluebird all of the time, I welcome the increased daily load limits. I only wish that they somehow would raise the monthly limits as well, but I am sure that won’t be happening any time soon.
Stay cool!
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