Category Archives for Credit Cards.
American Express is bringing back Member Week for October 9 through 13. There’s one offer that really stands out to me – all Amex personal, business and corporate cardmembers can register to receive a $25 statement credit on $75 spend at over 200 participating Resy restaurants by December 8, 2023, and this can be earned twice (for a total of $50 back).
Cardless is launching a TAP Air Portugal Miles & Go American Express card. They haven’t released a lot of the product details yet, but it’ll be interesting to have this Star Alliance airline enter the U.S. co-brand market. They had just starting making an unfortunately-timed big push for U.S. customers right at the start of the pandemic, with easy access to inexpensive miles and Star Alliance Gold status. So this could be interesting.
News about Bilt’s latest Rent Day promotion is out. As usual there’s double points on their co-brand card; free Soul Cycle classes; free points for answering trivia; and opportunities to earn free rent.
Special for October 1’s Rent Day they’re offering 5x points-earning on their credit card for sports ticket purchases (up to 10,000 bonus points), and launching Bilt Experiences with an opportunity to redeem points for NFL game tickets, including for hosted suites.
For years they’ve been taking away from the program, sometimes a little at a time and sometimes a lot. And they’ve been requiring more and more from customers to get less and less. Like the proverbial boiling lobster, SkyMiles elite members went along for the most part every step of the way. And that was very good to Delta, generating around $7 billion from American Express at around a 40% margin and accounting for the vast majority of the airline’s profit.
Delta wasn’t satisfied with that, and they got greedy.
Ultimately this is a great tool, that’s normally premium priced, but available free at no cost through the Bilt app – a way to help make the most of Bilt points or any points, the way that they’ve done with airlines and point.me.
The other possibility that was speculated two falls ago was a premium Hyatt credit card. And that’s back on the table, as a survey of possible benefits reveals. Some of the things under consideration appear to be:
With the American Express Membership Rewards 30% transfer bonus to British Airways ending August 31, Chase is picking up the mantle. They’re offering a 30% bonus on transfers to British Airways and fellow Avios airlines Iberia and Aer Lingus through September 22, in addition to their less valuable Marriott transfer bonus which continues through September 30.
Rent Day is the first of the month, and every month Bilt Rewards has special offers. Several of those are recurring, and there’s a new offer as well each month.
You no longer need to spend any money on this card to earn its Loyalty Point bonuses, and the potential to earn these bonuses has doubled. What’s more, it appears that new cardmembers receive the bonuses right away if they’ve already hit the 50,000 and 90,000 Loyalty Point thresholds this year.
There’s been a lot of hype and handwringing over reports that U.S. credit card debt has reached a record $1 trillion. That’s framed either as an alarm for the economy or a cautionary tale about consumer behavior. But neither of those things seem to be true.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
