rrgg

deleted

sydneyracquelle

The key is to take full advantage of DL’s generosity in that if someone earns DM in calendar 2023 it is technically good for 2/1/24 to 1/31/25. However DL gives you the status immediately upon earning it. So if someone earns status early in the year (which is much more likely now with huge MQM rollovers due to covid) they can effectively have the status for 2 years.

StayingHomeIsBetter

What more frequently-usable benefit are the DL/AMEX conglomerate going to take away next? This has to be a pre-emptive palliative to the next pain they are going to impose.

sydneyracquelle

The most painful one for me was losing RDMs at each MQM threshold. We used to get both MQMs and RDMs at each $30,000 spend threshold. Amex both giveth and taketh away.

GrayAnderson

How long does it take for you to get that refund?

[I don't have quite this much headroom in my card...though I did milk the "refer a friend, get [I forget if it was 4 or 5] points per dollar on all spend" bonus for my taxes one year (I timed it out so I got the two Miles Boosts in January of 2020). That having been said, 1.5 RDMs/dollar probably puts the card in the ballpark of being reasonable for baseline spend...Chase FU would be a bit better, but at that point it's a question of margins given the value with drinks in the SkyClub ;-)]

sydneyracquelle

The 1.5 SM kicks in after $150,000 spend on one card so it is a choice between either (a) getting this 1.5x RDM by using just one reserve card and getting 60,000 MQMs or (b) using an additional reserve card (one personal one business) to get another 60,000 MQMs on $120,000 spend. This requires an additional $550 fee but you do get another FC companion cert.

So if you use one reserve card for $130,000 spend and another reserve card for $120,000 spend you get a total of 120,000 MQMs. Some would prefer the additional 50,000 RDMs. Others would prefer the additional 60,000 MQMs. Regardless you must spend $250,000 on one or both cards combined.

I file the tax return immediately and it usually takes 4-6 weeks for the check. DM status isn’t lost until Feb 1 so if you do this in late January you minimize the time until the check comes.

DiverDave

I have thought of doing this, but I normally only spend $60-$90K on the card, and figured that Amex would drop me over such shenanigans.

Your hack works out pretty well. Even at $.01 per mile, you are only out $1705 and that's before the value of the companion certificates.

And it gets you two years of Diamond for one year of spending.

Nicely done!

Of course there is the risk that some scammer files your return first and grabs your tax refund.

David

sydneyracquelle

Why would Amex drop you? They love this spending. That’s their business. That’s like saying DL hates mileage runs or Marriott hates mattress runs. And I always efile my return as soon as tax season opens so very unlikely a scammer will file a return ahead of me.

kale73

Why on Earth would one set aside the other benefits? I’ve read several posts re the Reserve along the lines of “I only have it for the Club access” or “I only have it for the companion certificate” or “I only have it for the waiver/MQM bonuses”. My primary motivation for getting the card was the latter, but I’ve also found value in the SkyClub access, the companion certificates, etc. to make the card worthwhile. Those with other travel needs might not.

VFR

With a variable, quantifiable spending or discount benefit like this, I find it is helpful to establish what it's worth by itself then assign a value to the other benefits and then lower the breakeven based on those values. I have an Amex Platinum and don't have a travel companion living near me, so there isn't really an incremental value to the lounge access and the companion ticket is quite hard to use for me. If the other benefits sum to $100 of value, I'd have to spend 300,000 SkyMiles a year to break even.

You can do additive benefits as well (e.g. I expect to spend 100,000 SkyMiles this year and so I would value the benefit at $150) and calculate a value for the whole card. I just like to know, if I don't use any of the other benefits, about how much I would need to use to break even.

GrayAnderson

I think VFR explained this quite well - the value of some benefits is easy to quantify, either exactly (e.g. a $300 travel credit is probably going to be worth $300) or approximately (e.g. 100,000 RDMs will probably be worth somewhere in the ballpark of 1.0-1.3 cents/point, or $1000-1300 total). But some others, such as lounge access, are rather harder to quantify (particularly if not used often - SkyClub access is probably worth at most the $695 that a membership costs, but if you use it lightly then that might not be a reasonable value to assess it at; the free checked bag is probably a bigger benefit for folks who regularly fly coach vs paid first; and so on). Therefore, for quite a few folks it probably makes sense to mark down values for the ones you can assign a number to most easily, and then to "fill in the blanks" on other, more subjective benefits afterwards.

RobertS975

Which IRS card processor only charges 1.89%?

RobertS975

The Reserve card was a no brainer for me until the spend threshold bonuses stopped being both RDMs and MQMs!

sydneyracquelle

payusatax.com is 1.85%.

DTWout

Looks like it's coming to all of Amex, lol

https://www.reddit.com/r/delta/comme..._card_members/