sharka

Just a warning as this is Not always a good idea. CC companies have been tracking this and have pulled back miles/points issued or even denied bonus miles as they did this to me recently. If u are doing this to meet the minimum required spending within a certain period of time so u could get the airline bonus miles (or maybe hotel points), just want to tell u I recently did this and got questioned on this then was denied the miles. So this option don't always work and by the time u find out then promo period for spending expired and can't get the bonus offer--happened to me already.

Happy

I am curious about a few things:

Did you not ever pay for the charge, i.e. you canceled it before the payment due date to avoid paying?

Or did you wait till several statements later before you cancel? As travel plans do change over time and I would find it very odd that the banks would question a customer about cancel airline tickets / hotel bookings, especially it is purchased and paid for, months ago.

Which bank(s) has done this to you? I would guess it is not Citi. Did you lose the earned miles / promotion on spending, or the card sign up bonus?

Happy

Or you might be ending up at the 1% who does not get pay back or being paid back extremely slowly.

LizzyDragon84

The loan lengths vary. You can see the repayment schedule on the loan page. Loans seem to range from 6-18 months.

Happy

Most would as long as you dont need to have PMI in your escrow. In the ancient past, PMI is not needed when you either have 20% downpayment or you have 20% equity in your home. No idea what the current terms might be.

Stoughton

I've bought Visa GC's at Walgreens and they just show up as a Walgreens purchase.

bpo26c

There shouldn't be any issues purchasing gift cards, but just as an fyi when I bought gift cards at Walmart this year, there was a $5 - $6.00 fee per $100 gift card.

Marathon Man

You can search each check out isle rack for GCs and if you find $200 ones at Walmart (Amex) then they are the same price. Bring them over to the CS desk if anyone gives you lip.

What I had done in the early days of the UA MoM promo was to buy a boatload of Sams GCs at the UA mall and earn miles on those purchases AND mall miles. Then when the GCs came, I went to WM and combined them into WM GCs (There be limits on how many cards can be combined to certain amounts) and then I used the WM ones to buy the Amex GCs and pay their fees. Whatever was left over I shopped with, but now I burned the AMEX GCs elsewhere and also ended up with a ton of MALL miles from my purchases.

I have yet to see it actually happen because UA wont give the bonuses til March but my deal was that I get 1,000 bonus miles for every 3 transactions so doing 300 Sams GCs made sense. If you add up the miles for the CC that bought them, the miles earned for each one on the UA Mall and the 1k miles for every 3 cards, I think I did well even when factoring in GC fees.

Turns out one could probably use bigger Sams GCs at WM to buy Amex GCs directly, and include the fee in the purchase. After all it's just another product from the store so why not. Your clerk may not be sure but if they try it, it should work.

So, if you can find a mall that still gives miles for the purchase of Sams GCs then try this route to offset the costs. Again: the fact you are earning miles in the mall could somehow offset some of the GC fees.

UA mall stopped giving miles for Sams GCs effective Nov 3 (there were problems for people who bought them between 9/19 and 11/3 but they eventually did give miles for those) and AA mall stopped on Nov 4. But other malls (non Cartera ones) may still work for this.

********

Another idea is to buy Visa/MC $500 GCs at Stop & Shop supermarkets IF and when they include the purchase of GCs in their gas promotions program. And if they do the double promo it could be grande! I know of at least one bloke who claims to get like $2 per gallon off every time he fills up if he times it right! That right there negates the $4.95-$5.95 fee that the store charges for its GCs. They are bought from the racks and often sold at the registers or the CS desk. Either way it goes thru as a purchase from S&S not as a GC specifically.

CVS stores will also go thru as CVS purchases although GCs may not earn Extra Care bucks points.

Viajero Millero

Kroger's (and their stores) sells up to 500$ gift cards. For those desperate, get a few of those and a couple gas station cards, and you got $2500 l covered. Then pre-pay some of your cell phone/cable/internet/water/gas/electricity and you'll have one 3k card taken care of.

Lastly, if you're desperate and willing to lose (invest) up to 8-10%. You can always resell sore-specific gift cards.

Personally, a 300$ lost (investment) for 50K miles doesn't sound completely outrageous.

Stoughton

I just paid 1 of our property tax bills via Visa. Costs 2.5% but with some fairly large spends on our plate right now, it was worth it to knock a sizable piece off one of them.

Astrophsx

Was in London the other week and the hotel allowed a 50 GBP cash advance per day with no fee. It was charged to the room which could then be paid off with a credit card. Since it is a travel related purchase it would gain bonus points from cards like the Chase Sapphire. Not a huge amount of spend, but it is something!

pcharles

No longer short on the spend. $15,000 in USPS forever stamps put me over the edge for sure. ^ Thanks FT






And yes I made the spend, but the forever stamps was just kidding.

AlohaDaveKennedy

But they have fees and the net return is poor because the cards are relatively low value (say $100) and the total fees (say $5 activation) can nick you about 5%. That is why proprietary grocery cards for a store where you regularly shop for gas/groceries is better.

AlohaDaveKennedy

Certainly agree there.^

burdender

Can anyone provide a bank that doesn't go crazy over store returns onto the debit card? This is the second time they've frozen my account for making a purchase online with a credit card and then returning to the debit. First time I guess I understood since it was an abnormally large purchase strickly for the purpose of gaining miles. This time all I did was order myself a sweater along with other Christmas gifts from the same store. Sweater happened to not be really what i was looking for so I returned on my debit card. Figured since it was just a small purchase and on top of that Christmas time it wouldn't be an issue. What happens if people want to return a gift at Christmas time? Any answers or PM's welcome