noassumptions

Back when Autozone was selling $500 VVGC's you could get 3-5x with a certain Bavarian motorcar's family of cc's. A point was worth near $0.01 if redeemed in large denomination VGC's and up to $0.015 through their travel portal. Unfortunately Autozone was too fragile to last. They seemed to assume anyone buying what they were selling was a crook.

PaulMSN

Windows Live Search Club, when they had word games that accessed their search engine (so it would raise their hit totals) that you could play for points. The points could be redeemed for prizes, including airline miles. I started small, solving the puzzles in my free time, but then discovered that others had developed bots that could play some of the games for you. I'm cautious, so it was several months before I tried the bots, and I didn't realize at first that I could set up multiple accounts under different email addresses.

I had access to multiple laptops and would have several of them playing the games under different logins throughout the day. Eventually they introduced restrictions that made it more difficult, and later they started bouncing users, but I earned enough AA miles for a free international business class trip, and lesser miles in several other FF programs, before they ended the promotion.

If I had been gutsy, I would have gone all in from the moment I learned about the bots, which would have given me over a year before the restrictions started, and I could easily have earned enough AA miles to gain lifetime Gold or more in that time -- I had access to a roomful of PCs that I could have used every evening to do the work for me.
This was in 2007-2009, I think.

AlohaDaveKennedy

Oh for the glory days of the Grand Slam promotion! Recall slamming it out of the park with 10 accounts and racking up a million US Airways miles in a single day.

tuphat

This may not qualify as a "story," but: Excerpt from today's WSJ article (paywall) --

The Sapphire Reserve card proved great for business for Brian Kelly, who started the rewards website The Points Guy as a hobby in 2010, while working in human resources at Morgan Stanley .

His website helped spawn an ecosystem of rewards fanatics across the internet who swap tips about card deals. The banks covet his favorable reviews of their cards and often turn to the site to promote them. In December, Mr. Kelly hosted a card awards ceremony in New York City, sponsored by JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and others.

JPMorgan had approached Mr. Kelly in spring 2016 to ask how his company would market an upscale card it had in the works. He learned more details about the card, which turned out to be the Sapphire Reserve, a couple of months later while on vacation in Tanzania with his parents. The bank agreed to pay The Points Guy each time readers visiting the website started an application and received the card. The site earned millions of dollars from the card in the months after it was introduced.


Brian Kelly onstage during The Points Guy Awards in December. PHOTO: DAVE KOTINSKY/GETTY IMAGES

Travelz

Are there anymore stories people want to post from the past? It would be fun to hear more.

I'm jealous of all the fuel rewards everyone gets. We don't have that in my state anymore. I was able to get the CRS at Hy-Vee to add the points manually to my card for a while, but they stopped adding it for vgc purchases.

CerealCardSpender

I'm jealous of the US Mint and Target Redbird generation. You all made out like bank robbers!

Steve in Olympia

I still miss Amazon Payments.

CerealCardSpender

What is the "WF" acronym? What system was that? Wells Fargo CC?

littlewinglet

That's nothing. The real hey-day was from 2012 when Vanilla reloads can be had for 3.95 at every OD/OM and INK cards first appeared, then followed by 2013-2016 when you could do unlimited 5x, nearly unlimited MOs/BPs at just about any WM or grocery stores. Many made out like bandits, we're talking 10s maybe 100s of thousands made in some cases. I think I personally made 60k profit one time just juicing the WF card for 6 months.

ORD-TGU

I think today we are living the dream with these two, first, office store GC at a profit with the frequent $10 or $15 discounts plus 5X in UR with Ink Cards.
Also Simon Mall is easy MS.
We will forever remember these days.

hi55us

Alliant used to let you call in and make a payment with a debit card, including VGC. This made their 3% back card even more valuable. Once while on the phone with them I was given a website that I can use to make a payment, instead of calling in. The website allowed me to pay my CC using a debit card, but also have the money go directly into my savings account with them. This was great in of itself, until I discovered that this website was working with Mastercard and Discover. I easily racked up $100k+ in spend over a 6 month period on Mastercards including the Citi DC, Paypal MC and the Discover it Business. I still go onto the website every now and then to check on it, but it's been dead for close to a year.

Clueless12

Actually less than a year. After the first payment website died, there was another one you could use and still pay with a CC.

gm9928

That was a fun couple of years!

gm9928

I miss the Wells Fargo re-loadable prepaid Visa debit cards! For a buck or two, you could load the debit card online with a credit card ($2K rolling limit, every 30 days). And you could own two of them under your SS#. AND you could withdraw the cash from the cards with no fee at a WF ATM. Withdraw cash, deposit cash in the bank, pay credit card. Rinse, repeat. That was awesome for about 8 months 'til they shut it down.

Churnman

nevermind