I feel like things are generally still good w/r/t hotel points. PC, Hyatt, Hawaiian moved to Hyatt for 2:1, etc.

You could try the 2 Hawaiian Airline cards for 35K miles each which convert to 70K Hilton points each.

Or the 40K US Air card.

Or the Amex or Citi Hilton cards.

Or the Marriott cards.

Or the Air Tran card which will disappear soon.

You shouldn't expect 75K and 100K bonuses to last forever, but there are still good opportunities out there.

Let's not forget that just 2 years ago the standard bonus was a whopping 25K miles!

I heard NPR was going to do a story on card churning.

Simple! Now we play Grand Slam =)

As a valued member, you're invited to apply now and earn 25,000 bonus miles after your first use of the Card.1,2 Plus, earn 5,000 more bonus miles after adding an authorized user and using your Card, both within two months of opening your account.3

And, when you spend $25,000 or more in a calendar year, you'll earn an additional 10,000 bonus miles.4 That's up to 40,000 bonus miles!



I received this Mileage Plus Explorer card offer.


25k in spending a year to earn 10k bonus miles.

There is a reason why a CC offer is called special and another reason, why I was crushed with the end of the Citi churn. RIP.

You cant expect good offers to run non stop. If they would they would no longer be good offers but simply "everyday" offer. Just as others have said - take rest and wait couple months for good offers to come in again.

Exactly the reason why I took out a 5k unsecured signature loan 2 months ago to widen my credit profile during these non-lucrative times.

I cannot believe that. Costco will NEVER go for that, unless you get a super new rep. There is no way you can buy 2k Costco cards , return them and get 2k cash. Even if you get away with it once, you will not be able to do it twice. Costco tracking is very good.

I believe that a few months ago, when the offers you mentioned were made, the highest sign-up bonus for Star Alliance miles was 50k. Since then, there have been several good deals since then that broke that 50k Star Alliance miles barrier, most having a "mistake" component similar to Citi allowing you to apply for all three cards if you timed it just right.

1. Chase Sapphire briefly allowed double dipping in sign-up bonuses to obtain 100k points.
2. American Express Membership rewards has issued many targeted rewards for 75k and 100k sign-up bonus for a number of Membership Rewards cards, most of which waived the annual fee, and AmEx was, for a while, allowing untargeted people to "bump" up to the offer that they were not targeted for by applying under a different offer and then calling in with the promotion code that they weren't targeted for. The heyday seems to have been a few weeks ago, when AmEx was also allowing people to call in and add a substantial bonuses for adding additional users and making a certain number of transactions per month. Since then, AmEx has tightened up on the most generous of those offers. I believe that it was briefly possible to work these deals into 175k bonus points, which I think were convertible at greater than 1:1 on Star Alliance by using a redemption special to Air Canada, or much greater by redeeming to Delta (not Star Alliance).
3. thepointsguy.com mentioned that there is a targeted 60k miles offer for the United credit card.
4. Fidelity offers for existing customers have been expanded to include both Delta (not *A) and AmEx Membership Rewards (redeemable to *A via Air Canada and, for a few more weeks, Continental), although there appears to be a little bit of a crackdown on the most egregious cases of people not keeping their qualifying deposits in their accounts as required by the letter of the offer, although "most egregious" in this context seemed only to include people who had the nerve to call into customer service in the midst of abusing these offers in some obvious way, although it has been a couple of weeks since I last looked at the thread on that offer.

There are also a few non-airline offers out there that could be worth over $1,000 per credit card application: AARP 5% rebate for first 6 months, and three offers involving supermarkets or drug stores that may be expandable to most other spending by buying $500 gift cards for a ~$5 activation fee: 6% supermarket rebate from AmEx Blue Preferred ($75/year annual fee), 5 ThankYou points/$ on supermarkets and drug stores (and gas stations) from an offer from Citi Preferred, and a rebate of up to 7 points/$Rite Aid from Capital One Venture Rewards (2 pts/$ standard + 5 pts/$ bonus if you "activate" the offer on the cap1 web site; most Rite Aid's do not allow purchases of gift cards by credit cards, but there may be some exceptions).

There also have been a little bit of tectonic creep in the prepaid card landscape: AmEx e-gift cards (potentially stack another 1.6% big crumbs rebate on your onlnie orders, but I'm apparently banned by the for the moment), and AmEx for Target (currently being tested in a few cities, facilitates earning a small amount of rewards on up to $400/week in ATM withdrawals, mostly a psychological comfort for people irked by losing the opportunity to earn points when required to pay in cash).

So, I think the FlyerTalk economy is continuing to do OK, although loss of the mint was a big blow.

People get away with a lot more. Far more than a few grand. Abuse the Costco policy and your membership gets cancelled though, and it's at the store's discretion mostly.

+1000

Someone responding to that post quoted:
"Pigs Get Fat, Hogs Get Slaughtered!" Greed Kills

Since you're new to the game, some historical perspective is in order.

The offers we've seen over the last few years of 50, 75, 100K are not the norm. I don't think you ever saw offers like this until 2009 or 2010.

When I got my first airline card back in the 90s, an AA Visa, the bonus was 20K miles IIRC, which was then enough for a domestic roundtrip (now 25K). Similar for my Delta Amex. When I got my SPG Amex in 2004, the first use bonus was only 5K.

On the other hand, it used to be very easy to get these cards. Credit rating hardly mattered, if you had a SSN and a heartbeat, you'd be approved. After the 2008 financial crisis, credit got a lot tighter, and getting approved for the cards got a lot harder. With a smaller base of consumers to sell the credit products to, the competition to enroll those customers got more difficult, and the result was much bigger bonuses.

So, where do we go from here? My guess is that - at best - the bonuses follow the credit market. If the economy improves and credit eases, the bonuses may shrink. If the economy stagnates, then bonuses may stay as they are now. I suppose they may even edge up a bit, but I can't imagine we'd ever see another sudden three-fold increase as we did in 2010.

Another risk is that as the cost of the enrollment bonuses increases (and as analytic software improves), the airlines may take a closer look at usage patterns. If the majority of users enticed by big bonuses don't use the card much and cancel after the first year, then these offers may get fewer in number, or more strictly targeted, or tied to even bigger spending requirements.

One other macro factor to consider, that applies to cards affiliated with US-based airlines, is that the number of major airlines is shrinking. There's no longer a card to earn TWA miles, nor Northwest miles, nor America West miles. The AirTran Visa will vanish soon, as will the Continental Mastercard.

All things considered, my personal guess is that five to ten years from now, we'll be looking back on 2010-12 as a golden age of free miles from credit cards. Enjoy the thousands of dollars worth of free miles you've recently earned, because the gravy train won't last forever.

How true. Now I'm reduced to generating Delta miles at $10 per 1k via account transfers. Paying for miles or to fly seems soooo wrong!