Is It All Over ????
 

Maybe I am just panicking, but 3-4 months ago when I started this miles game I saw a ton of different good cards that I could apply for .... Capital One 100K, BA 100K, CO 50K, Amex 75K, AA 75x3K, etc. and new offers were coming out ... like Chase Saph.

As I collected all of these .... what's happening now? No new good cards (flights .... not hotels).

I got me AA, Amex, Chase Saph, BA, SPG, CO cards. Banked on Fidelity. Now what??? As I know most cards I got I can't really churn plus it's too early. So what's next?

Simple. you wait. this is a long distance running. take a breather, if you applied to all those cards, your credit rating would have been hit a bit. let it build up again, and then when good offers show up again, and its inevitable that they will, you pounce on them.

I feel the same. Now is when our credit card skills are put to the test. I know there are some smaller offers out there but they might pull from different credit agency's.

The 35k HawaiinMiles card. Maybe its time to start applying for Hotel cards

I hope to see an improved UA offer soon.

You have a whole life ahead of you, make it a very long marathon, there are new deals, new tricks, new cards that pop-up every year. Enjoy what you are getting now, continue on reading more blogs and FT, MP, etc, and exploit loop holes. Think of this as a long life time hobby, it will be much more rewarding that way.

Of course, ENJOY ALL OF THAT FREE (EXTREMELY CHEAP) TRAVEL!

Best,

PedroNY

It ain't over til it's over. :)

many more
 

The only thing over with CC's is the mint. OH crap:p, did I start that again. LOL
There are plenty more out there. Wyndham Rewards, Marriott Rewards, Hyatt, Hilton (2), Choice hotels, Priority club, United air, Airtran, Alaska air, and other chase, citi reward cards like the freedom card. Enjoy and fly free!

I agree it seems like the better offers have faded away. I'm going to start looking at Hotel offers and wait to see if things improve on airline offers. :)

All good deals get killed once too many people abuse them. At least we still have this year's grand slam to play with.

Back in the day you should churn 12 AA cards a year for 25K each. Just imagine if that was still possible.

My feeling is that once the whole CO/UA merger is done and over with and only one card (UA) will be available then "maybe" something good will come out but won't happen until next year.

These things do tend to go in cycles, but the current landscape seems bleaker than six months ago. No current 100K offers, reports that Amex is tightening up granting bonus offer IDs not originally applicable to the card applied for, possible devaluations of the BA program, uncertainties in other FF programs.

The positive? Since many of the recent credit card offers were made in a climate where the companies felt the need to attract new customers by dangling big mileage and point bonuses because of credit retrenchment by consumers, a double-dip recession may cause a lot of consumers to cut spending again and prompt another round of big offers.

It's only a matter of time before it's over.

Today's post on FrugalTravelGuy is a good example. One of the larger bloggers out there and he's encouraging buying Costco gift cards online and returning them for cash to meet minimum spend requirements.

Rampant abuse like this will kill it for everyone. :td:

I agree, but not as a accusation against Rick ... it's against the mass of people who lack self-control.

Yes, it's all over. And the ability to post new threads without any new information is over too! Please don't try it again or FT will ban you.

For me, it was finally time to get the AARP card and make use of it to get 5% back on all purchases for 6 months. I was too busy making required spends for bonuses to make use of this card until now.

That's funny. I seem to remember, not so long ago, when one blogger leaded the crusade against another for posting tricks for all the world to see.

Maybe the title of this thread should me modified to add Read Post #12 First.
So that others will not follow on and add new similar threads.

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
:D

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

Can't tell if joke or sarcasm ...

I still thought it was funny. My post was meant purely as a joke as well.

Just got same offer except 50K instead of 25K.

not
 

I am not encouraging it at all. A reader sent me the email. I put the email in my blog. I will not be using this technique. everybody has their line. this one crossed mine, but I report what I hear and get. you all make your own choices.

And the credit card party is long from over. just wait it out a bit

Love how everyone is running around and yelling the sky is falling.
Ye of no faith.... Q3 is only wrapping up. The well is not dry.
The most profitable side of banking will most certainly drum up new additional promotions that dazzle us into putting more revenue on these cards of plastic.

I have to agree with Jesperrs post. As a blogger you are not obligated to disseminate every piece of info that comes into your hands.

Badly played as far as I am concerned. With power (blog) comes responsibility.

The wall street adage comes to mind. The BULLS make money, the BEARS make money. The HOGS get slaughtered.

then why do you deny so many of the comments people post on your blog?


so you feel that reporting the costco scam is a constructive addition to your blog? but yet you say this crossed the line?

I have a different interpretation. Chase hired away a pair of executives from American Express, and has tried to move its credit card business, which was largely acquired in the merger with Bank One, up-market. These two are engaged in a market share battle for a demographic which responds to travel rewards. Capital One, Citi, Bank of America and Barclay's are simply caught in the crossfire.

Inevitably, there will be a truce and both American Express and Chase will evaluate their gains and expenses, and they will change the focus from customer acquisition to retention. I think we are already seeing the beginning of this phase with Chase eliminating foreign transaction fees, adding EMV chips to cards (it looks good even though they do not have the infrastructure in place to implement PIN authorizations), and some cards with primary auto rental damage coverage.

I'm not saying we will not see more 100,000 mile/point offers, but I think we will see more narrowly targeted and disciplined offers designed to attact and retain long term customers.

I couldn't apply for another one even if there was a good one out there, I'm maxed out on hard pulls.

Moderation, folks.

Like everything in life, practice moderation.

Do you know how many comments I deny on my blog? The answer is no you don't. It is less than 1% and in most cases is a personal assault on my family.

As far as the things I put on my blog, I think that is my decision isn't it? I don't direct your moral compass and never will. And believe me, you have no influence on mine.

Instead of complaining, why not join the fray and start your own blog? I'd love the opportunity to see what you have to add to the FF community other than criticism of others.