need help discovering chase offers
 

Some of the chase applications have explicit details of the bonus and I wanted to crawl through them all and see if there are any hidden gems. There are 46,656 possible applications and I don't want to go through all of them. This is primarily to avoid having to query Chase so many times from a single IP in a short period of time.

I have written a small bash script which deals with 1296 at a time and pops out the only the ones which mention the bonus details. This is going to be a small percentage of the 1296. I wanted to ask for 35 volunteers to go through the results along with me. PM me for details. Volunteers would need access to a linux machine. Mac would also probably work. Windows would require some rework and software installation.

Mods, feel free to move this elsewhere if milesbuzz isn't the right place for this post.

man if i knew what this stuff meant then i would help you..but really have no clue...and chase will probably hear about this...

Wow. Kudos for the ingenuity. I'd be happy to help, but not sure if I'm any help at all. You'd have to walk me through everything, so I may waste more of your time than I'm worth.

i'm in the same boat..if you give me a intro then i probably can figure it out...but no current knowledge

Any pattern to the way the bonus is formatted in the response? Any way to do a regex so that you can save each response, parse it for bonus, and pop that in to a spreadsheet for easy post-processing? Happy to help out with automated parsing but I don't sign up for manual work. My per-hour value to myself is too high for manual work, I always automate :)

did you find the 60K ink bold using this script?

Amex too
 

Maybe we should tackle Amex, too. I would love to find one of the 100k Platinum offers.

I think you need one good programmer instead of 35 volunteers. The vast majority of these pages will result in "Offer not available" and once you sort them out there will not be much for yourself to review.

Not to discourage you but this may or may not reveal any hidden gems. Just recall the United Explorer link for 60k miles (that by the way didn't follow you pattern) - it opened up different offers for different people based on the status of their United MileagePlus account.

Another thought is you should share what you find, you may want to masked the methodology, otherwise chase will pick it up and close the loophole. I'd delete the specifics mentioned above, and only mention specifics via pm.

I'm all for openness on the results, but don't share the method to the madness.

I'm in agreement bitachu and DavidL. I'd like to help but know nothing of scripts, etc....

DavidAL makes a good point. I don't mind helping out as well, but as others have stated my knowledge of scripts is minimal.

Good idea!

So if you have the files downloaded just do a cat *|grep Privacy Notice to look for a common denominator in all valid offers.

This should do the trick.

Unfortunately the bonus details are in a flash program and I don't know how to dig into that. Currently I am just popping out the codes which mention the bonus.

Chase is very easy to automate. AMEX would probably take a lot of creative effor.
Well, I don't want to query all the 46k codes from my server and get Chase's attention. This is why I wanted to break up the effort.

As far as hidden gems go, have you seen my links for Marriott 70k, Priority Club 80k, Sapphire preferred 50k, Ink Bold 60k,...? I came up with them only by playing around with lesser offers. I am not saying that this method will uncover everything but one might find something useful.

Good idea. I have edited the OP.

Peeps should also edit their quotes above. I've pm'ed them. Again, walk me through it and I'll help OP. PM me and I'll help however I can.

I guess I haven't been clear about what I need. The script I wrote will output the URL's which contain some details of the offer. This is most likely a small fraction of the 46k. All I need is people to run it, collect the result, vist the URLs and see if there's something worthwhile. Someone with flash programming knowledge could probably automate the last part but I don't know how to do it.

I am dividing up the effort because of the number of queries needed and because there is some manual work needed. I could do it alone but it would definitely take more time.

I have a linux box that could run these 24/7 and output everything. PM me and we can chat!

Travel hacking in the literal sense. Love it.

Once you get your group set, you may want to shut this thread down so Chase doesn't see how these offers are found.

+1

If I can run the script using cygwin You can count me in.

Probably a good idea to do this sooner rather than later. I was reading another thread where Bank of Hawaii responded out of nowhere (if that really was them). Who knows what other banks are lurking around seeing what the FT community is up to. Obviously we know citi doesn't pay attention! ;)

The only risk is that Chase might modify the format of the application URLs. Right now, probably the only reason you can't google for these offers is a robots.txt file.

Happy to help
 

Been a lurker for a while, but only signed up for an account a few days ago. I'll be happy to help, I have a Mac and a fairly fast connection and am plenty technical. PM me.

I too would be willing to assist if you still need people. I am more than capable.

Why don't you just run your script thru a proxy server to mask your IP?

I would love to help, but realize my computer skills a lacking. :(

GOOD LUCK :)

Is there any way for you to run it and email us an xcl with the list of URLs? Id gladly sit there bunching them in while watching a movie, if we can't get our hands on a programmer who can automate it.

The script gives you a text file with possible interesting links for testing. I am going to run 1296 per day. If others also run it, we can get through this sooner.

I could write a script to automate opening the urls in your browser. Say 10 tabbed URLs at a time. You just need to toggle through them looking for the offer details at the top and then close each tab/window. I could time it so that it opens 10 URLs every 30 seconds or something.

If each of the 36 participants checks 1296 URLs at 1 URL per 3 seconds (ie: 10 URLS per 30 seconds), it would take them about 65minutes of running this script/checking/closing tabs/windows.

Yes, you are right. The concern with doing things so fast is that it might raise interest and cause them to start formatting application links differently.

Maybe you could edit your post to be more vague.

I really think we should take this thread underground and just hint that we need people with linux boxes to help us out. There's too much being discussed

You should have never posted this in the first place.

It seems like Chase is already pulling down these offers, such as the 60k Bold, 30k Freedom, and the Fairmont card. If you want to keep trying to discover offers, you shouldn't post them here (or probably anywhere public).

It appears that someone has already done this and posted it as a comment in one of the blogs.

Limited knowledge about what is needed to be done but can quickly learn. PM if you need extra help

Hi,

I have a linux machine and would be happy to help.

EDIT: and lots of free time

Thanks

Closed per OP request.