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Announcement: a subforum for "manufactured spending" will be added

Announcement: a subforum for "manufactured spending" will be added

 
Old Feb 1, 2013, 10:18 pm
  #16  
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Originally Posted by Djlawman
But the descriptor is also only half the issue. People don't just want to increase to meet initial spend requirements for bonuses, they want to think of ways to increase overall CC spend just for the plain vanilla miles. E.g., the Mint. (FWIW, I never saw it as worth my while to lug dollar coins over to my bank on a regular basis, but those people were not doing it just to meet intro bonus threshholds.)
You are right. But that's still 'manufactured' spending, right?

Originally Posted by lkar
I accept this may be a semantic discussion about the breadth of the word manufactured and we may just have different ideas about what manufactured spending is, but I don't think most of what gets discussed now really is about truly manufactured spend. In a thread in the new forum I am participating in, we have come up with three terms, each of which are different things: time-shifting, bonus shifting, and manufactured spending. The techniques are similar, but the truth is the true manufactured spending discussion doesn't happen much in the board formerly known as milesbuzz, because these techniques are more heavily kept under wraps. One product that can facilitate true manufactured spend has been heavily edited to cover the tracks. Anyway, I do think the word is pejorative to some (many?) and might suggest FT is teaching people to cheat and defraud instead of how to be saavy and creative.
How and why do you consider the word 'manufactured spending' to be pejorative?

I actually think it's clever (both doing it and the name). It fits pretty much any situation where you put charges on a card that you would not otherwise put on a card. Manufacturing credit card spending.
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Old Feb 1, 2013, 11:03 pm
  #17  
 
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Originally Posted by kokonutz
I actually think it's clever (both doing it and the name). It fits pretty much any situation where you put charges on a card that you would not otherwise put on a card. Manufacturing credit card spending.
I had a suspicion our disagreement was definitional. I think manufacturing modifies spending. You are spending money for no reason other than generating miles, by having a credit card swiped in a circumstance where what you get for the swipe will pay for the swipe, eventually. I think there are many circumstances where you put charges on a card that you would not otherwise put on that particular card that are not manufactured spending. I'll give a few examples:

1) You need to spend $10k on your Ink Card in 3 months to get a bonus, but you only have $1k per month in credit card expenses. So, you buy $10k in gift cards and then use those cards over the next 10 months to meet your spending. I would not call this "manufactured spending." You simply shifted your spending in time. I guess under your definition, it would still be "manufactured" in the sense that you didn't want to put that $10k on the card at that time. I would say only that this is a very broad understanding of "manufactured spending" and not the one that I think is common.

2) You would like to pay your mortgage with a credit card. But your lending bank doesn't allow it. You find a technique to use a credit card in a way that will allow you to convert credit card swipes into a method of payment acceptable to the bank at a rate cheaper than the maximum you are willing to pay for points or miles. Again, I don't think the spend here is in any sense manufactured. It is a non-optional expense. I think, for what it's worth, that the ability of people to use new products to do this without large fees is a substantial portion of the current discussion on the board previously known as milesbuzz.

3) You have an recurring expense (let's say your season tickets for the local baseball team). You traditionally pay with a credit card, but, try as you might, you cannot find any credit card company that will give you more than 1 point per dollar. Using techniques, you are able to pay for the tickets by indirectly using a credit card that gives you 2x at grocery stores. This spending is not manufactured.

4) Your property taxes can be paid with a credit card, but only with a 3 percent fee. You think 3 cents per mile is too much to pay. But, using certain techniques, you can get multiple miles per dollar, bringing your cost down to 1 cent per mile, by a series of transactions. Again, I don't view this spend as manufactured.

True manufactured spending is where you are circumventing the fees that the lender must be able to collect to make the system work. I am not, by any means, trying to start a debate on whether this is or isn't ethical. But this is more of the shady art of the credit card game -- that is, credit card banks give bonuses in part because they collect 2 percent fees on swipes. The game with true manufactured spend is to circumvent the fee, pure and simply, by swiping but then getting 100 percent, or near to it, for your swipe, to pay back the loan before it is called. Other than one very generous vendor that is running a competitive system to paypal, when these schemes are rooted out by banks, they are dealt with harshly and swiftly, and it is a very dirty word. Coins were, in a way, "manufactured" spend in this sense, but it was in a circumstance where the government was ok footing the 2 percent bill (or whatever they pay) as the cost of getting the coins in circulation. Some of the current schemes for true manufacturing of spending, which are ironically not discussed on FT, are more underground and devious.
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Old Feb 2, 2013, 5:46 am
  #18  
mia
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The name Manufactured Spending was used not because any of the moderators "like" it, but rather because it is the term most often used by posters.

The distinguishing characteristic of manufactured spending is that the value is refundable in cash . Use a rewards card to buy an instrument which can be deposited in a bank account. (Some people will choose to use the instrument to pay merchants who do not accept cards, rather than deposit to their own account.)
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Old Feb 2, 2013, 8:54 am
  #19  
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Great improvement for FT^
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Old Feb 2, 2013, 9:29 am
  #20  
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So I slept on it and here is the best alternative I can come up with:

Creative Credit Carding.


But I still think Manufactured Spending works....
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Old Feb 2, 2013, 10:52 am
  #21  
 
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Originally Posted by kokonutz
So I slept on it and here is the best alternative I can come up with:

Creative Credit Carding.

That has a nice ring to it!

The more I think about it, I'd agree with a couple of other posters who suggested it might be better placed under the Credit Cards forum. But either location works I guess, at least it's cleaned up MB a bit.
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Old Feb 2, 2013, 11:04 am
  #22  
 
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Really annoying to have to scan a 2nd subforum. Extra clicks are huge hurdle on the interwebs.
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Old Feb 2, 2013, 11:35 am
  #23  
 
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Originally Posted by kokonutz
So I slept on it and here is the best alternative I can come up with:

Creative Credit Carding.


But I still think Manufactured Spending works....
Alliterative!
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Old Feb 4, 2013, 9:47 am
  #24  
 
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Originally Posted by lkar
I like the decision. I don't care for the name.

"Spending Optimization" or somesuch seems closer.
+1.
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Old Feb 5, 2013, 12:56 pm
  #25  
 
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What happened to this forum?
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Old Feb 5, 2013, 1:00 pm
  #26  
mia
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Originally Posted by saranyc
What happened to this forum?
Here is a direct link to the sub-forum:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/manuf...-spending-719/
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Old Feb 6, 2013, 9:37 am
  #27  
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threads on bonuses arent being moved?
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Old Feb 6, 2013, 9:42 am
  #28  
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Originally Posted by Kagehitokiri
threads on bonuses arent being moved?
What type of bonuses?
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Old Feb 6, 2013, 10:17 am
  #29  
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CC signup bonuses... take up a ton of milesbuzz
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Old Feb 6, 2013, 10:47 am
  #30  
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Originally Posted by Kagehitokiri
CC signup bonuses... take up a ton of milesbuzz
Ah, we did address that in the Announcement:

Extraordinary credit card offers are still welcome in MilesBuzz!, but such threads will now be moved or closed (with a redirect to a parallel discussion in another forum) when the buzz is off the offer.
These threads will not be moved to Manufactured Spending because they are of wider interest. The change will occur gradually. We are testing different solutions with the current card bonus threads. A few have already been moved to other forums.
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