The Milenomics Podcast Network

M² Episode 102: Good News/Bad News, A Clawback Comeback, and Stockpile or Cashout?

Added 2020-11-14 15:47:49 +0000 UTC

We break format to cover some late breaking news, update on what we've been up to and take a Listener Question. Be sure to share your take on these topics on slack!

0:23 Bad News: “Worst” of Slack

WalMart: MetaBank GCs limited to $49.99 (Slack link)
Speedway limiting BestBuy GC loads to $250 (Slack link)
MS Favorability Index? (Slack link)

13:36 Good News; PayPal Key Update

$10k/day limit in T&Cs seems to not be enforced
Summary of Bonus Credit Cards
BofA Premium Rewards codes Plastiq Mortgage/HELOC payments as travel earns 2% + Personal Preferred Rewards uplift
BofA Personal Cash Rewards MC earns 3% + Personal Preferred Rewards uplift for Plastiq payments categorized as Mortgage/HELOC
BofA Business Cash codes Plastiq Mortgage/HELOC payments as travel and earns 3% + Business Preferred Rewards uplift (when Travel selected as category)
BofA Business Cash codes Plastiq payments categorized as “Other Business Services” as 3% + Business Preferred Rewards uplift (when “Business Consulting Services” selected as bonus category)
Chase Freedom 5x Visa earns 5x for seemingly all Plastiq payments (for Q4 2020 PayPal is a bonus category)
Amex cards with +3x referral are great cards for this so far as well
Cards that did NOT code as travel when paying Plastiq Mortgage/HELOC: Chase Sapphire Reserve, Citi Premier, HSBC Premier World Elite MC, CNB.

24:17 Closing/Downgrading High-fee Amex Accounts with Little Pushback

Closed Business Plat, Delta Gold, Hilton Aspire
Either no retention offer when I asked -or- they just closed it without offering
Were the chat reps more free-wheeling when they started?

25:45 Third Buying Group Added: EMB Deals.

Be sure to listen to MSP episode 14 all about Buying Groups.
Have cooled off on my angst over MYS. What’s better? Tons of deals and slow to clear everything or almost no deals and clearing them super fast?
My point is: when tons of deals are out there check ins are going to be slow. It doesn’t have to be an example of anything other than that.
Multiple groups help with this too, but there’s a lot of overlap in the deals.
Having a few months of profits now makes things easier to ‘stomach’
Be sure to read Slack reports of EMB Deals issues (missing packages, slow/no response).

31:41 Amex Incidental Clawback Trial and Tribulations

At this point we’ve seen, and I’ve personally experienced, Amex clawbacks on air incidentals that have come a week or two after account closure
This seems isolated to air travel incidentals (not Hilton resort credits on Aspire) and have been reported on both Platinum and Aspire cards
Clawbacks seem to be limited to incidental for the current year. Unclear whether this is rolling 12 month or calendar year.
One thought is that downgrading and then closing a card is the way to go, because the clawback check on Amex’s side isn’t triggered by the downgrade nor the subsequent closure. If true, this is really nice - because it provides a path to a pro-rated annual fee refund for all of us (not just MA residents).
Clawback/comeback on my Biz Plat completed. I can say that once incidentals are clawed back, the air travel counter does *not* reset. So anything you get after clawback is manual/through chat. Didn’t have trouble getting JetBlue < $150 tickets credited as air incidentals (as seat assignment fees). Closed again, no clawback yet.
Another experiment I have in flight is a Hilton Aspire that I downgraded to No AF. First check is whether clawback occurred after downgrade. Next check is whether clawback occurs after closure. And how long should I keep the downgraded card? A month?
Another consideration with all these Hilton cards is downgrade/upgrade approaches. While seemingly resilient to clawback on closure it does clog up the 4 credit card limit.
Yet another experiment is a Biz Plat that I realized I hadn’t used my incidentals on yet for 2020. Bought 2 < $150 tickets, triggered credits, will close outright. Pretty sure that’s resilient to clawback.
Bottom line: We’ve learned a lot here, there are a lot of different permutations and combinations, and air travel credits are piling up.

41:59 AmEx Says Its Cardholders Are Stockpiling Their Points and Miles (HT Jonathan L on Slack)

Bloomberg
“They’re not choosing to redeem them for online retail, which they could,” Campbell said at a virtual conference Tuesday. “They’re just stocking up the points to travel.”
“We’d be crazy to dramatically pivot the whole company because of what we view as a fairly temporary change in the way people are going to spend,” said Campbell, who was at American Airlines Group Inc. during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. “The human urge to travel -- to gather, to explore -- is insatiable.”

48:15 Listener Question from RSD1952:

Hi! Absolutely love your show! I’m 68, have been into this game for almost three years, and you guys have become my go-to source for points, miles, MS and fun.

The show’s recent focus on cash-out options has led me to wonder if producing a quality podcast makes the two of you more likely to move in the cash-out direction. Lots of us are sitting on large stashes of MR’s and UR’s which, thanks to Covid, just continue to accumulate. As they grow, caution is clearly warranted, and that can take the form of either (i) sitting back and being less aggressive; or (ii) cashing out and continuing to be aggressive. I expect that most of us subscribers genuinely have that choice for each of our currencies, but I’m not sure that the two of you actually do. If you were to ‘sit back’ on a a couple of major currencies, I don’t know where a lot of the podcast’s content would come from - the ‘funnest’ thing is hearing all the stuff you’ve tried the previous week. We get to be vicarious adventurers!

Don’t get me wrong - we’re all adults here (says everyone but our P2’s) and you always emphasize that what works for you will likely not work for everyone else. However, I wonder if you aren’t subconsciously finding cashing out to be a somewhat better option than you would if you didn’t have the podcast.

55:21 New Annual Subscription Option