by PointsGuru | Feb 17, 2015 | American Express
American Express is pulling out the promotions this year like no other. They may be loosing Costco as a partner but who cares they have so many great “statement credit” deals that it’s a new surprise each week. AMEX card members can get a $50 statement credit back when you spend $250 or more at participating Los Angeles hotels through April 15, 2015.
Just Register any eligible American Express card for this offer. Does not include Bluebird or Serve cards. You will need to use your registered card to make a purchase of $250 or more on charges to your room, including your room rate.
The catch is that there’s a limited list of Participating Hotels:
Four Points by Sheraton LAX
Hilton Garden Inn Hollywood
The Hotel Of Hollywood
Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel
Hotel Angeleno
Hotel Normandie LA
Intercontinental Los Angeles/Century City
L’Ermitage Beverly Hills
Mondrian
Sheraton Los Angeles Downtown Hotel
Shore Hotel
The BLVD Hotel & Spa
The Garland
The Line Hotel
The Standard Downtown LA
W Los Angeles Westwood
You may register here for this offer and make sure that you use this same site to book the reservation. If they are made through third party websites or travel agencies you will not get your $50 credit. The credit will appear on your billing statement within 90 days after April 15, 2015.
I’ve been planning to get to LA in March but do not see my regular hotels on the list. Too bad it is not open to more participating hotels. I have the same issue with the Hilton promotion where I normally stay in every hotel owned by Hilton. If you are not set on staying at a certain place and open to trying out a new hotel this deal is for you.
by PointsGuru | Feb 14, 2015 | Points
Swagbucks, the popular online rewards site has a new card with a sign-up bonus and you know we are always looking for those over $50. If you aren’t familiar with how Swagbucks work you can read about it here.
You’ll receive 1,000 Swag Bucks points just for using your card within the first 3 billing cycles after your account is opened, which is good for a $10 gift card to a variety of merchants including Whole Foods and Amazon. You can then earn 2,500 points when you spend $1,000 within the first 6 billing cycles after account opening, which is redeemable for another $25 worth of gift cards.
This new rewards card also offers 1.25 Swag Bucks points per $1 on all of your purchases. So after you meet all the minimum spending of $1,000, you get a total of 4,750 points from bonuses and spending. This gives you enough for 10 Amazon cards at $5 each totaling $50. You would have 250 remaining Swag Bucks leftover.
$1,000 minimum spending requirement = 4,750 or more Swag Bucks points
The Bucks add up to a $50 Gift Card and points left over:
1,000 first purchase bonus points
2,500 bonus points after $1,000 in purchases
1,250 points from the actual $1,000 in purchases (1.25x points per $1).
by PointsGuru | Feb 14, 2015 | Gift Cards
The number one trusted gift card app, Gyft, is offering a is offering a Free $5 Gift Card when you sign up for a new account. You can use this card at over 200 Retailers including Amazon, Best Buy, Target, Home Depot, Sephora, Starbucks, iTunes, Whole Foods just to mention a few of many retailers.
Make sure to validate your account by email to reveal $5 Gyft code for you to use on gift cards. The promotional code emailed will expire 24 hours from when it is issued. Do not be like me and forget to use the code within 24 hours or it will be lost.
How this works:
1. Sign up for a Gyft account.
2. Validate your email address to reveal the $5 Gyft Card code.
3. Choose the gift card you’d like to purchase (must be $15 or more).
4. Add the Gyft Card code to your order and click the validate button.
5. Complete your order by paying with credit card, PayPal or Buy with Google.
6. Enjoy your new gift card!
This virtual account is great for uploading, buying, and redeeming gift cards in stores or online. I currently use Gyft to also keep track of gift card balances or hold cards such as the ones that Passbook do not work. Whole Foods is one of those cards. I add it to my Gyft account and it works flawlessly at their registers because it comes up in Passbook after its added. I also love sending out birthday gift cards via Facebook and the Gyft app.
by PointsGuru | Feb 13, 2015 | Charity
Discover Card tried a biodegradable card a few years back but it was not as generous as this new card from Commerce Bank out of Kansas City. Sustain:Green MasterCard is a unique card with a set of features designed to fight climate change and sustain the planet. This card reduces your personal carbon footprint, funds rainforest preservation and reforestation, and is a biodegradable card with every dollar you spend.
This biodegradable credit card comes with no annual Fee and a low APR of 1.99% on Purchases and Balance Transfers for 6 monthly billing cycles after account opening, then a competitive rate of 12.24% to 18.24% APR.
You can reduce your carbon footprint by 2 pounds for every dollar in Net Merchandise Purchases. Plus, Sustain:Green will reduce your carbon footprint by an additional 5,000 pounds of carbon offsets when you make your first purchase within 90 days. Spend at least $1,250 in a calendar quarter and Sustain:Green will reduce your carbon footprint by an additional 2,500 pounds, up to an additional 10,000 pounds per year.
You can use their carbon calculator to figure out your personal carbon footprint and our tools to monitor how you are doing in reducing your footprint and aiding the fight against climate change. You can also earn additional carbon reductions by referring friends and family.
How do they do this carbon footprint reducing? This green-friendly card issuer has partnered with the non-profit American Carbon Registry and the Mata No Peito rainforest initiative to achieve their carbon reduction goals. Mostly by automatically retiring carbon offsets on a monthly basis through the American Carbon Registry.
They also provide typical Mastercard benefits such as environmentally friendly E-Statements, Optional Auto Pay, 24/7 Customer Service (except holidays) and Online Account Access, and $100,000 Travel Accident Insurance.
Overall it looks to be a great card when you want to feel better about your consumption and what it’s doing to the environment. Although, I prefer to get the rewards myself then decide what charity or green organization deserves my money from “hard earned” shopping.
by PointsGuru | Feb 13, 2015 | Discover
If you ask me hands down the Best Superbowl commercial 2015 goes to Discover IT card who we have always been behind as one of the best cards for rewards. You just have to watch this if you have not seen it yet because it can already be a hassle to talk to a rep normally on the phone although truly with Discover a call is like this at first. He calls in and gets a human and that did NOT happen a year or so ago so this is a great change for the company. I called in and was ‘surprised’ myself a human answered I thought I called the wrong number.
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by PointsGuru | Feb 11, 2015 | US Bank
US Bank features the Edge cards such as Chase has the INK cards and Capital One provides the Spark cards series. Make sure that when you apply you are actually getting the specific card in the Edge brand of cards such as the “Business Edge Select Rewards Card”.
The Business Edge Select Rewards Card is a card where you can decide which 3% back categories similar to the Cash Plus card from US Bank on the personal level. With this card you decide once and you are locked into that category and do not have the opportunity to change it again. So no quarterly changes. Earn 3 points per dollar on net purchases in the category of your choice and one point per dollar on all other net purchases. The categories you can select from include:
- Day-to-day expenses, such as shipping, advertising, utilities, office supplies, telecom and professional services.
- Automotive, such as gas, service, tires, tolls, dealerships, car washes and repairs.
- Travel and entertainment, such as airlines, auto rental, hotels, restaurants and travel agencies.
Before we go any further let me point out that we highly recommend the Business Edge Cash Rewards Card over the Select version:
These Day-to-day expenses according to a representative at US Bank include a range of random things. Including insurance, tax prep, accounting, bookkeeping, direct marketing, computer services, data processing, management consulting, PR, legal services (8111), misc. business services, computers, equipment and software, stationery, blue printing, photocopying, commercial photography arts, laundry services, dry cleaners, uniform rental, cleaning janitorial service, exterminating disinfecting, equip rental, furniture rental, carpet upholstery cleaning, trucking moving storage, postal government only, courier services air group freight, publishing, ad services, employment agencies, temp help, tax payments, telecommunications equip telephones, long distance carriers, computer network info services, cable, utilities such as electric, gas, water, and sewage. Now that is a long list of things the card covers at the “3%” cash back in points.
We were excited in that you can pay taxes on this card and get 3% back and it really just comes to 2% back or less when you go to redeem the points. The problem is that when you go over to redemption it gives you a far less ratio than 1:1 that you would expect. The gift cards pay a bit higher as I was able to redeem an Amazon gift card for 7,000 points but only for $50. With many cash back cards you would get $70.00 statement credit or gift card for those 7,000 points. One example of redemption is with 7097 points you would only get back $47.55 statement credit. You may redeem as few as 2,500 of your Points for a statement credit of $16.75. Points can only be redeemed in incremental values of $0.01.
Another example is 5,000 points = $33.50 Reward. I am not too happy about really not getting a 3% back or full 1% back when it comes to a redemption that devalues my earnings. Therefore, I plan to cancel this card as soon as I can redeem any points I have left in the next billing statement and trade it in for a Business Edge Cash Rewards Card which will pay you at a 1:1 ratio.
Another thing I found out after I redeemed for an Amazon Gift card was that you can get a $50 U.S. Bank Rewards Visa Card
for the same 7,000 Points.
It’s been a real struggle
It has been an experience with this Business Edge Select Rewards Card from day one. First, I applied for the Business Edge Platinum Card somehow instead of the Rewards Card. I am not sure how the applications were switched up online but it happened. You really have to double-check then maybe triple check what card you are actually applying for after clicking around. I then noticed I was not earning rewards nor did I get the $100 bonus it talked about in the bullet points. I called in and I had the wrong card and why would I want a Platinum card with no rewards? I don’t and did not intend to apply for that. They changed my card to a rewards card and I was so excited to get this card I could get 3% back on utilities and business expenses. After finally getting my utilities changed over to this card I find out it does not pay back on the 1:1 ratio for statement credits or gift cards. Yes, after all these months and work of trying to figure out their system and getting the cards straightened out. But that is why there are sites such ass this one to get in the know before you apply for a card. I will also say that the phone customer service takes awhile to pick up so be sure to have lots of time on your hands. While I had such a horrible experience with this card I should not have assumed I would get a full ratio cash back and had not had assumed I would get the correct card after applying before charging on the card. You always have to check all of this. I do enjoy other US Bank cards and they have been great to me with the Cash+ Visa and the Club Carlson Business Visa and I do plan to keep using these cards.
by PointsGuru | Feb 11, 2015 | International Travel
Etihad Guest is doing tons of promotions and these two will take a few minutes of your day just to sign up for a chance at 1,150 miles plus a luggage tag, lightning cable, or iPhone screen protector. You’ll receive 1,000 bonus miles, when you complete your first earn transaction before 31 March 2015. That could be for flying with Etihad Airways or one of their partner airlines, paying with an Etihad Guest credit card, or spending with our non-air partners. For example hotels, car rental companies and retail partners.
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by PointsGuru | Feb 10, 2015 | Search
by PointsGuru | Feb 5, 2015 | International Travel
Enter to Win a $500 voucher on Iberia Airlines. Just pick which city you want to fly out of including Boston, New York, Miami, Chicago, or Los Angeles then enter your name and email and then send. Simple as that to enter! No purchase necessary to enter/win and a purchase will not increase your chances of winning. 18+ only. The sweepstakes ends February 28, 2015 at 5pm CT. British Airways recently merged with Iberia creating Europe’s third largest scheduled airline.
by PointsGuru | Feb 5, 2015 | Prepaid Cards
The RushCard Prepaid Card is giving a $10 bonus when you do direct deposit with your tax return with the card. To get the $10 statement credit, you must enroll in direct deposit and have your tax refund loaded to your RushCard by May 15, 2015.
You get a $10 statement credit after the 1st of the following month after the direct deposit is made. If are in the market for a RushCard this is a great time to get an extra $10 bonus.
Note there are various fees with the RushCard, depending on which type of payment plan you choose. There is a one-time card fee when you first load money on your new card. See more about prepaid cards here.
