Nerds With Inks

Sunday through Saturday, nerds with Inks can head nerdily to Office Depot/Max again. The deal is their $10 off $300+ in gift cards promo. It’s for Mastercards this time. As always, the idea is using an Ink (or Amex SimplyCash Plus) to take advantage of 5 points per dollar at office stores. The best option is buying a pair of $200 cards and seeing how many times you can sweet talk your way into repeating it. In-store only. Historically, the people willing to walk into more stores and make friends with more employees have done best with these. Have a great weekend, nerds!

Hotel Promo

If you have no excitement about the options available with your ThankYou points…the $50 promo for hotels in the Citibank Travel Center is worth looking at. Code CITI50 gets you 50 bucks off for 2 nights. And you can use points to cover the balance. I brushed this deal off, but after talking to a few readers about it yesterday, I stand corrected. The math gets pretty good for those looking at low-priced properties. Some of you did exceptionally well with it in places like Thailand.

 

United Promo

Thanks to reader Julie for sharing another targeted United promo. Each offer will vary (mine was pretty average – 7,500 bonus miles for booking a flight, checking a bag, and shopping). I can’t remember exactly when we saw the last one of these, but we’ve seen it before. Definitely worth investing 10 seconds to see what your offer is.

Take Screenshots

I’ve heard from a few people this year who didn’t get credit card bonuses they were promised. Some instances were about misreading the terms. One reader just forgot to meet the spend in time. But the rest all seemed to have legitimate complaints. I posted some tips a few years ago on how not to get screwed over. Those might help. But, for everyone, I strongly recommend taking a screenshot of the terms whenever you apply for credit cards. It only takes a few seconds and will make your life much easier when you have issues with a bonus. Personally, I just keep a Word document called “Screenshots” and dump everything there.

The main culprit lately seems to be American Express. Some of their card offers don’t have any “once in a lifetime” language in the terms. But I’ve seen (on multiple occasions) people being denied a bonus because they were previous cardholders. This is either incredibly shady or incredibly disorganized. You just can’t promise a bonus in writing and then deny it months later by making up new terms after the fact. Amex needs to figure out why this keeps happening. And you guys need to protect yourselves. One great way to do that is by taking screenshots of the terms. Do it every single time you apply for a card. Read the terms. Take a screenshot. Rest easy.

Time For IHG Card?

Thanks to reader Sunil for reaching out about the IHG card. I feel (very strongly) that this is the most underrated hotel card and don’t even know what I’d even consider next in line. Probably Hyatt. But the gap is huge.

Why?

Pretty simple. A $49 annual fee to get yearly free nights anywhere is a killer deal. Other cards (like Hyatt) limit their anniversary nights by category. That’s not the case with IHG. Cardholders (at least the ones I know) book a stay worth hundreds of dollars every year with this card.

According to Sunil, it sounds like links are starting to disappear. That means two things…

A) There’s a good chance the clock is ticking on this version of the IHG card.

B) There’s a possibility the new version won’t be as good. It could potentially have no anniversary night and/or a higher annual fee.

There’s no guarantee with any of this…just an educated guess from past experience. But it might be worth looking at the current IHG card very soon if you don’t have it already. Another factor is that, as Chase goes, this is one of the few options available if you apply for bunches of cards every year. This, Hyatt, Ritz, British, and Marriott Business are basically the only Chase products I get approved for anymore. Again, no guarantee here. Who knows, all IHG cards might get converted to the new and potentially worse version in a few months. But I think this is a gamble worth considering. Times change. We knew the IHG opportunity wouldn’t last forever.