These two questions haunt me almost every day. It usually goes like this:
Me: “You’ve got a free hour today, shall I go MS?”
“When was the last time I went?”
“If I go, how much can I do?”
The questions are motivated by fear, without a doubt. Fear of missing out on income or miles earning opportunity or fear of pushing it too hard with a retailer, or worse yet, a card company and getting banned. It happens every Staples Fee-free Visa Week to me.
The temptation of Staples fee-free week
I’m always the first one in the store on Sunday morning at the start of a fee-free week. I’ve never been denied my full load of $2,000 that early in the week. The thinking is that maybe the clerks haven’t been told there is a limit this week.
I go back around Wednesday and hit them again, usually in the afternoon so I run into a different clerk than the Sunday morning one and grab another $2,000. But now it’s Saturday morning and the promo ends at the end of the day. Do I hit it just one more time for another 10K Ultimate Rewards points?
That example asks both questions: How much and how often?
4X at Sam’s Club
The 4X Amex bonus at Sam’s Club til December 31 asks the same questions but for a different reason. In the Staples case, I also use my Ink card to pay my phone and cable bill so I don’t look suspicious (or so I think).
But the Sam’s Club deal works best with the Blue Business Plus Credit Card from American Express and there is no limit that I’ve found yet on how much I can buy at one time.
Do I get $500 on each of our cards or $750? After $500, the Dosh bonus is maxed out for the trip, but 4X Amex points + 2 for the Blue Business Plus Card is nice for the $4.88 card fee. And I only use the Blue Business Plus Card for this promo at Sam’s.
Gift card purchase limits?
Am I striking any cords here? Or do we need to find me a straight jacket?
I know some of you walk into a Simon Mall. Do their rules and regulations tell you how much you can buy? Do they tell you how often you can buy? Or how far your credit card company will let you go?
And buying gift cards online via shopping portals is the same way. I know some of them have maximum order sizes, but do any of them limit how often, with reasonable numbers? Isn’t there one that limits purchases to $60,000 per month? I can’t fathom those kinds of volume numbers. I try to limit my online orders to two per month per product be, it Staples or Giftcards.com. How about you guys?
Liquidation
And then we move on to liquidating the gift cards. I have two grocery stores that I use primarily that have good ink in their money order machines, so I can mobile deposit. And then we have to ask ourselves:
How many money orders can I ask for a Grocery store A today? What clerk will be working?
Two money order outlets seem to be enough for me and my volume, as I can go in the morning shift or afternoon shift. That gives me four different faces and I usually manufacture spend three times a week.
Data points
The best part about Ariana’s blog is the commonality of our interest here, combined with the diversity of our locations and manufactured spending methods.
I know somebody in this group can give another opinion on how hard they are hitting this Amex Sam’s Club deal. It’s new, I know, but an early success data point can be very helpful to the rest of us.
I want to go buy three $250 gift cards today on both our credit cards. It would be so much easier to pull the trigger if somebody reports they already have successfully OR admits it got them shut down.
Same deal with Simon Mall, Staples, regular grocery store purchases, Amex Gold cards being cut off from paying on gift cards? We are way better as a community sharing our stories than trying to do this alone.
I hope some of you PointChaser readers are at the Chicago Seminars this year. Please say hello if you are. I’d love to buy you a drink or coffee and share the lessons we have learned.
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