I love credit cards so much! v2.0 (see first page for add'l details)

[miztressuz]

I've been making a few calls this morning. I need to convince DH that we don't need escrow anymore. He said, "Why would we want to give it up? It's so easy." Not sure he's 100% on board yet. That would be a big chunk since our farm insurance is around $3000.

I did find that I can pay my farm, home, and auto insurance with a credit card without any additional charges or penalties. It's about $7000 a year that I could be earning rewards, plus I'd save $12 a year on the monthly auto-withdraw fee that we currently pay. (DH's choice years ago that I never balked.)

Even better! Save money and earn points? Score

I think in very few settings is this true. He gives examples like buying a tv that say costs $1000 and you walk up to the sales guy and offer $800 cash. And the sales guy takes your $800 instead of charging you $1000. IS that at Best Buy, Sears, or where?? Only some very small store is going to operate like that. He gives that example about buying furniture. I don't know of any furniture store that would operate that way either.

Agreed, most of the furniture stores I've been in want you to take the financing since they get a kick back. If you say you're paying cash they look disappointed. I've asked if paying cash versus credit would get us any deal and they go "Nah, they're both the same, but if you're wanting to use credit, I've got a 0% offer I can do for you...." Yeah, no, I'll take my points then We don't shop in the very fancy places often, because I haven't found anything in there worth paying those prices for, but I hadn't noticed a difference between the high end places, mid road chains and discount stores. And I haven't seen an electronics store outside of a chain in many years. Everyone here gets their electronics from Walmart, Best Buy, Target or Amazon. Unless you get some guy selling them off the dock in the back, cash isn't going to do anything for you here.

It's over with the shore excursions, under onboard credits.

Sweet, that's where I thought it was. This is looking up for using some shore excursions then. I took the $50 credit too but it's only good for one person at each port, so I could buy the second ticket online to try for the AmEx credit and then just call in to use the promo credit for the other person. I hope it works!

 

[vanjust14]

Hm... contra-DP: https://www.reddit.com/r/churning/comments/asn2tt/comment/egvw26s?st=JSEGJ7GB&sh=294afd4f

The way Amex is delaying their FN certs really makes it confusing. Hope I didn’t steer you wrong.

I saw those comments as well. Even if it's the 35k I think I'm still going to go for it since it's still a way to get 100,000 points without adding to my x/24

 

[miztressuz]

That new PP restaurant at SeaTac is already gone, barely lasted a week per DoC.

Well, poo, that was fast I still have some time, hopefully something else pops up. It can stay only open a week if it likes, just pick the day I'm there please

 

[mmmears]

Chase does occasionally soft pull people accounts but im not sure if this actually causes chase to shut peoples account down. The problem i do see is that if your on the train, u be most likely hitting your citi cards hard, your chase spendings will go down... chances are, if u do a big purchase, it may trigger something.
now, we watch ppl shut down, we see about 50% of ppl that are below 5/24 able to get their accounts back. but i havent seen anyone getting their accounts back at lol/24. Citi Train will def make u lol/24.
Chase is very cautious on your spendings... they worry that u would put a lot of purchases at once and then stop paying. Amex of course is similar but Amex is a lot more friendlier than Chase is.

hopefully that makes sense. this is just an analyzation too.


there is a rumor going around that amex is trying to get the airlines to change the coding of their gift cards... so its likely a major change in the future.
for now, it looks like AA has done so(but only seems to affect amex cards). WN still works, DL still works in $50 increments.

Thank you for the explanation. It does make sense. I'm coming from a perspective where we really just used one card (the plat) for years, barely using the others we had. And AMEX doesn't bat an eye when a big charge hits out of the blue. So any and all advice is welcome and appreciated.

Amex needs to get with the times and make this benefit a straight up travel or, at least, airline credit.

Totally agree. It's getting ridiculous compared to the ease of using the CSR. Plus I don't have much use for SW or DL from here. Bad for their business. Maybe we need @SouthFayetteFan to launch a twitter campaign.

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

Thank you for the explanation. It does make sense. I'm coming from a perspective where we really just used one card (the plat) for years, barely using the others we had. And AMEX doesn't bat an eye when a big charge hits out of the blue. So any and all advice is welcome and appreciated.



Totally agree. It's getting ridiculous compared to the ease of using the CSR. Plus I don't have much use for SW or DL from here. Bad for their business. Maybe we need @SouthFayetteFan to launch a twitter campaign.

Lol - I don’t mess with the AMEX RAT. They will come for me, they will find me and they will kill me.

 

[wanderlust7]

Does the previously posted method not work for the BGR/Biz Gold?

What category did you select as your 4x?

Alternatively, you could try Statements & Activity tab, click the Preview New Version button in the middle of the page, and click on the individual transactions that you want to see if they're coding 4x. There should be a box to the side that shows you the MR points earned and any bonus multiplier.

Think I have the "new" BGR, which is the 2 categories with the most spend. Don't think I need to select the categories. None of the methods work though. Maybe it works differently since they wouldn't know which categories until the end of the statement period. But even transactions on the cut statement don't show points earned.

 

[disneedee]

Nice that you were able to get the airline worked out! I'm no help on the symbols, it always seems random to me when I see them show up on my cards. When I want to check a multiplier I switch the new interface and look at the transaction detail, that's been pretty accurate.

Also nice your OBC purchase worked. You said you went through the website for that right? I can't get to my cruise right now to check where it is, the NCL site is having some issues, but do you recall if it was on the same page where you could prepay for gratuities or is it over in the activities section with the beverage packages and shore excursions?

when i did the ax cruise credits a couple of years ago i called into the cruise line and did it over the phone, paying with the ax.

 

[Alexle2007]

Yippee! Just received DS's acceptance for private school! Now I just need that CIU to arrive so I can pay the 10% deposit and facilities fee since it says I can do it electronically. That will put us close to the MSR

 

[miztressuz]

Does the previously posted method not work for the BGR/Biz Gold?

What category did you select as your 4x?

Alternatively, you could try Statements & Activity tab, click the Preview New Version button in the middle of the page, and click on the individual transactions that you want to see if they're coding 4x. There should be a box to the side that shows you the MR points earned and any bonus multiplier.

I could be wrong but I didn't think you selected the 4x category, I thought they picked the top two each month for you to get 4x. And with the old card I thought it topped out at 3x and restaurants weren't included. So I assumed new card and waiting for the statement makes sense in that case. But being out of the charge card game I'm not 100% versed on them

 

[disneymagicgirl]

It's funny...if this were Chase, I wouldn't care at all about going pending. But it's Citi...and my only "pending" experience with Citi was a denial due to inquiries so now I'm worried, lol!

Mine went pending and I waited forever for the letter. Called when I got it and I had put DH's SS#. She took the correct info from me and approved me. Then I waited forever again for the card in the mail.

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

Mine went pending and I waited forever for the letter. Called when I got it and I had put DH's SS#. She took the correct info from me and approved me. Then I waited forever again for the card in the mail.

Luckily I got approved within about 12 hours!

 

[miztressuz]

when i did the ax cruise credits a couple of years ago i called into the cruise line and did it over the phone, paying with the ax.

I like the sound of that. This was for excursions or something like it? I can't make a payment because I used UR points for it and the remaining balance has to go on one of my UR cards. Wasn't sure if the activities group codes any different than the sales group if I called in.

Although I guess I'm over thinking it. If it doesn't work I should be able to cancel it and rebook it with the NCL card. I don't think I'm picking anything super popular to worry about a sell out.

 

[disneymagicgirl]

TPG confirms own DP that AA GC purchase did not reimburse; announces to world that Delta and SW GCs still work to trigger Amex credit.

Same over at sister site MMS.

omg. they kill me.

 

[Lain]

I could be wrong but I didn't think you selected the 4x category, I thought they picked the top two each month for you to get 4x. And with the old card I thought it topped out at 3x and restaurants weren't included. So I assumed new card and waiting for the statement makes sense in that case. But being out of the charge card game I'm not 100% versed on them

Yeah, I totally forgot that's how the refreshed Biz Gold works. I have no plans to ever upgrade my BGR to the Biz Gold and have to pay a fee. And since Amex considers the BGR to be the same product as the Biz Gold (but didn't bother to upgrade the benefits*), I'm locked out of another bonus; and without that, it's not worth applying for.

*or send me a shiny metal card!

 

[Albort]

Only reason I can think of for using CIP for fees over gc's would be for the travel insurance benefits.

This is something u should not to do if your travel is not an actually business trip. Chase will ask you to prove your business trip.
You need to get a CSR for that.

 

[disneymagicgirl]

I missed like 25 pages in the last 2 days and tried to skim through some, but I'm waving the white flag.

Looks like nothing terribly important was missed...according to the dischurners news thread.

In other news, we have enough points to book 2 rooms at grand Wailea if we want to try and hop on the soon to be released SW flights. Not likely, but nice to know the option is there. But the fact that we have all those points, means I don't have enough stuff planned.

 

[wanderlust7]

Yeah, I totally forgot that's how the refreshed Biz Gold works. I have no plans to ever upgrade my BGR to the Biz Gold and have to pay a fee. And since Amex considers the BGR to be the same product as the Biz Gold (but didn't bother to upgrade the benefits), I'm locked out of another bonus; and without that, it's not worth applying for.

Oops, think I'm using the wrong acronym. Biz Gold instead of BGR to avoid confusion?

 

[kidsfirsttrip]

Just got back from our almost 2 week adventure using mostly cc rewards. We did 3 days in Disney prior to our cruise which left last Sunday. And then just finished 4 days at RPR universal. We had a great time!

Wanted to say I’m extremely glad @SouthFayetteFan does the Reddit updates I found it really helpful while away!
Disney was busy but after browsing this board (no way can catch up to it all) it sounds like we dodged a major bullet not going over Presidents weekend. Most people have stayed where we stayed so I won’t get too into it. One night Pop it was sufficient and worked out great as we got ME and magic bands but i couldn’t see us staying there long term. Then we switched to the Swan (a first for us). We loved it! The rooms and location were great! Will def head back there for a longer trip. The parks were busy (Friday 2/8, Sat 2/9) but managable. The kids chose AK and HS and I was able to get FOP in the afternoon - amazing. Then we did HS Saturday and SDD FP. It’s nice how everyone flocks to the new parts so you have some time to get other rides in first thing. We were able to do RNR X2 and TOT X2 standby with min waits in the am. That’s never happened any trip before.
Our cruise set sail Sunday. We took the RCCL Oasis to the western carribean. Another ship (Norwegian) from the same Port had an issue that week crashing into a dock in Puerto Rico. I can see why. It was incredibly rough the first 2 days. I felt so bad it was my kids first experience and it was unusually rough waters. Things calmed down and we had 2 great port days. It was a beautiful ship, lots to do and my kids had fun. We’ve cruised before but I wouldn’t call is “cruise people”. We like other types of vacations a bit more. But still if the price was right we’d cruise again.
Lastly we ended at RPR universal for 3 nights. Loved the hotel. Rooms were great. Parks were busy so EP was totally needed - was so glad to have it. My kids loved universal. I liked it but too many 3D/4D experiences and my head felt just gross. We did upgrade to APs because it was only $29 per person and they are good for 15 months. Will prob go back and do a more relaxed trip. Some mornings in the park and enjoying the pool/resort a bit more!
Came home late last night on a delayed flight to freezing rain and horrible roads to find our heat not working. Oil guy came at 4am so I am exhausted!!!!

 

[CyndiLouWho]

I never use the rewards card. I could offer to close it but I’m sure they’ll want to know why I need another card if I don’t use that one. I met the msr on the new arrival+ but I’ve still been using it so hopefully that at least looks good.

Because you need to keep Biz expenses separate. And you’re trying to grow your business

 

[Haley R]

Because he's a weirdo He likes to go to the bank. I've never had that feeling lol

His company used to do all paper checks, then sometime in 2016 they went to direct deposit, but his commission and expense checks were still paper. Commission went to direct deposits sometime last year. Thank goodness! We started using YNAB/budgeting together in 2016 and I was always like, WILL YOU TAKE YOUR CHECK TO THE BANK??? Even the expense check, it's always $400 for his vehicle allowance and then other stuff on top of it (he doesn't usually have anything unless he travels). But even this last week, he just took in his Jan and Feb vehicle checks.

I'm working on a full duplicate set of everything, I'm halfway there but I'm getting tired of pulling out random parts of my makeup and face lotion lol.

I hate going to the bank. Dh gets on me right away about doing direct deposit lol