I love credit cards so much!

[kmc8826]

Sorry for multi quotes but crazy busy work day.

Out of curiosity, do we have a pretty good number of people here with 3 Chase business cards? I'm wondering if there's still a bonus on CIU in early 2019 if I might pick up that card. I currently have Marriott Biz (1/18) and CIP (5/18). I'm thinking if there's still a bonus I could pick up CIU in 2/19 and pad my URs a little more to pay off our 9/19 Disney trip. Going for a third business card makes me nervous though, but I know others have done it. If I waited until 2/19, I would only be 1/12 with Chase before applying since I don't plan to get any other cards with Chase between now and then.

My husband now has all 3 Ink cards. But only one personal the Reserve. As long as your credit levels aren’t crazy you should be ok.

that was me....thanks for the link. I'm still debating my choices here...as I have to figure out if I can make this AF worthwhile...I'm trying to wrap my mind around the benefits of this card...it's pay $450(!) get a $300 credit so effective $150 cost....which is only $55 higher than current AF. So if I upgraded,I would get another 100k in my acct for an effective $55? (do I have this right?) plus a free 50k nite on anniversary next year? My current AF is due this month. So it's essentially getting 100k on my acct for $55....right? I guess my big question is can I use that $300 credit for gift cards at a front desk,and use them later one?(like after next year's anniversary date) So that by Aug/Sept 2019 I would have paid an extra $55,gotten 100k points,plus the ann. free night,and then I could cancel card after free night gets dropped in for a prorated AF refund on the next years $450? what do you numbers experts think? If I don't upgrade,I'm canceling this card anyway,so..... (sigh) ETA and fix all my acronym mistakes before I drank enough tea today

I have been happy with upgrading it. I am looking forward to points and happy to not dealing with potential Amex fall out for canceling card (or attempting to get new one). I have read gift cards should work for travel credit. Good luck deciding!

Just noticed, my kids’ fall sports pictures coded 3x on my CIP. Maybe it will do the same on my son’s senior pictures.

I spend a lot on those type of pictures. Certain companies have monopolies and you are stuck. Which company was it? Just in case one we always have to use...

If any of you have the Staples 10% amex offer, you might get an email of a clawback. Multiple Accounts only, if u only did it once, ur okay.

FYI.

I was behind on Twitter where the blogs were all reporting on it and went through it first before this thread and saw your post. This is a huge deal in my mind. Not exactly good customer service Amex...

 

[gottalovepluto]

If I buy gcs at Best Buy will it be a problem for my AMEX MSR?

I’m in the group that never counts gift cards towards Amex MSR if I don’t have to. My concern is even if the bonus posts Amex will someday go back with RAT & review my files and use it as an excuse to deny the current bonus I’m working on.

 

[amalone1013]

But where is all your stuff?!? I am s serial overpacker, no way I could do that! DH and I went to Vegas for 2 nights recently and he was shocked we made it with only 2 carryons and 2 personal items!

I used to be until I went to Europe for 2 weeks with a friend and knew I'd be responsible for all my luggage Here I will horrify you: for our 20 day wedding/honeymoon trip, we took 3 carry on size suitcases, 2 backpacks, and a garment bag...

I am struggling more when it comes to Disney tho, I typically overpack. This trip waterparks are the focus which eliminates a lot of stuff overall. And well be back in another week so well take bigger bags for extra stuff.

I've been wondering about this. I'm pretty sure I've only been using my income, but was thinking on my next ap I should use household income. But will that look suspicious if my income more than doubles since my last ap?

After we got married we started putting combined income instead of individual income and haven't had any issues.

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

DISchurners SURVEY Reminder!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/XY776K3 - give it a click This survey is for anybody here and will take 5 minutes or less!

I'll leave the survey open through this weekend and then post results for all to see here next week.

FYI: If you are in 2 player mode - answer the questions combined between both players.
AND make sure you answer all 8 questions (there are 2 pages to the survey)

Thanks to everybody who filled it out already (69 of you!)

 

[gottalovepluto]

Just texted my boss. I feel a bit like she didn't want to answer, usually she responds very quickly...

Spoiler: Annoying work details

Yesterday I told her how my cousin had her baby, and joked I'd have to plan around football season to go visit. She asked when that would be... um not planned yet, just joking around. Since I'm going to be out of town the 31st-4th, and 13th-23rd, probably not this month plus I don't want to bother someone with a newborn! And she was kind of like, no more vacation! It was like half-jokey... basically I lost my boss in Feb and this lady got promoted in our dept... I immediately shared all dept issues, she basically sat on them... now we are about 6 weeks out from a corporate audit so I think a lot of it is she is finally feeling the pressure to get the stuff done and is already worried about my time off since she has been leaving heavily on me. It just makes the raise thing even more insulting

Basically me at work this entire time:

ETA: I really wish I could hang this up by my computer

Thankfully you’ve resolved this particular issue! But... YOU CAN DO THIS. You can finish it out!! Do you ever use a self-rewards system? This morning I get Starbucks before starting! Or after work today $1 MCD’s soda! Or favorite candy bar! ...Yes I have a sugar problem but hopefully you get the feeling here- little things that just make you smile, moments you can escape in

 

[kmc8826]

I’m in the group that never counts gift cards towards Amex MSR if I don’t have to. My concern is even if the bonus posts Amex will someday go back with RAT & review my files and use it as an excuse to deny the current bonus I’m working on.

After my experience with Amex denying Dh’s bonus on the Delta Platinum last yea I absolutely agree with you. (And congrats on booking your trip!!!)

What do you (or anyone else) think about paying a credit union loan and credit union mortgage with Plastiq on an Amex if I can get it to go through? Given all the drama with Amex I am starting to think might be better to not do it unless I get desperate and in danger of not meeting the spends.

 

[disneymagicgirl]

Did you mean to quote that with no response? Or was it just the DIS acting like Citi IT?

hahaha, I didn't mean to quote at all. lol, not sure what happened.

Interesting to see it laid out. would be nice to compare the 2 with bonuses added in. Not that it matters, because I won't give marriott a dime until they rectify my TP situation. The poor team mom for hockey set up all the hotels for the season and all but 1 are marriott brands. I hate to tell her we won't be utilizing the team hotels.

 

[gottalovepluto]

How freaking exciting! Can you post details. # of people, # of miles, which program you used to book. Africa is like 6 years down the road for us.

TBH It’s late when I read this + I’ve been hitting the wine so don’t want to screw up the deets- promise I’ll post them mañana

 

[Lain]

I looked up the language, added it in RED.

Adding the other Business offers-
Exxon: Limit of $100 in total statement credits per American Express® Card Member.
Dell: Limit of $1500 in total statement credits per American Express® Card Member.
FedEx Office & Freight: Limit of $1,000 in total statement credits per American Express® Card Member.
(never got the shipping offer, but I assume it'd be the same, since we're seeing a pattern here)

So Marriot's a bit of an anomaly where it says "per Card Member" and yet the multi tab trick worked. Whereas the Ritz offer with the same "Limit 1 enrolled Card per Card Member across all American Express offer channels. " worked as expected and blocked me from adding it to a second card. But I'd play it safe and not expect to use it on more than one card.

Yeah I was thinking Albort might’ve had it mixed around earlier. The one offer per card member language is a lot more unambiguous than the one offer per card language.

 

[gottalovepluto]

I have some pages to catch up on but thought I would share a few churning successes and failures so far today:

On the success front, I was able to get us Business class seats for our flights from San Francisco to Johannesburg for our Botswana trip next summer! I had originally booked a coach itinerary using United miles with a combo of Lufthansa and South African Airways flights connecting through Munich, with the hope of upgrading that route to Business. I've been stalking the United website daily to see if any saver Business awards would pop up either for that route or one that was fairly comparable. Well, today it happened! I saw a Swiss itinerary connecting through Zurich. Still only one stop. A little longer layover in Zurich than we would have had in Munich, but totally worth it to get both legs in Business. I had to pay a $300 total change fee, but I also got back $23.60 because taxes were cheaper on the new route. So for 320,000 total United miles and a little over $275, we are now in Business to Africa! Super happy about that. Now to keep working on upgrades for the Emirates flights on the return...

Also on the plus side, I finished up the MSR on my Amex Biz Platinum so will hopefully see the 100K bonus MR post soon. Still trying to pull up some good offers for DH so we can get the 66Kish additional MR we would need to be able to upgrade both legs of our return flights from Africa on Emirates. The leg I really care about is the very long leg from Dubai to SFO, but I'd like to have enough MR to upgrade the whole itinerary if upgrades become available.

On the partial plus side is hearing from United customer service that they are crediting my MileagePlus account and the accounts for each of my kids with 3K miles each. This is a result of having our flight from LAX to BOI a couple of weeks ago delayed from 8:11 p.m. to 6:45 a.m. the next morning!! Apparently United had an aircraft but no crew to fly it at the time we were supposed to leave, SMH! Luckily, we were in the United Club when we got the unfortunate news about the delay, and the United agent in the lounge was able to book us in to a hotel with United vouchers and also got us food vouchers. Much better than being among the masses at the gate needing the same kind of assistance. United did give us all 7,500 miles as compensation for the delay, but I sent an email to Customer Service to see if I could get a little more. I was actually pleasantly surprised to hear back this morning with the additional 3K each.

This is in total contrast to the radio silence I've experienced from Delta on the delay issues we experienced with them on the way to LAX for the start of that trip. That trip was just cursed with bad travel karma. I'm hoping, though, that we got all of the bad juju out of our system for a while. With the amount of international travel we do, we've been pretty darn lucky in never having a truly awful delay or cancellation experience. If the bad stuff had to happen, better for it to happen on some short domestic flights. Anyway, on our way to Los Angeles for that trip, our 7:44 a.m. flight on Delta ended up leaving at around 4 p.m. due to an electrical issue with the plane that took eons to fix. We absolutely needed to be in the Los Angeles area to make a VIP tour at Universal Studios the next morning, so at about 12:30 p.m., we pulled the plug on waiting to see if Delta could fix our plane and jumped on a Southwest flight to Burbank through San Jose. Instead of arriving at LAX at around 9:30 a.m. that morning, we landed in Burbank at about 5 p.m. that evening! But Delta clearly had no backup plan if the original aircraft couldn't go, so we felt we had no choice but to bail out to another airline. Delta did refund our flights, and the Delta crew in Boise made a pretty heroic effort to get our bags off the Delta aircraft so we could check them on SW, but the SW flights still cost us around $900 more than the amount we got refunded from Delta, due to the last-minute booking. I wrote to Delta customer service and have heard absolutely nothing back. I expect to be SOL on that one since we made the choice to bail out and the original flight did end up going, but I still thought it was worth a shot to try to get something out of Delta. I sent a follow up request to Customer Service today. I'll take to Twitter next....

And also on the fail/frustration side was trying to attach my Marriott/SPG 7-night N&F certificate to a Marriott reservation in Chicago for our Hamilton trip. I was on hold for about 45 minutes total between two different reps. (I did have it on speaker while I was doing work and other things, but never fun to be on hold for so long.) Finally got a rep who knew how to attach a certificate only to be told that the room type I had reserved wasn't available to be attached to a certificate. The only room type eligible/available was one that totally wouldn't work for 4 of us. Ugh!! At that point, I just told the rep to cancel the room reservation and also cancel my N&F cert in exchange for the 45,000 points Marriott said it would offer. (I was only planning to stay 3 nights of the 7 anyway and can see no other use for the cert before it expires). Of course, I got an email confirmation of the cert cancellation but am still waiting for the 45,000 points to actually show up in my account. She said it could take 24 hours. We'll see. So instead of Marriott, we'll be staying with Hilton in Chicago. Whereas Marriott was a total PITA to deal with this morning, it was super easy to do a partial points/partial cash booking with Hilton for the nights I needed. So I cast my hotel loyalty lot with Hilton! I plan to cancel both my Marriott and SPG biz cards when the next AF hits for each. The free night certs just aren't worth it for me when we stay in hotels relatively infrequently and it seems so hard to find a hotel in the proper category for the cert and then a room type that the certs will actually work with. Way to lose a customer, Marriott/SPG!

(Edited to correct the total number of UA miles for the Business booking)

OMG it’s the day to book JNB trips! Well, technically I only got my return but I’m really hoping something opens up with UA for the fight there. Right now the best I’m seeing for my dates is 75k AA miles + $880 for fights in biz on AA & BA, I’m really hoping something on Swiss or Lufthansa up with UA from the West Coast because I’d much rather pay 80k UA!

 

[kidsfirsttrip]

So if DH is an AU and has his own account and we got the same offer is it safe to use on both cards?? I’m so confused....

 

[Haley R]

Ok - so your statement date is when the statement closes. Then you’ll see a new payment date. If you go to account details on the Chase site it will show you both “Next Closing date” AND “Payments are due on the”.

EDIT: and did we actually determine you didn’t change your payment date? Sorry - I’ve lost track of this saga slightly.

I changed it the first time but haven’t changed it since. Sorry for my never ending questions lol. Obviously we are more than a little anxious to get plane tickets.

 

[amalone1013]

Thankfully you’ve resolved this particular issue! But... YOU CAN DO THIS. You can finish it out!! Do you ever use a self-rewards system? This morning I get Starbucks before starting! Or after work today $1 MCD’s soda! Or favorite candy bar! ...Yes I have a sugar problem but hopefully you get the feeling here- little things that just make you smile, moments you can escape in

I have a sugar problem too! I use Starbucks as motivation on the weekends... if I have to drag my butt in I'm buying a $5 coffee.

 

[Haley R]

I think it doesn't change until the statement closes, but I don't remember exactly. I just get freaked out seeing a past date and heart skips a beat wondering if I missed payment - that sticks with you.

Well I don’t have that worry since the top of the page says no payment due lol

 

[gottalovepluto]

sounds like fun! if u can swing for F, swing for F! their F product is a rare breed.

I honestly thought I’d have a shot but right now neither JNB-HKG or HKG-SFO even has first class on the flight. The other SFO flight has 1st (not available with points right now though) but the timing sucked. Maybe there’s an equipment change in my future that will have a first class? I made sure I have extra AS just in case!

 

[gottalovepluto]

So if DH is an AU and has his own account and we got the same offer is it safe to use on both cards?? I’m so confused....

The current theory is Amex is tracking via SSN. Under that theory you should be fine.

 

[wendow]

So if DH is an AU and has his own account and we got the same offer is it safe to use on both cards?? I’m so confused....

Yep, we have not had any issues.

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

I changed it the first time but haven’t changed it since. Sorry for my never ending questions lol. Obviously we are more than a little anxious to get plane tickets.

Lol - yeah, I'm so confused on this one now. Playing with statement closing dates can end up being very confusing at times. You will get your points...eventually...some day...LOL.

 

[gottalovepluto]

After my experience with Amex denying Dh’s bonus on the Delta Platinum last yea I absolutely agree with you. (And congrats on booking your trip!!!)

What do you (or anyone else) think about paying a credit union loan and credit union mortgage with Plastiq on an Amex if I can get it to go through? Given all the drama with Amex I am starting to think might be better to not do it unless I get desperate and in danger of not meeting the spends.

Tbh after going through what you did that would fall into the “only if I need to because I’m desperate” category for me

ETA: and I've been desperate before. I met most of my 2md Amex MSR with bank account funding (on a non-MR cc) and it will literally haunt me for the entirety of my relationship with Amex in that I'm worried it will come back to bite me.

 

[Haley R]

Lol - yeah, I'm so confused on this one now. Playing with statement closing dates can end up being very confusing at times. You will get your points...eventually...some day...LOL.

That’s super reassuring lol. I’ll come back (hopefully next week) with an update.