I love credit cards so much!

[havaneselover]

They'll claw back- and watch the claw back! I once had them claw back as if the purchase had received 3x when it had only received 1x.

Yikes! Thanks for the heads up.

 

[pinkxray]

I finished my spend for the Chase Ink recently. Not sure where to go next. I am 2/24. I have the Chase Unlimited, Chase Ink Preferred and CSR. I would like to add the Chase Freedom with categories at some point. Since I am still 2/24 I want to finish up getting any Chase cards I need first. We fly Southwest a lot so I'm wondering if maybe I should go for that next? The personal bonus is only 40000 RR so should I wait until it goes up to try to get the companion pass? Or apply for the business now that has 60000 and try for the personal when the bonus goes up?

 

[CyndiLouWho]

Yes they will stay in your MDE until you use them. This is a nice option because they can't get lost. However once you link them you can't remove them from your MDE. If you happen to have current tickets linked I would suggest putting them in under your middle name so they don't get used before your current ticket. You can later reassign them to yourself. Before the last price increase I purchased 2 sets (8 tickets) for future years to use after our annual passes run out. I will later reassign them to the 4 of us that go and upgrade to annual passes.

I bought these before that price increase as well. Our next (&only planned) trip is for March. I'll need to load them into MDE soon for FP anyway. They've just been sitting in the sock drawer with all my WM & Disney GCs & unused credit cards. Lol

 

[CyndiLouWho]

So frustrated today. Looking for some Christmas inflatable decorations. Looked around yesterday. Found some at Walmart this morning, on clearance. Mickey and Minnie. Order online. Option for pickup at closest Walmart for Thursday. It is unseasonably warm here, wanted to finish outdoor decor today. So I choose another Walmart 25 minutes away that has pick up today. After 4 hours I head over there, even though I haven't received the Ready email. I get there & they have pulled Minnie but out of Mickey. While I'm standing there talking to employees, DH goes to other end of store to check what's on the shelf. Employee giving me option to ship to store and come back in a few days or tomorrow if the truck they are currently unloading has Mickey (won't be unloaded until 11 pm tonight) DH comes back with Mickey, another employee says it's the wrong one. After checking that it is indeed the one we ordered, first employee says she already canceled my Mickey order and if we want the one in DHs hands we can pay $10 more (in store price) or wait in another line at Customer Service for them to price match. Ugh. No. Took Minnie, came home and reordered Mickey to store 5 minutes from my house. This is why I avoid Walmart.

Kohls also screwed up my online order by shipping me 2 pairs of men's shoes instead of boys gym shoes & snow boots. After I got off the phone with them, they had reordered the boots and price matched a $70 pr of gym shoes to the $25 I paid for the pair originally which were no longer available.

All because I'm chasing these darn points.

 

[kmc8826]

Yes they will stay in your MDE until you use them. This is a nice option because they can't get lost. However once you link them you can't remove them from your MDE. If you happen to have current tickets linked I would suggest putting them in under your middle name so they don't get used before your current ticket. You can later reassign them to yourself. Before the last price increase I purchased 2 sets (8 tickets) for future years to use after our annual passes run out. I will later reassign them to the 4 of us that go and upgrade to annual passes.

We have 5 in our family. My embarrassing financial secret is that we now have 5 AP certificates in my husband's safe and 5 7 day PH's. Wanting to use deals, avoid cost increases, meet minimum spend and in some cases use credit card points and that small fortune is the result. I could have made a good down payment and bought into DVC for how much that all costs!

 

[gottalovepluto]

We have 5 in our family. My embarrassing financial secret is that we now have 5 AP certificates in my husband's safe and 5 7 day PH's. Wanting to use deals, avoid cost increases, meet minimum spend and in some cases use credit card points and that small fortune is the result. I could have made a good down payment and bought into DVC for how much that all costs!

When you start debating insurance for your ticket purchases you know you have a problem

 

[gottalovepluto]

We've been utterly uninspired this Black Friday in the family. So we got together and decided to pool our remaining Arrival + points and some various bank bonuses and Xmas spending money and go to Disneyland for a few days before Christmas as our main Xmas gifts! So. Excited. And only possible because of our credit card and bank bonus offers!!

 

[Lain]

I know there are a lot of eBags fans here. Just FYI and a warning --

Amex has and offer right now for a $25 statement credit when you spend $125 in one or more transactions at eBags. This offer works on eGift cards, but you can only buy (1) $100 and (1) $25 to maximize the deal; they don't offer custom amounts. If you were to take advantage of this offer across multiple cards, you'll end up with several $100s and $25s eGift cards. Ebates is also offering 20% cash back today!

Previously, eBags customer service could combine multiple gift cards for you into one gift code via chat or email. I tried to have multiple customer service agents combine my cards and got several mixed messages. All of them asked if my cards were purchased using the Amex offer (yes), and then some said they don't have the ability to combine codes purchased with Amex (bull), and others said they can only combine 2 codes from the same order (fine enough for now).

I'm just going to HUCA because they clearly still do have the ability to combine eGift codes, even if purchased with an Amex offer; what riles me is they're lying about their inability to combine the codes rather than saying it's against their policy to combine the codes.

 

[Dugette]

Just a PSA on Hilton points - once you book, if there is a while until your trip, be sure to check back on your reservation to see if the points needed has dropped! I've done this 3 times on our 2 night reservation at the Waldorf in Versailles next summer. I just did it now and got another 9K points back into my account (after having already taken advantage of two other point drops). It is slightly terrifying each time, though, as you do have to cancel and immediately rebook, but so far it's worked out fine and saved me a ton of points that can be used on other stays.

ETA: I just checked and we originally booked at 150K points last July and now are at 122K points. I'll take my extra 28K points, thanks!

 

[Lain]

Hope Thanksgiving is extra magical there! Weather looks like summer!!

Thanks!

Thanksgiving week(-end) at Disneyland was indeed magical! (And we had a much better time than our very disappointing trip before Halloween.) We arrived Wednesday morning at 7, before the parks officially open, were able to check into the Disneyland Hotel and got a room right away; dropped off our bags, found something unintentionally left by mousekeeping in our room; brought it to front desk's attention, for which they were profusely sorry, and offered us 3 Multiple Experiences Fast Passes on each of our tickets. We headed to Disneyland Park without having lost too much of the morning and rode a good number of attractions before it started getting crowded and too hot.

It was in the 90s on Wednesday and Thursday, and in the mid-80s on Friday and Saturday! In late November! Hardly the kind of weather to make me feel like the holidays are here. We’ve been doing Thanksgiving at Disneyland for years now, and it’s almost always warm in late November, but last week was especially hot! The crowds last week felt a bit heavier than last year, especially as it got later in the day. So we came fully prepared to take advantage of one of the Disneyland Hotel’s best features – it’s pool! We spent every afternoon at the pool and my daughter wanted to ride the slide over and over – she was so happy!

We also took full advantage of Extra Magic Hour each morning. Our usual strategy is to open up the parks anyway because we can get so much done (without having to pay extra for MaxPass) in those first 2-3 hours before the rest of the crowds really start rolling in. With EMH, we were able to check off every ride on our daughter’s wish list every day. Our daughter passed 40” recently so that’s opened up a lot of “new” rides for her. (We were sad there’s no Jingle Cruise this year.) Then we’d come back at night when the crowds are watching nighttime shows and otherwise thinning out to enjoy some attractions at night (Main Street with the lights, garlands and Christmas tree, Haunted Mansion and Small World holiday overlays all look fantastic at night, and Sleeping Beauty Castle lit up with snow and holiday decorations is really magical!).

We enjoyed a lunch at Café Orleans (really sad to see the menu changed, but at least the pomme frites, gumbo and beignets were still available). Another lunch on the lanai outside Trader Sam’s. Takeout of a slice of the 24-layer chocolate cake from Steakhouse 55. And tastings at the Festival of Holidays food booths.

We also enjoyed the annual Thanksgiving Family Dinner in the Grand Ballroom of the Disneyland Hotel. We met Minnie at her Thanksgiving table, Santa in his lounge in the hotel lobby, Chip and Dale, Pocahontas and Meeko. We ate too much. We danced to a live band. We’ve been doing this dinner for 8 years now! Some years have been real misses, but I feel like Disney is really taking feedback seriously and this dinner has been fantastic (and increasingly expensive) these last two years.

We did the Blue Bayou Fantasmic dining package on Friday night. New Orleans Square was packed so we’re glad we didn’t have to worry about finding seating for the show. The ribeye and rack of lamb, which we ordered, were cooked to perfection; but we were a little sad our Sorcerer Mickey dessert didn’t have the sorcerer’s hat but had a dragon instead. Our viewing spot was straight in front of Tom Sawyer’s Island, and we had a great view of the show and the fireworks afterwards.

Thank you to everyone in this community who helped make this trip possible! We visit Disneyland for Thanksgiving every year, but using credit card points I was able to book our stay at the Disneyland Hotel, which would have been cost prohibitive otherwise. It also freed up money for other paid experiences like the Thankgiving and Blue Bayou Fantasmic Dinners (paid for with Disney Gift Card deals, of course). Yes, it’s not the best use of UR points, but I think we all agree that the best use of points is what’s best for you. And what a difference staying on site made for this trip! We usually stay offsite for our quick trips, which is fine because we tend to stay in the parks longer to maximize our park time when we have just a day or two. But the parking and trams, or the walking along Harbor, then the long bag check lines at Mickey & Friends or the east gate really eat into our time. It’s nice to spread out our plans on a longer trip and just having to walk through Downtown Disney to and from the hotel. The bag check near Earl of Sandwich was never too long, even when trying to get to EMH; and Downtown Disney wasn’t too crowded. And with the weather being as hot as it was, I was so glad we could cool off and wind down in the Disneyland Hotel’s pools every day.

My wife, who is still very skeptical of credit card bonuses, casually hinted we should do this again next year. As in, stay at the Disneyland Hotel for Thanksgiving! Our stay was about 123k UR points, which is a good amount; but I figure we’ve racked up about 200k UR from spend in the last year so it’s doable (as long as certain sites and apps keep coding the way they do lol).

One condition – no more road trips! Apparently we’re flying next year. Being from the Bay Area, we’ve always driven to Disneyland because it’s about a 7 hour drive, give or take. We like the convenience of having our car with us; we come and go as we please and don’t worry about baggage. It used to be real fun trying to get to Anaheim as fast as we can, safely, because we knew Disneyland was waiting for us. Those few extra hours just made our travel day a long day. I have to admit it’s not so fun anymore because we have a kid in tow who needs to take potty breaks, sit down to eat, run around, etc., so our less than 7 hours trips are more like 8 or 9 these days. And on holiday weekends like Thanksgiving, traffic and accidents have a way of making a long drive even longer. So I think I have marching orders for our Disneyland trips next year, and I think I have a tacit agreement to go for the Southwest CP!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend!

 

[jhoannam]

Does anyone have the link for the website that tells you which card you need to use to get the max points/miles? I'm trying to get some Cyber Monday shopping done.

 

[Lain]

Does anyone have the link for the website that tells you which card you need to use to get the max points/miles? I'm trying to get some Cyber Monday shopping done.

Wallaby app + always check cashbackmonitor .com for which shopping portals give you the best cash back or points/miles at any given merchant.

 

[hsmamato2]

So frustrated today. Looking for some Christmas inflatable decorations. Looked around yesterday. Found some at Walmart this morning, on clearance. Mickey and Minnie. Order online. Option for pickup at closest Walmart for Thursday. It is unseasonably warm here, wanted to finish outdoor decor today. So I choose another Walmart 25 minutes away that has pick up today. After 4 hours I head over there, even though I haven't received the Ready email. I get there & they have pulled Minnie but out of Mickey. While I'm standing there talking to employees, DH goes to other end of store to check what's on the shelf. Employee giving me option to ship to store and come back in a few days or tomorrow if the truck they are currently unloading has Mickey (won't be unloaded until 11 pm tonight) DH comes back with Mickey, another employee says it's the wrong one. After checking that it is indeed the one we ordered, first employee says she already canceled my Mickey order and if we want the one in DHs hands we can pay $10 more (in store price) or wait in another line at Customer Service for them to price match. Ugh. No. Took Minnie, came home and reordered Mickey to store 5 minutes from my house. This is why I avoid Walmart.

Kohls also screwed up my online order by shipping me 2 pairs of men's shoes instead of boys gym shoes & snow boots. After I got off the phone with them, they had reordered the boots and price matched a $70 pr of gym shoes to the $25 I paid for the pair originally which were no longer available.

All because I'm chasing these darn points.

I feel ya'..... I'm trying to take advantage of all these WM deals while simultaneously avoiding the horrible customer service that is Walmart.... too many storeis to count like yours...

 

[gottalovepluto]

Shall we lol for a moment? Cyber Monday and Chase Ultimate Rewards website is a message that states "We apologize for the inconvenience. Ultimate Rewards is unavailable for a short time while we perform routine maintenance..."

 

[Psychodisney]

Shall we lol for a moment? Cyber Monday and Chase Ultimate Rewards website is a message that states "We apologize for the inconvenience. Ultimate Rewards is unavailable for a short time while we perform routine maintenance..."

I wonder if that's why I'm having trouble with chase pay at walmart.com!

 

[trstno1]

I know there are a lot of eBags fans here. Just FYI and a warning --

Amex has and offer right now for a $25 statement credit when you spend $125 in one or more transactions at eBags. This offer works on eGift cards, but you can only buy (1) $100 and (1) $25 to maximize the deal; they don't offer custom amounts. If you were to take advantage of this offer across multiple cards, you'll end up with several $100s and $25s eGift cards. Ebates is also offering 20% cash back today!

Ebates usually excludes gift card purchases, but this would still be great deal on an Ebags purchase. AmEx offer + Ebates = 40% off.

 

[trstno1]

I wonder if that's why I'm having trouble with chase pay at walmart.com!

The Chase Pay Walmart prom has been a fiasco this year. Despite multiple phone conversations with the Chase Fraud department, I was only able to make a purchase for egiftcards through Chase Pay on one credit card. For my other cards, I was able to purchase physical Walmart gift cards on-line, but I'm sitting here with my fingers crossed, hoping they don't cancel my orders.

 

[Lain]

Ebates usually excludes gift card purchases, but this would still be great deal on an Ebags purchase. AmEx offer + Ebates = 40% off.

Sorry for the confusion. I know. What I was trying to do was maximize the Amex Offer on two of my cards by first buying exactly $125 eGift Cards on each. But the only way to do this is to buy 1x $100 and 1x $25 per card, then combine them all into one card since (I believe it’s still the case) eBags allows you to use only one eGift card code per transaction. Apparently eBags is aware of this trick and won’t do it for eGift cards bought with the Amex Offer. I was trying to buy and combine all the cards first to use on actual merchandise to take advantage of the 20% Ebates.

 

[disneymagicgirl]

Shall we lol for a moment? Cyber Monday and Chase Ultimate Rewards website is a message that states "We apologize for the inconvenience. Ultimate Rewards is unavailable for a short time while we perform routine maintenance..."

UUGGHH! Finally got the toddler down for her nap so I could knock out some shopping and I got the same message. WTH would they do routine maintenance on CYBER MONDAY!?!?!?

 

[gottalovepluto]

UUGGHH! Finally got the toddler down for her nap so I could knock out some shopping and I got the same message. WTH would they do routine maintenance on CYBER MONDAY!?!?!?

They're not. It's broke but that's the message they're running with. I was on it looking at travel in like the 15 mins before it went down and it was being a total pill, pages took minutes to load before the page just died completely. That's not "maintenance"