Frequent Miler on the Air - Extreme Stacking Gone Wrong | Ep 85 | 2/13/21

Episode Date: February 13, 2021

3:08 Audience Feedback 4:33 Mattress Running the Numbers: Best Western elite status with just 3 stays https://frequentmiler.com/best-western-slashes-elite-requirements-for-2021/ 9:06 Main Event: Extreme stacking gone wrong https://frequentmiler.com/hugely-profitable-rewarding-the-motley-fool-subscription-with-amex-offer/ https://frequentmiler.com/amazing-looking-motley-fool-offers-that-arent/ https://frequentmiler.com/stack-drop-chase-boa-offer-for-56-or-more-in-profit/ https://frequentmiler.com/1800flowers-extreme-stacking/ https://frequentmiler.com/walmart-plus-savings/ https://frequentmiler.com/shopathome-honoring-walmart-deal-if-youre-persistent/ For more on the good old says (this no longer works), see: https://frequentmiler.com/sears-and-kmart-extreme-stacking/ 37:05 Post Roast: Is Nick wrong about the Companion Pass? https://frequentmiler.com/companion-pass-with-a-single-southwest-credit-card/ 42:10: Post Roast: Why did Greg publish a Schwab Platinum cash out guide? https://frequentmiler.com/how-to-convert-amex-membership-rewards-to-cash-with-the-schwab-platinum-card/ 46:35 Question of the Week: If it sounds too good to be true, how do we know it isn't? https://frequentmiler.com/7500-points-or-75-cash-new-new-checking-account-with-1-deposit-at-betterment-via-rakuten/ https://frequentmiler.com/my-experience-setting-up-a-new-llc/ Subscribe to our newsletter: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Like, subscribe, and ding the notification bell to find out when we post new content! Music credit: Annie Yoder

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event extreme stacking gone wrong is this is this the end of stacking our way to free stuff i hope not i hope not i hope not to say it ain't so but i'm not too worried because I am coming to you live today from Vacation Rentals at Wild Dunes Resorts. So I'm looking out at the beach and generally feeling pretty, pretty mellow today. So, you know, I'll take it. Right, right. All is well in the world if you are. Yeah, who cares about extreme stacking if I could be by the beach? He's stacking bricks of sand on top of each other to make his sandcastles this week. Well, what I did stack was some random stuff to make a desk here because there's no desk in this unit. So I'm literally, my laptop is sitting on a ironing board, which is kind of convenient because it raises up and down. And so I can get it

whatever height I need. Yeah. I mean, shouldn't all desks really be ironing boards? Maybe. Then my monitor is the bedroom TV and I'm sitting on a bar stool from the kitchen. Kind of MacGyvered my way to a desk here. That's terrific. So, I mean, I know that you've got this amazing upgrade. How does like a villa have three bedrooms and no desks? That's what I want to know. Right.

Yeah. I mean, each bedroom is kind of just a normal, like looks like a normal almost hotel bedroom, but without a desk section. And so, yeah, I guess they're figuring you're looking at the beach. How much work are you really going to do? Right. That's what they're making. Right. Well, you know, I think they're all individually owned. And so whatever the owner, however, the owner furnished it, that's how they furnished it. The last unit I was in last time I was here about three weeks ago, had a desk built into the living room TV cabinet. Yeah, yeah.

Like a pullout drawer. And so that worked pretty well, but not as good as a hiring board. Right, right, right. Not nearly as flexible and adjustable. Customizable. It was harder to move that thing where I wanted it, whereas this thing can go anywhere. I mean, that is pretty clutch.

So that's a travel-themed life hack, so that's a travel themed life hack right or is it it is yeah we need to put together a video of that yeah i think i think i think it nails it right there because i you know these these modern-y kind of hotels like the hipster modern millennial hotels they're frequently missing a desk and so you stay in one of those places and you're traveling and you have work to do it It's like you got to sit on the bed and be uncomfortable holding a laptop or whatever. Or you're like standing and have it on the TV stand or something. And yes, it's a little difficult. Ironing board, great solution. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. All right. So speaking of mailbags, which we weren't, but... Good transition. Well done. Smooth.

It's time for reader feedback from the giant mailbag. So, of course, I bring it everywhere I go. Here it is. And today's feedback comes from an Apple podcast review. Ooh. This nice, easy, this is like dessert. W-J-T-T. Let me try that again.

W-J-T-A-L. It makes me think of a radio station. W-J-T-A-L. Coming to you live from WTAL. And announces that these guys are naturals. There's a lot of great content out there, but these guys deserve to be highlighted. They're naturals at the medium, and I look forward to their podcast every week.

Keep it up and thanks. Well, cheers to that. I'll have some coffee to that. Very good. All right. So there you go. Thank you, station WJTAL. A-L. Terrific. that very good all right so there you go thank you station wj tal al terrific all right well thank you that's great that's good and thank you for for reading something from the apple podcast

because i never read those reviews from an apple guy so i never ever see any of that stuff so great to have that there and you know keep listening wj tal i love having you here so exactly let's let's get into the content that WJTAL wants us to talk about, because I know that WJTAL is a Best Western guy or gal. So let's talk about Mattress Running the Numbers. What do you got for us this week? Right. So this week, Best Western announced they are slashing elite requirements for 2021. So cutting them all in half. So we have a unique opportunity to earn elite status with only three stays. Three stays.

I mean, three stays or five nights. So depending on if you have one night stays, you might as well just do three one night stays, get gold status and you're off to the races and you get all the benefits that gold status gives you. Every last one of them. And so those benefits, no doubt, are compelling reasons to stay at Best Western. So can you tell us a little bit about the intriguing benefits of Best Western gold status? Yeah, I'll list all of the elite benefits that I'm aware of. Now, are you ready? I mean, sit back and relax while I read the list.

All right. You get, of course, bonus points, which is, you know, very common. People who have elite stats earn a bit more points per stay, of course. Not that easy. Do you get that? Right. And you get a bottle of water or two. Whoa.

Check in. Whoa. Or two in. Whoa. Or two? Is it not defined? I'm not sure what the water rule is, but you get some water. Some water. Yeah. Generous of them.

Thank you, Best Western. Yeah. That's wanting your loyalty. And I don't believe higher levels of status get you more water either. I think it's just... No, I can confirm that because i have checked into a vast western as a diamond member and only gotten two bottles of water so oh there you go anymore well then we know the number it's it's two well we don't know gold

might get one i mean you did get one bottle of water as a hilton gold member did you not at the is is that right is that what the uh hilton gold requirement well no i think that's I mean, you did get one bottle of water as a Hilton Gold member, did you not? Is that right? Is that what the Hilton Gold requirement? Well, no, I think that's, isn't that what you're talking about? Oh, you're talking about my stay. That's right. That's right. Yeah, for two of us, our breakfast was one bottle of water, one piece of fruit, one muffin.

And you're talking about going back. Anyway, no, so, so, so best western gold could be one bottle of water also you never you never really know but it could be but and so the other benefits are no i'm done that's it so three three stays for you know bottles of water hey i mean listen it depends on how cheap your stays are and how much water you can drink no because uh if you only get one assuming you can drink a max of two bottles of water so let's uh let's talk about is it worth it should you go out there and book a few uh cheap stays

so you can get best western gold status and brag to your friends. Well, now, you know, I'm going to have to compare this to the Marriott mattress run. No, I'm not going to have to compare. You know, we could joke about it, about how it's not worth it. But really, the reason it's not worth it is because if you're listening to this show,

I sure as heck hope that you've got elite status with somebody, whether you've got like Hilton Gold or you've got Marriott something or other or whatever else, probably you have some sort of elite status and if you do I think as long as you have anything like if you've got a card that's got a color on it Best Western will match Best Western Diamond status right and last I knew they never take it away like I think that it's just diamond forever like I don't know if it actually says that on the landing page but i don't think i know anybody who is no longer best western yeah yeah yeah so just i haven't

i haven't actually logged in to check that so maybe they downgraded me two years ago i really wouldn't know but uh yeah so just just do an instant status match with best western if if those bottles of water are are exciting you changer're going to change it for you. Yeah. All right. Are you ready for What Crazy Thing? What are we going to talk about today? I have no idea what crazy thing we're going to talk about. Yeah, nothing.

No. We did a doubleheader last week, and Nick and I couldn't think of anything for this week. Okay. I thought there was – I was like, did I did I miss something yeah you got a little scared there I kind of set you up I was intending to set you up for a nice little right to be like nope did it last week right the double header

last and I just like totally wept on that I missed it so yeah miss the setup sorry guys a little less entertainment for you this week so that will then move us into the main event. I think right so an event Extreme stacking gone wrong. Mm-hmm. Is this the end of stacking our way to free stuff? So there have been some high-profile misses collapses

failures of extreme stacking recently. Can you just, just to bring up one of them? Can we talk about? So the Motley Fool, the Motley Fool is the one that I think, you know, most people are probably familiar with because it's a great, great deal. So the Motley Fool came out as an Amex offer. There's an Amex offer for $99 back on 99 or more. And it just so turned out that the Motley Fool sold a $99 email subscription for their stock picks or whatever. And you could go through a shopping portal, of course, because Amex offers typically work no matter where you click through from.

Now, that's true, even though many Amex offers say, oh, you have to go to blah, blah, blah dot com slash Amex. And by and large, the vast majority of the time, that's not at all true. You can just click through a shopping portal. And as long as you check out of the store in question, you get your Amex offer money back. So there were lots of portals offering good payouts. You had American Airlines offering 7,400 points. I think Alaska was maybe 54 or 58. United was something like that. There were some portals that were 75 or $80 cash back, I think Alaska was maybe 54 or 58. United was something like that. There were some

portals that were 75 or $80 cash back, I think. So you could click through a portal and earn your 75 or 80 bucks or 7,500 points or whatever it might be and get your money back from Amex. So, I mean, it was like basically free points. You were just able to print free points by subscribing if you had the Amex offer synced up. And that was all well and good for a day or two. And then The Motley Fool reached out to us directly. And in the years I've worked at Frequent Miler, we've written about all sorts of crazy stacks and crazy deals that people have eventually backed off on or changed or it's died in one way or another. But I don't think I've ever had somebody who's like an executive I could find on the Motley Fool, you know, like on the store website somewhere

who reached out via email to say, hey, we're glad to have customers who are interested in our products, but let everybody know the stack is dead. If they're in a stack, they should look elsewhere. So I think exactly what he said, because he said that was no longer going to work. And so they pulled it and they instituted these terms at all the shopping portals. And I thought this was actually poorly done. And I don't know whether it was the Motley Fool's fault or the portal's fault, but it's not at all clear.

If you go to one of those portals right now, unless you really closely read the terms, that the payouts that they are advertising will not work on the vast majority of subscriptions that Motley Fool sells. Right. So, I don't know, a dozen, two dozen, three dozen. And there's three subscriptions that work on portals right now. So, if you click through a portal, you've got to buy the subscription that's $999,

$1,000 or the one that's $3,000 in order to get your 15,000 miles. I can't even imagine like saying, I'm going to spend $1,000 on a subscription to pretty much anything. It doesn't matter what it is. And then somebody's opinion about anything. If I was going to pay $1,000 to subscribe to something, it certainly wouldn't be somebody's opinion. Right.

And so they kind of made it all worse by, they actually jacked up the portal payout. So it was like more attractive to go through, click through. And if you weren't, as you were saying, if you weren't careful, you might've signed up for the $99 version. Of course, you know, I guess worst case, if you had the Amex offer, worst case is you get your money back. And so you don't really lose out on much except your time and maybe some taxes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I guess it wasn't the end of the world, but

another, another high profile one that I'm remembering is Wine Insiders. So that one, very similar situation where you had an Amex offer that would pay back 100%. So it was like $30 back on 30 or $60 back on 60. And what people quickly found out though, was if you go through a portal to get to Wine Insiders, something about the way the whole transaction was coded meant that it wouldn't trigger the Amex offer. And so you couldn't stack those two things. Worse, if you did any kind of like deal on the site, if you, like it was actually hard to avoid, you know, picking some kind of deal

that wouldn't track either for the Amex payout. So, yeah. Those sites are always trying to advertise a deal to you like, oh, buy this package kind of a thing. Exactly. The California Reds or the, you know, schnazzy Rosés or whatever it might be. And I guess any of those kinds of things were failing, right? Yeah. Yeah.

So. Crazy. That one was just kind of a waste. I ended up like not even bothering with that. Yeah, at all. Same with the Motley Fool. I did do the Motley Fool. And I got my points because I got in like right away the first day that we posted it on frequent miler. And I say, Yeah, I think it was Steven that posted it. That first night that Steven posted it. I said, You know what, I want to jump on this right now. There was part of me that was like, Oh, I think it was Steven that posted it that first night that Steven posted it. I said, you know what? I want to jump on this right now. There was part of me that was like, Ooh, I wonder if portal payouts will increase. But then there was another part of me that said, this isn't going to last. This is easy points. I better get on this now. And so I was glad I did because I did get the points and I got the Amex offer, which took forever to trigger by the way,

Amex credits have been super slow this month. Totally separate topic. But it took forever to trigger. Finally got it yesterday or the day before. Something like February, I don't know, February 10th to February 9th, something like that. And I checked out January 27th. That's super slow for an Amex offer. But at any rate, the Wine Insiders I didn't deal with.

But I would have originally thought that sounded like a great deal because a few years ago there was the Martha Stewart wine deal that you might remember. It was very similar. It was the same kind of a thing where it was like, you know, 50 back on 50 or something like that at Martha Stewart Wine and people were stacking and slicing and dicing and putting things together. And, you know, I've had a couple of people came out like a hundred bottles of wine for like nothing kind of a thing with those. And that

was back in the day when you could activate an Amex offer on all of your various Amex cards and use it again and again and again. So probably people who remember that would have reasonably assumed that the Wine Insiders thing would work similar. They were probably like, oh, great. I was just running out. It's time. I mean, mean this wine insider is the only one i can think of that works this weird way where it's you know it somehow tracks that you've gone through a portal and then and then doesn't give you the amex offer and we've seen it the other way around where if you take advantage of certain offers, the portal doesn't track. So, for example, 1-800-Flowers. We've over the years written like a million posts, we being mostly me,

but more recently Stephen wrote one, about how to stack deals with 1-800-Flowers. And a few years ago, we were earning Southwest Companion Pass by going through all these stacking mechanisms to buy flowers like incredibly cheaply and get enough Southwest points to earn a Companion Pass. and nuts and things like that and sending it to a food bank, you know, a food, forgetting a word for it. Anyway, so a charity and they were then, you know, distributing it to people who needed it. And so, you know, that was all great, but one by one they've been cutting back on those things. And, you know, one of the early things they

did is they made it so that if you used a promo code which at that time like to get southwest points you had to use a promo code that would invalidate portal rewards and so um you know you couldn't get both of those you know then it was at the time it's like okay but we could still get all kinds of rewards and discounts buying gift cards and then they stopped allowing gift cards and promo codes or something I don't remember all the details but you know one by one they were chopping away at all the different pieces of it so which I mean in fairness for a while there 100 flowers like giving stuff away basically right they were paying absolutely their stuff so it was ridiculous and and you know probably they needed to change something but the thing is for the average person navigating the

1-800 flowers world is like just almost impossible because you know knowing what you can and can't do it's just not intuitive at all and and it's one of those rare sites where you know most sites you want to go buy something from i don't know uh you Macy's, you click through the portal, you go to Macy's, you buy your thing and you get your portal rebate, you know, whatever it might be. And it's usually a pretty simple, straightforward process. But I feel like 1-800-Flowers was kind of the start of things getting really complex where it was like, well, if you do A, then B won't work. And if you do C, then B will, but not F.

Right. That's right. Clicking here first and blah, then B won't work. And if you do C, then B will, but not F. That's right. Clicking here first and blah, blah, blah. Right. And I mean, it's probably our fault. I mean, I don't mean us specifically, but us sort of collectively that, as you said, they had to be losing money on those deals when people were triple stacking and everything. And so they kept patchworking it. And then we'd find other ways and they'd patch that and so on. And now it's not, it's not completely dead,

but it's very limited, especially they're no longer on shop runner. So you can't get free shipping for free. You could get free shipping now by paying for the annual subscription to celebrations passport, but not for free anymore. So yeah, one by one things toppled away um which funny enough encourages you to abuse it more right because you can't pay for the the shipping thing then i mean then you got to get your money's worth right good point yeah i don't know if that really accomplishes their goal but maybe it does for

most people but anyway so, so, all right. So that, I mean, that kind of has gone by the wayside. What else has gone wrong? So, you know, I think you mentioned that Drop has been dropping the ball quite a bit, right? So Drop's one of those card link deals. Like a bad habit. Yeah. Yes, it is.

I'm sorry. Go ahead. One of those card link deals. Well, just to give people a big picture, there's several different apps and things where you link up your credit cards to it. And then if you shop at certain stores with that credit card, they give you some kind of rewards and drop is like that, right? Yeah, exactly.

But what's gone wrong there? Well, they offered this deal a few weeks back, a month back maybe or so, where you could click through. And you didn't have to click through, rather. You just had to use a card that you had linked to drop and make a purchase at the Farmer's Dog. And you would get $75 worth of points. And the Farmer's Dog is one of these subscription services where you get healthy snacks for your dog. And so you put in information about your dog and they kind of tailor the diet to fit your dog's size and activity level and blah, blah, blah. And so your first box was discounted. So you get this really cheap deal. First box could be as low as like 18 bucks,

but then subsequent boxes would be more if you kept the subscription. However, the way Drophead is set up, you would earn the $75 in points within a week of signing up. So essentially, you could order a box that was like 18 bucks and get $75 worth of points. At least that's the deal when we wrote about it, what it sounded like. And there was somebody that determined, that figured out, okay, this is the answers to the questions to get the cheapest box for the smallest dog. And, and so a lot of people followed that because I pointed to that comment and, you know, probably everybody's dog was the same size and gender and everything else all of a sudden. And, and so I guess it must've raised some eyebrows. And so farmer's dog ended up

canceling all the orders, which I mean, I guess fair enough. It's on them. They, you know, best they wanted to do. They could do that and drop, of course, clawed back all of the points for it. But they were very clear. Farmer's Dog was very clear that it was Drop's fault, basically. They said, you know, that it was Drop's mess up and fraudulent orders that they received. And sent an email surprisingly to say we messed up kind of a thing, which I don't know how that all happened, but that was essentially what they said. And they said, okay, so we're taking back your points.

We'll give you 5,000 points as a consolation prize, $5 worth of points as a consolation prize. But, but no big point payout for you. Right. Right. That's not bad. So you're not out any money and you get five bucks. Didn't cost any money for most people, but there were oddly a couple of people I know, like my sister-in-law got an order through and she got the email that it was canceled,

but then still got the box in the mail and got charged for it. But her subscription was canceled. I don't even know what happened there, but she didn't get the points. She actually got 10,000 points for some reason. So that doesn't make any sense at all. There was a chase offer too.

So she probably made out okay in the long run. But so, I mean, I guess no harm, no foul, except they did it again with the Ollie's deal a week later where they took back people's orders. They canceled people's orders after offering another similar deal. So I'm a little sour on drop at this point because I feel like you just don't know whether or not it's going to stack. And the same kind of thing, it's worth noting, has started to happen. I shouldn't say the same kind of thing, but issues also with

DOSH because DOSH used to be exclusively card-linked offers. And so you could basically always count on Dosh to track wherever you clicked through as long as you paid with a card that was linked to Dosh. But it seems like it's kind of 50-50 now where some offers are shopping portal where you actually have to click through Dosh and some of them are card linked where you get it even if you didn't click through Dosh. So I don't even know. Right. And my understanding is it's not always clear either, right? Like sometimes what it what it looks like on dash is that it's a card linked offer, but then if you try to get them the points from them, their response is,

well, you had to click through, but that might just be sort of their standard. We don't know what happened. So we could tell that you didn't click through. Right. Yeah. And if you didn't click through there, then obviously there's not going to be the tracking cookies. So, and I think a lot of their offers say, click through and use your linked card to pay. And, you know, like lots of portals say that kind of thing. And, you know, and the, I don't know, Dosh wasn't that way before.

So that seems to be a change. So it's less stacky than it once was. It was always very clear that it was going to stack. Now I look at Dosh as like, it's a bonus if it stacks. So I'll use a card maybe that's linked, but it's a bonus if it stacks. But there are still some opportunities to stack. And so, you know, there are some things that work. Walmart Plus is something that should have worked,

but kind of totally fell apart. So tell us a little bit about what happened with Walmart. Yeah, it kind of fell apart. But but then some of us sort of ended up with at least, actually ended up coming out ahead. So yeah, so Walmart Plus, we've gone through various iterations of this. But you know, what it is, is it's a free shipping plus other things service, very much like Amazon Prime, right? And they're trying to promote it heavily. And so a few portals had a deal where you got Walmart Plus either a year of it, either very cheaply or for free, you know, like better than free. So the best one was Shop at Home had $100 back when you shop at, when you buy a year of Walmart Plus, which costs what, 98, I think. And so the best, the best was, I think we were able to stack that theoretically with Drop.

Drop had like it varied what the deal was on there at different times. Yeah, sometimes it was 10% back. So it would have been $9.80. Sometimes it was like $23 or $25 or something like that. Right, right. And Google Pay had a card-linked deal for them as well. So there was that and drop as sort of two card link deals. And Chase, if you paid with a Chase card had like 10% back or something. $5 or something. I think it was $5. Yeah. Am I missing one? I feel like there was another stack in there, but. I mean, that's pretty good. Cause you were talking a hundred dollars back from the portal,

$30 back from Google pay. And then Dosh, it was either 10% or like another $25 or something. And then even it was five or $10 from Shay. I mean, at the end of the day, you were getting paid, you know, 40, 50, $60 to sign up for Walmart plus. I mean, not bad. And like you said, Walmart plus is kind of an Amazon competitor, but the thing that I have really enjoyed about Walmart plus so far is going into the store and being able to do the mobile scan and go,

because you can go in with your phone and just scan stuff as you put it into your cart. And then you go to the self checkout and there's automatically QR code on the self. You don't have to press anything. You scan the QR code with the app and pay right in Walmart pay there. It's literally like two taps and you walk out without having to scan everything at the register, which I wouldn't have thought was a big deal until I did it a couple of times with a full cart. And then I was like, wow,

standing in line was not such a problem a bunch of times with a full cart. And then I was like, wow, standing in line was not such a problem. A bunch of time off. So your stuff isn't in bags then, is that right? Well, okay. No, it's not, but I'm in New York state. So here in New York state, they don't, bags aren't free anymore. So there's no plastic bags. You got to pay for paper bags. So the no bag thing is, is a common thing. Now, if you order Walmart pickup, you don't get bags either. Somebody stacks everything in the back of your trunk. So unless you bring your own bags. So you got to bring your own bags here anyway. So you could bring your own bags and bag it yourself as you go. getting paid to do that is theoretically a great deal, but it only was theoretically a great deal for a long time. Because at least in my case, the only one of those things that actually paid out in a timely manner was Google Pay.

I got my $30 from Google Pay. I got $9.80 from Dash for a minute, and then they clawed it back. I know some people got to keep their $9.80. I don't know. Did you? What happened with you and your portal? As far as I could tell, my DOSH money stayed.

I didn't I haven't checked to see whether the Google pay rebates stayed around or not. But I assume it did. But it was the big payout that was the issue. So going through the portal and the problem, I know what the problem was. The problem was that portals, the way they work is you click through from the portal to the merchant, you buy something, you check out and pay. And that triggers an event that sends a message back to the portal saying, you know, thank you for the sale, basically. And that's how they know that you completed the transaction and the portal knows to credit you a certain amount of money. In this case, it was different because you click through from the portal and there was no option to pay right then. The option was to start a 15-day

free trial. And that had red flags all over it to begin with. It was like, wait a minute, how is the portal going to know how is it? And then I was, I was actually more worried though, about DASH and Google pay because the card linked offers, you know, you weren't going to get a transaction on your credit card for a while. Yeah. So how would you know how much you're going to get? Cause I mean, you were going to sign up for a trial and not be charged for 15 or 16 days. So right between 15 or 16 days, the payouts were going to change on those things. Right. So Google pay was $30 today. It might be $5 tomorrow, 16 days from now,

who knows what it's going to be. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, and in fact, I think that's what happened with DOSH if if I'm remembering right, or was it Drop? Yeah, it was Dosh. Dosh, yeah. That it was like a high payout the day I clicked through, but by the time it charged, it was a much smaller payout. I'm not complaining, but anyway.

So long story short, not quite short. It's long. Long story long. The portals didn't pay out. They didn't, they tracked these, these transactions at $0. Like, so you saw that you click through, but there was no, you know, no, no payout. So a lot of us, what we did is we went to the portal and, and filed a claim, a missing, you know, uh, purchase claim and yeah. And the initial response for me, and I know a bunch of

other people was, uh, some vagaries about like how long it takes to get the payouts and, and so that we should sort of wait until then. What it didn't say is like, you should file another claim later. What it said was like, it made you think that the claim was still open, but in fact, behind the scenes, they closed it. So luckily some readers noticed that, refiled claims and let us know.

And so we refiled claims. And actually just the day we're recording this, I know that you and I both finally got got messages from from shop at home saying your claim has been approved or whatever. And so 100 bucks is sitting in my account now. Right. And mine too. And thanks to the readers who followed up with that first, because I was sitting back and waiting, figuring it'll probably get worked out because many of these things are a little complex in the technology. And this one seemed like it was going to be complex from the get-go, but I figured probably eventually Walmart's going to figure out they owe money to shop at home.

They're going to pay a shop at home. Shop at home is going to realize they owe money to us. But it doesn't seem in hindsight now, like that was going to happen if people didn't put some pressure on. So thanks to the readers who did, because then I knew, Oh, you know what? I should send a message too. Cause I saw some squeaky wheels were getting the grease and getting paid out. So I said, Oh, you know, I did this. I shopped through, I sent them screenshots because I kept screenshots. And I I've said this a lot of times before, I'm going to say it again, take screenshots. Whenever these kinds of deals come up, take screenshots. I had a screenshot of the portal showing that it was paying out a hundred dollars. I had a screenshot of the order as I placed the order. I had a

screenshot of the confirmation from Walmart. I had a screenshot of the tracking cookie from shop at home that showed like the number of the transaction and everything. I had a screenshot of the tracking cookie from Shop at Home that showed like the number of the transaction and everything. I kept all that stuff. So I said, listen, I got all this, I did it. And I paid for the subscription. So I'm expecting the cash back. And still, it was like, oh, you know, you won't find out in 14 business days. Oh, you know, you're gonna find out soon. And you had to keep following up, following up, following it. And they did pay it out. And I sure hope that Shop at Home got their money out of the deal. And that's how they paid it out. I hope they're not just paying out of their pockets. But and it wasn't just Shop at Home. We're talking about Shop at Home because that's the portal we

used. Right. That was the deal that we had first kind of found there that Greg had first written about. But the same kind of thing happened with Swagbucks and some other sites too, I think. Right, right. So hopefully Swagbucks will have the same, you know, that filing a claim will get people paid. I imagine it will. But I haven't heard any data points one way or another yet. So yeah, that should work. And so, you know, I think in the long run, it works out. For anyone who's paying attention and does their homework, that's kind of the downside. There's probably some number of people who just haven't been following, just sort of assumed they'd get paid and just aren't tracking it

and probably won't then get the payout. They might miss out. Yeah. So you got to make sure you keep track of what you do, where you click through and follow up now and then. Now, by and large, I have good luck with portals. I've had very few purchases over the years that didn't track as I expected them to at portals. Been like few and far between these times when they don't, but being prepared and being able to follow up is good when they don't. The other nice lesson out of this is that, you know, obviously

shop at home did pay out. And for people who perhaps weren't aware before, there are opportunities like this to stack. Now we've talked about some of the things that have gone wrong today, but the fact of the matter is that this at least should have gone right. And in the end did go very right for a lot of people in the sense that you were able to stack a shopping portal, a card-linked offer from Google, and a card-linked offer from Dash. So it's, I mean, three different rewards methods altogether. And so that hopefully, you know, sets off some light bulbs that,

ooh, what else can I look to stack? Does that mean I can stack more than one card-linked offer? And yes, there are times when more than one card-linked offer will stack. So, and the Chase offer also, which is yet another card-linked offer. So these things run sometimes on different platforms on the back end, and you can stack good rewards and get paid a bunch of money to get yourself a subscription. I almost signed up other family members.

Like, let's all get a Walmart. So extreme stacking is definitely not dead but it does it does feel more hazardous than it used to be you know it used to be we could go through a portal and buy a gift card and get points for that gift card and then go through a portal again and use that gift card and get you know get more points for that um get points in the store and go through the portal again and get points when you use the store points and oh that's right yeah yeah there's used to be like a triple or quadruple stack and like keep getting things that were like free after points and then use the points and get more points and oh yeah it was crazy because sears would sears and kmart they'd have all these like 100 back in rewards deals and

you could you could do all those stacks to buy those things. So you're, you're, you're getting much more than a hundred percent back in rewards. And then whether or not you even care about that stuff, I mean, you could resell it or you could give it to charities or, you know, whatever. I just finally got rid of a bunch of lousy Bluetooth speakers, just like last summer. It'd been sitting in my garage for years. We got rid of some of those too, yeah. We got rid of some of those too. That was my first companion pass was through Sears

because I did exactly what you just said. I went through the portal, bought the gift cards, went through the portal, used the gift cards, earned the Sears points on purchases, went through the portal again and used the Sears points, earned more Sears points. And back in the day, we used to talk about rolling the points, right?

You'd roll the points by buying something that came with 100% back in points. And then you were able to immediately use those points to buy another one or something else. And so, so it used to be different. And, and often I hate when people talk about how things used to be like, Oh, in the golden days, Oh, it's over. It used to be different. And there certainly were some easy stacks like that. It's not dead now. It's changed a little bit. That's all. It's changed. And there there's some easy stacks like that it's not dead now it's changed a little bit that's all it's changed and and there's some sort of as we discussed there's some sort of surprising new ways in which stacking is failing or or at least leading to trouble but yeah it's still there it just takes a little more um i don't know know how i guess to to navigate the

the stacking waters. All right. So on that note, is it time to roast ourselves, roast each other? Last week we each roasted ourselves. We did sort of. Yeah. Yes. So, uh, so this week, I don't know what he, what he got, Greg. Yeah. I'm not roasting myself today, Nick. Oh, you're not. Oh, no, sorry. Shoot, I'm in trouble. All right. Well, why don't you go first? Okay. So you wrote a post about the new Southwest credit card bonuses, the personal cards now are offering points plus one year of a companion pass which is good for any number of flights uh whether you book with points or you book with cash you can add your companion for free and you and you were just kind of like meh we've seen better this isn't going to work out that good but but but view from the wing called these offers amazing one mile at a time called

them awesome and you were like meh explain yourself i mean come on like i saw other people talking about these offers too like they were great i mean you called out to there but but i saw this in plenty of places on social media where people like, Oh, these awesome Southwest offers, I was like, what are you guys talking about? These awesome Southwest? I mean, like it might be an okay-ish offer. If you're positioned to fly a lot with Southwest in 2021 and like to all six of those people, congratulations, you got yourself a great deal. But like for the vast majority of folks, it's just not a deal. Because A, you're probably not going to fly all that much this year, right? I mean, maybe you'll fly some, but you're not going to fly nearly as much as you would

in an ordinary year. So like for starters, there's that problem. Then there's additionally the fact that flights are so cheap right now. And at the beginning of the year, when I wrote a comparison and said, oh, the companion pass. But you very clearly pointed out, you made a great point. That means you're only saving five or six or seven or 8,000 points each time you fly. So, you know, as flights continue to be super duper cheap, your savings behind having the companion pass, we can save five, six, 7,000 points a flight. So how many times do you have to use that for it to be worthwhile? Now, the previous offer five, six, 7,000 points of flight. So how many times do you

have to use that for it to be worthwhile? Now, the previous offer on these cards was 80,000 points. So they've replaced that 80,000 point offer, which were 80,000 points that never expire because they're Southwest points with an offer. Now that gives you 30,000 points and a companion pass. That's only valid until February, 2021, the end of February. I'm sorry, February 2022, the end of February of next year. So you're trading 50,000 points that would never expire for a companion pass that's only valid in the middle of a big pandemic. And that just doesn't make any sense to me. Like, you know, how many times do you have to fly?

I mean, granted, if you're going to fly tons and tons of times or you got a couple of really expensive trips coming up, it might work out. I'm sure that there are a few people that are to work out for it. But the average person, if you're saving 8,000 points each time, then you have to take at least seven flights in the next year with two people for that offer to work out better than having just gotten the points in the first place. And I mean, I just don't know that many people that I think can be confident they're going to take seven flights between now and next. Right, right. Yeah, no, I 100% agree. You know, where you went wrong with the post was if you had, if you had written, if you had written like good things about the offer,

then I would have had something to roast you about here. But instead, I thought it was very reasonable and really roasting the others who called it so amazing and awesome. I mean, that's crazy. It's not. Wait until the end of this year. You know, like if you're I mean, I guess you got the opportunity cost if you're under 524 of trying to stay under 524, but like wait until the end of the year and they'll probably run those 80,000 point offers again and try to earn yourself a companion pass next year for 2022 and 2023. A, have a companion pass that's valid for two years and B, have a companion pass that's valid when you actually might fly. Plus when you earn the companion pass pass in that way you have all those points that you can use for for the all those free flights whereas doing it this way you only have the 30 000 points

points that aren't going to expire you know and and so yeah that's just uh craziness craziness to me so yeah yeah not worth it all right that wraps up our post-roast segment. Oh, Greg thought he was getting away that easily. So no, my post-roast for Greg this week, you're not getting away quite that easily, though it won't necessarily be the most difficult one. My post-roast isn't even a roast. It's a question, all right? So you wrote a post this week

about how to convert membership rewards points into a Schwab brokerage account. And I was like, this is not news. Like the Schwab account has been around forever. We've talked about this a billion. Why did you write that post this week? That's a good question. So the reason was for the first time ever, I finally decided to actually do that to convert points. So this was a couple of weeks ago, but I sort of had it on my to-do list to write the post.

I went to convert the points to cash. And I knew from the past that the way you do it, you log into your Schwab account. And there was a little link there that said, invest with rewards. And it let you pull your membership rewards over into your Schwab account. I logged in my Schwab account. There was no link. I looked everywhere. Couldn't find no link at all anywhere in there, but I log into Amex and there's something new. There's a link invest with rewards on the Amex side. So it's on the Amex side now. So that's all. It's super simple, you know, but I figured it was worth letting people know. You know, it is. And so I asked because I saw it and I was like, huh?

Because it just didn't seem like the kind of thing that I would have expected you to write about. But then I was at the same time like, well, I don't think we probably have a post about that. And like we've talked about it on the show a number of times, and it's probably gotten mentioned in passing and posts here and there. Obviously, Stephen wrote about it some in the sense that he wrote about doing it, I guess, during the 40K to far away challenge. But really, that is an awesome deal, potentially, especially if you're collecting a ton of points right now from the MX Platinum offer, or the gold offers have been really high. The business gold offer just increased this week.

Personal gold has been up there. You wrote a post about how to get all the various different personal gold offers. And with the ability to refer people and maybe pick up 30,000 points while you refer a player to, it's really easy to accumulate a lot of membership rewards points right now. It really is. Yeah. You might very well have more than you need. This could be a great opportunity. Exactly. The other thing was kind of in the back of my mind is my post from, I don't know, maybe three weeks ago or so about

the hundred K platinum offer. Like in there, I was saying, here's why you need to get it. And, and one of the arguments was like, even if what you want is cash back, you don't want the ability to transfer to airline partners and all that. You just want cash back, then great. Sign up for this 100K offer now. And then a year from now, sign up for the Schwab Platinum 60K offer. Then you've got well over 160,000 points that you could convert to cash at the 1.25. And so that's well over $2,000, I believe, that we're talking about. And, and boom, I mean, it doesn't. You're like $1,000 and change profit appear out of nowhere in a year with very little effort. Yeah. I mean, it's, it is a great deal and you probably didn't have a post to link to, to explain how to do that when you wrote. Exactly, exactly. So I need to remember to go back

and add that link to the new post, yeah. You do, it's funny. I had an email request for an email interview this week, somebody that was looking to do an article on pandemic related stuff. And so I responded with some things. And one of the questions they asked was, like what's my favorite pandemic card right now

during the pandemic? What's the thing that I think people shouldn't miss? And the platinum card is the one that came to mind. But I know that that probably does not seem like the answer for like the average Joe, the person who's looking at credit cards. And in fact, a good friend of mine wrote this week, who is not really into credit cards at all, but said, you know, I'm sick of my husband collecting all of these Cabela points. I want to get some cash back. Like what's the cash back I got to get. And the first thing that popped into my mind was you should get the platinum card. But then I got to pay $550 a year for the platinum card. It doesn't make any sense to somebody who doesn't know and understand how it works out. So having that post,

I think is super valuable to be able to point people to it and say, this is why you need to get that platinum offer right now. Right, right. Exactly. Yeah. Anyway, so lighthearted roast there. All right. So that I think brings me to the question of the week. And so question of the week this week is my question for you sort of inspired by a number of readers. So I got a similar question a couple of times, not even a question, a similar comment a couple of times on post this week. So we wrote about a deal this week that I don't know if it'll still be going on when this thing, when our podcast publishes, but at least during this week, and you can check and see if it's still going, Rakuten was offering 7,500 points or $75

cash back when you opened a Betterment checking account and you fund it with at least a dollar. So all you had to do is open a checking account, fund it with a buck, get yourself 7,500 points or $75. Relatively low checking account bonus, but like no requirement. All you had to do is open it, deposit a buck, right? And so in response to that and frequent miler insiders somebody had said something to the effect of you know i saw that and it was just like too good to be true and so i knew it wasn't for me like you know if it looks too good and true then something must be wrong right so like it's just and i was like what do you mean too good to be true it's only like 75 bucks and she said well it, it's 7,500 points for a dollar. That's just too good to be true.

I didn't think it was going to work out. And then similarly on the post that I wrote about forming an LLC this week, talking about the Brex bonus, it's somebody else in there, in that thread who said the same kind of thing. Like, I don't get it. How is Brex making money on this? They're giving away this huge bonus and it's not exactly a credit card situation, I don't get it. How is Brex making money on this? They're giving away this huge bonus and it's not exactly a credit card situation, blah, blah, blah. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And so I heard that same kind of, if it sounds too good

to be true, it probably is a couple of times this week. And so the question that came to my mind was, how do you know when it's that kind of situation? How do you know when it's something that's reliable or like, do you ever have that where you're like, no, this sounds too good to be true. It probably is too good to be true. I'm going to avoid this deal because it can't possibly work out. How do you evaluate things to know what is too good to be true? Yeah. Wow. You know, I mean, that's a, that's a great, I don't have a, a answer ready for you off the top of my head.

Maybe you do. No, I don't really. But what sort of occurs to me as I think about it is someone has to do with, like, how familiar you are with similar things, right? So we're familiar with credit card or bank account bonuses or credit card bonuses. And so when we see one that sounds great, it doesn't seem like it's a too good to be true thing because we've done similar things and gotten rewards. So this is just more of that kind, might be slightly better, might be slightly worse. I mean, you had mentioned the betterment one. I mean, that's for a bank account bonus, 75 bucks.

That's very small. Right, right. That was what came to my mind when somebody said, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. I was like, 75 bucks sounds too good to be true. Like, I mean, you're not watching the bank account bonuses then because bank account bonuses frequently could be three, four, five, six, $700 sometimes for opening an account and depositing a little bit of money.

So I thought 75 bucks, like how can that possibly sound too good to be true? But then I looked at it from the other perspective and I said, well, she's looking at it as I only need to deposit a dollar and I get 7,500 free points. That sounds like, how can that possibly work out? It doesn't make any sense. They're not making any profit on that. And so I can understand the skepticism, rather. But I don't know why I don't have that filter. Like where I looked at that, and there was,

I never in a million years questioned whether or not that was going to pay out. And I don't necessarily know why or what it is that I use to filter to say, okay, that deal probably isn't any good, but this deal probably is. Although I think you made a good point there in the familiarity, because I've gotten the same thing from friends before that have asked me a little bit about credit cards. And I've said, oh yeah, you can sign up for this credit card and you spend a few thousand dollars and you get hundreds of dollars back, whatever it might be, whatever the offer might be. Sapphire Preferred, for instance, like I'll explain, you get 60,000 points, which are

worth $600. And they're like, wait, I just have to sign up for a card and spend $4,000 and I get $600 back. And I'd be like, yeah, I mean, that's kind of how it works. And they'll say, oh, that sounds too good to be true. Right, right, right, right. Yeah, no, I mean, I think there's the familiarity. And I think there's also that we kind of understand a little bit of what's behind it, right? That basically companies are, instead of paying for advertising, they're going to have a profitable relationship with you and, you know, sort of cut out the middleman in a way. And, and that's basically what's happening. And it, it, I think that's great. Instead of, you know, instead of the big TV networks making money, you're, you're making something by signing up and no. Yeah.

I don't know. I mean, So how do they make money I mean like you look at something like Brex and Brex is offering what 110,000 points that could be transferable to airlines or could be $1,100 on this Brex cash account that you've written about now I've written about it and you have to have a business and so you gotta have an LLC or an S Corp or something like that not a sole proprietorship but it does of, I can get where somebody would say it sounds too good to be true. Because you have to spend like, what, $3,000 on the card and you end up with $1,100 in potentially cash. And so it's very low bar requirements, not a hard pull situation, not an account that's

going to appear on your credit reports. And so the question from the reader in that case was, I don't get what's in it for them. Like, how is Brex making money on this? They're like giving away all these points in cash. And that's, that's a similar question. I've gotten on lots of deals like that before. SoFi and, you know, whatever the various deals have been like, what's in it for them? Right. Right. I mean, you have two different things. So, so in these cases that you're talking about with, with Brex and with SoFi, like what we had in it's not, that's not sustainable in that situation, right? So it's, it's like, we have however much million dollars for basically expanding our customer base. So we're going to do that very rapidly by,

by giving customers big, big perks, right? That doesn't mean they're going to be doing the same two years from now. They probably, they almost certainly will not be. Probably won't, yeah. Right, right. Right. That's why you get a strike while the iron is hot, right? You know, look at SoFi. And SoFi was super generous back in like October of 2019.

They were giving money away like candy. That's right. Oh, it's like very little dribs and drabs. And they've changed the account and obviously the interest because interest rates are down everywhere. But also for new customers, the ATM fee reimbursements and cashback, they've made all these changes along the way. And that's kind of expected. That's what's going to happen because the venture money is not going to last forever. But they're exactly I think what you said is what it is. They're trying to

make a splash. It's just like if you've ever been outside of a sports stadium and seen some brand giving away a billion of their energy drink or, you know, or, or snack bar or whatever it is, I mean, that's costing them something too. They're just giving it away for free person after person. Right. The idea is hopefully they're going to draw customers in for the longterm. And so I think that's where this comes from. And I'm, I'm, I'm not, I just, I'm not intimidated by that in the sense that I'm not going to probably sit it out when I've often said before that there's venture capital money to burn. I got a book of matches, you know, I'll take, I'll take whatever it is that they're offering and, and maybe it'll be great. You know, this Brexit account, maybe I'll love the Brexit account and

decide that I want to keep it. I certainly think the rewards seem interesting and intriguing. So I probably will keep it around. I mean, I keep a ton of money in it. We'll see. But I mean, I think it's intriguing anyway. I'm not worried that I'm going to lose my money because it's FDIC insured the same way as many of these, you know, like banking app skin things. But I guess that's what it comes from, is the familiarity where we're like, I've seen this movie before, you know, like banking app skin things. But I guess that's what it comes from is the familiarity where we're like, I've seen this movie before, you know? Yeah, we've seen the movie and we sort of understand what's behind it as well. You know, just the high level stuff.

That doesn't mean we're not going to get caught up in, you know, signing up for something that doesn't work out for us. That will happen probably. But more often than not, these things are what they seem to be. And so, yeah. That's part of the exciting, the fun of playing the game, I guess, right?

It's like, you know. Right, right. Now, you know, I guess I feel like I need to add a caution, right? Because a lot of these things, especially the credit card deals, like you're going to lose if you're not careful with your caution, right? Because a lot of these things, especially the credit card deals, like you're going to lose if you're not careful with your money, right? So if you're not paying your bill in time, and so you end up incurring interest payments and penalties and all that

stuff, you're not going to win the game. So yes, you got the $500 bonus or whatever it is, but now you're going to be ending up paying them like $150 every month forever, whatever it is but now you're going to be ending up paying them like 150 every month forever or whatever it is and and you're going to lose big time if that's the case so so um you know use caution players situations like if you're going to play the game you got to play well otherwise right right pass the ball off and sit down on the bench for a little bit if you know that's what you got to do but yeah i mean I mean, and that's a good point. That's another good point that's worth making because people do get drawn in on those things. I had a family member who posted on social media just recently saying, is the Amazon credit card any good? And so I looked through the responses from

this family member's friends and there were a number of people that were like, Oh yeah, it's great. You know, I, and I can't remember exactly. Somebody said something like, you know, I carry some balance on it, but I get all these rewards and blah, blah, blah. I can't remember how they said it, but however they said it was clear that they were carrying a balance month to month, but they were excited that they were getting 5% back on Amazon. And I was thinking, you know, you're paying out 19%, you're not getting anything, right? You're getting something. Yeah, I thought, Oh, man, you know, worked on that person, that person got tricked into it. And I kind of felt bad that they had, but, but yeah, so I mean, there's certainly are ways to kind of get lost in the game and to lose. And there are some things that just don't work out. You know, I wrote about checking bonuses last year.

I did really well on a bunch of them, but there was one checking account where I just didn't get the bonus and I never got the money. And then, you know, sad music for me, whatever I'm about with my life. I didn't follow the requirements to a T. So I knew there was a risk that I wouldn't get it. And that's the way it goes. So, I mean, sometimes you will lose, but I haven't, I haven't lost big on one of these things, especially in the banking side, when it's like banks offering this stuff. I find it's generally pretty reliable, right? I mean, if they offer a credit card with a bonus, you get the

bonus, right? If you do what it actually says you have to do you get the bonus right right right yeah absolutely so it sounds too good to be true i mean i've told people about that about our hobby that that it's one of the rare places where it sounds too good to be true but it's true it's true yeah yeah exactly exactly all the time right i mean like you're sitting there in your your swanky three-bedroom motion front place and you're like, yeah, I didn't pay for the three-bedroom, but I got the three-bedroom. That sounds too good to be true, but that's the way it works. So have fun with the hobby. Yes. All right.

I think that wraps up another episode. It sure does. So if you've enjoyed what you've been hearing about today, you'd like to get on our email list so you can get these posts in your inbox each day or each week. You want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Get on our email list, follow us on Twitter and Facebook, join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group. And wherever you are listening to this, please give us a thumbs up, give us a like, hit the subscribe button, leave us a comment. All those things are helpful. Thank you very much for that. And we'll see you guys again next week. Bye everybody.