Card Churning Experiment Month Six: Stymied

THIS PAGE CONTAINS REFERRAL LINKS. PLEASE READ MY DISCLOSURE FOR MORE INFO.

It’s time for another update on my credit card churning experiment! It’s also the month where my plan doesn’t work quite as expected and I get stymied.

I’m trying to introduce a new topic each time to keep these things fresh and not just boring reports of my points. This time I’ll be talking about some lesser known and discussed benefits with the AMEX Platinum card. I’ll also talk about how to check on pending card applications.

If you want to see the previous posts in this series, here they are:

• Travel Hacking? Credit Card Churning? Let’s Do This!
• Credit Card Churning Experiment Month One
• Credit Card Churning Experiment Month Two
• Miles and Miles and Miles: Credit Card Churning Experiment Month Three
• Q&A: Credit Card Fee Waivers and Churning Plans
• Where Are My Points? Credit Card Churning Experiment: Month Four
• Credit Card Churning Experiment Month Five: My Points Come In!

The cards

AMEX Platinum

I finished my minimum spend on this card!! Woohoo signup bonus!

I’ve had the American Express Platinum card for over three months now. In my last post, I mentioned that I was worried about meeting the minimum spend ($5000 in three months) but that I thought I’d squeak it in. Well, I did! Six days before the deadline!

::cheering ensues::

I learned my lesson though – I’m only going to go for the larger spends during months where I KNOW my spending will be high. The only reason I managed to meet that level of spending was because I had 3 personal/1 work trip in that time. $5000 would’ve been too much in a normal 3 month period.

That being said, I’m glad I got this card. It really does have some great benefits. So that’s what I wanted to talk about today!

Lesser Known AMEX Platinum Benefits

When I see people talk about the AMEX Platinum, the same benefits come up time and again:

• Free lounge access (so nice for frequent travel and long layovers)
• The $200 airline fee reimbursement (which I’ll talk about shortly)
• The monthly Uber credit

For this month’s new topic, I wanted to talk about some benefits that I’m not sure people realize they have. At least, I haven’t seen anybody talk about it. Considering I’ve now been in conversations with over 100 other people specifically talking about this card, that seems odd.

When you log into your AMEX account, you are greeted with a banner at the top with your name and some links to other pages. Below that, your payment due and current balance, next payment date, and summary of Membership Rewards are displayed. Next on my screen is a link to refer friends, followed by a summary of recent transactions.

If you keep scrolling down, you eventually come to the “Amex Offers & Benefits” section, which is what I want to talk about today. I’ve touched on these briefly before but wanted to dig into it some more.

These offers vary, so I always do a quick glance through whenever I’m logged into my account. Plus, the offers expire after a while.

Through this feature, I’ve been able to earn extra points and money back from several retailers. For instance, I signed up for a Whole Foods offer back in October and received double points for shopping there. I’m currently signed up for a deal with Rover, the dog sitting site. I don’t know if I’ll use it in time, but if I do I’ll get $30 off a charge of $75 or more. That’s a great deal!

Some of the better deals I see right now are:

• 30% off a year’s subscription to Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited
• $10-$20 off Turbotax
• $10 off an order of $50 or more from GNC.com (New Year’s resolution, anyone?)
• $25 back on $50 or more at Stitch Fix
• 25% off purchases from FTD (expires on Valentine’s Day…flowers…get it?)
• $5 back on $15 or more from Harry’s Razors

As you can see, there are some pretty substantial savings to be had. As always, make sure you aren’t spending the money just because it’s “a good deal.” It’s not a good deal if you are buying something you wouldn’t already buy. But if you are planning to buy Turbotax or Harry’s Razors anyway, this is a good way to save a few bucks.

Remember that in order to earn these deals, you must pay with the card linked to this account. If you sign up on the AMEX page and then pay with a Chase card, it’s not going to count.

American Express Platinum Review (ongoing)

I am maintaining my position that any responsible credit user who is in the military, or married to the military, should get this card. There are so many benefits and considering the annual fee is waived for military members in active status, it’s just a smart idea. That is of course assuming you want a credit card and will use it responsibly.

Last time I wrote that I still needed to take advantage of a few benefits before the end of the year. Well…I didn’t do so hot there.

I completely forgot about the airline credit while I was home for Christmas. Luckily, somebody posted a reminder on December 30th to spend the money by the end of the year in order to earn the credit. And I did that! But unfortunately, the transaction recorded in the AMEX system as happening on January 1st, so it ended up using my 2018 credit instead of my 2017 credit.

I’m clever though, right? I took a screenshot of the pending transaction on December 31st, showing that I’d made it in time. I was going to use this as “proof” just in case exactly this situation happened, since I’d heard it could.

Unfortunately, AMEX didn’t bite on the screenshot. The very nice customer service agent said “thanks but no thanks” to my offer of sending in the screenshot and read me the rules about the airline credit being based on the posting date.

Could I fight harder? Probably. But it’s a free $200 credit. I’m not going to draw attention to myself as a potentially bad customer, especially since I’m about to stop using this card for most transactions. I want to stay in their good graces since I love this card so much!

That being said, my 2018 airline credit is gone. But if yours is still available, make sure you use it before the very end of the year! I won’t make that mistake again.

And if you already have the card, remember that you have to make your selection for which airline you want the credit for by the end of January. Don’t dilly dally – change it today if it’s not what you want!

(The United gift registry is still down and rumors abound that it will be closed forever, so I recommend a different airline if you are trying the ole “purchase gift cards with my airline credit” trick)

Other than my disappointment about not getting my 2017 credit (which is completely my fault), I’m still loving the AMEX Platinum.

You can find out more about the AMEX Platinum card and why I chose it here.

Chase Sapphire Preferred Review (ongoing)

I’m also still using the Chase Sapphire Preferred card (referral link) occasionally for any business that doesn’t accept AMEX. In my life that generally means Costco, which is where I do the bulk of my shopping. That has typically been accounting for a couple hundred dollars in spending each month (mostly groceries). However, over the holidays it also meant I spent another couple hundred doing things with my family.

You see, I decided to give my niece and nephew experiences for their Christmas gifts, instead of “stuff.” Two of the locations we went to didn’t take AMEX, so my Chase Sapphire Preferred card spending was a bit higher this time. In all, I earned 474 points on this card over the last month.

You can find out more about the Chase Sapphire Preferred card (referral link) and why I chose it here and here.

Discover Card

Discover Card offered 5% cash back at Amazon and Target from October to December, so I used that to order several things I bought on Black Friday. That netted me $16.20 in cash back. Not bad!

My Next Card!!

Well…now for the bad part.

Did you see that Southwest increased their signup bonus for the Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier and Plus cards? Each of them is currently offering a 50,000 signup bonus instead of the normal 40,000 bonus. That’s 50,000 points after spending only $2000 in 3 months – fairly easy to accomplish. Then you can also get the Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier Business card, which has a 60,000 signup bonus for spending $3000 in 3 months.

You may recall that I’ve discussed how if you earn 110,000 Southwest points in a single calendar year, you receive the highly coveted Companion Pass. The pass allows you to get one free ticket when you buy one for yourself. That is a huge value!

That means that I could get one of the personal cards and the business card, spend $5000 in 3-4 months, and boom! Free airline tickets.

I’ve been going back and forth on whether to get the Southwest cards for months, but I decided to take advantage of this offer since the timing was perfect. I’d just finished up the minimum spend for my AMEX, so I needed a new card. And the interesting thing about the Southwest Companion Pass is that it’s not good for just one year. It’s good for the remainder of the calendar year you earn it in, plus the entire following calendar year.

That’s right. If I complete my $5000 total minimum spend ($2000 + $3000) by, say, April, I will have the pass for the rest of 2018 and all of 2019. Sa-weeeeeet!

But of course something had to go wrong.

Stymied By The Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus Card

I applied for the personal Plus version of the card earlier this month. For the first time, I wasn’t instantly approved. The screen told me my application was pending and that I’d find out within 30 days.

What???

So now I’m waiting. However, I did do a bit of digging about whether there was anything I could do to make the process work faster. I wish I’d dug sooner, so I could have an answer for you regarding my future with this card. But here’s what I found out.

***All information current on January 23rd, 2018. I make no claims to its validity after this day. Actually, I’m just going off what a stranger on the phone said…I make no claims to its validity at all***

If you call Chase Customer Service, it will send you through some touch-tone menus to get you to the point where you can check on the status of your application. I don’t want to list a phone number for Customer Service, because the one on the back of my current card doesn’t match the Contact Us number I saw for my online profile. I called the online number.

The phone system told me my application was still under review, so I selected the option to speak to an agent. I reached someone about 30 seconds later. She explained that it was still in review, but when I asked how long it would take (because it’d already been over a week) she looked closer and said that was surprising. She told me they normally clear these within a week, but mine hadn’t even been looked at yet. Then it takes 7-10 business days to actually find out if your application was successful.

I’m on a shot clock here, people! I want that Companion Pass ASAP! So I asked the agent whether there was anything to be done, and she gave me the phone number to call the reviewers directly to check on the status. Unfortunately, the office that reviews pending applications is only open from 8am to 10pm, and I was calling outside those hours. So…I don’t have an answer for you as to whether my application will be approved.

But, the agent told me she expects me to get the card since I’m a good customer with a good history with Chase. She also said that when I call they will pull it up while I’m on the phone and they can usually complete the review and approve/deny you during the call. So I should know very soon! I’ll try to provide an update tomorrow.

That’s the purgatory I’m in right now. I’ve completed the minimum spend on all of my current cards. And I don’t have a new card yet. So…stymied. I wait. More to follow!

Month Six Experience

Purchases

I haven’t used any points since my last update.

My Month Six Results!!

Everything here is based on my statement date, which happens to be the 17th of each month. You can expect my monthly updates to happen about week three of every month.

Starting Points/Miles:

• Ultimate Rewards: 65,988
• United: 545
• Delta: 2,915
• Southwest: 1,637
• AMEX: 55,842

Total Points/Miles as of December 19th: 126,927

Points/Miles Earned:

• Ultimate Rewards: 474
• United: 0
• Delta: 0
• Southwest: 0
• AMEX: 93,164 (60,000 signup bonus + two referrals + normal points earned)

Points/Miles Earned In Month Six: 93,638 (DOUBLE WHOA)

Points/Miles Spent:

• Ultimate Rewards: 0
• United: 0
• Delta: 0
• Southwest: 0
• AMEX: 0

Points/Miles Spent in Month Six: 0

New Point/Mile Totals:

• Ultimate Rewards: 66,462
• United: 545
• Delta: 2,915
• Southwest: 1,637
• AMEX: 149,006

Total Points/Miles as of January 23rd: 220,565

My Credit Score

Credit scores may drop or rise if you start churning. I have no major purchases planned, no need to take out a loan anytime soon, and a high starting score. If you plan to take out a loan soon or are concerned about your score dropping, credit card churning might not be for you.

Between July and now, my credit score has gone down 9 points. While this probably seems related to the credit card churning, in reality it’s because I had my credit pulled by apartments when I was apartment hunting in the fall.

Looking at Discover’s Credit Scorecard, between July and now my credit score fell 14 points. That was a bigger drop than I’d expected based on what I’d read about card churning. However, this is the fourth month in a row where it has held steady, so unless it falls further I’m not worried.

My Experian Score 8 from AMEX was first baselined in October. It hadn’t changed since then.

Ya know what I’m learning? These “monthly updates” on my credit score aren’t monthly. That’s kind of annoying, since I’m trying to closely track them for your benefit so you can see how card churning affects a real person. Of the three scores I checked, only one had been updated in 2018. Another was updated 31 days ago, and the third was last updated almost two months ago! So I’m trying to give you regular updates, but keep in mind when I say “now” that “now” might not be “today.”

Final Thoughts

I’ve earned a lot of travel points in the last 6 months! Now I need to spend them. I’m going to pay for some hotel nights on my parents’ upcoming trip. And I’m tentatively planning a trip around May that I’ll talk about later, once I have more to say. But other than that nothing major is planned.

If you had, say, 150,000 travel points to spare…where would you go?

Referral Links

As I said before, if you sign up for a credit card via my referral links, I receive referral bonuses. In turn, you receive the same signup bonus I got on the cards. That’s 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points on the Chase Sapphire Preferred if you spend $4,000 in three months, and 60,000 Membership Rewards points on the AMEX Platinum if you spend $5,000 in three months.

You don’t have to sign up via the referral to receive the bonus, but if you sign up through my link you are helping support this blog. If you use the referral link, great! Thank you very much! If not, I completely understand. No hard feelings.

Make sure you will be able to meet the minimum spend requirements before you sign up. That’s the whole point, right?

NOTE: Please do NOT use the referral links or start churning cards if you don’t plan to pay off your balance in full every month. I’ve been through the pain of having credit card debt, not paying off my bill each month, and even a couple late payments. That’s not something I recommend for anyone. Besides, the rewards are only a good deal if you pay off your balance in full each month. If you don’t, the interest you are paying will outweigh the rewards. Use credit wisely!