Miles And Points Sprint: New Addition Here, Big Moneymaking Amex Offer, $1,000 Business Class Tickets, Lounge Changes, and More

Here is a quick Miles and Points Sprint to bring readers up to date from things of the last day or so.

New Addition Here

Sorry about the big head on me – I am terrible at selfies!

The reason I had no post yesterday and that this roundup has quite a bit of material is that I missed most of the activity in the miles and points world yesterday. But, it was for a very good reason – we were in the hospital having a baby (rather, we were in the hospital while my wife was having the baby!)! Everything went very well and we were able to welcome our 4th child into the world yesterday afternoon. I know this doesn’t have anything to do with miles and points but it is obviously something we are really excited about and I couldn’t help but share news like that here! 🙂

Our little guy is named Timothy and we were actually able to come home today. The other kids were thrilled to welcome him back home!

Big Moneymaking Amex Offer

An Amex Offer that appeared in accounts yesterday was for Smart & Final, a grocery store chain out west. It is for an awesome spend $50 and get $25 back. As Amex has done with Offers at grocery stores in the past, you can use this offer up to 3 times per card.

This is huge since this chain does have gift cards of all varieties, including Visa/Mastercard gift cards! Counting all the Amex cards and subaccounts that you could register times the 3 times per card and you have a serious moneymaking opportunity. I first saw this at Doctor of Credit. Another post that covered this as well is over at Miles to Memories.

Business Class Tickets To Europe For Around $1,000 

One Mile at a Time wrote about a fantastic deal on business class tickets on oneworld airlines to Europe for around $1,000! To get it at this price, you will need to have a couple of things – such as an AARP membership and British Airways credit card, but even if you don’t you can still get these tickets for $1,490. While that price may sound high, that may only be a little more than economy tickets for summer travel to Europe (if not cheaper).

Priority Pass Losing United Club Access

Per View From the Wing, Priority Pass (the lounge membership that comes with several cards) is losing access to United Clubs soon. That is a disappointment to anyone that has been leaning on that membership for access to the United Clubs. Now, you will have to stick with the annual single-use passes for United cardmembers, Star Gold (on foreign carriers for domestic travel), or United Club membership for access.

Two Major Issues With eBay Gift Card Purchases

Over at Doctor of Credit, there is a post today about two problems with buying gift cards on eBay with certain cards. Check the post for the whole story. I will say that one of the items, using Chase Ink cards and earning 5X points for gift card purchases from GiftCardMall and PayPal Digital, still works for me. The post mentions that it looks like some users are losing that because of the changing of the name for how the purchases are coded. However, my recent gift card purchases gave me 5X points and were coded the way the post mentions. So, YMMV with the bonus, but definitely check out the cash advance warnings!

Book Southwest Awards TODAY!

As I wrote last week, and many blogs are talking about today and yesterday, today is the last day to book awards at Southwest before some vague increases go into affect tomorrow. Read the post from last week to see the advantages of booking now.