A Simple Call Can Earn You Thousands of Bonus Points

A Simple Call Can Earn You Thousands of Bonus Points

Maybe I’m sick in the head, but for some odd reason I sorta like paying taxes. Okay, I don’t necessarily like paying taxes per se. But the process gets me excited. I have shifted my mindset from begrudgingly thinking “Darn it, another big fat check to Uncle Sam” to something more along the lines of “Yay, another great opportunity to earn tons of credit card bonus points”.

As Benjamin Franklin famously said, “…in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”. Taxes are inevitable, you have to pay them. Might as well have a positive mindset about paying taxes :).

 

Here’s What I Do Every Quarter

It’s that time of year again. Time to pay quarterly estimated taxes. As a physician who is a partner in a group practice, I pay quarterly estimated taxes every three months. For this year, tax payments are due April 15, June 17, and September 16, and January 15, 2020. We are now in the month of June, so the second payment is due in a few days!

I have a strategic and systematic routine for earning credit card points throughout the year. In short, it looks like this:

1. Sign up for one or two (maybe even three or four) credit cards several weeks before tax payments are due. Ideally, these cards should have a huge introductory sign up bonus offering a large amount of bonus points. Even better if the cards have no annual fee.
2. Earn bonus points by spending on these new cards. Since my wife and I are frugal minimalists who don’t spend a lot of money on random stuff, most of our credit card spending is “manufactured” via tax payments. Doing this ensures we meet the spending requirements to earn these lucrative bonus points. If we are not working on a new credit card sign up bonus, then we use my American Express Blue Business Plus (referral link) or Citi Double Cash Back card to make a small profit on paying our taxes,
3. Call credit card issuers to see if there are any retention offers to earn additional bonus points on credit cards I already have.

Wait, what? You can just call to see if you can earn more bonus points on your credit cards?

Yup. That’s right.

And yes, it’s true. I do in fact do this every 90 days.

 

Retention Offers

There are four ways to rack up a ton of credit card points:

1. Introductory sign up bonuses. This is by far the fastest way to earn a lot of points. Usually it’ll be something like “Earn 50,000 bonus points when you spend $2,000 in the first three months”. In my opinion, the best one available is the Chase Ink Business Preferred (referral link) which has a sign up bonus of 80,000 valuable Ultimate Rewards points.
2. Manufactured spending. Basically, manufactured spending is the process of spending money on credit cards (and earning points), then converting that money into cash to pay off that credit card.
3. Spending in bonus categories. For example, earning 5x Citi Thank You points by using a Citi Prestige card in restaurants. Or earning 5% back (or 5x Ultimate Rewards points) using the Chase Freedom card at grocery stores this quarter.
4. Retention offers.

So what are retention offers?

Simply put, the credit card issuers want to keep you as a customer. And in order to achieve this, they may offer bonus points to retain your business. Hence, retention offer.

Because they earn a cut of the transaction costs whenever you make a purchase, credit card issuers earn more money when you keep using their cards.

Every quarter I see if I can squeeze out some bonus points via retention offers. Most of the time I’m out of luck and there just aren’t any available.

But once in awhile I get lucky. I certainly did a few weeks ago when I got some very generous retention offers!

 

Call #1: Citi Retention Department

Last month, I knew that we would have some relatively large travel purchases. We are planning a family trip to Europe some time in the fall.

Knowing that my Citi Premier card earns 3x Thank You points on travel related purchases, I decided to call Citi to see if I can be rewarded even more for these travel purchases I am anticipating.

In order to get retention offers, you usually have to be transferred to a credit card issuer’s retention department. To do this, you can call the number at the back of the card and tell the teleprompter that you are considering closing your credit card. This will generally get you transferred to a live customer service representative (CSR) in the retention department. Remember, the credit card companies want to keep your business!

Here’s how my call with Citi went:

• CSR: “Hello, thank you for calling Citi. How may I help you?”
• Me: “Hi, I haven’t found my Citi Premier card to be quite as valuable as I hoped so I am debating whether or not to close my card”
• CSR: “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I see that you are a Citigold customer and we value your business. Why do you not find your card to be valuable?”
• Me: “Initially it was valuable to me because we use to travel a lot. But now that my wife and I have a baby, we just don’t really travel anymore. However, I would still like to keep this card if possible. Are there any offers available on the card that will convince me that it is worth keeping?”
• CSR: “Let me check. I do see one offer. If you spend $1,000 within the next three months, you can earn 5,000 additional bonus points.”
• Me: “Oh, that’s pretty good. Are there any more offers available? (side note: you should alway ask if there’s more offers)
• CSR: “Hmm. I’m afraid not. This is the only offer.”
• ME: “Okay. I’ll take it. Thank you.”

Our conversation was a little bit more extensive than that. It probably lasted for about 10 minutes. But the above is the general gist of it

I did ask the representative if my three other Citi cards had any offers. My Citi Prestige had none. So did my Citi Double Cash Back card.

My Citi Preferred card did have a spending bonus of earning an extra 5x Thank You points on select categories like groceries and gas for a maximum bonus of 2500 points. Did I take advantage of this bonus? You betcha.

I didn’t stop there. Next, I called American Express.

 

Call #2: American Express Retention Department

Some time in May 2018 I signed up for the old American Express Business Rewards Gold card. I easily made the required spending bonus to earn 50,000 Membership Rewards points and the offer back then waived the annual fee of $175 for the first year. In general, it’s best to wait for a great sign up bonus with American Express because you can only earn a sign up bonus for each card once. At the time, a sign up bonus of 50,000 Membership Rewards was as good as it gets for that card.

This card is no longer available and was eventually replaced by a new American Express Business Gold card which has an annual fee of $295 that is NOT waived the first year and a sign up bonus of only 35,000 points. Clearly, this sign up bonus is not nearly as lucrative as the one I took advantage of last year. It’s a great example demonstrating how important it is to be strategic when applying for Amex cards.

Anyways, fast forward a year to May 2019. After having the Amex Business Rewards Gold card for a whole year, the annual fee of $175 was posted to my account.

$175 is a lot of money to pay for a card I don’t even use.

Every time an annual fee comes up, a decision has to be made:

• Keep the card and pay annual fee
• Close it and get annual fee reimbursed
• Downgrade the card to one with no annual fee
• Keep the card if a statement credit is offered (which would offset some or all of the annual fee)
• Keep the card if a retention bonus is offered

Since the Amex Business Rewards Gold card is not a card that I truly value, I was okay with any of the above outcomes.

But I do like bonus points, so I proceeded to call American Express.

Here’s how my call with American Express went:

• CSR: “Hello, Dr. McFrugal. This is Daisy from Fort Lauderdale with American Express. How may I help you?” (names have been altered to maintain privacy)
• Me: “Hi, I noticed that the annual fee for my Business Rewards Gold card has just posted. I’m re-evaluating all of my cards and I haven’t been using this card very much. So I’m thinking about closing it.”
• CSR: “Sorry to hear that, sir. Why aren’t you using your card?”
• Me: “Well, I’m not using it because other cards that I have earn more points in categories such as airfare and gas. Plus when I first applied for the card, I thought I might use it for the bonus category of spending on social media ads. However, I just don’t see that benefit as valuable.”
• CSR: “I see. We can offer you a statement credit of $50 if you want to keep the card.”
• Me: “Hmm. Do you have any other offers? Like, do you have any big spending offers?”
• CSR: “Let me check. I do see an offer in which you can earn 30,000 bonus points if you spend $10,000 in the next three months.” (Hearing this, I immediately thought Bingo!)
• Me: “Are there any bigger offers to earn even more bonus points after more spending? Like $20,000?” (It doesn’t hurt to ask!)
• CSR: “No, just the 30,000 points after $10,000 spend in three months.”
• Me: “Okay, great. I’ll take it. By the way, are there any other big spend bonuses in my other cards? Like my Blue Business Plus card? (I didn’t expect any since this card has no annual fee, but again, it doesn’t hurt to ask!)
• CSR: “Let me see. Actually, yes. There’s an offer to earn 20,000 additional bonus points after spending $10,000 within three months.”
• Me: “That’s awesome. I’ll take it!”

 

Bottom Line

Because of these two simple calls, I was able to earn a total of 57,500 bonus points.

More specifically, I earned:

• 5,000 + 2,500 = 7,500 Citi Thank You points
• 30,000 + 20,000 = 50,000 American Express Membership Rewards points

I was easily able to make the required spending for these retention bonus offers because my estimated quarterly taxes are more than $22,000. (When you are a high income earner, you have to pay quite a bit in taxes!)

The net result of these calls equals a profit of about $400.

57,500 points can easily be converted directly into $575 of cold hard cash. But of course, I would have to subtract the annual fee of $175 that I still have to pay. So this is how I calculated the $575 – $175 = $400 profit.

But of course, I probably won’t redeem these points for cash. The reality is that I can get a much better value out of these points if redeemed for travel or transferred to partner programs. In this case, I’m pretty sure I can get at least a $1,000 value out of these points.

A $1,000 value from two 10 minute phone calls is not too shabby. A definite big win in my book!