So in essence, say you really need the 100,000 miles to book an award and you don t want to wait sev

I m excited westin peachtree plaza hotel to announce that starting today that I will be featuring guest blog posts from some of the greatest minds in the frequent flyer world. For the first post, I m happy to introduce Joshua Pickles, also known as Mr. Pickles. In the frequent flyer community Mr. Pickles is known for his ability to analyze opportunities and push the boundaries on what is possible when it comes ways of earning miles and points.
Update: There is a chance your credit card company may characterize these purchases as cash advances, so I recommend making a small purchase to verify how the charge westin peachtree plaza hotel posts, westin peachtree plaza hotel before buying a lot of Amex Gift cards.
Greetings to all TPG followers, I am Joshua Pickles and I contribute to the Flyertalk and MilePoint forums under the handle mrpickles . Beginning today I will be guest blogging with tips and tricks to help you maximize your miles and points potential. To read more about me see the end of this post or visit my own blog at www.TheMrPickles.com or follow me on Twitter @TheMrPickles .
The Points Guy contacted me and asked if I could weigh in on some ideas on how to make some worthwhile purchases on your newly acquired Chase British Airways 100K mile Visa card. As you know, to get the 100K miles you need to make a total of $2,500 westin peachtree plaza hotel in purchases within 90 days. The first 50K miles post after your first purchase, westin peachtree plaza hotel which can be a purchase as small as a pack of gum or a tomato at the grocery westin peachtree plaza hotel store, westin peachtree plaza hotel then bam you have 50K points in your account. But for some people, finding a way to complete the $2,500 total spend requirement in the next 90 days requires some creativity.
When I was a frequent flyer newbie I would get a thrill out of earning points and miles. I felt that I was getting something for free, and when standing on the jetway boarding for my next flight I would sneak a glance at other passengers boarding passes and notice no status or no frequent flyer number westin peachtree plaza hotel and snicker to myself thinking that these people were losing out on miles. Even today I cringe when I see someone in a restaurant or grocery store handing westin peachtree plaza hotel over a fist of money. All those lost miles.
Well, it did not take long until I realized it took an awful lot of activity just to get just one free flight or hotel night. Then I was enlightened that a better way to rack up miles was to Double Dip. I use online shopping mall websites and for simplicity I will focus on one called Big Crumbs . This is a online shopping mall where members sign in and then click through to the popular stores where they want to purchase an item such as eBay, Expedia, Walmart, Drugstore.com, etc. Members earn a cash back incentive which is a percentage of the total amount spent per store for example Flowers.com is 9.6%, and Nordstrom is 5.6%.
BigCrumbs is very simple to use. First you click on the link and sign up for a free account. Next you sign-in and shop as usual. Third; in about 2 months you will receive an automatic cash rebate via Paypal on all of your purchases. Payments lag about 8 weeks, so purchases made throughout the month of May will be paid on July 15.
One of the stores on BigCrumbs is the American Express Gift Card store which pays 1.6% cash back. You can use a Chase British Airways westin peachtree plaza hotel Visa card, for example, westin peachtree plaza hotel and make a purchase at the American Express Gift Cards/Business Store,(earning westin peachtree plaza hotel 1.25 BA miles per dollar spent) and then use the American Express gift cards for everyday purchases. There are two Amex Gift Card stores, one for personal and one for business gift cards. The personal store has an upper limit of $3,000 per gift card ($5,000 per order) and the Business store has an upper limit of $5,000/gift card ($75,000 per order). American Express will not ship gift cards to Hawaii or Vermont.  There is a current offer code from American westin peachtree plaza hotel Express GEN374 which gives an additional $5.95 discount to help absorb any fees incurred like a shipping fee. Another offer code is EMMOTCM for FEE-FREE westin peachtree plaza hotel Amex Gift Cards good until 6/30/2011 (this is the better deal for the time being). This would be the Double Dip:
You can take it a step further and use the newly purchased Amex Gift Card and go back to Big Crumbs and book your travel through westin peachtree plaza hotel the Expedia travel website and earn an additional cash back of 6.4% on all air, hotel other travel bookings. This would be your Triple Dip:
So in essence, say you really need the 100,000 miles to book an award and you don t want to wait several months to meet the $2,500 westin peachtree plaza hotel spend requirement. Once you get the card in the mail and activate it, you could buy $2,500 in gift cards from the American Express Business Gift Card store, which would cost $2,500 plus $8.95 in shipping and handling. You d then receive an automatic Paypal payment from Big Crumbs for $40 the next month, so you d come out $31.05 ahead once you take out the shipping fee. So in essence you ve just taken nearly 33% off the $95 annual fee, earned 3,125 additional BA miles on top of the 100,000 bonus and you hit the spend requirement immediately. If you then spent those gift cards on travel through Expedia using Big Crumbs, you d then get an additional money back:
BigCrumbs works on a referral system much like any multilevel marketing program. There are three tiers. First tier is the person who referred me, second tier is myself, and the third tier is the person who signs up under me. I make a small commission on the purchase that I make and so does the person above me, and above them. The person below me makes a small commission on their purchases and so do I and the person above me. Anyone that you get to sign up makes a commission and so do you and I. So basically you get a commission on your own purchases and the purchases of the next two steps below you. If you have many buyers below you then you will have a continuous stream of passive westin peachtree plaza hotel income. So to get started please sign up under my link here .
mrpickles has been writing on the Flyertalk.com forum since 2009 and more recently on the MilePoint.com forum telling stories of racking huge amounts of frequent flyer miles in a short period of time. Primarily focusing on American Airlines AAdvantage miles mrpickles found notoriety in December 2009 when The Wall Street Journal wrote a front page article which featured a story that hinted about how mrpickles earned American Airlines lifetime Platinum status without ever stepping on an American Airlines westin peachtree plaza hotel flight. More recently he was featured as one of the Legends of Flyertalk at the Chicago Seminar 2010, a gathering of over 500 frequent flyers learning the tricks of the trade. mrpickles currently holds over 5.8 million miles and points over several programs and this year has top tier status with United, Air France, Continental, and American Airlines as well as Starwood Hotels and Hilton Hotels.
Great tip and AWESOME to see Mr. Pickles westin peachtree plaza hotel blogging. He is indeed very knowledgeable in maximizing your miles/points and an all around great guy. This knowledge and info he shared on the forums in the past have revolutionized my accumulation of miles and points. Period! Thanks again Mr Pickles!
Can you meet Amex spend threshholds this way? I recently got the Starwood card. I don t think I ll have any problem hitting the $15K spend requirement in 6 months, but if I came up short, could I buy Amex giftcards through Big Crumbs or would that not count since it is Amex for Amex?
@Tim- Great point- this isn t the best way for everyone to use their card since many offer category bonuses (like double points on airline purchases). However, this is a quick and lucrative way to hit spend thresholds and get even more money back from every day purchases.
Would you be able to deposit the gift cards back in your checking account? If so you would have the 2,500 points from buying westin peachtree plaza hotel the cards, the $31.05 of rebate from the purchase net of the shipping, and have money in your checking account to pay for the credit westin peachtree plaza hotel card bill.
Another thing to think about if you use bigcrumbs is if you live with a significant other or husband/wife have one person sign up for the site too and use the other person in the household as the referral. Then person A buys the item, gets the rebate, and person B also gets the referral $.
FWIW, I just found out about bigcrumbs from mrpickles, so I haven t used this idea, but it was the first thing that came to mind after signing up for the site (using pickles link). Can we call that a quadruple dip?!?
Mr. Pickles, that is just what I needed to hear. You are the relish of my life. As a guy who just got 2 BA Visa cards, I was just last night talking to my wife about how to meet the minimum spend requirements. Please, give me more.
@Scott- Yes it will work with any Amex card, but today we are focusing on the Chase British Airways 100K mile bonus Visa card since the signup expires this Friday May 6, 2011. Once you get the card this is a way to lock in the mileage bonus ASAP, and then possibly use them for summer travel.
Am I right, Big Crumbs works like shopping mall of any frequent flyer program? westin peachtree plaza hotel In other words, if I want to purchase something in target.com, I should use either AMEX/AA/Delta/Continental, etc shopping portals OR Big Crumbs? And I have to choose, what I want more cash back or miles/points.
On the Amex Gift cards on the Personal side, I have been able to order the Gold ones for $2000 and $3000 in the same order for the $5K limit not $500. With Big crumbs westin peachtree plaza hotel it is $80 back in cash plus the miles or points for the purchase on the card. I use the Travelocity Amex card since I am grandfathered in from the MC days so I get 4% back in travel. There are ways online to liquidate them other than the mint, such as up to 2 payments a quarter for estimated taxes, and there are limits on how often you can order the amex cards, as I just had an order canceled for placing it too soon.
@Jason- Apparently the news of the death of OBL overshadowed westin peachtree plaza hotel this. This real announcement was that The Points westin peachtree plaza hotel Guy is introducing Guest Blog Posts. The purpose of the Guest Blog Post is to introduce a diffe