The 5 Biggest Wins of 2017
With 2017 winding down I thought it would be fun/interesting to do a list of the 5 biggest losses in the hobby and the 5 biggest wins in the hobby for the 2017 calendar year. They will include sales, new products, new banking rules etc. I did the five biggest losses yesterday so I will be doing the biggest wins today. Spoiler alert: 2017 was the year of the loss!
Ranking The Wins
I will rank the wins in descending order of importance. I am not gonna lie we were scraping the bottom of the barrel for these. Please let me know in the comments section what your top 5 would be!
Facebook Group American Express Business Platinum 100k Sign Up Bonus Offer
One our Facebook group members was able to secure a contact person at American Express. The contact was willing to give our group members a special offer for the American Express Business Platinum card. This offer was double the standard/public sign up bonus of 50,000 Membership Reward points. We may be releasing this offer again in the near future so make sure to join the group if you aren’t already a member!
Kroger Gift Card Deal
This was a good money maker and point producer plus free gas! If you were able to ramp it up the earning potential was endless. You did need to add the offer to your accounts quickly to really maximize it though. The fact that the gift cards were profitable on top it being in the lucrative grocery store category made it one of the better deals. Earning 4x fuel points on top of that made it a top 5 deal of the year. It was limited to areas that had a Kroger or one of it’s affiliates so not everyone would have been able to take advantage of this one.
American Express Releases The Blue Business Plus With a Bonus
The Blue Business Plus from American Express may be the best everyday card on the market now. My Ink Plus used to be my clear cut favorite card but with the death of 5x at PPDG the Amex Blue Biz Plus may have surpassed it. Earning 2x Membership Reward points on EVERY purchase (for the first $50,000) is hard to beat. And the fact that it originally came with a 20,000 point sign up bonus and no interest for the first 15 months shot it up to #3 on our list.
New York Times Google Home Offer
There was an amazing offer a few months ago that allowed you to snag a $130 Google Home for $16.99. It involved signing up for a subscription of the New York Times and paying for one month of service. It was an amazing offer, that only lasted a few hours, but the inability to scale landed it in the 2 spot. The offer was so good my article was even trolled by a NY Times employee…he even joined our Facebook Group to prolong his attacks!
Amazon Fire Tablet Sale
The best deal/win of the year was the Amazon Fire tablet sale. Miles to Memories was the first to break the news that you could buy up to 40 tablets dirt cheap! This was a great deal that had scalibility at 40 tablets. These ended up being great gifts or nice profit makers when reselling! I am still surprised the sale went on for as long as it did. I have to assume that Amazon had a huge stockpile of tablets they needed to unload. Either way getting a 7″ tablet for $15 is hard to beat and that is why it is our #1 win of the year.
Conclusion
While 2017 may have been a year filled with losses there were a few nice deals mixed in. Hopefully 2018 sees an uptick in this area. The beginning of the year should kick off nicely with the new Amex Hilton cards being unveiled. The announcement of SPG/Marriott getting some new cards in it’s lineup is another positive for 2018. Hopefully it is just the tip of the iceberg!
Let me know in the comments what your top 5 wins/deals of 2017 were!
Lower Spend - Chase Ink Business Preferred® 100K!
Chase Ink Business Preferred® is a powerful card that earns 3X Ultimate Rewards points in a broad range of business categories on the first $150K in spend per year. Right now earn 100K Chase Ultimate Rewards points after Learn more about this card and its features!
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
[…] American Express released the Blue for Business Plus card last year to much fanfare. It even made it on our top 5 biggest wins for 2017 list. […]
[…] This year was a rough year! That may be an understatement. We took a lot of hits without adding much of substance in it’s place. Hopefully 2018 isn’t as bad. I don’t see things truly improving until the next recession hits unfortunately. I hope I am wrong but the banks are back to making big profits which means they can cut out the excess to entice new customers. Come back tomorrow to see our 5 biggest wins of the year. […]
Mine was being offered a red aviator AA card on a flight for 40,000 miles for basically just paying the $95 annual fee and making one purchase on it with no minimum spending requirements. My wife and I both signed up for one and each received 40,000 miles. She also just recently received the AA gold card offer for 55,000 miles after spending $4000 in 4 months.
My biggest wins were the 50K signup I got from the Merrill + credit card (although I haven’t used them yet) and the 60,000 signup bonus on the JetBlue card.
Those are two good ones. I was able to get the ML for my wife but I was unable to get it 🙁
I’m not on Facebook, but would like to know about the 100K Amex offer when it become available. The NYT / Google Home deal was a farce. I met all requirements and was sent a code that had been previously used so it was no good. Contacted Customer Service at the NYT and was told they would “take care of it.” Three weeks later I called in and cancelled the online sub. I was told it was supposed to be a 12 month commitment for the Google Home and there was an error in how it was originally presented. They cancelled my sub without argument.
I think they changed it after a few hours and people started having issues with the codes since they were pulling them back after sending it out etc. If you got in early you got it no problem. I gave mine to my Brother in Law for Christmas 🙂