Welcome to the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast! 🎻
Justin and co-host Darren explain the sudden Comenity/Bread Financial shutdowns—what likely triggered them, how to de-risk, and smart pivots to keep earning points & miles.
Breaking news: a War on Happiness report: sudden account shutdowns, why they maybe happened, and why it was absolutely worth it. Accounts closed, no email, no warning, just mass confusion and zeroed credit limits. Miles and points drama for sure!
Timestamps:
00:00 👋 Intro: low-cost travel with points & miles
00:45 🧱 Comenity/Bread shutdowns—what happened
01:51 🎙️ Darren’s experience & takeaways
03:16 🧩 Card benefits & stacking (what still works)
05:50 🤯 Surprise closures & service headaches
13:18 🧪 Likely triggers & risk factors (patterns we saw)
22:46 🛡️ De-risking playbook & future considerations
26:41 😮 Most surprising elements
28:44 📣 Announcements & speaking engagements
30:29 🧰 Rewards tools & CardPointers shout-out
31:15 ✈️ Meetups: travel & points community
32:40 🧠 Maximizing ongoing card benefits—safely
39:30 🧭 Navigating shutdowns without losing momentum
48:18 📚 Lessons learned from past deals
52:55 ✅ Closing notes & what’s next
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Rough Transcript:
Theme Song: [00:00:00] Travel at low cost with points and miles. Credit card rewards bring the smiles. Many adventures, tales to be told, make and save money, the world will unfold.
Fight the war on happiness. Pick up the gold. Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast breaks the mold.
Justin Vacula: You’re listening to the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast. I’m your host, Justin Vacula, here to help you make money, save money, and travel the world at next to no cost with credit card points, miles, benefits, and loyalty programs. Thanks for joining me for today’s episode, Comenity slash Bread Financial suddenly closing Accounts, a War on Happiness Report, sudden account shutdowns, why they may be happened, and why it was absolutely worth it.
Accounts closed. No email, no [00:01:00] warning. Just mass confusion and zeroed credit limits, miles and points drama for sure. Visit meetup.com/philly miles and points to RSVP for monthly Greater Philadelphia Travel Credit, miles and Points meetups I host in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. The next meetups are September 28th and October 19th, 2025.
Find a link in the show notes. For more content between episodes, follow Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast on Facebook and x. Follow Justin Vacula on Instagram. Subscribe to Hurdy Gurdy Travel podcast on YouTube for daily content, including travel videos, podcast clips and posts. Find more information including select episode transcripts at hurdygurdytravel.com.
On with today’s episode recorded September 22nd, 2025. Welcome back to the show, Darren.
Darren: Thanks, Justin. Breaking news and not the good kind, unfortunately, but there’s a silver lining, some opportunities to talk [00:02:00] about how you and I maybe think about credit cards, what the utility might be for a card that’s, as you’ve said, a little under the radar, sneaky spend, if you will.
Justin Vacula: Yep.
Darren: And what the value was in the short term.
Justin Vacula: Yeah, really interesting. Lots of people talking about the shutdowns, community slash bread financial, an issuer that most people. Probably don’t have, some people probably never even heard of. But being in the more intermediate to advanced side, probably lots of this when we’re out of other cards and other issuers, we’ve looked for other opportunities.
So even if listeners haven’t had cards with Community slash bread, I think they should be interested in how this all went down. The miles and points of drama, the war on happiness, all the things.
Darren: I think there’s also some good things to talk about here when you think you’re shut down, generally, right? Justin, you do a, an excellent job of keeping your wits about you, as they say, thinking through things logically without getting emotional. Certainly, I’m sure it came as a shock, trying to move through it logically. What can I do? What [00:03:00] questions? Who can I talk to? Is there an opportunity for me to talk to someone and plead my case?
And I think all those things are good, and I’ll speak personally, have helped me in the past actually reverse a shutdown. I won’t say what happened this time, Justin. We’ll we’ll keep the listeners on the edges of their seat.
Justin Vacula: All right. Let’s talk about this portfolio. We ended up getting cards like the AAA Travel Advantage Visa, which was giving three times points at grocery stores, and even on certain travel.
This used to be a card with Bank of America. You could cash out points for AAA travel vouchers or AAA vouchers, but it got moved to C Amenity, so it was just a straight cashback card. 3% cash back grocery, not too interesting, but there was a certain way that we were using a certain rewarding debit card to make these payments.
We were effectively getting 5% back at grocery stores and for us, buying lots of prepaid cards, gift cards, doing a lot of creative spending [00:04:00] with large credit limits. This was very beneficial. We also had the bread rewards card with community or bread financial. Effectively 3.75% back at grocery plus the other 2%.
And because these cards were so interesting, because of this extra 2% on top of the regular rewards, I ended up getting some more obscure cards like the Unity by Hard Rock card, which had a small signup bonus and the 2% grocery, the Caesars Rewards Visa card, partially earning status with Caesars and also earning.
Some rewards, mostly one X or two x. Again, not that interesting. These weren’t amazing cards for benefits, welcome offers or even bonus categories, but with the extra 2% and the high volume of spend, I think it really put it over as some very interesting cards to sign up for after we’ve gotten the more interesting ones with Chase, American Express, and many other issuers.
The real
Darren: advantage here, maybe [00:05:00] outside the Caesars Rewards visa, which we’ve talked about in and of itself, but the real advantage is here. The ability to stack whatever rewards we were earning on these cards with an extra 2% call it by paying with a reward, issuing debit card, not speaking in code here, there are a number out there, most of which are not currently open for new applications, but certainly there are some others that are, and maybe your local credit union has a debit card, for example.
What’s a saying? Always be probing, right? Always just check in on the way back from your staples run.
Justin Vacula: Yes. I come back from Las Vegas and Chicago. I got home around 7:00 PM I went to grocery store as usual as, even though I’m back from travel, there are certain plays I wanna stop and get almost every day.
So I went to a grocery store. My community slash bread cards worked just fine. The next day I tried to make an online purchase and it was declined, which was quite odd. I went back to that same grocery store, different day, and the cashier said, [00:06:00] oh, it aired. It said Account closed. The account closed. What’s that all about?
I’ve had times where I maybe would get fraud alerts or a transaction would just decline for some reason, but I’ve never seen account closed, so I think, oh. I think I might know why, but. I just use a different credit card to complete the transaction and I called the number on the back of the card because at this point, what do I really have to lose?
It’s often wisdom not to call the bank unless you absolutely have to ’cause it can result in adverse action, calling in eyes in your account and so on. And there was a robotic message that said Thank you for calling, but your account is currently closed. Goodbye. So I couldn’t even get a human, couldn’t talk to the human.
I logged in online. Available credit limit zero. No email, no communications. Terrible customer service. So really odd chain of events. No. Oh, we saw this and that. Going on with your account, we decided to shut you down. No phone call, nothing. It’s just failed in store. And [00:07:00] then I saw the available credit limit was zero.
It didn’t even say online that my account was closed.
Darren: To be fair, Justin, I, it sounds like they didn’t really want you as a customer anymore, so providing you bad customer service, it’s probably in their best interest. But yeah, I’ve never heard of that count closed message either at the grocery store.
That’s wild that would already be set up and moved so quickly. It seems like they had some idea that this was coming and then they must have saw, must have seen the most recent purchase go through and it reminded them, oh. Justin ULA guy, it’s time to shut his accounts down for AA shutdowns back in the day.
They started with people that had the reward flights that were gonna leave the next day and work their way back. It seemed just real. I think we call ’em peaches in the PG version of podcast. Is that the correct terminology? Ooh,
Justin Vacula: we can go with that. And perhaps this was a lifetime achievement award.
Perhaps It was several factors that led to the shutdown, which we can talk about, and the bad customer service we had the. Rollout of the New [00:08:00] Caesar’s Prestige card, they upgraded or added an additional card to the no annual fee version, but they didn’t allow you to have the new card and the old card and then upgrading.
It was quite a chore that they said that it wasn’t available. Customer service told me to call customer service like the South Park episode grounded Venda Loop, and it seemed like reading numbers was similar to a family guy skit, where there was an episode where Peter. Was reading phone numbers or numbers to his housekeeper, Consuela, and she kept repeating them back in an incorrect way, or she thought it was quantities of numbers and not the digits.
So yes, lots of bad customer service with community slash bread financial, and this really tops it all off. No warning, no concern. Just the shutdown. And in an odd way,
Darren: yeah it is, I think it is unusual for the. At least the cards that I’ve had shut down. There is still the opportunity to speak with someone and talk to them about why the shutdown occurred, what they perceive to be the [00:09:00] risk.
In some instances, it allows you to address those concerns and maybe revive your accounts. In other instances, not as much, but at least having that explanation is helpful, both because it helps you understand what happened here, but also maybe it prevents you from making similar mistakes with other cards down the road.
And that’s again, I think something that we’ll talk about. What are maybe some risks for shutdown down?
Justin Vacula: Yes. And it was very much like the classic Terry Collins video, the former Mets manager, where the pitcher, Noah sin guard, attempted to bean the batter. Chase Utley. He got ejected from the game and the umpire comes out and he says, shouldn’t there be a warning?
And the response, Darren.
Darren: The situation and everything that happened before that. That’s what did takes that Justin.
Justin Vacula: Yeah, just a, just an ejection automatically. No appeal. Nothing. You’re just thrown outta the game. And that’s how it was with this. And if listeners have not listened to that video, we reference it a lot.
So I think it’d be a good podcast companion. We could put that in the show notes along with the family guy in South Park, I think. [00:10:00]
Darren: Yeah. Lost of Easter eggs today. Justin. Lots of fun little tidbits.
Justin Vacula: Yeah, so let’s talk about the math, because of course, America loves math, and here was the stack with the AAA Travel Advantage card that we didn’t really hear much about.
Wasn’t that interesting? But adding this extra 2% in lots of spend was really good. So imagine a credit limit of $20,000, something about what I had on this card, and I aim to maximize that every statement period. A little bit difficult at times. But I would make additional stops to get the spend in because 5% back is pretty big.
So if we got 3% from the card itself, an extra 2% when paying it off, then in about a year we would get around 4400 4800 3% on 20 k, limit another 600 a month, 7,200 a year. Lots of numbers here, so 7240, 800, some quick math here for about $12,000 a [00:11:00] year just from one credit card. So I think a really strong play there, knowing that there might have been a shutdown at some point, but if we lose the Triple A Travel Advantage Visa, it probably doesn’t really matter in the long run because there were no extraordinary benefits, statuses or anything like that.
And interesting that they just decide to shut down the account rather than say, oh, you can’t pay it anymore with a debit card. You have to use a bank account. And at that point, 3% really isn’t that interesting compared to other options. But if you’re saying 12 KA year, add the other limits from the other cards.
I had limits around 5,000 and you could still get a meaningful bump with that. So listeners can do the math on that, but maybe something around 15, $20,000 a year just using some credit cards. And paying them off payment was impossible. Probably never would’ve applied for many of these cards. So even with the shutdowns, the play really paid off.
Darren: Yeah. And Justin, you [00:12:00] provide, I think this is a great example of a card that certainly was under the radar for those that had the time and or creativity to do some meaningful spend here and be able to pay those cards off with a 3% card. You’re right, a $12,000. At least gross profit on this, depending on what your expenses were to spend that money to start with.
But that’s very appealing for a, like you said, under the radar card that was with a bank that if there was a shutdown down the road, didn’t really have a significant impact on your ability to say transfer points to travel partners or get new and exciting cards from some of the major banks.
Justin Vacula: Yes, we mentioned lifetime achievement award.
What really happened? Maybe we’ll never know. The one reason. It was probably multiple reasons that contributed to the shutdown, but we don’t know just yet is I haven’t received an answer. Maybe we’ll get a vague shutdown letter in the mail if that even comes. Some of these banks talk about a letter will come in the mail, but [00:13:00] it doesn’t always arrive, and sometimes these letters will say something.
We’ve just decided to terminate relationship as stated in the terms, basically like a kind of a weird circular thing. They’re not gonna state what led to it. And of course there was no warning. It was just a shutdown and probably not retrievable at this point. So what were some of the likely triggers?
Was it the pay by phone, was it the velocity? I didn’t cycle credit card limits and for listeners were unfamiliar. We had an episode about that before. And cycling would be if they gave you a 20,000 credit limit if you ran it up to 20,000. Paid it off, ran it up again in the same statement. I didn’t cycle.
There was some talk of, oh, maybe you could cycle once. Maybe you could cycle twice. But I just avoided that ’cause that’s usually a high risk factor. I didn’t do that, so maybe it wasn’t.
Darren: I think it’s worth noting here. Red C had a slightly different pay by phone approach as compared with other cards where we know we can pay by card or paid by, yeah, debit card or both [00:14:00] automated where you don’t need to speak with a person.
But community was different. Tell us about that.
Justin Vacula: Yes, with the community pay by phone. You had to speak with an agent and the agent took the payments. So perhaps that had something to do with the shutdown, is maybe agents were looking at the account some more. They saw the transactions, they saw the higher amounts, so perhaps that had something to do with it as well.
And I wonder, was it the high rewards earning? Did that trip something in the algorithm? If they’re seeing like, okay, we’re paying out like $300 in cash back a month for several months, maybe. That triggered something they didn’t like it. And that’s maybe what shut the account down. Was it going up to the limits on the cards?
So maybe some people were letting the balances go really high and then paying it off. Typically, I would make these payments once per week to not have the balances get very high. But on some of the cards, they wanna charge a fee if you use the debit card to pay by phone because they wouldn’t allow you to use the debit card to pay online.
Which is funny ’cause they read from a script. Oh, you can always. [00:15:00] Log in online and make a payment and say, oh, it didn’t allow me to use a debit card, so that’s why I’m calling in today. So the agents were just reading from the script, which is pretty funny. Maybe a risk factor was fraud alerts that sometimes when making larger purchases or maybe several purchases in a small amount of time that the fraud alert led to eyes on account or some flag in the system.
Darren: Yeah, I think as we discussed about earlier, Justin, I think anytime that you have a human starting to look at these accounts. See some combination of high spend or high reward balance, what you’re spending money on where, what those code, what those spending, or what the MCC charges are. The merchant
Justin Vacula: category code for listeners.
Darren: Correct. Sorry. Yes. Thank you, Justin. The merchant category code, basically ensuring that you get three x on all your spend. That might also trigger some additional examination of your accounts. At some point, they may decide that you’re simply not a profitable customer, Justin, which I think we both agreed is always [00:16:00] our goal, but we just like to maximize that profitability before they realize it.
Justin Vacula: Yes, because of course we’re using credit responsibly. We’re getting lots of rewards, so I guess they’re making some money on the interchange fees that when we’re making a transaction in a grocery store, the grocery store has to pay the credit card issuer some money. So perhaps some. They felt that it wasn’t enough or after some of the other considerations that they didn’t want us.
It just sounds like a straight up business decision. That’s what we might get in the mail. We’ve made a business decision to close your accounts. That’s one of the vague things that they usually say, and it’s funny because I did some things to de-risk, like split tender. So if I were to make a purchase for a $500 gift card, I wouldn’t put all 500 on the same card.
I would do something like 299 33, 3 99 37, and then put the rest of it on another card. So it wasn’t these like similar amounts all the time or the larger amounts because maybe at a grocery store that [00:17:00] will trigger some kind of fraud alert or some problem. And another consideration for the shutdown is that I used a certain payment processor.
They would charge you a fee. To load funds, but you were able to select the category. So even if you paid 3% to load funds, you got 3% back on the AAA card, for example, and then later got 2% paying it off. So just clicking buttons at home, a net, 2% on $20,000, it’s attractive. But I also did in-store spending.
It wasn’t just the online spending, but that, I think that still could have been part of the lifetime achievement award here.
Darren: It’s a powerful portal, Justin, but it seems like it’s been involved in a couple of these shutdowns. Now that’s causation or correlation, I think is hard to tease out. Because folks that are using that payment processor are also doing lots of other creative spending and like you said, is it one particular thing or is it the lifetime achievement award that you’ve mentioned earlier?
Yeah, we often, and that’s, we [00:18:00] often ask
Justin Vacula: who makes the rules
Darren: on this case? Community makes the rules, unfortunately.
Justin Vacula: Yes. It could have been a portfolio consideration as well if I had multiple cards with them and all the cards were showing similar patterns of, okay, reward, bonus category, payment by phone, lots of spend, lots of rewards.
This guy has four cards and he is doing the same thing on all of them, and maybe they didn’t like that. Is there some other issuers where I don’t use every card all the time or max it out every statement because the rewards aren’t that significant. And there’s no other stacking opportunity. Like I’ve heard in the hobby, some people talk about sock drawer cards that they just keep their card in a safe or actually a sock drawer, but they keep it for certain benefits, like free check bags or hotel statuses or some monthly, quarterly, annual benefits and so on.
So they’re not using their Amex platinum for everyday spend. Like the woman who was. Argumentative at a Walgreens a few years ago [00:19:00] thinking that her Amex Platinum would be enough for an ID or whatever nonsense that was. So in this case, we’re using these limits very actively, or we were using these limits very actively and maybe ’cause that was happening on multiple cards, that could have had something to do with it.
Darren: Yeah, the Amex Platinum has a lot of new features, Justin, but real idea is not one of them. So don’t be bringing it. Don’t be bringing it with you. Now, your Costco membership card I understand may or may not work so. If you’re buying the gold, bring your Costco card. You never know where it may help you out along the way.
Justin Vacula: Yes. And it seems like they employed these risk controls. The zero notice freezes, the credit limits were showing as zero account closed at the grocery store was the cashier message. I don’t know how the cashiers got that message, but very interesting. So it was definitely a war on happiness moment.
Darren: Yeah, I’m sure that was very disappointing in the moment, and like you say, you hope that you can live to.
To spend another day, but not in this instance it turns out. So no [00:20:00] more supermarket sweeps for the community cards? Sadly,
Justin Vacula: yes. We’ll be able to pivot towards other cards, and that’s the advantage of having multiple cards because of course the answer to everything is more credit cards.
Darren: Absolutely, Justin.
Justin Vacula: And that’s an advantage of a de-risking thing, is that some people might only have one or two credit cards, and what if something happens with those one or two cards, and maybe they won’t be shut down. But what if there was fraud on the card and the card was locked and had to be resolved? And then what are they going to do, especially when traveling?
So very good to have lots of credit cards for the welcome bonuses, the bonus categories, the benefits, and then for considerations like that in case there happens to be issues with a certain card issuer. And even earlier this year, I had some credit cards that were moved to other banks or cards that were just discontinued.
So having backup plans is really good.
Darren: I’ve never heard anyone talk about portfolio theory when it comes to credit card fraud alerts. Justin, that’s first for me. Very [00:21:00] interesting approach here, but yeah, no, you make a good point. I was listening to another podcast recently. The host was having, our co-host was, I guess Host was having some problems with their Capital One card and it taking weeks for those issues to be resolved.
Imagine that’s your only card, either personal or business or worse, both. You’re trying to pay for groceries or pay for business expenses, buy inventory or services, whatever it might need be, and you can’t do anything because the credit card has locked your account that would be brutal. So yeah, I think it’s a great point there.
Having cards with different banks helps de-risk that. And even when you’re doing uncreative spending, sometimes the banks don’t like it for whatever reason, and you can end up with lock cards that, that make it challenging. As an aside, Justin, as we talk about that, I know one, one tip that folks have talked about is when you travel, making sure that you’re bringing cards for more than one bank, just in case the card gets locked or shut down while you’re [00:22:00] traveling.
And then you would be, like you say, in a
Justin Vacula: pickle,
Darren: in a speed, you’d be, I was gonna say in a speedway hut, but yeah. Pickle’s good too.
Justin Vacula: Yes. So you never know what can happen or yeah, you’re overseas and then the bank views it as a suspicious transaction and locks the card and you can’t contact them, or it takes time to resolve.
So having the war chest with you, multiple credit cards, of course, I think is a good place. So we weren’t putting all of our hopes in community. This wasn’t our retirement plan. This is more of the get rich, slow plan and the hobby for most people. So not a big loss here, a bit of a let down, for sure. But we will thrive.
We can celebrate the wins while we have them and be okay with it going forward.
Darren: That being said, Justin what things are you considering now after this shutdown that you are implementing yourself or would recommend other people think about as a way to de-risk? Yeah. At the [00:23:00] bank level or at the credit card level?
Justin Vacula: Yes. I think varying payment and amount timing. So instead of just running up to the balance and making the payment in full, maybe you want to make a payment every week, every two weeks, not let it get so high, not let it have the same amount every time that we’re not paying back 18,000 199 every time.
And I think this happened in the past, especially with Citi, where people were able to use certain prepaid cards. Or prepaid ish cards where they were making all these $200 payments, these $500 payments, whatever it was years ago. I wasn’t part of that unfortunately, because Citi shut me down for other reasons.
But if you’re make the payments again and again, this could be a risk factor, so you don’t wanna look robotic in that. And I think it’s important, again, to mention Strike Wall. The iron is hot. Yeah. While these good opportunities are present, I know people who are more intermediate to advance. They missed out on this.
They were saying, oh, I wanna stay under 5 24 with [00:24:00] Chase. I wanna get more cards with them. So I’m not gonna sign up for community cards. But I’m wondering, is the 5 24 status really worth it that much that you were willing to give up $12,000 in a year? I don’t think so. If I can choose four cards with ity and one card that gave me 12 k.
Maybe make a total of around $20,000 through this for about a year of success. I think that’s worth more than another one, two, or three Chase cards, especially when Chase might just decline you anyway after you had waited.
Darren: I think the opportunity cost is a good one there, Justin, that people talk about 5 24 and staying under 24, and I think it does.
It really does depend on what the opportunity is. Whether you playing this game are likely to take advantage of it. Are you gonna have the time, energy, interest in maximizing those cards in a way that you do? Or if you’re just gonna sign up for them and not, and only put 10% of that spend on it, [00:25:00] maybe it is worth it.
So I think as folks are considering, what does their strategy look like? Again, where do you wanna go? What are your goals this year? Are you trying to make cash back? Are you trying to earn transferable points? And then from that, what can I do to achieve those goals and what cards fit that strategy? And if I already have enough points in my account to meet those goals, maybe there are some opportunities like this where I get some cards that are a little more under the radar and maximize some of those cash back.
Justin Vacula: Yeah. So we could always go toward a more blended approach too, of the points and the cash back. So even though I travel a lot, I still value the cash back, especially when I’m traveling. I have to use cash for certain things, particularly when I was in uk. I was Ubering and I couldn’t use Uber gift card balance, so I had to pay straight up cash.
And then some other small incidental things like train rides, meals in some cases, and much more. Some taxes and fees you have to pay for certain flights when flying overseas, so there’s still a desire for cash, [00:26:00] and in this example, getting something like 5% cash back in a pretty easy manner was I think very valuable.
Darren: For sure and 5% I think is very competitive. I don’t know that there’s many other cards out there that are gonna meet or exceed that number.
Justin Vacula: Yes, we’re losing the altitude reserve pretty soon, or at least the, all the features of it, 4.5%. So now we’re looking at maybe two x to three X everywhere cards going forward, or cards that are two x, but the points are more valuable than 1%.
Darren: Yeah, there’s still some three x and four X categories out there, which we’ll talk about a minute, but. Before we get there, Justin, what was the thing that surprised you the most about this? I know that you’ve had interesting relationship with ity along the way, fraud alerts and locked counts and upgrade challenges, but looking back, what was the thing that surprised you the most?
Justin Vacula: It was funny calling in, because usually when you call them, it says, enter the last four of your social security number. I entered it and then I got [00:27:00] the, your account is closed. Goodbye. The next time I called in, I said agent, representative, and then I was able to speak with a human and it was funny ’cause I was still able to pay the card and the agent didn’t mention anything on that particular call about your account is closed.
So I wanted to make the payment first and then inquire about recovery or what was going on in a future call. And three outta the four credit limits were zeroed. I think there was one day four were zeroed, but then I looked again today and then one of them was showing credit limit. Unless I got confused about something, but I know.
That earlier today, one of them was still showing credit limit, so I was thinking, is that one recoverable? Maybe it’s just a fraud alert and the other ones are safe. And they said, no, sorry, your account’s been shut down. You’ll receive a letter in the mail. So we’re still waiting for that letter in the mail, and it’s been some time.
How long does the mail really take your Darren?
Darren: Depends. They’re mailing it from Justin, but yeah, I think there are some regulations about closing accounts and what they’re required to do. A notification, as I recall from. [00:28:00] Or my previous shutdowns that they required to send a letter. Again, whether that letter is any way informative, just like the letters I think that they send out when they deny you, they can put essentially anything they want on there.
It could be like the, could be like the eight ball, right? Like they could just shake the magic eight ball and put whatever answer they want on there. But I do think they need to send a letter to meet regulatory obligations.
Justin Vacula: Yeah. And past podcast guest, mark Kosinski had mentioned that some of these letters he’s received.
Contradictory information like you’re using too much of your credit line or, and then you’re not using enough of your credit line. So which one was it? Citi?
Darren: Just like cashiers make up rules. Justin, sometimes banks make up rules.
Justin Vacula: Alright, we’ll take a break for some announcements. If you’re enjoying today’s episode, don’t forget.
Zork Fest 2025 Z-O-R-K-F-E-S-T. It’s coming up in Las Vegas, December 5th through the seventh at M Resort, casino Hotel. [00:29:00] Zork Fest combines miles points and gambling content all in one weekend. I’ll be there speaking and connecting with podcast listeners. Buy your ticket at zorkfest.travelzork.com. Also noting that a new tower will be opening the week before Zork Fest.
We hope to get those rooms assigned in the room block. Comp rooms are possible- very good offer for those coming to Zork Fest, you have the opportunity to contact Travel Zork and a host from M Resort may match offers that you’re getting with other casinos like Virgin, Caesars, MGM, and more. I’ll also be speaking at Chicago Seminars Hyatt Regency O’Hare, November 7th through the ninth, 2025.
Use the promo code HurdyGurdy when buying a ticket to support me. Also join me from October 24th through the 26th. 2025 for Chicago Seminars Holiday Inn Chicago oakbrook use promo code I must have a promo code 20, [00:30:00] Darren’s favorite promo code for $20 off tickets. It’s the best. And you saw some Hurdy Gurdy music recently.
It was a system of a down cover, right?
Darren: Yeah. One of my friends sent me an Instagram reel about the, what kind of band would you call that? A minstrel band. Ooh. Maybe folk
Justin Vacula: Medieval.
Darren: Yeah, playing a system of the down cover, it was quite good. There were bagpipes. There was a Hurdy Gurdy, yeah. Ah, like the, I enjoyed it.
Justin Vacula: There’s the folk metal group, elvey as well. E-L-U-V-E-I-T-I-E. So they definitely have a lot of those instruments. This episode is also supported by card pointers. If you have multiple credit cards like me, because the answer to everything is more credit cards, card pointers helps you automatically activate bank offers and knows which card to use, where for maximum rewards.
Card pointers saves me time and money. Use my link card pointers.com/herty gerdy travel for a discount on annual and lifetime plans. It was interesting. In the last week, coming back from Chicago, I had to pay for a bag with Southwest. My flight was sponsored by [00:31:00] someone else. Couldn’t use miles and points and a card pointers offer came through where I got an email from.
Chase says, congratulations, you’ve received statement credit for your Southwest purchase. So how about that? Some found money there that I very nice wouldn’t have known about.
Darren: Yeah, excellent.
Justin Vacula: And finally, I also host monthly travel and points meetups in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. Our next meetups are September 28th and October 19th, 2025.
If you’re local or wanna make the trip, it’s a fun casual way to talk point strategies. Meet like-minded travelers like Darren, who’s often at meetups and share ideas. RSVP at meetup.com/philly. Miles and points. And what’s the name of that group again? Darren?
Darren: Philly Miles and points. Justin obviously, oh,
Justin Vacula: everyone knows that.
Greater Philadelphia Travel credit Miles and Points. Yeah,
Darren: ex exact.
Justin Vacula: Exactly. He’ll be there though. A lot of the meetings anyway. Oh, probably,
Darren: probably, yeah. Fortunately Justin doesn’t make me name the group when I walk in and he just invites me in. Everybody else with [00:32:00] it. It all serious. It’s a great group.
It’s really grown over the last year and it’s, again, I’ve said it before, but it really has something for everyone. Some folks are fairly new and come in and have some, how do I get started? Questions. Some folks that have been doing some sort of miles and points things for a better than a decade are there and are interested to hear what other folks are doing.
I know Justin has, you’ve done a great job in really bringing the gambling side, the casino leverage to the points and viles world, and it’s something that we often talk about there.
Justin Vacula: Yes, and I learned from others too, as you have as well. So even being more advanced in this. There’s still more to learn, which is good.
All right. Back to the absolutely shut down drama and discussion. Even though we’ve been shut down by community and BR Financial, I still think that there are lots of opportunities and miles and points. The sky has not fallen. We have other cards with more legitimate, perhaps merchants. We have the [00:33:00] five x category on the Chase Inc.
Cash credit cards for office supply stores. Amex gold for four x grocery and many more. So it’s interesting. We talked about possibly canceling Amex golds because the community cards were so strong for grocery, but now with ity out, maybe the gold becomes more valuable again.
Darren: Yeah, and that’s the great thing about Amex is really if the, if you’re not signing up, depending on how you’re getting the card, but if you’re upgrading the card or you’re really only committed to that card for a year with the signup bonus that you get.
Then as those cards move through and maybe there’s a better opportunity, you can product change those cards sometimes with an upgrade offer, or you can downgrade those cards and save a little on annual fee. And all along the way, you’re trying to maximize or optimize your spending categories for what your spend is.
AMX, I think, is still the world’s funnest bang. Maybe other folks will disagree with the recent increase in. Annual fees. [00:34:00] But yeah, I think there’s still a lot of value there if you’re willing to play the game.
Justin Vacula: Yes, and it was mentioned on, I believe, the omics podcast. They said that as the annual fees go up, sometimes the signup bonuses go up as well, so I’m happy to play that game.
Some people are getting 250,000 or 300,000 membership rewards for signup bonus, even though the annual fee might be what, 700, $800? I’ll take a higher annual fee for more points.
Darren: I think $900, isn’t it 8 95 now? Oh, even higher. Yeah. Yeah. It’s gonna be the first
Justin Vacula: for a thousand dollars annual fee, or I know.
999 Darren. Yeah. 9 95. No, nine. Nine five. Yeah. The competition is on, but it’s nice, especially we’ll be grandfathered into many of these benefits, meaning that we’ll have the benefits, even though we didn’t have to pay the higher annual fee, because, for example, I currently have a business platinum, and it’s maybe six or seven months into the card.
So I’m going to get the remainder of that year [00:35:00] with the annual fee and still be able to enjoy benefits in a few weeks.
Darren: Yeah I think people that are holding multiple Amex biz Platinums, for example, suddenly have a bunch of things to take advantage of probably before their annual fee hits.
And if you say upgraded your card towards the end of this year, maybe you still have a triple dip opportunity before. Downgrading or closing that card and trying to minimize the financial impact of the annual fee. But yeah, I think there’s still, like you said, Justin, still a number of good cards out there that you can use in a whole variety of ways.
Just because one bank has decided they no longer wanna do business with you, doesn’t mean that the game’s over by any means.
Justin Vacula: Yes. And back to Amex, I recently got approved for a no lifetime language, Amex Blue Business Plus. So for listeners. This means that there’s no restrictions saying that if you have or have had this card, then you’re out.
Typically with [00:36:00] Amex, it’s one signup bonus per lifetime, but occasionally these offers come out. I logged into my Amex account on browser. I saw the offer, and then in the app as well. So you’re preselected for this offer, and there was no popup saying, oh, you’ve already had this card before. You’re not eligible.
The application went through, I got approved. So I believe it was 25,000 membership reward signup bonus for no annual fee, 0% a PR and two X membership rewards on all spend. So that’s nice to get that and add that, especially since I’ve already had the card. And if I outright apply for cards that I haven’t had with American Express, I typically see that popup message.
So the no lifetime language offers typically get around the popup. I also upgraded an American Express Surpass card to an aspire. As the annual fee came up on the card, they didn’t gimme an upgrade offer. I called multiple times asking, but I was still eligible to upgrade the card. So before October, I’m going to get a [00:37:00] $50 airline incidental credit I’ll be able to use, and then once October comes, I’ll get another $50 and I should have two free night certificates if I’m thinking about it correctly, because I spent more than $30,000 on the Surpass card with the six x grocery category.
So that’ll trigger the lifetime year of the card for Aspire, giving me a free night cert. And then I believe I also get one for just having the card, having upgraded from Serpass to Aspire or outright having it may give you that annual certificate, but it’s been a little bit weird because sometimes if you apply do you just get it?
But if you upgrade in the past, I’ve received a free night cert for upgrading, even though I didn’t put much spend on the card. So I think I’m gonna get two. We’ll see what happens, but it’s gonna be worth it. And perhaps a trip to Lancaster later in the year for Hilton DoubleTree in Lancaster and going to the Strassburg Railroad.
Darren: That’s a different meetup group. Justin, I can’t possibly remember both names, so you’re gonna have to help me out here a little bit. But no, [00:38:00] in all seriousness, I think the. Just to repeat what you said and try to summarize a little bit on the upgrade from the Surpass to the Aspire, there’s a 15 K certificate, free night certificate at 15 k on the Surpass.
And the reason you kept spending on the Surpass was ’cause the surpass bonus is grocery and then once you crossed 30 K, you decided to upgrade. And that 30 K total spend for the year transfers over and triggers the free night certificate. On the Aspire, right? Yeah. So that’s how you get two. And then your question was, do I get another one then, or do I have to wait for the anniversary?
Since the card was preexisting and had an anniversary?
Justin Vacula: It’s
Darren: just question just whether Amex views it as an anniversary of the Aspire card, which you just upgraded to. Or whether you have to wait a year. So yeah, let us know how that goes. I will be curious.
Justin Vacula: Yeah, we’ll see. I’m
Darren: in a similar situation this year.
Justin Vacula: Yeah, nice to do the upgrades at the end of the year and take advantage of all [00:39:00] these credits. Like the resort credit is twice per year, so now that I’ve gotten the most I can probably outta the Surpass, it’s a good opportunity to upgrade it to Aspire, and then perhaps in January after I used the yearly and quarterly in January.
Then I can downgrade it to a surpass once again and get that six x grocery spend.
Darren: I love it. Yeah, I think that’s a great strategy with the Surpass and the Aspire upgrade. Downgrade. Yes. And Amex has been very minimal to that.
Justin Vacula: Yeah, very generous. I had some heat recently with Chase, which was weird as I got shut down by Chase.
Oh no. But I got a letter explaining why, and it said Accounts opened with other issuers, many requests for credit. And this was really surprising to me. Yeah, because I’ve paid my Chase cards in full. I have had accounts in good standing and I’ve been applying for lots of credit cards for years now, and I haven’t had those kind of warnings or issues or letters or shutdowns with Chase, and there was no warning with this [00:40:00] one, so I paid all my chase balances to zero.
They weren’t really that high. I called in today and explained that I’m opening cards. To get travel benefits, to get travel rewards. I travel for work purposes and I’m not running up balances to flee the country. I’m gonna pay off all these balances. I’ve paid you guys chase for eight years now, so it’s not a problem.
And they reinstated my accounts. So it’s weird. The banks are perhaps getting stricter maybe because of economic or financial concerns, or maybe all these applications caught up to me. I don’t know. I think a rare. Case with Chase. Perhaps most listeners won’t have to worry about this, but I’m going to adjust.
I was planning on applying for five or six cards in January, but now I’m just going to sit on it for a little bit longer. So there are some ups and downs in the game and we just have to roll with the punches. Thankfully, I was able to get back into Chase because that shutdown would be a lot worse than a community or BR financial shutdown.
Darren: For [00:41:00] sure. I love that approach. Calling in or rather first paying your cards down, proving them to them in good faith that you’re gonna pay your debts, as they say. And then calling in and talking with them about, Hey, this is consistent with what I’ve done in the past. I’ve been a good customer for a number of years.
Revive those accounts. I agree, Justin. I think the macro environment here, a lot of uneasiness in the corporate world about re recent revision to jobs, reports and things like that. I think that has tightened the risk profile, as you said earlier, and some things that banks have been fine with in the past all of a sudden are triggering more scrutiny, in this case, a temporary shutdown.
I’m sure you are you’re breathing a style of relief when they opened your accounts back up. Oh yeah.
Justin Vacula: The rep on the phone said, oh, can you just hold for two minutes while I reinstate your accounts? Oh, absolutely. I’ll hold for 15 minutes. Come on. I, it was just like his nice way of saying it rather than just saying, he’s gonna put me on hold.
He asked me, but I still thought that was funny. Oh yeah. More. No problem. [00:42:00] I’ll even sit here in silence if that’s what you want, sir. Sometimes that’s good customer service there. Yeah, sometimes these bank calls, I tell them, oh, I just have the phone on speaker because I’m cleaning or I’m making breakfast or something.
Just letting ’em know is a courtesy. I’ve definitely heard interesting things in the background and some call centers, some roosters and some occasions, kids, cats much more so I, as a courtesy just let them know. But with this chase call, I wanted to be more focused and. With other more routine calls. It really doesn’t matter if I’m making some cleaning noises in the background.
Of course, we want our podcast audio to be good. So I’m sitting still and trying not to wiggle about this one and all those good podcasting practices, but it’s interesting for sure. It was a great phone call and I think it was nice they didn’t start asking me all these other questions or making up other reasons to shut me down.
Darren: Absolutely.
Justin Vacula: Now I wonder, I have a question for you, Darren, or maybe you were about to ask me. It. Should people self shut down? If they might be in danger with community [00:43:00] slash bread financial, what if maybe their credit limits are zeroed, but they haven’t seen that shutdown notice, or they didn’t call in, or maybe they still have available credit limits, but they think that they’re gonna get shut down?
Should they just close their accounts proactively rather than being closed on?
Darren: That’s a great question, Justin. I, and I think, again, it depends on. How much effort you want to put into saving your community cards. So there certainly have been other banks that people have, as you indicated, self shut down.
That is to say you recognize that some of the things that you have done in your creative spending portfolio may be viewed as a risk factor or have already been identified perhaps as a common risk factor for other people that are shut down. You think maybe they’re going alphabetical. And my last name is ula, so I’m not shut down yet, but by gosh, it’s gonna be soon.
Justin Vacula: They started
Darren: with V or they started with V and maybe they’re going, or maybe they started with Z and they’re working way their way up. They haven’t gotten an R yet. Justin, I don’t know. [00:44:00] No. So I think in that instance, the idea of shutting your account down before they can shut you down, right? And avoiding that negative account, closed interaction, but more importantly, the negative remark on your credit report.
Then some amount of months later you reapply and you hope that they’ve forgotten that they were gonna shut you down to start with. I don’t know of any data points with community where folks have done that. It would be interesting. That has been a strategy that have worked with other banks. Banks that are located in urban populations.
Justin, I would say, or. Large towns, what do we call those? Cities, right? Cities. Yeah. So I think there’s that opportunity, but I’m not aware of community for the cards that you talked about here. I’m not sure. I don’t know. I’m not sure. I’d apply for them twice if Yeah you shut, yeah. You go through it.
And especially I think with the reduced opportunity of some of the [00:45:00] creative processors that you’re working with, is if that’s the risk factor. How do those cards, or do those cards still make sense in a different MS world? I don’t know yet. Maybe it would be nice to have the option still.
Justin Vacula: Yes, the Caesars card would probably be the number one contender for a reapplication because it’s giving you some tier credits and you could even spend your way to diamond status.
So even though you’re not getting the extra 2%, it might still be worth it to get those bonus tier credits. And it also comes with a signup bonus. Yes. $150 worth of comps. And it’s funny because they had that rule of, oh, if you have the no annual fee card, you can’t apply for the annual fees card. So it’d be funny if there were a future where, oh, they shut me down and now I can just apply because they closed the account and maybe I’d get approved to undo the rule.
In a way,
Darren: there’s some cards that people have applied for on the day they’ve been shut down, or a day later have been approved and have been able to utilize those [00:46:00] cards for some period of time before. In some instances that the bank recognizes that they were not supposed to have those cards at all again, or that they continue to have those cards for long periods of time.
So what do you think, Justin? Will you try to reapply for the Caesars card and see if they’ll let you back in?
Justin Vacula: Yeah, maybe see if there are other data points from the community if they were able to get back in. Although, as you said, it’s not as appealing anymore, but maybe a year from now. Maybe the, depending on what the letter comes in the mail or.
There could be some sort of second chance like, okay, you can open again, and we’ve just, yeah, they could have just ended it. If the pay by phone was such a problem, then they could just not accept those cards. I suppose that’s a possibility. ’cause I know that the AAA card used to be used a certain payment processor and then that payment processor sent us an email and said, oh, this card is no longer supported.
So I’m not sure what happened there in the background, whether the bank did it or it was a problem they had. But maybe the bank was upset about that and they said, okay, we’re not gonna allow [00:47:00] transactions. Or there were some of the cards where the loads would just fail. It just wouldn’t work. And then you wouldn’t even get a fraud alert and the card would just be like silently locked.
So it’s interesting that they just decided to shut everybody down rather than hoping that people just use it for in person. We’re too notorious so we can’t even play the game at a lower level. I
Darren: think they probably look at the subset of customers that are using those payment processors and deciding.
We don’t really want these customers anyway. They’re not necessarily profitable customers. They always pay their balances off potentially. There’s a lot of credit risk if they’re running up their accounts. Even if they are paying them off routinely. We’re just going
Justin Vacula: to have a change of heart one of these months after a solid payment history of a long time.
Darren: Yeah. You know what they say, A past performance does not predict future performance, so you never know. And yeah, I do think it has something to do with the, what do I wanna say? Profiling or the customer profile that’s using some of these creative spending methods, I think they say these people are not profitable people, right?
These are not profitable [00:48:00] customers. We can say they’re using this tool in a way that’s a way it’s not intended to generate rewards on our cards and so that we’re gonna shut you down and that’s it.
Justin Vacula: You’re done.
Darren: Do not pass. Go. Do not collect $200 or even three 50.
Justin Vacula: Three 50 Tree 50. Good. We’ll wrap it up here.
Some takeaways. The community play was about the stack of the payment by phone and sometimes the category bonuses. Were comfortable losing these cards and it’s better to have played hard with them and got shut down after several profitable months, or maybe even a year perhaps. There wasn’t even an opportunity that was that big if we played it slow.
We can accept unfavorable outcomes because we had a good run. It was about the process. We knew that this might happen, but we were okay losing community if it came to that. There’s still lots of opportunity elsewhere and the game usually shifts anyway, and that makes me think of a past deal [00:49:00] that was super profitable.
We had a play at GameStop around 2018. That’s now. Dead. Do you remember that? Happy Holidays play, Darren. That was, I think around October or November.
Darren: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of GameStop plays back in the day, I think that one we were using Happy holidays and getting portal cash back, plus card rewards, plus flipping it for another card, another gift card within GameStop, and generating GameStop points along the way that we could then use for.
Merchandise to either for our own personal use or to then sell. So there was a lot of stacking in that deal, as I recall.
Justin Vacula: Yes, there was a portal, it might’ve been top cash back. It was giving 10% back on these physical happy gift cards, and you were able to use the happy gift cards in person to even buy other gift cards.
So GameStop was one of those listed merchants, and we were able to buy things like vanilla visa, gift cards. [00:50:00] Or Amazon gift cards that we considered pretty close to cash. So getting that 10 x cash back, the 10% cash back, plus the credit card rewards on the initial spend, and even the GameStop rewards that were maybe worth two to 4%.
It was quite a deal. We just had to go in person a lot to GameStop stores, and mostly it went pretty well. It was a lot of younger cashiers that really didn’t ask many questions. They didn’t really care. And for some time there weren’t even many limits or scrutiny about this Over time, there were some corporate memos that went out and said that they don’t accept these to buy gift cards.
They started asking to see the cards and then making up rules saying that you couldn’t use these cards or they don’t accept them allegedly. So it died. It wasn’t that big of a shutdown. It wasn’t like our cards were deactivated and we couldn’t have access to the cash, and we had other outs. As well that we could use them to maybe resell merchandise.
So there, there were some ways to get around it and we were able to liquidate those [00:51:00] cards and we didn’t get burned.
Darren: Yeah, and it’s another good point that, like you were talking about earlier, when you are using your cards to earn points, especially in a closed loop ecosystem, it’s cash back or it’s, you can only redeem them for a certain.
A company, we’re not talking Chase or Amex or City where you can transfer those points or miles into different travel ecosystems. Really, in those instances, you should be cashing out as you go and minimizing your risk. So when that shutdown comes, and I think if you’re listening to this podcast and you’re playing this game at a level that you’re earning free flights around the world, you, it’s probably a win, not an if.
And that’s okay. Like you said, it was worth it. It’s $12,000 you have now that you didn’t have before, and you learned some things along the way about de-risking and it was a profitable deal while it lasted.
Justin Vacula: Yes. And I wonder if we never really got involved with any of this, what would life be like? We’d just have a city double cash [00:52:00] card and be using that and only getting 2% cash back.
And we didn’t know about all this creativity. We wouldn’t have been able to take all this travel lots of wins and some setbacks along the way. There’s certain fragility about it. Things aren’t going to last forever. The game shifts, but that’s okay. I’m very happy to have had this opportunity to then in this space to capitalize on this deal, and I know going forward there’s gonna be new opportunity that comes about.
So although we mourn a loss with community, we celebrate the successes that we had. All right. Thanks for coming on Darren and discussing this breaking news, this war Unhappiness report.
Darren: You’re welcome, Justin. We don’t always bring great news to our listeners, but we do share things we think are important and that Jill learn from Hope that was the case here and Justin shared his experience with Community and Bread.
Sadly, there’ll be no more bread for him
Justin Vacula: or maybe in the future we’ll see. All right. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for future episodes, some closing [00:53:00] announcements. For more content between podcast episodes, follow Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast on Facebook and x. Follow Justin Vacula on Instagram.
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Thanks for listening. Have a great [00:54:00] day.
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