I know what you think — is this guy for real? What good stuff? There is no good stuff in miles & points business. It’s all decline, decay, and misery, wherever you look.

Well, I’ll prove you wrong. Although, to prove you wrong, I’ll need your cooperation — we have some pretending to do.

For example…

We can get excited about the new Chase Marriott business card 70,000-point sign up bonus, but we’ll have to pretend that we know nothing about a MAJOR Marriott Rewards devaluation that comes into effect in three days sharp.

By the way, how do you HT to Flyertalk Wiki? Something like this?

That reminds me: before booking your Marriott travel, check my mammoth research: Marriott 2015 Changes Hit on 03.19 — Is There a Silver Lining?

Because, believe it or not, there are some sweet spots in the soon-to-be-devalued Marriott chart that you might be able to take advantage of if you wait. And if not, just burn your Marriott points before March 19.

What else?

Well, we can get excited about the return of $20 Rebates from Staples (with $250 in Visa Gift Cards) if I pretend that my time cannot be spent more productively doing other stuff, like, I don’t know — working or having a beer. Driving to Staples might only take me 15 minutes one way, but my local Staples never has VGCs during these promos. Of course, I could pretend that it doesn’t drive me mad or, that when I’m mad, I don’t tend to act irrationally, and by acting irrationally, I mean driving to another Staples that is about 30 minutes away in city traffic. And then it might, just might be that the second, far away Staples doesn’t have these cards either! And then, at the end of the month, I could pretend I don’t get a nicely itemized bill from my therapist, which — the bill, not the therapist — doesn’t make me feel any better.

Just kidding. No therapists for Andy. I’m a trooper.

But even if you get your card on the first try, how are you going to scale it with one rebate per address? Sure, let’s pretend that you can ask all your second cousins to give you their addresses for the rebate purposes (just don’t forget to get the goddamn check from them when the time comes), but how many second cousins do you have?

Boy, this pretend-business is truly tiring.

Anyway, the promotion will last until 03/21, but if you want it, I suggest you don’t wait. Shawn from Miles to Memories did a good write-up on it. 

What else?

Doctor of Credit dissected the new offering from BBBV that might — just might — be a new 5% on everything card. That would be handy considering how old 5% cashback cards are falling down like leaves in the Fall. But, that’s fine: let’s pretend it hasn’t been incredibly hard to load an AMEX RedCard at Target lately; let’s try and forget that AMEX Serve is about to stop credit card loads entirely on April 15, and let’s not attach any credibility to this rumor –yet.

Churning on AmEx business cards looks to be coming to an end 🙁

— Doctor Of Credit (@Drofcredit) March 15, 2015

Get the picture?

Yes, we do have some silver linings in otherwise very cloudy skies, but it appears that these silver linings can easily bear their own lightning strikes.

What else?

Get 1,000 Hilton HHonors points for changing your password. Takes about 40 seconds of your time, and that’s because I’m slow.

Get 1,000 Club Carlson points on March 19 by following them on Twitter and registering (set your calendar).

View from the Wing writes about Etihad offers 25% off their award redemption with promo code REDM25.

Efficient Asian Man writes about getting a better Citi Prestige card that can almost make sense at a Citibank branch. Not exactly the news, but this is the first time I saw it. In my little world, that qualifies.

Any other good news that I’ve failed to cover? Share the joy in the comments. Please?

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