Recycling credit card points

[windwalker]

I was just wondering if anyone on here had actually been successful with recycling credit card reward points. Tim Ferriss wrote about this and Piggybacking in his blog (http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/01/03/how-to-piggyback-and-recycle-credit-card-points/).

Piggybacking definitely seems like something that would be worthwhile to do, but recycling seems more like a sneaky scheme that the credit card companies would probably get upset about if they figured out it was happening. I would think buying too many gift cards and paying off your balance every month would set off some kind of red flag. Maybe you could get away with a certain amount of this, but maxing out your balance every month seems like the kind of thing that would lead to your credit getting cut off.

Who knows, maybe they wouldn't notice.... Does anyone here actually have experience with this, and if so, what was the result? Were you able to continue recycling points without any issues?

[kamakiri]

That post is pretty dated. With the NWA/Delta Merger, and the absolute suckiness of Continental, you might want to think about why you are looking at this in the first place.

Amex paid thousands of customers $300 to cancel their accounts last year, and they are closely reviewing all accounts. The cc business is not what it was even 6 months ago.

I do have to say that this is one of the posts that is directed at people who have no business following it, and glosses over certain glaring facts. Miles, for example, take 6 to 9 weeks to post. Hardly something to count on if you need to, "inflate your rewards account quickly to get an international ticket". Fees tagged onto gift card purchases are also not added in. A $4 fee on one $100 gift card a month is an annualized interest rate of 50%, makes no economic sense at all, compared to that, at 16% a cash advance is a bargain.