HUGE Prime Day Deals, Easy $200 + NEW Bilt Transfer Partner

In this video, I want to talk about Amazon Prime Day deals, which started today. Then we have how you could earn a $200 Amazon gift card instantly to use on those deals right now. Then we also have how you can earn 10 Amex points per dollar with a competing sales event that is happening at the same time as Prime Day. Then Built is adding a new hotel transfer partner. We'll tell you all about that. And we have a popular credit card that may have just been discontinued. Hey, credit warriors. Welcome to the show. My name is Ben Hedges, aka The Credit Shifu. And on this channel, I cover US credit cards, personal finance and luxury travel. If you like the sound of that, please subscribe. But let's get into it. And this video is brought to you by Cook Unity. But more on that later. All right. So Amazon Prime Day or days started today. The sales event runs from June 23rd to 26th. So you actually get four days of sales on Amazon. But some items have limited quantities. So if you want the best deals, you should probably shop earlier rather than later. And opening up the Prime Day landing page today, and you can do this by searching Prime Day on Google or just going directly to Amazon dot com slash Prime Day. I see a load of great deals, especially on electronics. At the top, it says up to 40 percent off. I guess that's in general. But then down below in today's big deals, it's up to 50 percent off. I see over one hundred and thirty dollars off an Apple watch, just under one hundred dollars off a Kindle, 39 percent or one hundred and seventy dollars off this Amazon Fire TV. Scrolling down, I see some deals on mattresses, this vibe mattress for 22 percent off. And I need a new mattress for my guest bedroom, actually. So I might check that out. Actually, in the end, I went for the Zinus Green Tea. It's one of the memory foam mattresses that a lot of Airbnb hosts rave about. I got 21 percent off in Prime Day deal. So that's a 300 dollar mattress for about two hundred and thirty dollars or so. Plus tax comes to about 255. So there are loads of deals out there. Electronics seem to have some of the best percentages. But go and have a look for yourself. And if you want two hundred dollars to spend on these Prime Day deals right now and you are not an Amazon Prime Visa signature card holder yet, well, you can actually get a two hundred dollar Amazon gift card just by signing up for that card. There is no spend requirement. So as long as you get an instant approval, you will have two hundred dollars in your Amazon account today to use on Prime Day deals. And then obviously, since the stuff that you're going to be buying is discounted because of Prime Day, you'll be getting more than two hundred dollars in value. OK, if it was 50 percent off, you would be getting, I guess, three hundred dollars in value. I don't know whether that's the math or not, but whatever. Something like that. I've talked about this one before, guys, so I won't spend too much time on it. But yeah, it's a great card to use at Amazon. It's five percent back on everything. And actually, sometimes if you use no rush delivery, for example, you can get increased cashback. So great example of this today. I ordered that Zinus Green Tea mattress. I used no rush delivery and I actually got eight percent back on my Prime Visa signature card. So that's going to be like almost 20 bucks or something. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be 20 bucks. One hundred and two hundred fifty five dollars. You do have to be a Prime member to get this card and also to take advantage of Prime Day deals. And the bonus is going to be around until July 9th. All right. Let's now look at a rival sales event that's going on at the same time as Prime Day, where you can earn up to 10 Amex points per dollar spent or 10 percent cashback. And that would, of course, be through Rakuten, which is an online rewards portal where you click through their site to some of your favorite retailers and you can get extra cashback or Amex points, whichever you choose. And actually, they also offer built points now as an option as well. And that is on top of whatever you would earn on whichever credit card you use at that store. They are currently doing their big stack event. Now, you can't click through to Amazon, OK, since that's a competitor, but you can click through their site and earn 10 percent or 10 X points back at Gap, Macy's, Expedia, Nike, Adidas, Bloomingdale's. You also have Dell Technologies on there. Great to combine with the Dell credit on the Amex business platinum. And that's just a few of the stores. All right. They also have quite a few travel booking sites that are offering 10 percent back as well. Rakuten's big stack event runs from June 22nd to June 26th. So they actually started one day before Prime Days. All right. Take that, Jeff Bezos. Every store is at least 10 percent slash 10 X points, and some are quite a bit more. If you are not a Rakuten member yet, I'll put a link to it down in the description. And I think for signing up, you get 50 dollars bonus cash back after you make your first purchase at any one of their stores. All right. Let's get on to talking about a new built transfer partner and a credit card that was just discontinued. But first, I am a busy guy and running three YouTube channels and two Airbnbs means I work long hours. The last thing I feel like doing when I get home is cooking a meal. Yet I do not want to resort to fast food. And that is why I have partnered with CookUnity. CookUnity is a chef to you meal delivery platform that connects you with hundreds of fresh, fully prepped meals from award winning chefs. And for my viewers, you can go to the link in the description now to try CookUnity and get 50 percent off your first order. With CookUnity, you can choose from over 300 meals nationwide each week, including over 25 diets and global cuisines. All meals are handcrafted in small batches in local kitchens. There's over 180 chefs on the platform, including Food Network stars, James Baird Award winners and Michelin starred masters. Meals are delivered fully cooked. So all you have to do is heat them up in two minutes or less and you're ready to eat. I especially like how they give you instructions for either the oven or the microwave, since I prefer the cooking effect of the oven. But sometimes I just want my food in two minutes. This time I used the microwave to heat up six meals for me and my family, and I was blown away by how good they still tasted, especially this grilled grass fed skirt steak with herb frits by BK Prime. So good. I would have spent a lot of time preparing that if I'd made it at home from scratch or a load of money if I went out and bought it in a restaurant. So if you want to experience affordable gourmet dining at home with hundreds of options from top chefs across the country and save a load of time and hassle, you have to check out CookUnity. They are currently offering my viewers 50% off their first order. So scan the QR code on screen now or click the link in the description below and use my code BenHedges50 to try it out. So Built just put out a press release talking about their newest transfer partner, which is called I Prefer, and that is the rewards program of preferred hotels and resorts. They describe themselves as some of the world's best independent and boutique hotels. Their membership program is pretty cool. Even at the silver tier, which is the lowest level, is what you get just for joining. You get enhanced room upgrades and early check-in and late check-out. All their hotels are highly rated. I did not see anything with a rating below 4.5 stars on TripAdvisor when I did a quick search for hotels in New York. Less hotels were available to book with points though, or it could just have been the dates that I was searching, but you know, you might want to pay attention to that. But let's now look at the value of the points. So this hotel, the Michelangelo in New York, was quoting me $591 per night in cash and in points it was $75,000 per night plus $52 in fees. So deduct $52 in fees from $591, that gives you $539. Then divide that by $75,000 and that gives you 0.7 cents in value per point. So these seem kind of like Marriott points in value, but let's now read a bit of the Starting today, built members can transfer built points directly to I Prefer Hotel Rewards at a 1 to 2 ratio, unlocking stays at more than 700 independent hotels, resorts and residences across 85 countries. As our 24th transfer partner, this partnership gives built members access to some of the world's most extraordinary independent properties, from cliffside retreats in Santorini to historic estates in Tuscany. Did you catch that? One crucial point in there. Points transfer at a 1 to 2 ratio. So if the 0.7 cents per point value is common across all of their hotels, that gives you 1.4 cents in value per built point that you transfer over. It beats built's travel portal, which is 1.25 cents per point. So it means this could be worth doing. This is now live in your built account, so you can go in and find it amongst the other hotel transfer partners and link your account. I would wait though until July 1st because when built adds a new partner, they often do some kind of bonus on rent day, the first of each month. And these bonuses can be like 20% all the way up to 100% for platinum members, meaning that would be four I prefer points for every one built point transferred over. So it's definitely worth it to wait and see what happens. And if you haven't used built before, I will paste a link down below. They have a great dining program that you can sign up for where you earn three extra points per dollar on top of what you earn on your credit card at their restaurants. And you can also earn points on rent and mortgage to link is below. Okay, let's talk about our final item today, a certain credit card that has just been closed to new applicants and may be discontinued. So the US Bank shopper cash rewards card earned 6% back on two retailers that you choose each quarter from a long list, including Amazon, Apple, Walmart, and a load of other stores. It also gave you 3% back on one everyday category that you choose like wholesale clubs or gas, it was a card that could be pretty valuable for some people who maxed out the categories at those stores. And don't forget, you could change them each quarter. So if you were buying a computer, you could switch to Apple doing a lot of grocery shopping, switch it to Walmart, etc. Anyway, this card has now been closed to new applicants. So if you search it on Google, it comes up in search. But when you click in, it just goes to the main landing page for all us banks credit cards. And so people are now saying that it may have been discontinued. I think this is likely since although this card undoubtedly worked for some people, it did have a $95 annual fee, which when you're doing cashback is really not ideal. Okay, people on the cashback, you know, credit cards model, they try to have no annual fee cards, okay, or maybe one annual fee card that earns, you know, really high cashback in a certain category that they use a lot. But in general, they should be looking at no annual fee card since you know, you're like taking one step forward and one step back if you have an annual fee. And it did attract a lot of criticism for this reason, like take a look at this Reddit post that cites the annual fee as the main negative point, the poster raises a key point in this post, the cash plus card, that's another US bank card has the same cap and no annual fee. And the extra 1% does not make up for the annual fee. 1% of 6000 yearly cap is only $60. Now the cash plus card that he's talking about is this one. And actually, it seems like the quarterly cap is $2,000, not 1500. Either he got it wrong, or they increased it. And the rewards are set up 5% in a load of reasonably useful categories. It's not individual merchants, but it's broad categories, although they're not like super useful. They're sort of medium useful. All right. And there is no annual fee, I could definitely make this card work. All right. So the fact that the cash plus exists, kind of sabotage the US 1% extra at slightly better stores doesn't really make up for the annual fee. So it doesn't surprise me that this card has closed applications. Of course, if you still have this card, you're probably going to be grandfathered in for now. But do look out for any announcements in your account of them switching you over to another card. Maybe you'll get the cash plus let me know in the comments what you think was it a good card or not. And that is the video for today guys. Don't forget to check out today's sponsor cook unity. My viewers get 50% off their first order. So scan the QR code on screen now, or click the link down in the description and use my code Ben hedges 50 to try it out. Please subscribe if you knew and we'll see you next time.