@abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxy wrote:do the points post after statement closes or does it post some days after required spend is completed? thanks!
My statement credits and points have been posting pretty quickly lately. I made my 5th $60+ purchase on the 15th and the $50 statement credit showed up on the 19th, of course back-dated to April 5th. My statement has not closed yet.
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It is hard to identify which transaction would get counted as online shopping for SYW, while it might be less likely that utility bills would get counted.
Anyway, I received an email from SYW today, mentioning the status of this SUB. So far, the online orders via Safeway and Instacart are included in the online shopping (including the instacart annual membership fee). The online Safeway purchases are coded as "safeway.com" but I do not see any ".com" for the Instacart purchases.
Fico8: EX~EQ~TU~810 (12 month goal~840).
I hope that this product would be kept alive in the market, after closure of Sears stores, and a good lender would acquire it with its current business model.
By stacking several offers, I could increase my groceries CB to 52% (I do groceries via Instacart). So, essentially I do not need Amex BCP.
Here was the latest stacking on groceries: Purchase Instacart GC via Costco/Amazon/Sams Club at ~20% discount, 2% Costco executive membersip (if purchasing via Costco), 25% CB from SYW card for online shopping, 5% discount for groceries pickup when purchasing them via Instacart --> max CB=52%.
There is a cap on the GCs that can get purchased at Costco/Sams Club. So, it might be good to have both memberships.
PS: I guess, there should be no issue with buying branded GCs, since they possibly get treated as products. I guess, there should be several issues, if somebody purchases Vanilla GCs that are equivalent to cash. Some experienced people might jump in to describe better.
@xenon3030 wrote:I hope that this product would be kept alive in the market, after closure of Sears stores, and a good lender would acquire it with its current business model.
By stacking several offers, I could increase my groceries CB to 52% (I do groceries via Instacart).
Nice!!! Thank you so much for pointing me to the Insta deals in the "top five cards" thread.
I think you've already thought of this but: If I'm not mistaken, in a good month you can do even better if you want to do an extra step (if you fund Insta GC purchase with VGC from WM Pay and stack 250k points and 100 statement credit, for example).
I've done this successfully, but didn't spend a full 1k on Insta GCs:
- buy Incomm Sutton Vanilla at WM self-check using WM Pay to trigger both offers* (thanks bockrocker);
- buy Insta GC on Costco.com using the Vanillas**;
- buy something on Insta with the GCs.***
I didn't get to 52 because I don't have executive and I didn't choose my Insta store wisely.
* This part works with this as well, according to some other posters. But the VGCs from there may be harder to use. In my case I got bin 411810. This may work with many other GCs, I've just seen people frustrated not being able to use certain VGCs on Costco.com.
** I was also able to buy Costco GC on Costco.com and then use those to by Insta GC in store. I didn't plan it that way and I don't think it's very efficient, but it may help you bypass the per-customer Instacart limit. However, I think that limit resets frequently (weekly or shorter) anyway.
***In Cali, I have a lot of places that don't mark up. However, in other parts of the country I think there are fewer options. I think Aldi generally allows pickup and marks up 10% so that's still a good deal. I don't use Insta much, but this time I got a pretty good promo deal on Costco (lol!).
I'm hoping that a few more orders like this will train Instacart to give me those big promos that I know some people get. 
Does anyone else have thoughts on how to get those? I also asked this in the "top 5 cards" thread.