Bye Bye

Today I received an email from Rakuten stating that starting on February 15th, Rakuten would no longer payout an extra 3% cash back on purchases from GiftCardMall.com, GiftCards.com, and Raise.com.  Instead, Rakuten will be offering just 1% cash back for those sites and purchases.  The email states:

and the bad news detail:

For those with the Rakuten Visa with linked Amex Membership Rewards accounts, it’s been an incredible run.  Each $5,000 Visa gift card (VGC) purchase has earned over 20,000 Membership Rewards (MR).  Some have chosen to cash out those MR’s via Schwab at 1.25 cents per point (cpp), while others have utilized them through transfers to Amex transfer airlines or direct travel portal bookings.  The effective 4x for online gift card purchases didn’t seem to be sustainable.  Now there’s no question about it.