Turns out some folks are really good at noticing and gaming the system. NPR reports that some people are using their credit cards to buy U. S. Mint $1 presidential coins from the government $1,000 at a time, which are shipped free, to rack up points on their miles credit cards or just bonus points in general. They then deposit the coins in their bank accounts and immediately pay off the credit card purchase.
Pretty damn ingenious to me. According to NPR’s Planet Money team, the only downside to people doing this is they adding to the problematic issue of surplus $1 coins the government isn’t able to properly get into circulation anyway. As it stands, the U. S. Mint has a surplus of $1 billion in $1 Presidential and Sacajawea coins that people won’t buy. By shipping the coins free to the mileage card gamers only to have them redeposited into a bank a couple weeks later, the federal government is losing money on shipping costs and time recounting/accepting them again.
Read the whole story here: How Frequent Fliers Exploit A Government Program To Get Free Trips : Planet Money : NPR.
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