On May 9th, in the post “Experiment in progress: Sony 30X,” I described how I used a combination of techniques to attempt to earn 30 points per dollar from a Sony.com purchase.  I had hoped to report success by now, but I can’t.  Not a single bonus point has shown up in my account in the Ultimate Rewards Mall.  However, the experiment is not completely dead…

Background

As a reminder, the experiment went like this:

• I started with a Visa gift card that was bought at Staples.com.  Currently, the Ultimate Rewards Mall offers 5X bonus points at Staples, and the Ink Bold offers 5X for office supply purchases.  So, by buying Visa gift cards at Stapes through the Ultimate Rewards Mall and paying with an Ink Bold, one can earn 10 points per dollar.  This part of the experiment is pretty safe: it has been proven before.  I didn’t even really test this part – I just used a Visa I had lying around from a previous experiment.
• I logged into the Ultimate Rewards Mall with my Ink Bold account and clicked through to Sony.  For Ink Bold owners, Sony is currently at 10X AND is listed under “gift cards”.  So I bought myself an e-gift card using my Visa gift card to pay.  If things worked, I would have earned 10X for this part of the experiment.
• Once I received the gift card, I went back through the Ultimate Rewards Mall to Sony, and bought an iPhone dock using the gift card to pay.  The total purchase amount was $1.49 more than the gift card value so I used my Ink Bold to pay the remainder.  Ideally I would have earned another 10X for this final part of the experiment.

Results

Every day I’ve checked “Ultimate Rewards Mall & Travel Earnings” to see if any points have posted.  So far, not a single point has posted.  Is it time to declare the experiment dead?  Yes, and no…

What went wrong?

Buying the gift card: I was worried when I bought the e-gift card because I was routed to a different URL for the purchase.  It’s very likely that the failure to get points from this purchase was due to the fact that the purchase was made at cashstar.com instead of sony.com. 

Using the gift card: The Terms and Conditions for Sony in the Ultimate Rewards Mall do not say anything about gift cards so it should be OK.  However, it’s possible that the written terms & conditions are not complete.  So, it may be the case that I didn’t get points because purchases made with gift cards are not eligible for points.  That doesn’t make sense, though, because I did pay $1.49 with the Ink Bold.  Worst case is that I should have received points for 10X of $1.49, but I didn’t even get that.

Terms & Conditions:  I think this is the real reason I didn’t get points for the purchase.  The Terms & Conditions state:

Not eligible on Sony outlet, refurbished, clearance items, and Sony Ericsson locked phones, or Employee Purchase Programs.

Remember that iPod dock I bought?  It was on clearance.  The T&C clearly state that my purchase was not eligible.  In other words, I messed up big time!

Only mostly dead

The Sony experiment was a failure, but it didn’t prove anything other than my ability to make mistakes.  It’s still possible and even likely that the experiment would work under the following circumstances:

1. Buy physical gift cards which are sold by sony.com.  Don’t buy e-gift cards which are sold by cashstar.com.
2. Using physical gift cards, buy items that meet the T&C.  Don’t buy Sony outlet items.  Don’t buy refurbished items.  Don’t buy clearance items.  Don’t buy Sony Ericsson locked phones (that’s a weird one).  And, don’t use employee purchase programs.

I will redo this experiment, but unfortunately it will be too late to make a big impact.  The 10X promotion is scheduled to end at the end of this month so it’s unlikely I’ll have results in time for anyone to capitalize on them.

If anyone else has been experimenting with a Sony double dip, please let me know how you faired fared!

Related posts

• Experiment in progress: Sony 30X
• Ultimate Rewards Mall Awesomeness!
• Frequent Miler Laboratory
• Ultimate Question
• Ultimate Rewards, Ultimate Confusion: Shopping
• What’s my X?

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When Home Depot first began offering 10X through the Ultimate Rewards Mall, the question on everyone’s mind was how best to double dip?  Could we go through the mall to buy gift cards and then go through again to use them for a total of 20X?  Or, what if we search GiftCardGranny.com for discounted gift cards and then go through the UR mall to use them… Would that work?

Home Depot’s Terms & Conditions within the Ultimate Rewards Mall say “Not eligible on gift cards.”  I hate when vendors do that.  There is no indication of whether that means you won’t get points for buying gift cards, or you won’t get points for using gift cards.  In this case, sadly, it appears that both are true: no points are awarded for buying or using gift cards.

Lab Assistant Jeff tried both buying and using gift cards, but neither has resulted in points.  I’ve also heard from a couple of other readers who have had similar results.  So, unless anyone out there can tell me differently, I’ll declare this potential double dip dead and update the Laboratory page. 

To maximize points at Home Depot, simply log into the Ultimate Rewards Mall, click through to Home Depot, and shop without gift cards.  If you use your Sapphire Preferred card to pay, you’ll get a total of 11.77 points per dollar (10X from the UR mall, 1X from the card, .77X from the annual dividend).

If you want to take advantage of Home Depot’s 10X offer, you might need to hurry.  I can’t find it right now on the site, but I have a vague memory of seeing a statement along the lines of “available through March 31”.  That is, if my memory is correct, today may be the last day!  We’ll see tomorrow…

In working on a post that will hopefully show how to buy British Airways miles cheaply, I ordered a $10 Sears gift card for myself.  Or, more accurately, I ordered it for Frequent Miler.  With such a small purchase, I was surprised when Sears’ Account Services department called to verify the order.  It turned out that I had accidentally put the wrong zip code in with my billing address, so it was no problem getting that cleared up.  The interesting part was the following:

Sears Agent: Are you buying this for the miles?

Me: Um, uh, well I did go through the Membership Rewards mall to buy this…

Sears Agent: Its no problem, I was just wondering.  A lot of people buy these for the miles.

Me: OK.  Just out of curiosity, why did you ask?

Sears Agent: I saw this was a gift to Frequent Miler which sounds like “frequent flyer”.  It’s no problem at all.  We’re very happy to have you as a customer.  Thank you for shopping at Sears.

Well, that’s cool!  If Sears knows we’re doing this for the miles and thanks us for it, then it seems likely the Sears gravy train will continue.  I wish I had thought to ask “When is 10X coming back to the Ultimate Rewards Mall?”

UPDATE: THE 10X DEAL EXPIRED 3/19/2012 AT MIDNIGHT

For quite a while, it used to be possible to earn 10 miles per dollar at Sears when shopping through the Aadvantage eShopping portal.  Similarly, the Ultimate Rewards Mall offered 10 points per dollar at Sears at various points in time.  Today Aadvantage is down to 6X and Ultimate Rewards is down to 4 or 5X (depending on which card you log in with).  However, thanks to this tip from DealSeeker, you can once again earn 10 miles per dollar!  The downside?  We’re talking Delta SkyMiles here:

Delta SkyMiles are definitely not worth as much as American Airlines miles or Ultimate Rewards points, but if you’re a regular Delta flyer, this can be a great deal.  Does anyone want to try to double-dip here?  Go through the mall to Sears to buy e-gift cards and then go through again to buy stuff with the gift cards for a possible total of 20 miles per dollar.  The process works with the Ultimate Rewards Mall, but not so well with the Aadvantage eShopping portal. 

Anyone?  Anyone?

My failed Drugstore.com experiment revealed a nice deal.. 

The Experiment

Last month, drugstore.com offered 10 points per dollar for purchases made through the Ultimate Rewards Mall.  I was tempted to try to double dip by buying drugstore.com gift cards and then using them in order to get to 20X.  I didn’t try it, though, because of the terms and conditions:

However, I noticed that Beauty.com and Drugstore.com are the same company and that Beauty.com gift cards are available for extra points in the Ultimate Rewards Mall:

My hope was that I could get 15X by buying Beauty.com gift cards for 5X and then spending them through Drugstore.com for an additional 10X.  So, I bought a $50 Beauty.com gift card by going through the Ultimate Rewards Mall, and then I spent it by going through the Ultimate Rewards Mall (and a few other portals). 

Well, I did get 5X points for the gift card purchase, and I now get lots of Beauty.com emails that I really don’t need, but none of the drugstore.com purchases using the gift card resulted in any points or cash back.  I tried the Ultimate Rewards Mall, Big Crumbs, Aadvantage eShopping, and BeFrugal.  None of these purchases resulted in additional points or cash back.  I now think that the Drugstore.com T&C statement “Not eligible on gift cards” means “not eligible on purchases made with gift cards.”  I’m guessing that buying gift cards at Drugstore.com probably will result in points from the Ultimate Rewards mall.  Currently, though, Drugstore.com is down to 5X in the Ultimate Rewards Mall so there is no advantage to buying gift cards through Drugstore.com as opposed to Beauty.com, but it might be a good experiment to run in case Drugstore.com goes back to 10X.

The Triple Dip

Drugstore.com and Beauty.com offer an automatic double dip:  when you make purchases, you are automatically given 5% back in the form of “Drugstore.com dollars” that can be used in the future.  The surprising discovery was that I was given Drugstore.com dollars for both the purchase and the use of the Beauty.com gift card!  In other words, by first buying a gift card and then using the gift card, I got 10% back to be used for future purchases!

Obviously this won’t help you much if you just want to make a single purchase, but if you regularly buy from Drugstore.com (or Beauty.com) you can maximize your savings by doing the following:

Step 1: Go through the Ultimate Rewards Mall to Beauty.com to buy gift cards.  Currently you will get 5 points per dollar.

Step 2: Use the gift cards to buy what you need.  For most items you can get free shipping by putting at least $25 of items in your cart or by using your ShopRunner membership if you have one.

Step 3: Make sure to use your drugstore.com dollars when they become available and before they expire.

If you follow the above steps, you will get a 10% rebate on your Drugstore.com purchases, free shipping, and 5X Ultimate Rewards! 

Note: some products are mysteriously not available for free shipping.

Happy shopping!

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I’ve written before about ways to leverage the OPEN Savings program that comes with American Express business credit cards.  For example, see Maximize points per dollar at Amazon.com and Triple dip shopping at Barnes & Noble.  Did you know, though, that MasterCard has a similar program?  If you have a MasterCard credit card for business (such as the Ink Bold), then you qualify for this program.

Easy Savings

Details about the MasterCard Easy Savings program can be found here.  Just like the American Express OPEN program, with Easy Savings you get cash back automatically when using your credit card at certain merchants.

For frequent travelers, it is notable that you get 1% back at many gas stations (through the Fuelman network), 5% back for car rentals at Budget and Avis, 5% back for Frontier Airlines purchases, 5% back at Wyndham hotels, and 4% back from any hotel in the Easy Savings hotel network.  For the latter, I checked my local area and found that the hotel list is quite broad and includes both Hilton and Marriott hotels among many others.

The Easy Savings website has a button for registering for the program.  I somehow received cash back from a post office purchase without registering my Ink Bold, but I’d recommend registering just in case.

Double, triple, quadruple dipping

One of the things that I love about this program and the Amex OPEN Savings program is that the savings stack automatically with any other discounts or rebates you can find.  For example, FatWallet offers 1.5% Mr Rebates offers 2%  cash back for booking Wingate Hotels by Wyndham through their site.  And, the Ink Bold offers 2 points per dollar for hotel expenses.  So, you can easily triple dip by using your Ink Bold through the FatWallet Mr Rebates website!  You will get 5% cash back from Easy Savings, 2% cash back from Mr Rebates, and 2 points per dollar from your Ink Bold!  Quadruple dip opportunities come when you have a special promo code, corporate code, or other discount that you can apply as well.

Win a Nook!

Reminder: Until Feb 14th, you can win a Barnes & Noble Nook Color simply by adding a comment to our ever growing story. Visit this page to participate!

Through the Ultimate Rewards Mall, Magazines.com currently offers 40 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent.  Ever since lovetofly reported on Milepoint that he partially succeeded in double dipping Magazines.com, I’ve been trying to find a way to turn that 40X bonus into 80X by buying and redeeming gift cards through the online mall.  Initially, both lovetofly and I partially succeeded: we received full points for our gift card purchases, but only half points for our magazine purchases (using the gift cards).

Double Dip RIP

I tried purchasing magazines with one year subscriptions (rather than the two year subscriptions originally purchased), then I tried purchasing magazines through a second portal, then I tried sending my wife a magazines.com gift card so that she could redeem it through the Ultimate Rewards Mall.  Unfortunately, all of these experiments failed.  I have consistently received 40X points for purchasing e-gift cards, but not since the first experiment have I (or my wife) received points for using gift cards.  So, I’m officially closing down the magazines.com double dip experiments.  Unless someone comes up with a new secret twist, I’m going to assume that the original double dip was a fluke or a bug that has since been fixed.

Still a Good Deal

Despite not being able to double dip, it’s worth noting that 40 points per dollar is an incredible bonus by itself.  Magazines.com will match competitor prices (hat tip to WillRunForMiles), so if you’re in the market for magazines, you don’t have to live with paying extra for those extra points.  If you’re interested in books, they carry those too.  Note that the terms and conditions prohibit getting points for books, but you can circumvent that very easily by buying yourself a gift card first, and then use that to buy books!

Buying Points

40 points per dollar is an interesting bonus amount because buying magazines.com gift cards is equivalent buying Ultimate Rewards points for 2.5 cents each.  2.5 cents happens to be the same price that Chase will charge to sell you points directly!  If you buy directly from Chase, you have the advantage of getting points instantly, but you are limited to 5000 per month.  If you buy indirectly through magazines.com you will have to wait up to a month to get the points, but there is no limit to how many you can buy.

Improving the Deal

If you have the Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card, you will get an annual 7% bonus on top of any points received from the Ultimate Rewards Mall.  So, the 40 points per dollar becomes 42.8 points per dollar.  This translates into buying points for 2.3 cents each, which is less than Chase charges!  Next, if you use your gift cards to donate magazines and books to schools, libraries, or hospitals, you might be able to itemize these charitable gifts on your taxes and save as much as 30%.  If so, that would lower the purchase price all the way to 1.6 cents per point.  (Note: I am not an accountant so please do not take anything I say as tax advice!)

Analysis

If you’re in the market for magazines or books, I doubt you could do much better than this.  Go through the Ultimate Rewards Mall, and buy yourself a magazines.com e-gift card.  Then, go through the mall again to buy what you want (you never know, they might mess up and give you double credit!).  You will get at least 40 points per dollar, which is a terrific bonus.  At the fair trading price of 1.31 cents, a 40 point bonus is equivalent to a 52.4% rebate!

If you’re interested in buying Ultimate Rewards points regardless of whether you get books or magazines, this might be a good option for you.  No matter what, I wouldn’t recommend buying points unless your are sure you can redeem them at a higher value than what you paid.  If you need the points immediately, then your only choice is to buy directly from Chase.  If you don’t think you’ll need them for a while, I’d recommend waiting for better opportunities.  If you need the points soon, and can afford to wait as much as a month to get the points credited, then by all means jump on this opportunity! 

Win a Nook!

Reminder: Until Feb 14th, you can win a Barnes & Noble Nook Color simply by adding a comment to our ever growing story. Visit this page to participate!

As you probably know, the new Chase Ink Bold business credit card is a great option for credit card churning.  It offers 50,000 valuable Ultimate Rewards points after spending $5000 in three months with no annual fee the first year (For more info, please see Preparing for Miles).  Beyond simply credit card churning, though, the Ink Bold is a great option for gift card churning:

Gift Card Churning

The Ink Bold will give you 5 points for every dollar spent on office supply stores, cable and wireless service, and landline communications.  The office supply store category is especially interesting because you can use your Ink Bold at office supply stores in order to buy gift cards for other types of stores and restaurants.  In that way, you can effectively get 5 points per dollar for virtually all of your purchases!

Double Dip

If you have the Ink Bold then you also have access to the Ultimate Rewards Mall.  Here you can get extra points for clicking through the mall to online retailers.  You can easily double dip with the Ink Bold by clicking through to office supply stores such as Office Depot, OfficeMax, and Staples.  In this way, you will earn 5 points per dollar from the Ink Bold for office supply purchases, and another 3 to 5 points per dollar from the Ultimate Rewards Mall.  Until the end of January, Staples is offering 5 points per dollar through the Ultimate Rewards Mall, so you can get a total of 10 points per dollar for all Staples purchases!

Staples.com

Staples.com is one of the few online merchants I know about that sells gift cards from other merchants.  Many stores have gift card racks in their brick and mortar stores, but not online.  The interesting thing is that not only does Staples sell these cards online, but several readers have reported that they have received Ultimate Rewards Mall points from buying gift cards at Staples.com.  This means that, by buying gift cards at Staples through the Ultimate Rewards Mall using your Chase Ink Bold credit card, you will earn 10 points per dollar for all purchases using those gift cards!  For your convenience, here is the list of cards currently available online:

Ironically, one gift card to be wary of is the Staples gift card itself.  It can only be used in-store and not online.  So, if you buy these, make sure you plan to make purchases in person!

NOTE: I haven’t yet confirmed this double dip on my own, but since Staples is likely to reduce their Ultimate Rewards bonus starting February 1st, I thought it was important to get this information out right away.  I have heard from more than one reader that it works.

Triple Dip

In a future post I’ll show how to take this trick a step further to triple dip for as much as 20 points per dollar!

Win a Nook!

Reminder: Until Feb 14th, you can win a Barnes & Noble Nook Color simply by adding a comment to our ever growing story. Visit this page to participate!

As I reported in earlier posts, on December 9th I bought several items from Sears and received over 20 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar.  I then sold those items on EBay for a small loss.  In the end I was out a total of $391.43, but I gained over 49,600 Ultimate Rewards points.  My cost per point came to .79 cents each.  I consider anything less than the Fair Trading Price of 1.31 cents to be a win, and anything less than 1 cent per point to be a big win.  For details about these exploits see the following posts:

• Mileage Run Shopping: Buying 162,000 Miles for $500
• Mileage Run Shopping Results

That wasn’t the whole story though.  Along the way I made mistakes, I made a friend, and I ended up with an extra Barnes & Noble Nook.  Read on.

The Auctions

I listed my items on EBay with free USPS Priority Mail shipping (e.g. I would pay for shipping) and I timed the auctions to end early enough before Christmas to ensure that anyone ordering a Christmas present would receive it in time.  In general, this strategy worked well, with one hiccup.  All of the items sold for a decent price.  With one item, the buyer immediately contacted me to say they didn’t really want the item.  I could have forced the issue, but instead I relisted it and it sold again, but without a problem the second time.

The Mix-up

The real fun occurred the Wednesday before Christmas.  I received a message from one of the buyers who said that she had ordered a Nook Color, but had received a Canon T3i DSLR camera instead!  She was very unhappy because the Nook was intended to be a Christmas present for her mom! 

Oh man.  I had accidentally swapped the Nook and the camera!  A look at the shipment tracking of the other package showed that it had not yet been delivered, but it was close.  I contacted the camera buyer to see if they too needed it by Christmas, but never heard back.

The Solutions

For the Nook buyer, I found a Sears within a few miles from her house.  Using extra Sears gift cards I had, I ordered a second Nook (through the Ultimate Rewards Mall, of course) and scheduled it for her to pickup at her local Sears.  She was so happy with this solution that she offered to overnight the camera to my other buyer!  I offered to pay her for this, of course, but she refused payment.  I couldn’t believe how generous she was!

So, now most of the problems were solved except that a Nook Color was still headed toward the camera buyer.  I had never heard back from him so I didn’t know if he would be willing to mail it back to me.  Instead, I found a USPS package recall form.  I filled it out and brought it to my local post office.  They were supposed to fax it to the delivery post office and call them as well.  I was told that a package recall had a pretty slim chance of success so I didn’t expect much, but when I checked the tracking info the next day, it showed that the package was set to “return to sender”!  Awesome!  All problems were solved!

It turned out that I had some money left on a Barnes and Noble e-gift card.  So, to thank the Nook Color buyer, I sent her the card.  I hope she or her mom got good value from it!  And, if you’re out there reading this, please once again accept my huge thanks for your help!

The Original Nook

Apparently items marked “return to sender” are not considered rush items by the post office.  It took nearly a month for me to get the package back!  I do have it, though, and that’s what counts.  Thanks USPS!

So, what should I do with the Nook?  I could sell it and make a decent profit as before.  With only one item to sell it is much less likely that I’ll mix it up and send it the wrong way.  But, no.  I have a better idea.  I’m going to give away the Nook!  I have an idea for a contest that I think will be a lot of fun.  So, if you have your eyes on a Nook Color, check back soon!

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• My double dip experiment with the Aadvantage eShopping mall worked!  I received 10 points per dollar for making a Sears.com purchase using gift cards.  I had bought those gift cards for 10 points per dollar through the Ultimate Rewards Mall on December 9th, so I earned a combined 20 points per dollar.  Even with the UR Mall at only 4 or 5 points, I think this is the best current Sears double-dip option (e.g. buy gift cards through the UR Mall, use gift cards through the Aadvantage mall).
• The Magazines.com double dip through the UR mall seems to be a bust.  Whereas I reported earlier receiving half credit for purchases of 2 year magazine subscriptions, I haven’t received any credit (yet) for a few purchases of 1 year subscriptions.  I’m beginning to think that someone at magazines.com spotted the error and closed the loophole.  Next experiment: buy gift cards through the Ultimate Rewards Mall, but redeem them through a different portal.
• This is just a reminder that MileagePlus shopping is running a promotion until the end of the month where you can get 500 bonus miles for a purchase of $75 or more.  If you make one purchase of about $100, this is like an extra 5 miles per dollar on top of the bonus points you would get anyway through this shopping portal.

Since I began blogging over 4 months ago, I’ve frequently written about variations of “double dip” opportunities in which you can earn points or miles for buying merchant gift cards, and then earn more points or miles for using the gift cards.  This post will give you an overview of the current opportunities to double dip with Sears.  Sears is a particularly good option for this trick since they sell such a huge range of products. 

Aadvantage eShopping

The Aadvantage eShopping mall is currently offering 10 points per dollar for Sears’ purchases.  Theoretically you could go through this online mall to Sears to buy yourself gift cards (there is no tax or fee for the cards) and then go back through the mall to use those gift cards.  By doing this, you would get 1 mile per dollar when using a miles earning credit card, and 20 miles per dollar from the Aadvantage eShopping mall.  Aadvantage miles have a fair trading price of 1.56 cents each, so this would amount to a 32.76% rebate in the form of AA miles!

Unfortunately, the Aadvantage eShopping mall is notoriously bad about crediting purchases like these to your account.  When I’ve written about similar deals in the past, I found that the only way readers were able to get miles was by emailing, calling, complaining, and stamping their feet.  Even then, some haven’t yet received miles.  So, go this route only if you’re willing to take on the fight!

Ultimate Rewards Mall

Several times in 2011, the Ultimate Rewards mall offered 10 points per dollar for Sears purchases.  Unlike the Aadvantage eShopping mall, the Ultimate Rewards mall has been very good about crediting most purchases within a week or two.  If you hold the Chase Sapphire, Chase Freedom, or Chase Ink Bold card you should have access to this mall.  With the Chase Sapphire, points accrued through the mall are particularly valuable because the Sapphire will award you with a 7% annual bonus.  So, by doing the double-dip at 10 points per dollar, you will get 1 point per dollar from your credit card, 20 points from the double dip, and 1.47 points from the annual bonus for a total of 22.47 points.  At the fair trading price of 1.31 cents, this amounts to a 29.4% rebate in the form of points!

Unfortunately, the Ultimate Rewards mall is currently offering only 4 points per dollar if you log into your Sapphire or Ink Bold account, and 5 points per dollar if you log into your Freedom card account.  Personally, I plan to wait until they (hopefully) bump the offer back up to 10X before I go this route again.

EBates

Ebates.com currently offers 6% cash back for Sears’ purchases.  Theoretically, you could double dip and earn 12% cash back.  I haven’t tried this and, frankly, I haven’t had great luck with EBates cash back offers so I don’t especially recommend this route.

Mix and Match

While I know that the Aadvantage eShopping mall is stingy with crediting miles for gift card purchases through Sears, it is quite possible/likely that they will award miles for purchases using gift cards.  So, you can go through the Ultimate Rewards mall or EBates to buy gift cards and then go through the Aadvantage eShopping mall to use the gift cards.  In this way you will earn 5 or 6 Ultimate Rewards points (or 6% cash back) and 10 AA miles.  Based on fair trading prices, this amounts to approximately a 23% rebate. 

My Experiment:  I recently made a Sears purchase in the Aadvantage eShopping mall using gift cards I had bought earlier.  Hopefully I’ll receive 10 points per dollar for this new purchase!  I will report back later with results.

Extra Points

If you try any of the schemes listed above, make sure you are a member of Sears’ Shop Your Way Rewards program.  With this program you will earn 1% back from your purchases (not counting purchases of gift cards) that can be applied to future purchases.  If you make over $2500 of purchases you will become a Silver member and will be able to earn 5% back on certain days of the year.  Bigger spenders can achieve Gold or Platinum status and earn even more.

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