The triple mile promotion is just the beginning of the story.  Read on for ways to maximize points and savings…

This week, the AAdvantage eShopping portal is offering triple miles for a few merchants: 

• LivingSocial 9X (was 3X)
• JC Penney 12X (was 4X)
• Charles Tyrwhitt 12X (was 4X)

And a couple of double mile deals:

• Nordstrom 8X (was 4X)
• Bose 6X (was 3X)

How to maximize points and savings

Here’s a 5 part guide to maximizing points and savings for shopping at these or any merchants:

1. Compare portals to find the best rates
2. Look for discount gift cards
3. Look for the best online coupons
4. See whether purchases made with gift cards earn points (or cash back)
5. Shop!

1. Compare Portals

There is no single best portal finder, but I find it is a good idea to check both cashbackholic.com (for cash back rates) and evreward.com (for miles & points) to find the best options for any particular merchant.  For example, with JC Penney, I checked both portal finders and discovered that the AA portal at 12X was in fact the best option for earning points.  For cash back, the ShopDiscover portal currently offers 10% back.

2. Look for discount gift cards

Go to GiftCardGranny.com to search for gift cards for the merchant where you want to shop.  For example, I looked up JC Penney and found gift cards discounted as much as 20%:

If you’re in a hurry to buy something, then look for e-gift cards which are typically delivered in a few hours or overnight:

Once you find a vendor to buy gift cards from, check cashbackholic again to see if you can get extra cash back for buying from that vendor.  For example, here I searched for the gift card vendor “Raise”:

You can find sign up links for most cash back sites in my “Sign-Up Links” page.  In some cases you’ll get a $5 bonus for using my links.

3. Look for the best online coupons

Normally I would simply do a Google search for something like “JCP coupons”.  In this case, the site EvReward automatically showed some decent coupons:

Typically coupons found on sites like Ev’Reward will work fine with shopping portals.

4. See whether purchases made with gift cards earn points (or cash back)

In some rare cases, merchants won’t give you points (or cash back) for going through a portal if you make your purchase with gift cards.  Visit the Frequent Miler Laboratory to see if data exists one way or another.  For example, I went to the Laboratory and searched for “JCP”:

As you can see, attempts to use gift cards to buy merchandise and to get portal points or cash back were all successful.  The only failures were the attempts to use JCP gift cards to buy other gift cards.

5. Shop!

Given the work done above, here is how I would maximize points and savings when shopping at JC Penney:

1. Go through BeFrugal or TopCashBack to Raise to buy JCP e-gift cards for 18% off.  By doing this, you would get an additional 2% back from BeFrugal or TopCashBack.
2. Go through the AAdvantage eShopping portal to JC Penney and pick out merchandise.
3. Apply coupons (e.g. 10% off).
4. Pay with gift cards.

Through the above techniques you could save approximately 30% off anything at JC Penney and earn 12 miles per dollar! 

Note that by using gift cards you do not get automatic warranties or price protection that are often automatically provided by your credit card company so in some cases you might do better to pay directly.

JC Penney gift cards are readily available through gift card resellers for 25% off (or more).  This is a nice, easy way to get an automatic 25% savings on all JCP purchases.  If you’re willing to order online, though, you can do even better.  Currently, the Chase Freedom card offers an extra 10 points per dollar for JCP purchases when you start your shopping within the Ultimate Rewards Mall (just until then end of July).  Similarly, ShopAtHome currently offers 10% cash back when you start your JCP shopping within their portal.

With some merchants, points or cashback are not awarded when you pay with gift cards.  However, I’ve recently received confirmation that both of the portals I mentioned do work with JCP purchases made with gift cards!  Through the Ultimate Rewards Mall, HikerT made 100% of his purchase using gift cards and he used a free shipping coupon code, and he received all of the expected points.  Through ShopAtHome, a reader named Steve made most of his purchase with gift cards and small percentage with a credit card.  He received the full 10% cash back.

Step by Step

If you’re in the market for JCP stuff, do the following:

1. Estimate the total price of all items you plan to buy (including taxes)
2. Go to GiftCardGranny.com to find a gift card reseller with cards who’s value add up to the amount you plan to spend.  I’ve had good luck buying from both Cardpool and PlasticJungle.  I haven’t tried any of the others.
3. If buying from Cardpool or PlasticJungle, start at TopCashBack and click through to the appropriate reseller.  This will give you 2% to 4% in extra savings!
4. Buy the gift cards you need to cover your purchase.  If you plan to order online, you may find it easier (and faster) to order e-gift cards.  I don’t know whether e-gift cards from JCP can be used in-store.
5. When you are ready to make a purchase, log on to either the Ultimate Rewards Mall or ShopAtHome, then click through to JCP.
6. Within JCP’s website, pick out what you need and then pay with your gift card(s). 

Add it up

With the gift cards, you save 25% off of the total purchase (including taxes!).  With the portals, you get back 10% of the pre-tax total.  As an example, in a state with 6% sales tax, your tax-included savings would come to 34.4% (or more if you value Ultimate Rewards points higher than 1 cent each).  You could save even more if you buy your gift cards after clicking through from TopCashBack.

If you’re in the market for clothes, furniture, housewares, etc. this can be a great way to stack discounts for big savings especially if you find items in which JCP already has a competitive price!

Yesterday I declared that I was pulling the plug on the Home Depot double dip experiment.  In that post I wrote that a few people who tried buying Home Depot gift cards through the Ultimate Rewards Mall failed to get any points.  Worse, when they used the gift cards through the Ultimate Rewards Mall they didn’t get any points that way either.

Interestingly, several people wrote in the comments that they did get points for using gift cards, but they had paid at least part of the total with a credit card.  So, it looks like it may be possible to double dip by buying discounted gift cards (find them at GiftCardGranny.com) and then using them through the Ultimate Rewards Mall, as long as the gift cards don’t cover the whole purchase.  Personally I think I’d rather just shop directly for 10X than chance not getting points at all.

Another mistake I made was when I declared that yesterday was likely the last day for 10 points per dollar at Home Depot.  Somehow I thought that yesterday was the last day of March.  Mrs. Miler has since corrected me, so I’m now under the impression that today is the last day of March.  Please correct me if I’m wrong about that.  Anyway, based on my new perspective of the Gregorian calendar, I now think that today may be the last day for 10X at Home Depot.

For those eagerly awaiting news about the latest Staples free after rebate items, here’s an update:

The good news is that Staples has a new Free After Rebate item for which you are allowed 10 rebates. Trend Micro Titanium Antivirus is on sale for $35 with a $35 easy rebate, so this will mean $350 worth of credit card spend and as much as 3150 free points! The problem right now is that the Staples system is messed up and is only allowing you to order 1 at a time. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.  Rather than order each copy separately, I plan to give their IT staff at least until Tuesday to fix this. The offer is good until Saturday (3/31).  Once this is resolved, I’ll post step by step instructions as usual.

GiftCardGranny update:

A couple of people have reported inaccurate prices were listed by GiftCardGranny.com for reselling your gift cards to PlasticJungle.  The founder of GiftCardGranny has weighed in with the following information:

Plastic Jungle provides us with a data feed of all their sell percentages. It is suppose to be updated every day on their end. This is the first I’ve heard of the rates on our site not reflecting what is on their site. Be assured, we will look into this and make sure our information is accurate.

I use GiftCardGranny.com regularly so it’s great to hear that they’re taking the issue seriously.  In the meantime, be sure to double check PlasticJungle’s rates, which can be found here.

Updated 5/7/2013 with new cash back rates

In a previous post, I showed that it was possible to increase credit card spend (and thus earn points and miles) by buying and selling discounted merchant gift cards. See “Churning merchant gift cards” for more information. If you’re interested in doing this, it’s helpful to have a “cheat sheet” showing where to go for the best deals. When looking to do gift card arbitration (buy low, sell high), start with GiftCardGranny.com to find the best buy and sell prices. Then, use the table below to figure out your total costs:

Buying gift cards:

Selling gift cards:

* Cash back type: some portals offer cash back as a percentage of the gift card’s face value, others offer cash back as a % of the transaction amount.

NOTE: GiftCardGranny sell prices for PlasticJungle are not always up to date.  To get an accurate sell price from PlasticJungle you need to actually enter a gift card number into PlasticJungle’s web site to get an offer.

Buying and selling discount gift cards is a good option if you are looking to increase credit card spending in order to qualify for sign-up bonuses, gain bonus miles or elite status from high spend, or simply to earn credit card rewards (cash back, miles, points, etc.).  In the post “Top 20 best value gift cards” I showed that it is sometimes possible to buy gift cards for the same price or less than you can sell them.  A big advantage of merchant gift cards for buying and selling is that they are usually sold with no shipping or handling costs and with no sales tax.  By wisely buying and selling gift cards it is possible to drive up spending on your credit cards and get most, if not all, of your money back for paying off the bills.

My first stop is always GiftCardGranny.com which maintains up to date buy and sell prices for a number of gift card resellers.  Through careful scouting of this site, it is possible to find cards that you can sell for about the same price as you will buy.

Below are my experiences with buying and selling discount gift cards from several online gift card resellers:

PlasticJungle

PlasticJungle is probably the best known gift card re-seller.  I haven’t yet bought any cards from PlasticJungle, but I did sell one without any problem.  They provided a shipping label which I printed and affixed to a regular letter sized envelope.  I mailed the gift card and received a check in about a week.  If you’re thinking of buying from them, consider going through FatWallet to get an extra 1% cash back from your transaction.  Also note that, while I had no problems, a few readers have complained in the past about issues dealing with PlasticJungle.  There is a reasonable chance that these issues were due to growing pains.  Hopefully they have things running smoothly now.

CardPool.com

Through CardPool.com I ordered a $99.00 Home Depot electronic gift card for $89.89 (9.2% off face value).  After they called me to check my identity, I received the gift card via email.  They told me that the phone call was only needed for my first order.  Overall, the process was simple, fast, and painless.

I also sold a gift card to CardPool.  Like PlasticJungle, CardPool paid for postage and I received a check promptly.  In both cases (buying and selling), I first went through the ShopAtHome cash-back portal.  ShopAtHome offers .8% cash back when you buy gift cards from CardPool.com and 1.6% cash back when you sell gift cards to CardPool.com.  In both cases, cash back appeared as pending within a few days.  The amazing thing was that the cash back percentages turned out to be percentages of the gift card’s face value, not the transaction amount!

GiftCards.com

One of the neat things about GiftCards.com is that if your gift card has a PIN, you can sell them the gift card electronically by entering the gift card # and PIN into their website.  There is no need to mail anything!  The best part is that GiftCards.com doesn’t lower the sale price when you sell to them electronically as some other resellers do.  So, in the same day that I bought a Home Depot e-gift card from CardPool.com, I was able to sell it to GiftCards.com!  By going through the cash back portal, MyDealsAndCoupons, I was able to get 3.2% cash back on the sale of the gift card!  Just like with ShopAtHome, the cash back was a percentage of the gift card’s face value, not the transaction amount.  Much like PlasticJungle and CardPool.com, with GiftCards.com I received a check in about a week.

EBay

Buying and selling gift cards on EBay is very different than with the companies listed above.  When selling on EBay, you need to factor in EBay’s pretty hefty seller fees (EBay + Paypal fees come to about 11.75%) and you do need to pay for shipping or pass along that cost to the purchaser.  I sold one gift card on EBay and it went OK.  I managed to get a bit more for the card than I would have through a gift card reseller, but it was definitely quite a bit more hassle. 

I’ve also bought a few gift cards on EBay.  There are several advantages to buying gift cards on EBay over other gift card resellers: 1) You can pay with an EBay gift card and it is often possible to get points or cash back for purchasing EBay gift cards; 2) You can sometimes get better discounts than from other resellers; 3) You get 2% back in the form of EBay bucks; and 4) You can use EBay bucks to pay for gift cards.  On the other hand, there are serious downsides: 1) You never know if the seller is honest (see Washing Walmart); and 2) It can take a very long time for gift cards to be shipped and delivered. 

So far I’ve been lucky, and my EBay experiences have been fine.  I’ll continue to buy gift cards on EBay because of the significant benefits, but I’ll stay away from selling due to the extra hassle. 

Please share

Do you have gift card buying or selling experience? What has worked well for you and where have things gone wrong?  Please share your experiences in the comments below.

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A reader contacted me yesterday asking about the best way to meet minimum spend on her American Express business card.  She has $1000 left to spend and wants to buy Walmart gift cards.  Of course she could simply go to Walmart to buy them, but she’d like to save money and/or earn points too.  So, what is the best option?  Here’s the best approach I can think of:

Step 1: Look for discounted Walmart cards

Go to GiftCardGranny.com and search for Walmart.  You may want to uncheck the box on the left that shows Ebay Auctions since these are not final prices.  As of the time of this writing, there are many cards available for anywhere from 2% to 5% off their face value.

Step 2: See if any of the discount cards qualify for additional cash back

Before buying the cards found in step 1, check to see if you can earn cash back by going through a cash back shopping portal:

• Through ShopAtHome, the following offers are available:
  • CardPool.com offers .8% cash back
  • GiftCertificates.com offers 3% cash back
  • GiftCards.com offers 3.5% cash back
• Through FatWallet, you can get 1% cash back for purchases made at PlasticJungle
• Through eBay, you always get 2% back in the form of eBay bucks.

Step 3 (optional): Buy bank gift cards in order to buy the Walmart cards

Through the American Express OPEN Savings program, purchases of more than $100 at OfficeMax result in a 5% rebate!  So, you can go to OfficeMax and buy $200 Visa gift cards.  Once you account for the $6.95 fee per card, you end up with a savings of 1.7%.  You can now use these Visa gift cards to buy the discounted Walmart cards you found in steps 1 and 2.

NOTE: Only do this step if the gift cards you intend to buy are each $200 or less!  If they cost more, it probably won’t be possible to use the Visa cards to purchase the Walmart cards.  Another option is to go through Big Crumbs in order to buy an American Express gift card in a larger denomination.  Through Big Crumbs you will get 1.4% back, but you will have to pay Amex a service fee and shipping.  Truthfully, unless you buy a very large denomination card from Amex (in order to minimize the % loss due to shipping and fees), this option is probably not worth the effort.

Add it up

Through the 3 steps above, it may be possible to save as much as 5% in step 1, 3.5% in step 2, and 1.7% in step 3 for a total savings of 10.2%! This would amount to about $100 in savings!

Other options

In this post I detailed how to go about getting Walmart gift cards with as big of a discount as possible.  There are, however, many other ways to meet the minimum spend on your credit cards.  For some examples, please see “Top ten ways to spend a lot of money and get most of it back.”

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A new option for meeting minimum credit card spend! 

On Friday, I reported that one can save money almost anywhere by buying discounted gift cards prior to making purchases.  In that post I mentioned that the folks at GiftCardGranny.com had supplied me data for a future post.  Well, this is that post…

I asked GiftCardGranny.com to use their database to find the gift cards that retain their value the best.  These are the cards with the smallest difference between the best discount purchase price and the best resale price.  For example, if one could buy JC Penney gift cards for 80% of their value and then resell them for 77% of their value, that would be attractive because the buyer only risks losing 3% if they find they’re unable to use the gift cards.

The Data

GiftCardGranny.com aggregates gift card buy and sell prices from ABC Gift Cards, Cardpool, GiftCards.com, PlasticJungle, CouponTrade, GiftCardBin, and eBay.  For my request, GiftCardGranny.com poured over 6 months of data to find the cards with the smallest difference between the average discounted purchase price and the maximum sell price.  eBay data includes both “Buy It Now” and auction prices, but GiftCardGranny.com trims the outliers from the auction prices in order to prevent the auctions from unduly skewing the results.  I further filtered the results to remove merchants with fewer than 20 gift cards represented in the dataset.

The Results

Incredibly, we discovered that the average discounted purchase price in some cases was lower than the best available resale price.  In other words, it is sometimes possible to make money by buying and selling discount gift cards!  For example, at the time of my writing this, there are a few Boston Market gift cards available for 30% off their face value.  At the same time, GiftCards.com is offering 72% of face value to buy Boston Market gift cards from you.  So, you can actually make 2% profit by buying and selling these cards. 

So, without further ado, here is the top 20 best value gift cards:

1. 24 Hour Fitness
2. BoJangles’
3. Dave and Busters
4. Frontier Airlines
5. Fuddruckers
6. Pei Wei
7. Speedway Motors
8. PGA Superstore
9. Piperlime
10. Boston Market
11. Athleta
12. Abercrombie & Fitch
13. TGI Friday’s
14. Albertsons
15. Dell
16. Cabela’s
17. Gulf Oil
18. Exxon
19. Walmart
20. Target

Note that not all of these gift cards are always available at a good price (or at all).  You can use GiftCardGranny.com to find the current best discount purchase price and the current best resale price for these cards.  If the card you want is not available, sign up for email alerts to be notified when it is.

Why Bother?

Obviously, if you shop at any of these merchants, it may be worthwhile to keep an eye out for these discounted gift cards.  Another option is to try to make some money by buying and selling gift cards, but really you’re not going to get rich doing this.  The real value, in my opinion, is for those of you struggling to meet minimum credit card spend in order to qualify for big signup bonuses.  If you spend a couple of hours each week looking for cards that you can buy and sell for little or no loss, you may be able to meet minimum spend requirements without stretching your budget.  Please note, though, that there are risks involved: individual buyers and sellers may try to swindle you; cards can get lost in the mail; clerical errors could mean that you do not get your gift cards or get paid properly; etc.

Extra Cash

In some cases, when buying and selling gift cards, it is possible to get 1% to 3.5% cash back in the process!  Here are some of the best deals I’ve found.  Please let me know if you come across others:

• Through ShopAtHome, the following offers are available:
• CardPool.com offers .8% cash back for buying gift cards, and 1.6% cash back for selling gift cards!
• GiftCertificates.com offers 3% cash back for buying merchant gift cards.
• GiftCards.com offers 3.5% cash back for buying merchant gift cards.
• Through FatWallet, you can get 1% cash back for purchases made at PlasticJungle
• Through eBay, you always get 2% back in the form of eBay bucks.

Note: If you would like to signup for ShopAtHome, please consider using this signup link.  You and I will both receive $5 towards our accounts.  When asked for the email address for the friend who referred you, enter:

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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!

I’ve received a number of reader emails recently that go something like this:

I am about to spend a lot of money at [merchant name goes here], can you tell me the best way to save money / double dip / earn miles?

I’m always happy to do my best to answer these questions as best I can, but let me now give a general answer that should work in most circumstances:  Buy gift cards at a discount, and (if possible) spend the gift cards through the best online shopping portal available.  Here are the details:

Buying Discount Gift Cards

There are many companies that buy and sell discounted gift cards.  I’ve found that the easiest way to find the best deals is through a site called Gift Card Granny which aggregates prices from a number of gift card exchanges.  Using their site, simply search for whichever merchant you are interested in and then sort the results by Discount % in order to find the best deals.  Usually you can save at least 10% off the value of the gift card. If the merchant you are looking for isn’t available, you can sign up for alerts so that you’ll be emailed once they appear.

In some cases, you can even do a little bit better by going through a cash back portal.  For example, if you find that GiftCards.com has a good price for gift cards, go through EBates.com to get an additional 1% back.  Otherwise, please go through Gift Card Granny’s link so that they’ll earn a commission and can continue to provide this valuable service.  Note: I do not have any financial relationship with Gift Card Granny, but they have supplied data to me that will be used in future posts so I am a bit biased here .

Using Gift Cards

Whether you plan to use your gift cards online or in-store, make sure to sign up for any loyalty program the store offers.  For example, Sears / Land’s End / Kmart offers a “Shop Your Way Rewards” program in which you get the equivalent of 1% back on all purchases (savings can be applied to future purchases).

If using gift cards online, make sure to go through the best online portal available for points, miles, or cash back.  I check two sites: evreward.com and nerdwallet.com/discounts/ to find the best deals.  Unfortunately, the data on these sites is sometimes a bit out of date, so it is worth also logging into your favorite portal (Ultimate Rewards Mall, of course) to double check.  Once you have found the best option, make sure your online shopping cart is empty before you go through the portal to the online store.  Then go through the portal to the store, fill up your shopping cart, and checkout using your gift cards.

Notes:

• Not all stores allow points to be earned when using gift cards.  For example, Barnes & Noble will not award points for the portion of a purchase that uses a gift card.
• Some stores do not allow their gift cards to be used online at all.  Staples is the one primary example of this that I know of.
• It is always a good idea to google for coupon/promo codes before checking out in order to save even more.  In some cases, though, you won’t get points / miles / cash back from the shopping portal when you apply a code.  Check the merchant’s terms and conditions before you proceed.

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!