Yesterday I showed a number of different credit cards that are offering bonus points for Home Improvement spend this quarter.  Here are some ideas for maximizing your savings and points earned…

Maximizing points and savings at Lowe’s

In previous experiments I’ve found the following triple dip to work at Lowe’s:

• If you’re planning to move, go to this link to request a 10% off coupon from Lowe’s.
• Go through the Ultimate Rewards Mall to Lowe’s and buy Lowe’s physical gift cards (do not buy e-gift cards).  Earn 5X from the Ultimate Rewards Mall.
• Pay for the above gift cards with a card offering 5X at Home Improvement stores this quarter (Freedom, Discover, etc.).
• Go through the Ultimate Rewards Mall again to buy merchandise.  Apply coupons, if any, for savings.  Pay with gift cards.  Earn 5X from the Ultimate Rewards Mall.

In all, you can save 10% and earn 15 points per dollar on your purchases!  Keep in mind, though, that when you pay with gift cards you do not get automatic extended warranties or other protections from your credit card.  For additional ideas for saving money, see “Extreme savings at Lowes“.

Manufacturing spend at Lowe’s

If you don’t have any plans to buy things at Lowe’s, you can still take advantage of your credit card’s 5X earnings by buying gift cards.  Go to a Lowe’s store and look for their gift card rack.  Buy gift cards for things you would have bought anyway (but where you would have earned only 1X otherwise).  A couple of good examples include Amazon.com gift cards and gas gift cards. 

Here are two options to take it further:

• Buy high value gift cards (think gas cards) and resell through a site like PlasticJungle.  You’ll lose money on the deal, but it might be worth it to you to if you highly value the points earned.
• Buy gift cards to merchants that sell Visa or MasterCard gift cards.  Then, use the merchant gift cards to buy those Visa or MasterCard gift cards.  For example I’ve had success in the past at Bed, Bath & Beyond where I was able to buy a Visa gift card with a Bed, Bath & Beyond gift card.  I’ve had similar experiences at Staples, OfficeMax, and BestBuy.  Caution: at each of these stores the cashier and/or manager might not allow you to buy gift cards with gift cards.  So, this approach is risky!  Once you have the gift cards, hopefully you can create a PIN and cash them out (see “Gift card PINs“).

Maximizing points and savings at Home Depot

Here is a path to earn extra points and savings at Home Depot:

• This week, go through the AAdvantage eShopping portal to Home Depot to earn an extra 6 miles per dollar.
• Pay for merchandise with a card that earns bonus points this quarter.

Or:

• If you’re planning to move, go to this link to request a 10% off coupon from Lowe’s (yes, Lowe’s).
• Print the coupon and bring it to Home Depot.  Ask them to match the discount on anything you buy.
• Pay for merchandise with a card that earns bonus points this quarter.

Or:

• Go to an online portal that offers points or cash back for Staples.com. The best current opportunity I know of is TopCashBack which currently offers 5.5% back. Click through to Staples.
• Buy Home Depot e-gift cards at Staples.com, and pay with a card that earns bonus points at office supply stores (see “Best Category Bonuses“).
• Use the online or in-store options from above to purchase items and pay with your gift cards.

The last option doesn’t take advantage of current Home Improvement bonus offers, but it may be the most lucrative option if you want to shop at Home Depot.

Background Info

For your reference, here are some helpful nuggets of info that I presented yesterday (that I believe to be true):

• Credit card bonus points are stackable with shopping portal bonus points. For example, if you use the Chase Freedom card this quarter and go through the Ultimate Rewards Mall to Lowe’s, you’ll get 5X from the credit card and another 5X from the shopping portal.

Home Depot

• The AAdvantage eShopping portal is offering 6X for Home Depot this week.
• In past experiments, people did not receive points for buying Home Depot gift cards through online shopping portals.
• In past experiments, people did receive points for using Home Depot gift cards through online shopping portals to buy Home Depot merchandise.
• Home Depot does not sell gift cards to other merchants (neither online nor in store).

Lowe’s

• The Ultimate Rewards Mall currently offers 5X for Lowe’s
• In past experiments, people did receive points for buying Lowe’s physical gift cards through online shopping portals. I do not expect this to work for e-gift cards since they are not sold directly by Lowes.com (Lowes.com sends you out to another URL when you select e-gift cards).
• In past experiments, people did receive points for using Lowe’s gift cards through online shopping portals to buy Lowe’s merchandise.
• Lowe’s sells a large selection of merchant gift cards in-store. Dan’s Deals lists the following: AMC Theaters, AT&T GoPhone, Aeropastle, Amazon, Applebees, Barnes & Noble, Bass Pro Shop, Bath & Body Works, Bed Bath & Beyond/Buy Buy Baby, Boost Mobile, Build, A, Bear, Cabela’s, Cheesecake Factory, Chili’s, Claire’s, Coldstone Creamery, Cracker Barrel, Darden Restaurants, Fandango, Finish Line, Foot Locker, Game Stop, Gap Inc (Gap, Banana, Old Navy, Athleta, Piperlime), Golfsmith, Ihop, iTunes, JCPenney, Jiffy Lube, Jo, Ann Fabric, Justice, Kohl’s, Lane Bryant, Lowe’s, MLB.com, Macy’s, Marriott, Marshalls, Michael’s, Nascar Superstore, Nike, Nordstrom, OfficeMax, Olive Garden, Outback Steakhouse, PFChang’s, Panera, Petco, Petsmart, Pizza Hut, Red Lobster, Red Robin, Regal Cinemas, Ruby Tuesday, Sephora, Shell, Southwest, SpaFinder, Sports Authority, Staples, Starbucks, Subway, TGIFriday, TJMaxx, T, Mobile Prepaid, Tracfone, Verizon Prepaid, Virgin Mobile, Xbox
• I’ve seen additional gas gift cards at Lowe’s besides Shell, so the particular gift cards available at any one Lowe’s store may vary.
• Lowe’s does not allow you to buy gift cards with Lowe’s gift cards.  UPDATE: Reader bf says that it is possible to buy merchant gift cards at Lowe’s with Lowe’s gift cards.  He says “It requires going to the customer service desk and getting a supervisor to override the register but it works. Can’t do it at regular registers.”

This quarter, everyone wants us to shop at Home Improvement stores.  Below are the deals I’ve been offered.  Some are targeted to specific individuals, some are not.  If you qualify, don’t forget to register!

Chase Freedom

This quarter, Chase offers 5% cash back on up to $1500 in spend with the Freedom card at restaurants, movie theaters, and Lowe’s.

If you have a premium Ultimate Rewards card in addition to the Freedom card (such as the Sapphire Preferred, Ink Bold, or Ink Plus) you can transfer points to one of those cards and then transfer points to select airline miles or hotel points.  This is a great way to get even more value out of your Freedom card rewards.

Discover

This quarter, Discover offers 5% back at Home Improvement stores for up to $1500 in purchases.

Citi Forward

I received this targeted offer for my Citi Forward card.  Citi is offering me 5X for purchases in the following categories: Clothing, Home Improvement, Home Furnishing, and Department Stores.  I can earn up to 2500 “additional points”.  I interpret this to mean that I get 1X normally, so the additional 4X is counted as the “additional points”.  I think that means I can earn 5X for up to $625 in these categories (625 X 4 = 2500).

Barclays’ US Airways

Barclay’s sent me this targeted offer for one of my two US Airways cards.  They’re offering 5 bonus miles for Restaurant, Gas Station, and Home Improvement store purchases.  Since they are offering 5 bonus miles per dollar, I will still earn the base 1 mile per dollar and get a total of 6 miles per dollar for these purchases.  I can earn up to 2,500 bonus miles, which means I will get 6X on up to $500 in spend in these categories.

Strategy

My Barclays’ US Airways card offers the best miles per dollar offer at 6X, but for only $500 in spend.  This is also the only offer that includes gas station purchases, so I’ll use this card to buy gas and maybe buy gift cards at a gas station.

The Chase Freedom card is possibly the best offer overall because it offers extremely valuable Ultimate Rewards points.  Also, thanks to my Chase checking account, I qualify for a 10% annual bonus on all Freedom card points earned (see “The new king of the Ultimate Rewards Mall“).  So, I’ll earn a total of 5.5 points per dollar within the bonus categories.  This will be my go-to card for restaurants, movie theaters, and Lowe’s this quarter.

I’ll use my Citi Forward card for clothing, home furnishing, and department stores.  And, I’ll continue to use it for bookstores (such as Amazon.com) since it always earns 5X there.  I usually use this card at restaurants and movie theaters for 5X, but I’ll wait until I tap out the Freedom card 5X before I go back to the Forward card for those purchases.

My Discover It card will probably sit in a drawer unless I figure out a great way to manufacture Home Improvement spend.

Maximizing Home Improvement Spend

With so many cards offering bonuses for Home Improvement spend, many people have asked me for tips for maximizing spend in that category.  I’ll present some ideas tomorrow on this topic, but first I’d like to turn the question around.  Do you know of good ideas for maximizing spend at Lowes or other Home Improvement stores?

Here are some potentially helpful nuggets of info (that I believe to be true):

• Credit card bonus points are stackable with shopping portal bonus points.  For example, if you use the Chase Freedom card this quarter and go through the Ultimate Rewards Mall to Lowe’s, you’ll get 5X from the credit card and another 5X from the shopping portal.

Home Depot

• The AAdvantage eShopping portal is offering 6X for Home Depot this week.
• In past experiments, people did not receive points for buying Home Depot gift cards through online shopping portals.
• In past experiments, people did receive points for using Home Depot gift cards through online shopping portals to buy Home Depot merchandise.
• Home Depot does not sell gift cards to other merchants (neither online nor in store).

Lowe’s

• The Ultimate Rewards Mall currently offers 5X for Lowe’s
• In past experiments, people did receive points for buying Lowe’s physical gift cards through online shopping portals.  I do not expect this to work for e-gift cards since they are not sold directly by Lowes.com (Lowes.com sends you out to another URL when you select e-gift cards).
• In past experiments, people did receive points for using Lowe’s gift cards through online shopping portals to buy Lowe’s merchandise.
• Lowe’s sells a large selection of merchant gift cards in-store.  Dan’s Deals lists the following: AMC Theaters, AT&T GoPhone, Aeropastle, Amazon, Applebees, Barnes & Noble, Bass Pro Shop, Bath & Body Works, Bed Bath & Beyond/Buy Buy Baby, Boost Mobile, Build, A, Bear, Cabela’s, Cheesecake Factory, Chili’s, Claire’s, Coldstone Creamery, Cracker Barrel, Darden Restaurants, Fandango, Finish Line, Foot Locker, Game Stop, Gap Inc (Gap, Banana, Old Navy, Athleta, Piperlime), Golfsmith, Ihop, iTunes, JCPenney, Jiffy Lube, Jo, Ann Fabric, Justice, Kohl’s, Lane Bryant, Lowe’s, MLB.com, Macy’s, Marriott, Marshalls, Michael’s, Nascar Superstore, Nike, Nordstrom, OfficeMax, Olive Garden, Outback Steakhouse, PFChang’s, Panera, Petco, Petsmart, Pizza Hut, Red Lobster, Red Robin, Regal Cinemas, Ruby Tuesday, Sephora, Shell, Southwest, SpaFinder, Sports Authority, Staples, Starbucks, Subway, TGIFriday, TJMaxx, T, Mobile Prepaid, Tracfone, Verizon Prepaid, Virgin Mobile, Xbox
• I’ve seen additional gas gift cards at Lowe’s besides Shell, so the particular gift cards available at any one Lowe’s store may vary.
• Lowe’s does not allow you to buy gift cards with Lowe’s gift cards.

Through the Ultimate Rewards Mall, Chase Ink cardholders can earn 10 points per dollar at Buy.com this month (see “Ultimate Rewards Mall September Edition”).  On September 2nd, I launched an experiment: Could I buy gift cards at Buy.com and receive 10 points per dollar?

After logging into the Ultimate Rewards Mall with my Ink Bold account, I clicked through to Buy.com.

There, I searched for gift cards and found a few good ones such as Home Depot, Marriott, and OfficeMax.

Sadly, there were no high value cards such as gas cards, Target, or Walmart but each of the ones listed above are pretty good.  With Home Depot, you can double-dip (go through the mall a second time to buy items at Home Depot using your gift card) as long as part of the purchase is made with a credit card.  Marriott double-dipping should work too, but so far I’ve had little success doing so through the Ultimate Rewards Mall.  You might be better off booking your stay through a portal like FatWallet when planning to pay by gift card.  If you’re lucky enough to have a friendly OfficeMax nearby, there are lots of great opportunities to upgrade your gift card.  See “10% off everything and 7% off everything else.”

Buy.com adds a $2.99 shipping & handling charge for the first card you put in your basket, and 99 cents for each additional card.  So, if you plan to buy multiple cards, I’d recommend buying them all at once so as to minimize shipping and handling charges.

For this experiment, I bought a single $100 Marriott card which arrived in the mail about 5 days later.  It took 8 days for the transaction to show up as pending in the Ultimate Rewards Mall:

Note that the transaction above makes it look like the points posted on September 8, but in reality, they didn’t show up on my account until September 10.

No Super Points

Buy.com has its own loyalty program where you can earn “Super Points” for each qualifying purchase.  My account shows 0 super points earned from the gift card purchase.  I guess this means that gift cards are not qualifying purchases.

Other items of note

• As you can see from my screenshot above, Staples still gives points for software purchases despite the Terms & Conditions that say otherwise.
• In addition to this experiment, I launched a Bloomingdale’s double dip experiment the same day, but have yet to see any points.  I’ll wait another week before giving up on that one.
• I plan one more Buy.com experiment.  I will buy a Buy.com gift card to see if I get points, then I’ll use that gift card to buy a merchant gift card (e.g. Home Depot, Marriott, or OfficeMax) to see if I get points again.

Sears brings 10X to Freedom holders, but drops Ink and Sapphire to 4X.   

Every month, the Ultimate Rewards Mall has new month-long specials. Last month, I wrote about the August specials in the post ““Ultimate Rewards Mall August Edition.” Today, I’ll show you how things look for September.

As always, thanks goes to HikerT for updating his website that shows the Ultimate Rewards Mall payouts for different Chase cards. You can find his website here: lakebagger.com/ur/.

First the bad news

Here are some of the goodies from last month that went away:

• Sears dropped from 10X to 4X for Ink and Sapphire cardholders
• Staples dropped from 5X to 4X
• Office Depot dropped from 5X to 3X
• HSN dropped from 10X to 4X
• Shoebuy dropped from 15X to 10X
• JCPenney dropped from 10X to 6X
• Drugstore.com dropped from 10X to 8X

September Goodies

Now on to the good stuff!

Sears 10X (Freedom 10X. Ink & Sapphire 4X)
A couple of days ago I predicted that Sears would extend 10X through September.  I was hoping that would mean that I would get 10X from either my Sapphire Preferred or Ink Bold card.  However, Sears’ bonus earnings for both of those cards has dropped down to only 4X.  For Freedom cardholders, though, there’s great news: Sears now offers 10X bonus points if you log into the Ultimate Rewards Mall with your Freedom account!  For information about how to leverage this deal, see “Sears 10X: Leveraging the Deal.”  Also, please see “Sears 10X final days?” for additional information.

Sony 10X (Ink Bold 10X, Freedom & Sapphire 2X)
Note that past experiments have shown that it is possible to double-dip here to get a total of 20X, but you need to be very careful.  Buy only physical gift cards (not e-cards).  Then, when using the gift cards, make sure to avoid products excluded via the T&C:

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

See “Sony 30X success” for more information.

Buy.com 10X (Ink 10X, Freedom & Sapphire 4X)
From an old Frequent Miler post, I found the following about buy.com:

A reader has reported success in getting 5 points per dollar by going through the Ultimate Rewards Mall to Buy.com to purchase merchant gift cards (Home Depot was his example).  They do charge a small shipping fee ($2.99 for the first card, $.99 for each subsequent card), but they also give you 1% back in the form of “Super Points” which can be used for future purchases.

For some reason, this info never made it into the Frequent Miler Laboratory (I probably simply forgot about it).  I plan to redo this experiment this month before putting it in.

Bloomingdale’s 10X (Sapphire 10X, Ink & Freedom 6X)
Time for a new double-dip experiment!

OfficeMax 5X (Ink 5X, Freedom & Sapphire 3X)
Note that in a previous Frequent Miler Laboratory experiment, buying OfficeMax gift cards through the mall did not result in points.

Home Depot 5X (Ink & Freedom 5X, Sapphire 3X)
In past experiments, buying gift cards from Home Depot did not result in points, but using gift cards did results in points as long as part of the payment was made with a credit card. See “Is the Home Depot double dip alive?” for details.

A few more:

• Macy’s 5X (Freedom 5X, Sapphire & Ink 3X)
• Ralph Lauren 5X (Sapphire 5X, Ink & Freedom 4X)
• Pottery Barn 5X (Sapphire 5X, Ink & Freedom 3X)
• Lord & Taylor 5X
• Dell Home 5X (Sapphire 5X, Ink & Freedom 2X)
• L.L. Bean 5X (Freedom 5X, Ink & Sapphire 2X)
• Tiger Direct 5X (Ink Bold 5X, Freedom & Sapphire 2X)
• KMart 4X
• Living Social 3X
• New Balance 3X

Predictions

Near the end of most months I write up a post with my predictions for how the mall will change.  I didn’t do so at the end of August other than to predict that Sears 10X might stay around longer (partial success!).  Sorry if you were expecting a more complete set of predictions!  I’ll plan to do the usual prediction posts at the end of each month going forward.

April 1st kicks off with a cruel joke from Chase.  Many of the big bonus point offers in the Ultimate Rewards Mall have dropped precipitously.  Below are some of my findings this morning when logged in with my old Ink Bold and my Sapphire Preferred (note that you may see different results with a Chase Freedom).

First, the good news:

• Office Depot: 10X Ink Bold; only 4X Sapphire Preferred
• Kohl’s: Still at 10X for both cards
• Nordstrom: 10X Sapphire Preferred (only for 3 days)
• Drugstore.com: 10X Sapphire Preferred; only 5X with Ink Bold

The exciting news here is the Office Depot 10X opportunity.  Since the New Ink Bold offers 5X automatically when used in office supply stores, you will get a total of 15X when making Office Depot purchases with your Ink card through the UR mall!  Last I checked, though, there were no merchant or bank gift cards available online (also the T&C says “not eligible on purchases of gift cards”).  If they begin to offer free after rebate products, though, this could be a big win.  It might even be worth filling out rebate cards for 15X!

And now the bad news (very bad):

• Staples: down to 2X (from 4X).  Noooooooo!!!!!  The perfect PPM may still be perfect, but for fewer points.  And for those of you who have been buying gift cards with your Ink card for a total of 9X, the total is now down to 7X.  Nooooooo!!!!
• Barnes & Noble: down to 2X (from 10X).  No longer can you buy ultimate rewards points for less than a penny.  Nooooooo!!!!
• Home Depot: down to 4X (from 10X).
• Magazines.com: down to 25X (from 40X).
• Sears: down to 4X (from 5X on the Ink).
• Lands End: down to 2X (from 5 or 6X)

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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.

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…

I’ve been waiting and watching for changes to the Ultimate Rewards Mall, but somehow missed this.  Thanks to reader Randy for pointing this out!  Home Depot purchases made through the Ultimate Rewards Mall now give 10 points per dollar (up from 5)!  If you have any big home projects or tools or appliances to buy, this could be a great way to earn tons of points.

Double Dip?

If you’re a frequent reader of mine, you’re probably wondering whether a double dip is possible.  That is, can you earn 20 points per dollar by buying gift cards through the UR Mall and then using them through the UR Mall?  I don’t know for sure, but it might be possible.  On MilePoint one person reported that the double dip did work despite the terms and conditions that say “Not eligible on gift cards”.  I’ll give this a try, of course, and I’ll report back.  If anyone reading this has already tried, please let us know how it turned out!

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Buy.Com Gift Cards

A reader has reported success in getting 5 points per dollar by going through the Ultimate Rewards Mall to Buy.com to purchase merchant gift cards (Home Depot was his example).  They do charge a small shipping fee ($2.99 for the first card, $.99 for each subsequent card), but they also give you 1% back in the form of “Super Points” which can be used for future purchases.  Thanks for the tip Pete!

ShopRunner

A lot of people got free ShopRunner accounts last year from the American Express Gift Chain.  I didn’t do the gift chain, though, and today I ran into two online stores where I could have made use of ShopRunner!  I know some people got multiple ShopRunner memberships.  If anyone has an extra one (and if they’re transferable), please let me know.  It will be really helpful for some of the double dip experiments I’ve been working on!

UPDATE: A couple of people have already offered me ShopRunner accounts.  Thanks Everyone!