I’ve met only one out of two goals, but have managed to rake in over 1 million points and miles anyway…  

In January, I wrote about “my strategy to buy Platinum and a million miles.”  The  basic idea is to put a huge amount of spend on my Delta Reserve and Delta Platinum credit cards in order to earn 50,000 MQMs (medallion qualifying miles).  Combined with roll-over miles and actual flying, that will be enough to get me to the 75,000 MQMs required for me to maintain high level Delta Platinum status.  For details of why I want to do this and how this can be pulled off, see my recent post “Mileage running, from home.”

The plan I wrote about in January was to pump up spending by taking advantage of shopping portal mega-offers: buy merchandise in order to get lots of points, then sell the merchandise for as close to the original buy price as possible.  By doing this well, it’s possible to maximize points earned and pump up credit card spend, while minimizing my out of pocket costs.  At the time, I didn’t know what shopping portal bonuses might be offered nor did I know if there would really be enough to make this plan viable.

Results so far: shopping portals

So far this year, I’ve only taken advantage of two shopping portal mega-offers: Nordstrom 36X through the British Airways shopping portal, and Sears 15X through the Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Shopping portal.  See “Weekend Update” and “Sears 15X: Frequent Miler’s almost final results for details.  My Southwest points still haven’t moved from pending to available, but I’ll assume that they will soon.  In total, these two shopping sprees led to a combined 269,000 points.  In order to reach 1 million points over a year, I would need almost twice than number of points in 6 months so I’m pretty far off from that target.

Results so far: credit card spend

Across both Delta credit cards, I need to spend $110,000 this calendar year in order to get all 50K MQMs.  So far I’ve spent $56,000, so I’m right on target!  Except for the shopping portal mega-offers described above, most of this was achieved through 1X spending: Kiva loans, gift card churning (buying gift cards at a discount and selling for little or no loss), and personal spend.

Beyond 1 Million

Even though I haven’t earned a half million points so far via shopping portals, I have already earned slightly over 1 million points and miles this year.  Thanks to Club Carlson’s generous promotions, a few credit card sign-ups, Ink Bold 5X spend, and other tricks, the points and miles keep rolling in.

Reader goals and results

Do you have mile earning goals?  Elite status goals?  What are they, and how well are you doing so far?  Do you have any great success stories to share?

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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Last month Nordstrom ran a promotion in the British Airways shopping portal in which they gave 36 miles per dollar to people who signed up for the promotion and made their first ever BA shopping portal purchase, and made that purchase through Nordstrom.

As I reported earlier, I bought approximately $4000 worth of merchandise with the intent to sell it for as little loss as possible.  The difference between how much I spent and how much I got back from reselling was my cost.  In order for this to be a good deal, I wanted the cost per mile to be less than 1 cent.  Specifically, I targeted .5 cents per mile as a really good deal. 

Selling Approach

I had bought 10 watches and 7 noise cancelling headphones.  Rather than deal with trying to sell and ship all 17 items individually, I decided to use a service called “Fulfillment by Amazon”.  I signed up for a seller account and shipped all of my stuff to Amazon.  They take their usual seller fees and also charge for storage of the items.  In exchange, they handle all of the details of making each sale, and shipping the items. 

So, how did I do?

With my original pricing, I was on track to meet my target of acquiring BA miles for .5 cents each.  Truthfully, though, I became a bit impatient and put the items on sale to sell them quickly.  They all sold in one weekend and I ended up with a somewhat final tally of acquiring BA miles for .67 cents each.  It was still a very good deal and I was happy with that.  But then Amazon made a big mistake…

Amazon’s Error

Of the 10 watches I sent to Amazon, Amazon somehow sold 24 of them!  I opened a ticket with Amazon’s seller support telling them they had sold 17 of the 10 items (this was before they sold 7 more), but was told the following:

Greetings,
Having researched your account I could see that you have sent 10 units but total order shipped for this […] is 17 and I could see that all the items are shipped and the payment is already posted to your account. As all the orders has been fulfilled and there is no fulfillable quantity in your account we would not able further investigate on this issue.
You would receiving the payment for all the 17 orders.
Thank you for selling with Amazon,

No, Amazon, Thank You!

What’s Next?

I fully expect that Amazon will eventually figure out the error and come back to collect their money.  And, of course, I’ll readily return it.  It does reduce my confidence in them considerably though.  If they can accidentally pay me too much, they can just as easily accidentally pay me too little in the future.

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Aadvantage eShopping Mall

For quite a while Sears has offered 10 miles per dollar for purchases made through Aadvantage eShopping, but I found today that Sears is now down to 6 miles per dollar.  Rats!  Also, Sears is still pegged at 4 points per dollar in the UR Mall.

Nordstrom

When Nordstrom offered 36 British Airways miles per dollar, I threw down over $4K.  Since then I’ve been trying to sell the items for as little loss as possible.  My stated goal was to average a loss of .5 cents per mile.  Sales are not complete, but so far I’m tracking pretty closely to this.  Also, my British Airways miles finally moved to actual usable miles!  For those of you who participated, how is it going for you?

Amex Platinum 100K Offer

Yesterday I asked for help deciding how to handle my next credit card churn.  The general consensus seemed to be to go ahead and signup for the 100K Amex offer now, and worry about other offers later.  So, I went ahead and did just that. I was approved on the spot!  Now I’m trying to figure out why I was targeted so that others can get in on this too…

In January I reported my strategy to buy Delta Platinum status and a million miles.  The idea is to use gift card churning and other tricks to spend a total of $110,000 on two credit cards (Delta Reserve and Platinum) in the calendar year.  Most of these tricks result in getting most of my money back so I won’t go poor doing this.  By spending $60K on the Reserve card and $50K on the Platinum card I will earn 50,000 Delta Medallion Qualifying Miles towards Platinum elite status.  The remaining 25,000 miles needed for Platinum status will be earned through flying.

In that same post, I suggested the possibility of earning an average of 20 points per dollar on spending I put on the Platinum card.  If I manage that, I would earn a total of 1 Million miles on top of miles earned directly from credit card spend and from flying.  Note that I’m primarily focused on earning elite status.  The million mile target is more of a nice-to-have bonus if I get there.

To meet these goals, I would need to spend, on average, $2115 per week using my Delta cards, and I would need to earn almost 20,000 points or miles per week in shopping portals.

So, with 7 weeks into 2012 accounted for, how am I doing so far? I’ve spent an average of $2195 per week so I’m slightly ahead on spending, and I’ve earned just over 24,000 points and miles per week from shopping portals.  I’m ahead there too!  Of course, the Nordstrom 36X deal accounts for most of my success on the latter point, but still it’s nice to see!  Hopefully we’ll continue to see mega-deals every couple of months so as to keep up the pace!

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Hotel Award Nights Oops

This morning’s post about when to use points for hotel award nights has some kinks I’m trying to work out.  Ric of Loyalty Traveler pointed out that I had initially set the bar too high for Hilton HHonors.  I agreed with him and went ahead and adjusted the Hilton formula.  Since then I’ve also looked deeper into Club Carlson and found that it’s quite rare to get the Fair Trading Price of .7 cents when redeeming points.  I looked at 12 hotel rooms in Chicago, London, and Paris and calculated the value per point one would get for hotel awards on a random day.  I found that for properties costing more than $200 per night, Club Carlson points were worth, on average, .78 cents each.  For less expensive rooms, the points were worth, on average, only .33 cents each.  Therefore, I split the difference and set a target of .6 cents for Club Carlson redemptions.  I plan to look deeper into each program to evaluate the formulas and I’ll adjust them as necessary.  Of course, I’ll let you know anytime the formula changes.

Nordstrom

The 36 miles per dollar promotion has ended early.  Most likely someone at Nordstrom figured out that they were giving away the farm and put and end to it.  My points are still showing as pending.  Hopefully they won’t try to renege on the deal! 

My first shipment of Nordstrom junk arrived today.  Now to start selling…

Win a Nook Contest

The Write a Book, Win a Nook contest is almost over!  Tomorrow (Feb 14th) at noon I’ll randomly pick a winner from the comments people have posted.  Good luck everyone!

Nordstrom

I went ahead and plunked down over $4200 at Nordstrom thanks to the British Airways 36 points per dollar deal.  Just two days later, over 150,000 points already show up as pending!  Woo hoo!  Now, hopefully I can sell some of this junk…

Cheap Nook!

While the contest to Win a Nook continues, you might be interested in buying one for yourself at a huge discount.  Frequent reader (and contributor and Nook story writer) SteelSnow tipped me off to this thread on SlickDeals.  The basic idea goes like this:

• Buy a coupon worth $30 off at Staples for about $2
• Use the coupon at Staples.com to buy a Nook
• Staples.com is currently offering an instant rebate (in the form of a $20 gift card) for Nook purchases
• Contact Staples to ask for a price match on the Nook you just bought since it is even cheaper at a store called Quill.com.

The total discount varies depending on which Nook you buy, but it is quite good.  Of course, you can do even better:

• Go through the Ultimate Rewards Mall to get 4 points per dollar for your purchase.
• Use your Ink Bold for the purchase to get 5 points per dollar!

Make sure to read the Slick Deals post for more information if you’re interested.

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!

Yesterday I described how it may be possible to buy and sell items from Nordstrom in order to effectively buy British Airways Avios miles for as low as half a cent each.  Please see this post for details.  I also promised to write a post describing how I went about finding the best items for resale.  This is that post.

WARNING: I am not an expert at this.  I’m barely even a novice at this!  I have one and only one experience in buying and selling multiple items for the purpose of earning miles (see Mileage run shopping results).  So, while I will describe my process, you should not think of this as expert advice!  It is just one guy’s approach.  Hopefully some readers who are better at this than me will chime in with better advice in the comments below.

The Goal

The goal, for me, is to find items that will resell easily for as little loss as possible.  I think of the total loss as the total price paid for miles.  For example, if I buy $1000 worth of merchandise at Nordstrom for 36 miles per dollar, I will receive 36,000 miles.  If, after selling this merchandise, I have a total loss of $180, then $180 is the price I paid for those 36,000 miles.  In order to calculate cost per mile, I divide the total loss by the total miles earned:  $180 / 36,000 = $.005 = .5 cents per mile.

Expenses

When planning to resell items, it is important to factor in all of the expenses you will incur:

• Sales taxwhen buying items (unless you are lucky enough to live in a no tax state!)
• Resale discount.  In order to sell your items, you will most likely need to heavily discount it from the amount you paid.
• Selling fees.  If you sell via EBay or Amazon, for example, they will take a hefty cut of your resale price.
• Shipping costs.  Unless you pass along the shipping costs to your buyers, or you sell locally, you will have to cover shipping to them.

If you Google for “eBay seller calculator”, “Amazon seller calculator”, etc., you’ll find web sites that can help you calculate your total profit (in this case, total loss).  Use these tools to estimate your loss and make sure that the final cost per mile is something you can live with.  If you don’t think you can end up with a final cost of less than 1 cent per mile you probably shouldn’t do it.

Items I look for

I look for items that meet the following criteria:

• Lightweight and small:  I like to offer free shipping and I don’t want to pay a fortune for shipping to my buyers.  Cameras, headphones, tablet computers, jewelry, watches, etc. are examples that fit this criteria.
• Good price: I look for items that sell for the same price (or less) on Amazon.com.  If an item is readily available through Amazon at a much lower price then there is little possibility that I can resell the item without taking a huge hit.  As I learned from DeltaGOLDflyer, in many cases it is possible to force a good price by using a merchant’s price match guarantee.  I haven’t ever done this, though.
• Consumer Electronics: I prefer to buy consumer electronics because both EBay and Amazon charge lower selling fees for items in this category (for fixed price sales).
• Ratings.  I look for items that get very good ratings/reviews: 4 stars or higher.
• Popularity: I want items that will resell easily.  Luckily Amazon.com has lists of best sellers in each of their departments.  For example, here is an example of Amazon’s best seller list for computers & add-ons.  I try to make sure that things I buy are in the appropriate best seller list.
• Resale value: This one is key.  I look for items that resell for as close to the purchase price as possible.  One way to do that is to search for the item on EBay and then filter the results to items that are “new” and to “completed listings”.  The results will show in green the items that sold and for how much.  In red are the items that did not sell.  Ideally most of the items in green sold in the ballpark of what I was hoping for, and hopefully the items in red were way overpriced.
• Competition: Uncheck the “completed listings” box on EBay to see how many people are selling the same item.  If there are too many, the market may be too competitive to be successful.

So, that’s about it.  I spend a lot of time surfing the merchant’s web site looking for items that might fit the criteria listed above.  I grab model numbers and search for them in Amazon and EBay to research their popularity, resale value, and competition.  Then, finally, I go with my gut: does it make sense to me that people would buy this from me?  Is this a cool/desirable product?  In the end, I take a deep breath, take out my credit card, and spend.

If you have other strategies for finding good items for resale, please comment below!

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!

How I plan to turn the Nordstrom 36X opportunity into cheap travel. 

I’m sure that most readers know of The Point Guy’s recent post “Amazing Deal Alert: 36 British Airways Avios Per Dollar Spent at Nordstrom!”  When I first read this, I was skeptical because the deal relies on two promotions (a Nordstrom double points promo AND a Nordstrom first purchase triple point promo).  I was betting that they would only award points for one promotion.  However, since then, I’ve seen that many people, including The Points Guy, have all 36 points per dollar showing up as pending!

If you have a real reason to buy from Nordstrom, you would be crazy to let this deal pass up.  Make sure to jump on it by February 14th before it expires!  Also, be sure to carefully read The Point Guy’s post showing exactly how to qualify –you don’t want to take a chance of messing this up!

Buying Miles

For those of us that are not really interested in buying from Nordstrom, all is not lost.  If you’re willing to invest some time and energy into buying and selling, I believe that you can turn this promotion into an opportunity to buy British Airways Avios miles for as little as half a cent each.  With Avios, you can fly round-trip short haul American flights for 9000 miles, or LA to Hawaii round-trip for 25000 miles.  If you can buy Avios for half a cent per mile, this means that you can fly round trip on short haul flights for only $45!  Or, you could fly round trip from LA to Hawaii for $125!

In my last major mile-earning adventure, I bought and sold electronics from Sears.  With Sears offering 10 points per dollar through the Ultimate Rewards Mall at the time, and with the ability to double dip by buying Sears’ gift cards and then using them, I was able to earn over 20 points per dollar.  As I described in the post Mileage run shopping results, I gained over 49,000 Ultimate Rewards points for a net cost of $391.  In other words, I bought Ultimate Rewards points for .79 cents each (which is an awesome value, by the way).

I think it is possible to do a similar churn with the Nordstrom promotion:

In my Sears adventure, my net costs amounted to 17% of my total Sears spend.  If one can find items at Nordstrom to resell for a similar loss, the math works out even better.  Suppose, for example, you buy $5000 worth of items at Nordstrom and sell them for a net loss of 18%.  In that case you would earn 180,000 Avios for $900.  In other words, you would buy Avios for .5 cents each!  The great thing with this promotion is that it would be OK to have a net loss as high as 36% because this would amount to buying Avios for 1 penny each, which is still a great deal if you redeem your Avios wisely.  Even at 1 penny each, for example, round-trip flights from Detroit to NY would cost only $90!  Sweet!

Should I do it?  Should you?

My first look at Nordstrom’s website was depressing.  Gift card purchases don’t qualify for the promotion.  DSLR cameras (which I bought through Sears) are nowhere to be seen.  However, I dug deeper and found some great possibilities.  I’m now convinced that this deal is worth investing in and that it is possible to earn Avios for a half cent each. 

If you decide to jump on this, please be aware that this could end up costing you much more!  There is no question that this is a gamble, so go into this only if you’re willing to risk big losses.  Also note that this will cost you time and effort that would be hard to justify if you count this time as “work”.  Do this only if you can afford it, and if it is a hobby that you enjoy.

What to buy and how to sell

I’m not going to publish what I plan to buy.  If too many people buy and sell the same items, the resale market for those items will be flooded and the resale price will necessarily drop.  None of us would do well in that scenario.  Instead, in tomorrow’s post I’ll describe how I went about finding the best options for resale, and I’ll follow up with another post on how to sell your inventory.

Are you in?

Are you planning to take advantage of this opportunity?  If so, what is your strategy?

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!