A reader who goes by Ford Prefect alerted me to this limited time offer.  The Southwest Airlines shopping portal (Rapid Rewards Shopping) is offering 15 points per dollar when shopping at Sears.com.  The deal is only good through 5/23 (Wednesday).

Here is an excerpt from an ad Ford Prefect received via email:

The ad seems to imply that Sears has increased from 3X to 5X as the standard bonus, but is 15X for a few days.  At least, that’s the best translation I can come up with without the help of a Babel fish.

Here is an image captured directly from the shopping portal:

There are lots of great ways to capitalize on this! 

I’ll follow up Tuesday morning (a bit later than usual, though) with a post detailing some of my ideas, but feel free to comment below with your own.

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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A few days ago I published a complicated scheme that I thought could get you to Hawaii round trip for $182.24.  Then, the next day, I posted a caution saying that some of my prior assumptions seemed to be wrong.  I said that I would check the facts and let you know.  So, here is the final word on those assumptions:

Assumptions Busted

The Hawaii trick relied on a couple of faulty assumptions about the American Express Membership Rewards shopping portal.  Many emails, reader comments, and FlyerTalk posts have led me to understand the following:

• Amex Platinum and Centurion card holders are given an extra point in the shopping portal above what others see.  So Sears 4X only applies to those cardholders.  Everyone else sees Sears at 3X.
• Unlike almost every other shopping portal in the world, the rates shown by Amex are inclusive of your standard credit card points.  So, 4X means you will get 1 regular point from your credit card spend and 3 bonus points. 
• I don’t yet have an answer to whether buying Sears gift cards through this portal will result in extra points.  Apparently, it can take quite a while for this information to show up on your statement and it is not as readily available as it is on other portals.

With the above information we can officially call the Hawaii scheme a failure.  C’est la vie. 

Yesterday’s post titled “Hawaii round trip for $182.24” can be filed under Frequent Miler #FAIL.  If you were thinking of following the plan I outlined yesterday, please don’t.  At least, don’t do it yet.  I made several assumptions in that post that are looking questionable or are plain wrong:

Assumption 1: The meaning of 4X

I assumed that Sears 4X meant that you would get 4 extra points for shopping at Sears through the MR portal, in addition to the one point you get anyway for using your credit card.  After all, every other portal I’ve used works that way.  For example, when you click through a 4X link in Chase’s Ultimate Rewards Mall you get 4 points per dollar in addition to the points you get from your credit card directly.  According to one reader, though, when Membership Rewards says 4X, they really mean “3 extra points + 1 normal point = 4X.”  I don’t yet have personal experience to prove that Membership Rewards is completely screwed up works in this unusual way, but I believe it may be true.  I took a look tonight at the site and saw that, unlike Ultimate Rewards, not a single merchant is listed at 1X.  That’s presumably because 1X is what you get without the portal.  I’ll investigate more to find out for sure how this works.  Look for an answer soon.

Assumption 2: 4X everywhere

I should have learned this one from the Ultimate Rewards Mall.  There, you sometimes get different rates depending upon which card you have.  It turns out that the same is true with Membership Rewards.  Where I log in and see Sears 4X, others see Sears 3X.  Don’t even think about going with this plan unless you see 4X.

Assumption 3: Points are given for gift card purchases

Another assumption I made is that the 4X bonus applies even to gift card purchases at Sears.  Many merchants exclude gift card purchases from bonus points.  However, based on past experiences, I still think this assumption is true, but I don’t yet have proof.  I did buy a Sears gift card in this way, though, so I should find out soon.

Sorry!

I should have checked my facts and assumptions before posting yesterday.  I know that.  I knew that.  Sometimes though, I get excited about an idea and just want to share.  What do you think?  In the future, should I wait until all facts have been checked or should I jump in and post anyway?  Certainly I should add a warning next time if I do post prematurely…

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A reader challenged me recently to help him find a way to quickly earn more Membership Rewards points.  He’s planning on taking advantage of the current bonus offer in which Membership Rewards points can be transferred to British Airways Avios miles with a 50% bonus.  That is, until May 31, for every 1000 Membership Rewards Points transferred, you get 1500 British Airways miles.  Below is the plan I suggested.  It’s not easy, but if you want British Airways miles this will do the trick.  It will also help quite a bit with meeting minimum spend on an Amex MR card if you need to do so.

Prerequisites

To do this trick, you need an American Express card that earns Membership Rewards.  You also need a nearby Kmart that sells BP gas cards.  And, you need nice cashiers at that Kmart.  Oh, and patience and attention to detail would be helpful too.

The Plan

The plan is to buy Sears gift cards through the Membership Rewards shopping portal, upgrade them to BP gas cards, and then sell them to get most of your money back.  The end result is that you will have bought Membership Rewards points for about 1.07 cents each.  Once you convert those points to British Airways miles with the 50% bonus, you will have bought British Airways Avios for .71 cents each.  Here are the steps:

Step 1: Buy Sears gift cards

Go through the Membership Rewards shopping portal to Sears and buy Sears gift cards for yourself.  Currently the portal offers 4 points per dollar for Sears so you will earn 4 points from the mall and one point from your credit card for a total of 5 points per dollar.  Note that you can buy either physical gift cards or e-gift cards, but the physical ones are a bit easier to use at Kmart so I recommend those.

NOTE: A few readers have reported that Sears only shows 3 points per dollar through their view of the Membership Rewards shopping portal.  Apparently, the bonus points you get depends upon which Membership Rewards card you have.  If you only see 3X, then this trick is not for you.

CAUTION: Reader Kathy stated in the comments section that Amex bonus points are inclusive of the regular points you get for credit card spend.  That is, when the mall says 4X it really means 3 bonus points plus 1 regular point.  If true, this kills this opportunity.  Rats!

Step 2: Upgrade the gift cards

This is the painful part.  Hopefully you pre-checked that your local Kmart carries BP gift cards.  If so, go to Kmart and buy BP gift cards using your Sears gift cards.  I’ve done this many times and only once was told no.  Since then I’ve only bought 2 or 3 at a time and usually load up my cart with staples I needed anyway (tissues, cereal, dog food, etc.) to obscure the gift cards.  That has always worked for me.

Step 3: Sell the gift cards

Go to the TopCashBack portal and find PlasticJungle.  PlasticJungle currently buys BP gift cards for 91 cents to the dollar.  You’ll get 4% (of 91%) additional cash back from TopCashBack.

Add it up

Suppose your goal is a round trip ticket to Hawaii.  You can go from LA to Hawaii using British Airways miles for 25,000 miles round trip.  To get that many miles, you’ll need 17000 Membership Rewards points.  To get that many points with this plan, you’ll need to buy $3400 worth of Sears gift cards.  Now, let’s do the math:

• Buy $3400 in Sears gift cards via the Membership Rewards shopping portal.  Receive 3400 X 5 = 17,000 Membership Rewards Points.
• Upgrade to BP cards and sell cards to PlasticJungle via TopCashBack.  PlasticJungle will give you 91% of $3400 = $3094 cash back.  TopCashBack will give you 4% of $3094 = $123.76 cash back.
• Total cost: $3400 – $3094 – $123.76 = $182.24
• Transfer Membership Rewards points to British Airways and you now have enough mile to go to Hawaii!

Considerations

Note that the trip to Hawaii was just an example.  BA also has great short haul redemptions such as Detroit to New York City for only 9000 miles round trip.  With this technique, a trip like that would only cost about $65!  Will I do this?  Honestly, probably not.  I already have a boatload of BA miles and I don’t really cherish the idea of virtually living at Kmart for the next few months.  Also, my favorite points are Ultimate Rewards, so I’ll continue to focus on schemes to buy those.  This trick is tempting though…

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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?

Last month I bought a $500 Walmart gift card on EBay.  When it arrived, I was afraid I had been scammed.  Read on to see why I bought the card, why I feared trouble, and how I protected my purchase…

To buy the $500 card, I spent $485 worth of EBay gift cards that I had purchased at Kmart using Sears gift cards.  The Sears gift cards had been purchased at Sears.com through the Ultimate Rewards mall for 10 points per dollar.  Are you with me so far?  When I purchased the $500 gift card on EBay for $485 I earned $9.70 in EBay bucks that can be used for future purchases.  My goal now is to turn the Walmart gift card into about $470 cash.  In the end, I will have spent $30 in exchange for $24.70 in EBay credit ($15 left over from the gift card and $9.70 in EBay bucks) and 5000 Ultimate Rewards points (worth $65.50 in Fair Trading Prices).  Since I’m sure I’ll use the EBay credit soon, my final tally will be to have spent $5.30 in exchange for 5000 Ultimate Rewards points.  That’s an excellent return, but arguably more trouble than it’s worth.  Anyway, you now know why I bought the Walmart card.

The card took almost a month to arrive.  I have no idea why the seller took so long, but be prepared if you make similar purchases!  Worse, when it arrived it looked weathered and used.  The rectangle on the back that hides the pin code had already been scratched off.  I was worried, of course, that I had been cheated.  Had the seller spent all the money on the card already?  I went to Walmart.com to check the gift card balance and was relieved to see that it had the full $500 amount on the card.  

I was still worried, though.  An unethical gift card seller could keep a copy of the card number and pin and, over time, drain the card of its value without the buyer knowing.  I was worried that if I sold the card to a gift card re-seller, as I had planned, they might receive the card with less value than when I shipped it.

Luckily, Walmart is one of the few online merchants that will let you buy gift cards using gift cards.  So, I used the questionable gift card to buy $500 worth of brand spanking new gift cards.  I picked out cute ones, just because I could:

I could have bought one $500 card, but I bought 5 $100 cards instead.  This way I can test out different card re-sellers to see who gives the best cash back and service when selling to them.  Also, some won’t buy cards with more than $300 value, so the smaller denominations are better in that way.  

The cards arrived promptly and in perfect condition.  I’ve sold two already and hope to report back the results soon.

So, there you have it: gift card laundering at its finest.

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As of this morning (Feb 1), there are a number of changes to the payouts from Chase’s Ultimate Rewards Mall for the Chase Sapphire Preferred and Ink Bold (note that when logging into the mall for other Chase cards, you will have different offers).

Let’s look at some key bonus rates for the Sapphire Preferred and Ink Bold:

• Avis: 5X
• Barnes & Noble: 10X (up from 7X)
• Drugstore.com: 5X (down from 10X!)
• Groupon: 0 (has been missing from the UR Mall since January)
• Hotels.com: 4X
• HP: 3X (down from 5X)
• Kohl’s: 10X
• Magazines.com: 40X
• Office Depot: 5X
• Sears: 4X (Same as before. Boo!  I was hoping Sears would go up!)
• Staples: 4X (down from 5X)
• Target: 3X (down from 5X)

Comparing to predictions

Last night, I made the following predictions:

• Staples.com will stay at 5X
• Target.com will decrease from 5X to 3X
• HP will stay at 5X
• Drugstore.com will decrease to 8X
• Sears will increase to 6X or 7X

How did I do?  I got Target exactly right.  I also correctly predicted that Drugstore.com would go down, but it actually went all the way down to 5X instead of my predicted 8X.  Against my predictions, Staples and HP both went down, and Sears stayed the same.  So, I batted 1 (or maybe 1.5) out of 5.  Not very impressive!

Analysis of Changes

Ick.  Most of the changes are not so good.  Sears staying at 4X is a big disappointment.  Staples dropping from 5X to 4X slightly lowers to value of the Ink Bold double dip I’ve been writing a lot about lately (in fact, I need to re-write a new post that I had ready to go).  Office Depot at 5X doesn’t help too much as their terms and conditions explicitly say that gift cards are excluded (but it’s a great deal if you actually want to buy something from Office Depot).  Also Groupon is still missing from the site altogether.  On the plus side, it’s great to see Barnes & Noble back up to 10X.  I’m really pleasantly surprised, as well, to see Magazines.com staying at 40X and Kohl’s staying at 10X!  Also with Avis at 5X and Hotels.com at 4X there could be some great opportunities to save on travel and double-dip with other promotions.

What’s Next?

Virtually every shopping portal, including the Ultimate Rewards Mall, is heavily promoting Valentine’s Day related merchants right now.  So, my next bold prediction is that rates will change again on Feb 15th.  Let’s hope for some good news then!

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 a special triple dip with the Chase Ink Bold credit card, you can earn 20 points per dollar at Kohl’s and Sears!

In a previous post, I wrote about how to get 10 points per dollar using the Chase Ink Bold credit card (for more about this card, please see Preparing for Miles).  In this post, I’ll show how to turn that trick into a triple dip worth 20 points per dollar!

Step 1: Log into the Ultimate Rewards Mall and shop at Staples.com

By going through the Ultimate Rewards Mall to Staples you will earn 5 points per dollar from the mall and another 5 points per dollar when using your Chase Ink Bold credit card at Staples!

Step 2: Buy Gift Cards

If your goal is to shop at Kohl’s, then buy Kohl’s gift cards.  If your goal is to shop at Sears, then buy Lands End gift cards (which work at Sears).  With the exception of Visa gift cards, Staples does not charge any service fees or shipping charges for gift cards.  Use your Ink Bold for these purchases.  As described above, you will earn 10 points per dollar for this transaction! 

If you do not have an Ink Bold, another option is to use the Chase Sapphire Preferred.  You will get 5 points from the mall, plus 1 base point from the credit card, plus a 7% annual bonus.  In total, you will get 6.42 points per dollar using this card.

If you have both the Ink Bold and the Sapphire Preferred, then log into the Ultimate Rewards Mall with your Sapphire account, but make your purchases with the Ink Bold.  In this way, 5 of the bonus points will count towards your annual 7% bonus and you will increase your points per dollar to 10.35!

Step 3: Spend your gift cards online via an appropriate portal

Kohl’s currently offers 10 points per dollar through the Ultimate Rewards Mall.  So, when shopping for Kohl’s merchandise, go through the Ultimate Rewards Mall to Kohl’s and then use your gift cards to make your purchases.

Sears currently offers 10 points per dollar through the Aadvantage eShopping Mall.  So, when shopping for Sears’ merchandise, go through the AA mall to Sears and then use your Lands’ End gift cards to make the purchase.

With either of the above steps you will earn an extra 10 points (or miles) per dollar, for a total of 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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