On May 1st, I published “Ultimate Rewards Mall Awesomeness!” where I showed a number of great deals in the Ultimate Rewards Mall. This post is simply a reminder of those deals. You only have a few days left. Most of the deals are scheduled to end May 31st (this Thursday).
Ink Bold
If you log in with your Ink Bold account, you’ll find the following:
- Staples.com at 5X! If you want to get 10X for buying gift cards online, now is the time! (5X from the mall, plus 5X from the Ink Bold’s category bonus). Staples carries a number of gift cards including Starbucks, Marriott, Southwest Airlines, and even Visa.
- Sony at 10X! While my double-dip experiment didn’t pan out (see “Sony 30X only mostly dead”), I have since verified that buying physical gift cards (but not eGift cards) does result in points. So, if you know you have a Sony purchase coming up, but you’re not yet ready to pull the trigger, consider stocking up on gift cards. Beware, though, that when you buy things will gift cards you don’t get automatic extended warranties or purchase protections given by some credit cards.
- Overstock.com at 10X A reader double-dip experiment didn’t pan out, but 10X is pretty good by itself!
- Lenovo at 5X
Freedom
If you log in with your Freedom card, you’ll find the following:
Sephora at 20X!This 20X deal only lasted about a week.- QVC at 10X! A reader who goes by carwag25 tried a double dip experiment with QVC, but it didn’t work. No points were given for buying an e-gift card (which was sold by CashStar), but points were given for using the gift card. It is likely that the double dip would work for a physical gift card, but we don’t yet have proof of this.
Sapphire Preferred
If you log in with your Sapphire or Sapphire Preferred, you’ll find the following:
- J. Crew at 10X! Mommy Points, you were going to re-test the double-dip on this one. Any luck?
- Ann Taylor at 5X
Comparison Shopping
Since Ultimate Rewards Mall has different deals depending on which card you log in with, Hiker T has been maintaining a web page that makes it easy to see the current rates and to see which card you should log in with. You can see his page here: lakebagger.com/ur/
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Furthermore this crisis is not over yet, and has not yet been described scientifically in a proper way by the time I write this comment. That is why I am not going to use recent situations as an example of the threat of the dependence on Russian gas in the EU, even though it may possibly serve as the best one. The threat however does exist and the recent energy crisis is not the only proof of it.
FM: FYI Staples continues the FAR for McAfee from 6/3-6/9, $65 cost -> $65 mail-in rebate. Ink gives 5X, UR gives additional 2X. Limit = 1.
bf: Yep, I decided it was too small of a gain, and too much hassle (with a mail in rebate) to be worth a writeup
Great catch, Thanks for the heads up, just bought 25 Visa GC’s towards my Ink minimum spend.
And if you want 10X thru UR at staples.com using Ink Bold, you’ll have to act by 5/31.
bf: Thanks for the info. I’m not going to be able to try this and publish it in time.
FM, it’s from Staples Memorial Day flyer and runs only thru 6/2 so gotta hurry. Potential problems: It’s not Staples Easy Rebate, it’s a mail-in, and it’s McAfee which is notorious for denying rebates for trivial or no reasons. But I think it’s worth a shot, especially for download version.
I don’t know how you did your calculations in “What’s My X?” I value UR points between 1.31 and 2 cents so if buying VISAs is 9x or 8x……….what’s my X? 🙂
DreamingOfPoints: I’ll update the chart once we know what Staples drops to 🙂
FYI, Staples FAR for McAfee 3-user antivirus (CD or download) $65 should net 650 UR pts.
bf: Really? Awesome! I’ll investigate this weekend and post on Monday
Jcrew: I purchased a e-giftcard and a physical giftcard on the same purchase. Took about 5 days, but I got points for one of them…. but I’m not sure which one, I know pretty stupid of me to not split the orders. BUT i did about 3 months ago get an e-giftcard and did not get anypoints. So this leads me to believe that only physical giftcards will provide points… and then a double dip possibility.
matuag: Thanks for the update. I’ll use this as evidence that the physical gift card earns points.
I’m confused…
I don’t have an ink bold yet.
I really wanted to do the $100 GC at Staples for 10x with URM….are you saying it’s no more after this month?
If so, is it still worth it getting 2x extra from URM (currently the rate you get from CSP’s URM) combined with 5x from ink bold (compared to office depot)?
Thanks
DreamingOfPoints: Starting June 1, the UR Mall will likely have a different bonus for Staples, but we don’t know what it will be. It was 4X for a while, so I think that is likely. 9X is still very good. If it drops to 2X, I wouldn’t bother.
[…] Frequent Miler has a list of Ultimate Rewards promos that are expiring […]
Thanks for the link to Hiker T’s website. This is super helpful and definitely bookmarked.
I bought an e-gift card, but on that same order I also used a physical gift card that I got from using the J Crew credit card and it awarded points on the whole thing.
Will Staples let you buy Amex reload cards with Staples GCs? You would still be paying the $3.95 activation fee for a $500 reload card, but would be getting 5000 UR points instead of 2500 points.
I supposed you could buy $100 staples gift cards online to get the 10% cash back and then redeem those in store for the amex prepaid reloadable cards?
Grant Thomas: You might be able to. You would have to find someone willing to let you buy a $500 reload card with 5 $100 Visa cards. Otherwise the $3.95 fee would eliminate the benefits. It doesn’t seem worth the trouble to me.
bf: To my knowledge, Staples doesn’t sell Amex reload cards (Office Depot does).
mommypoints: Now I’m really confused. Earlier you said that you didn’t get any credit, but now you got points on the whole thing. I’m clearly not thinking straight today. Can you explain?
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