Friday, November 6, 2015

Earn a LOT of bonus miles doing your Christmas shopping online via this cool promo!

If you're going to be buying stuff (including Christmas presents) online anyway over the next few months, you might as well get a bunch of extra miles.  Read on for more details ...

First things first, if you aren't familiar with using shopping portals to earn extra miles/points (very easily!) when shopping for just about anything online, read THIS POST first.

Also, two other quickies.  1) If you haven't already, I highly recommend taking advantage of THIS DEAL (only if you like getting 22%+ off everything you buy!) if you're going to be spending money (on presents or otherwise) between now and year-end at any store that accepts Apple Pay.  2) If you want to make a quick/easy $20 (or $60 if you're married!), then I recommend jumping on THIS DEAL (albeit self-serving since I'll make $20 if you choose to use my referral).

So back to today's deal ...

I got an email today from United Airlines telling me that I could earn up to 6000 bonus United Mileage Plus miles by shopping through their shopping portal between now and November 24th.  The deal hasn't actually started yet, but they apparently gave me a 2-day sneak preview as you can see here (check your email or your United shopping portal account to see if you were included as well):



As you can see (in the fine print - you may need to click on the photo to look at a full size version to read the small print), depending on how much you spend, you can earn up to 6000 bonus United miles - in addition to the miles you'd already earn from the portal.  (Of course, you should always factor in whether a different portal is better to use, factoring in the regular and bonus miles during this promotion, by checking at CashBackMonitor.)

It looks like this deal will be made publicly available in 2 days.  The other GREAT news is that the United shopping portal is run by a company called Cartera, that also runs the shopping portals for a few other airlines (including Southwest & American).  Often times, in the past, all of the portals run nearly identical offers.  For example, during "back to school" shopping, United, SWA, & AA all ran nearly identical offers that were very similar to this.  So take advantage of one or all of them, and possibly for your spouse as well, if you're married.

If you don't already have mileage accounts with United, Southwest and/or American, it's very easy to sign up for a free frequent flyer account and start earning miles (via shopping and/or flying).  If you're shopping anyway, deals like this (and especially just using shopping portals) can be a great way to grow your mileage balance without even flying.

Another option to consider is buying (via this deal) & reselling items (on eBay or Amazon) to generate these extra miles.  But such reselling activity is beyond the scope of this post ... feel free to ask if you're a reselling newbie and interested in some insights or direction ...

As I mentioned, this deal hasn't started publicly yet ... and not certain it will be offered by SWA, AA, and/or others (beyond just United) ... but it's definitely something to keep an eye out for and utilize with your Christmas shopping!

2 comments:

  1. Can we purchase gift cards for ebay and target?

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  2. Sorry to not give you a definitive answer, but you'd want to check the terms for each store via each portal. Sometimes the explicitly exclude gift cards. If they do not, then you should be okay (you'll have a good chance arguing your case if the miles don't post for some reason). If they do exclude gift cards, you might still get lucky and have it work, but obviously don't count on it.

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