American AAdvantage Shopping Back to School Bonus
Given that this year these promotions have launched on staggered dates, you are probably tired of reading about how much I like mileage portal promotions, but I do! As a reminder, I have already covered United’s 2K Back to School bonus, Alaska’s 1,500 miles bonus and Southwest’s 2,500 bonus. Now, American AAdvantage is running a promotion of their own!
The Offer
- 700 bonus miles when you spend $350
- 1,500 bonus miles when you spend $750
Key Terms
- “Back to School” bonus offer runs from 08/03/16 through 08/21/16 at 11:59:59 pm ET (the “Bonus Period”).
- During the “Bonus Period” Member will earn a one-time bonus of up to 1,500 AAdvantage® miles on qualifying purchases, in addition to the standard AAdvantage® miles earned from shopping online through the AAdvantage eShoppingSM mall.
- “Qualifying purchases” do not include returns, cancellations, shipping and handling, taxes, gift card or other cash equivalent purchases, and certain products that are not eligible for bonus miles.
You can find the full details and terms here.
Which Airline to Choose?
Alaska, United and American all pay 2X bonus miles at their various tiers. For that reason, I am participating based on how I rank those miles. For me that is Alaska, then United and then American. On the Southwest front, I personally have a lot of points already and the payout is 1.67X at best, so I am prioritizing it last, but the ability to get bonus points towards a companion pass will definitely be attractive to some.
At this point the only major mileage portal run by Cartera without a back to school promotion is Delta SkyMiles Shopping. Given how they have staggered these promotions this year, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them release a promotion in a day or two and then you get to read once again about how much I love all of this. 🙂 Happy shopping!
What do you think? Which airline bonus are you going for first?
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[…] This discount is good on almost everything on eBay. While gift cards are excluded, you can generally purchase $60 in gift cards and then get $15 of free items from an unrestricted category. Just about all merchandise is unrestricted which is nice compared to similar deals. You can also use iConsumer for even more cashback or the AAdvantage portal back to school bonus. […]
I started to take advantage of some of these but then BA was running an increased mile payout on their site so it was better to go that way. I always check someone like cashbackmonitor for the best rate, even with the bonus.
For example on this AA one if you spend $350 you get 700 miles so that’s 2x earning on top of the earn rate through the portal. So say your want to buy something from Drugstore.com. AA is paying 3x per $1 so if you bought $350 at Drugstore.com you’d get 1,050 from the portal and then another 700 from the promo so you’d earn 5x per $1 but BA currently offers 6x for Drugstore.com so it would be better to go that direction.
I’m with you though it depends on the miles you value the most. Also it depends on the store and earn rate.
Does anyone have personal experience, from past Cartera portal bonus promos like these, as to whether or not merchant gift cards are really excluded from qualifying purchases?
FWIW, I have 2 other things I consider when deciding which portal to prioritize:
a) What is the pre-bonus/promo payout (on CashBackMonitor) for the online retailer I’m considering using. While the 1.67x for SWA is the worst of the four, perhaps it has a higher pre-bonus/promo payout than the others for some retailers.
b) What accounts do I need to round-off or top-off. I have found that these promos are great for these purposes on our family’s less-frequently-used accounts (like my kids).