Bonuses from Four of the Major Airline Portals
Most of the major mileage earning shopping portals are run by a company called Cartera. For this reason, sometimes their promotions tend to overlap. That is exactly the case right now where United, American, Delta and Southwest (among others) all have lucrative bonuses for shopping through their portals this month. Let’s take a look.
United MIleagePlus Shopping
United is running a combined bonus promotion along with a giveaway for shopping through their portal. For the giveaway, you earn 5 entries for each transaction through their portal and 5 entries for opting into email. You can win 20,000 bonus miles or even 100,000 miles and $2,500 in cash.
As for the bonus miles promotion, it is setup with the following tiers:
- 500 bonus miles for qualifying purchases of at least $125
- 1,750 bonus miles for qualifying purchases of at least $600
- 4,000 bonus miles for qualifying purchases of $1,500 or more.
Key Terms
During the “Back to School” bonus campaign, which runs from July 21, 2015 through August 12, 2015 at 11:59:59 pm ET (the “Bonus Period”), Member will receive a one-time bonus of up to 4,000 bonus award miles on qualifying purchases, in addition to the standard miles earned from shopping online through MileagePlus® Shopping.
You can find all of the details of the promotion along with the full terms here.
Southwest Rapid Rewards Shopping
Southwest is giving up to 3,500 bonus points for using their shopping portal through August 16, 2015. Here is the breakdown of how you earn:
- 500 bonus points for qualifying purchases of at least $125
- 1,500 bonus points for qualifying purchases of at least $500
- 3,500 bonus points for qualifying purchases of $1,000 or more
Key Terms
*During the “Back to School” bonus campaign, which runs from July 15, 2015 through August 16, 2015 at 11:59:59 pm ET (the “Bonus Period”), Member will receive a one-time bonus of up to 3,500 bonus points on qualifying purchases, in addition to the standard points earned from shopping online through Rapid Rewards Shopping®.
You can find all of the details of the promotion along with the full terms here.
Delta SkyMiles Shopping
Delta is giving up to 1,500 bonus points for using their shopping portal through August 16, 2015. Here is the breakdown of how you earn:
- 300 bonus miles for qualifying purchases of at least $100
- 700 bonus miles for qualifying purchases of at least $300
- 1,500 bonus miles for qualifying purchases of $700 or more
Key Terms
During the “Back to School” bonus campaign, which runs from 7/27/15 through 8/16/15 at 11:59:59 pm ET (the “Bonus Period”), Member will receive a one-time bonus of up to 1,500 bonus award miles on qualifying purchases, in addition to the standard miles earned from shopping online through SkyMiles Shopping.
You can find all of the details of the promotion along with the full terms here.
American AAdvantage eShopping
American Airlines is giving up to 3,500 bonus points for using their shopping portal through August 16, 2015. Here is the breakdown of how you earn:
- 500 bonus miles for qualifying purchases of at least $125
- 1,250 bonus miles for qualifying purchases of at least $500
- 3,500 bonus miles for qualifying purchases of $1,000 or more
Key Terms
*During the “Back to School” bonus campaign, which runs from 7/14/15 through 8/16/15 at 11:59:59 pm ET (the “Bonus Period”), Member will earn a one-time bonus of up to 3,500 AAdvantage® bonus miles on qualifying purchases, in addition to the standard AAdvantage miles earned from shopping online through the AAdvantage eShoppingSM mall.
You can find all of the details of the promotion along with the full terms here.
Are These Good Deals?
I think it is good to know what sort of promotions are being offered by the portal relating to your favorite currency. For example, if I value AAdvantage miles highly, then I can earn an extra 3.5 miles per dollar if I spend $1,000 through their portal. This works out great, especially if they have a good payout for the store I am shopping at.
The way I look at promotions like these is to compare how many miles I will earn from the normal portal payout along with the bonus, to any cashback I can receive. I use Cashback Monitor to compare everything and then determine if it makes sense to participate in one of these promos or to just go for straight cashback.
Conclusion
A lot of portals are running similar promotions for back to school. If I didn’t cover the portal for your favorite program, you may want to head to their website to see if they have something similar going on. I have personally already maxed out a couple of these and will probably leave the other two on the table. 1,500 Delta SkyMiles just doesn’t do it for me if you know what I mean!
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Thanks for the reminder — this is a good excuse to use up a few grand of discounted Staples GC. Looks like United, Southwest, and American are all 3x for Staples right now.
Shawn, what do you buy to max out the promos? GCs don’t usually pay out for me, even if FM’s laboratory shows some successes. How long does AA mall usually take to post, anyway?
For these promos I purchased a couple of iPads to resell, although it was a couple of weeks ago. Whether gift cards work or not depends largely on the merchant. I wouldn’t go out of my way to use these promos, but you should definitely know they exist and figure them into your calculations when doing your normal shopping.