The American Airlines AAdvantage Shopping portal is offer a holiday shopping bonus that will give you an extra 10 points per dollar at each spending threshold.
There is no minimum spending requirement on a given purchase, they will take your total spending between November 12 and December 2 and add it together to see what threshold bonus you qualify for. No registration is required.
Some current lucrative offers are Magazines.com at 20 miles per dollar, Nordstrom and Sephora at 12 miles per dollar, and Restaurant.com gift certificates at 11 miles per dollar.
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Has anyone ever used the Restaurant.com certificates? My experience with them is that the restaurants often don’t exist, or are in very questionable parts of towns. Could anyone else care to share on this? I don’t like to buy things I can’t use just for miles.
Restaurant.com gift cards are worth very little. They sell outright for huge discounts (I’ve seen 80%), and they come as free gifts for all kinds of things where it is clear the people giving them away can’t be spending more than $.05 on the dollar or they wouldn’t be making a profit. I know for me there is a single restaurant within 50 miles that takes them (assuming they still do).
I’ve used them with reasonable success. Do not ever buy them at the face price on their site. There is almost always a coupon code to get them *much* cheaper. Slickdeals.net and I’m sure other sites will show you when they have such a promotion running.
They offer $X off of your purchase, typically with a minimum purchase amount and often excluding alcohol. Be sure to read the fine print so you don’t get surprised.
Bear in mind that restaurants that are willing to give up some (or all) of their profits to get you in the door are likely not the packed, popular places.
Mary, I used several in Austin and they all worked out fine. One of the places was a bit out of the way, but of course I knew they as I’d googled it before I bought the cert!
Wish this was available last week! ugh
I have never had a problem using them, but one thing I find pretty annoying with the Restaurant.com gift certificates is they force an 18% tip on you. Normally that isn’t too big of a problem since you are going to tip anyway. However, I purchased some for places in Chicago that are more “fast food” places where you don’t tip (think local Taco joint where you order at the counter and throw your garbage away yourself, where you MIGHT throw your change in the jar if you paid cash). They even added the 18% tip at these establishments, which to me was a waste since that is not a place where I normally would have tipped (definitely not 18%!).
All in all, if you can get the certificates for free, or for pennies on the dollar (there are plenty of places to do this), it’s fine, but I would never pay for them myself unless there was a huge incentive to do to. Even this AA shopping deal isn’t enough for me.
Don’t forget FTD. They are offering 30 miles per dollar. $250 would get you 10,000 miles with the combined offers.
mileage plus shopping has a 2500 bonus mile promo as well but requires $1250 in spend to hit the 2500 bonus miles
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/milesbuzz/1520896-mileageplus-shopping-portal-2-500-holiday-bonus.html
do amazon payment for the 2500 miles? or the purchases have to be from AA shopping portal site?
I still haven’t received the bonus from july’s 2500 miles promotions
You can get 2750 miles (2500 + 250 ) and get a $25.00 credited to your registered Amex account when you use the Aadvantage Shopping Portal.
Correction 2500 AA miles and 250 MR. Plus $25.00 credit
@Jason
HOw do u get the $25 credit?
Thanks Gary. Used this to pickup something the wife has been wanting.
I’ve used Restaurant.com certificates before. As said before never buy them at face value.