83,000 American Airlines Miles for $5?

by Gary Leff

The AAdvantage shopping mall currently shows 83,871 American Airlines miles for buying a $59.99 MOTOROKR S305 Bluetooth Stereo Headphones from the Verizon Wireless store.

It’s the fourth item in this list.

I think the offer is supposed to be 2 miles per dollar spent, and I don’t have an interest in these headphones at $60, but I’ve gone ahead and purchased one anyway. If they’re offering almost 84,000 American Airlines miles at $60, I’m certainly in.

I’ve made screen shots and .pdfs of the offer for myself. I’ve made the purchase via American Express, which I’ve had good luck in purchase disputes when needed in the past. I recognize that the Verizon Wireless store has a tough return policy (14 day, I believe there’s also a $35 re-stocking fee).

In the end, I’m not being greedy on this one, I’ll go for it once and hope it gets honored but my guess is that the chance is less than 20%. Your mileage may vary.

(HT: >Rick)

Update: I’ve changed the title to be ‘83,000 American Airlines Miles for $5?’ because Nabeel in the comments points to this item with the same mileage offer, free shipping, but that costs only $4.97. (They do make you select your phone device to make sure this item is compatible, I picked a PalmOS device and that worked.) Of course given the $35 re-stocking charge, I wouldn’t plan on returning it…

Update: And… gone. Update: Back…???? Seems to be working again indeed, at least for the charger/paper weight at 5:30pm Eastern.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Decided to buy the headphones since I can always use them as a Christmas gift for my brother. We’ll see what happens!

  2. Just made the $5 purchase. My concern is proving to AA that the Verizon purchase came from their website. Any ideas on that? I took screenshots of all steps of the purchasing process as well as a shot of the offer on AA’s mall website. I’m ready for a fight!!

  5. Bought the $5 paperweight for a chance. Saved print screens. Will everyone just weight eight weeks to confim? Can we have a check in here at the blog to see results?

  11. I tried to buy a charger under three different accounts, but alas, the deal was pulled just after my first order. In hindsight, I should have just bought 25 on one order. Hopefully someone else did that and can let us all know if they end up being successful getting the 2M miles that would net.

  12. All items (including the other ones linked above) have been zeroed out. Right after I took the screen shot.

  13. Yep deal looks dead all show ZERO for items. Can’t wait to see how this goes! Fun either way!

  16. Someone on there just posted:

    Just talked to a Verizon CSR at 800-922-0204 to try to cancel my headset order and place another charger order. They have a 14 day no hassle return policy and they don’t charge a re-stocking fee.

  17. Also purchase that $4.97 item while the miles were displayed. I’m not sure how long I need to wait, but I don’t see my transaction on AAdvantage Shopping My Statement. Have I missed a step? I simply signed in to AAdvantage shopping, and clicked “Buy Now”.

  18. Hi Guys, So I messed up the screenshot save for the charger, and when I went to do it again, they have removed it – anybody get a shot that they would be willing to share?

    Thanks!

  20. Here’s to hoping, I got in for 3 before it closed. :-/. Though I have some screen shots :-).

  21. My order still shows shipped, conf email in hand…we’ll see if they post the miles but I’m guessing I’m in for a fight. Purchase conf email is timestamped 1:49pmET.

  22. still not sure what a screenshot proves you can always open firebug and change it to wtv you want…

  23. Thanks for letting us in! I hopefully got one, and displays as shipped, but no tracking number yet! Crossing my fingers!

  24. The meta data in the screen shot or PDF should state when the image was created and last edited.

  25. When I load the charger, I still see 83871 miles. On checkout though, it gives me a warning about promo *****. Does anyone still see the miles? Do you need a promocode at checkout?

  27. Looks like the $59.99 headphones are not even on Gary’s link anymore, so either they’ve been sold out or just taken off the site.

    BTW, at least for IE you can hit CTRL + F5 for a full refresh of the page/data shown in your browser session.

  29. That’s got to be an orphaned page result, searching for Verizon on the shopping portal only returns the one entry for new phone service, nothing else.

  31. Does anyone honestly think that they are going to get miles for this? $10,000 investment gives you 166 million AA miles. It is silly!

  32. Just ordered 3 x paperweights. Screenshotted the heck out of the offer and the purchase confirmation(s).

    So, naïve me wants to know: how does AAdvantage eShopping know you’ve completed the purchase at the Verizon store, in order to credit the points back? I don’t see any obvious “callback” or “trackback” going on.

  35. I know you’re in for FUN Gary, but you seem to have a golden touch with these sort of things. Or a powerful pen. Either way.

    Look at it this way:

    For $10 I could buy a DVD and entertain myself tonight. Or for $5, I can buy entertainment for the next 8 weeks!

  36. I just completed it(3:58pm MST) for $4.97 through the Verizon website. I took screen shots with the snipping tool in Windows 7. I have confirmation and shot with the 83,871 points showing. Let’s hope it works.

  37. I bought an extended battery I needed anyway. So I spent $50 and even if I get significantly fewer miles than I’m hoping for, I still got what I needed and not a paperweight.

  44. If Verizon doesn’t give us the miles, we should all bring our hockey pucks to the Chicago DO and mail them to Verizon corporate HQ. It is like those AOL disks that people would mail back to AOL cause they were getting so many of them!

  46. My wife actually has that phone, I’ll look like a hero for buying it and hope for the 83k.

  47. I just bought 3 chargers (paperweights) for a total of about $15! If the deal goes through, I should gain 251,000 miles. Amazing!

    Fingers crossed!

  48. i just bought 3, one on each family member’s aadvantage eshopping account. I used the “Back…????” link above with no problem.

  49. I received a cancellation email from Verizon. Well it was fun playing.

    ”
    Dear Valued Customer,

    Thank you for choosing Verizon Wireless, America’s most reliable wireless. We do appreciate your business.

    This email is to confirm the cancellation of your internet order. You have not been billed for this order. If you have not requested your order be cancelled, please call us at 1-888-374-7782. “

  50. I have big-time doubts about whether we’ll get the miles. Don’t get me wrong–I bought four of the chargers. When you think about what you get –$10 gets you more than enough miles to get you to Asia in first class — the likelihood that the miles will get paid out is slim to none. Either they honor the deal and then devalue the currency by increasing mileage requirements for redemptions since this event appears to be reverberating around the web, or they slam the door in our faces. It’s probably worth thinking about what to do when (and not if) this occurs, and find a way to get at least a tenth of those miles.

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