Do you cherish Doggie Howser, M.D. as much as I do, but think he’s just too expensive?

Fortunately jfhscott reminds me about a 1-800-Flowers discount that still allows earning miles:

Skyselect sells $50 gift cards to 1-800-Flowers for $29. The current offer runs through November 27 but these sales are run consistently (so another should likely be along shortly after this one is done). You can only use one card per transaction (account login required). But this amounts to a $21 discount on 1-800-Flowers purchases.

And here’s the kicker: If the base price of an order before shipping is less than $50, miles don’t seem to be awarded, but if the base price is over $50 then miles seem to be awarded on the full cost of the order (not on the amount over the value of the gift card). In other words, experiences seem to be that you can stack mileage earning with a discounted gift card purchase.

Often the miles for flowers deals are great until you get to the shipping cost and that tends to undermine the value proposition. But if you can get a discount on your orders that’s greater than the cost of shipping you can flip the value back in your favor.

Let’s take an example:

• The lavender and sage wreath runs $54.95 plus $13.99 shipping. That’s $68.94.

• With a $21 savings the net cost is $47.94.

• At 30 miles per dollar you earn 1650 miles, or a total cost of 2.9 cents per mile, but you can often do better than that.

I wouldn’t straight up buy miles this way. But it sure does make sending flowers to folks more attractive. And if you can find items that you can resell, you might be able to bring your cost down substantially further. It could even make sense to use the buy miles/get flowers technique, using the discount, to meet minimum spend requirements. If you don’t have access to Vanilla Reloads and Bluebird. (And consider paying the actual cash balance to 1-800-Flowers with an American Express small business card, since OPEN savings generates a rebate with the site.)

It’s hit-or-miss whether you’ll earn miles when you go through a cash rebate site to get to 1-800-Flowers, so I’d stick with the mileage-earning and payment with gift card routine.

The best 1-800-Flowers offer I had seen in a long time was 40 Delta miles per dollar with promo code 52DE. The link still goes to the 1-800-Flowers site but I do not know if the offer is live. I personally prefer this link for 35 Delta miles per dollar since it says ‘your promo code…will apply automatically at checkout’. Make sure that the promo code box populates. Or consider that you can earn 30 American miles per dollar through December 31, and American miles are meaningfully more valuable than Delta miles anyway.

With so many miles and at a discount through purchase of gift cards, you and your loved ones need never be without flip flops made of flowers again.