There’s an incredible offer right now that someone hasn’t thought through the implications of. You can buy American AAdvantage miles at just over 4/10ths of a cent apiece making charitable donations (!!!) and there are other great offers as well. It will not last.
Frequent Miler writes that you can earn ‘an additional’ 5 times the usual American AAdvantage miles through December 27 (or ‘while supplies last’) using SimplyMiles.
Here’s how the offer is described – basically you earn sextuple miles:
As a special holiday bonus, through December 27 or while supplies last, earn an additional 5x American Airlines AAdvantage bonus miles on every offer site-wide. For example, if you earn 100 miles on a purchase of $30 or more, then you will actually earn 100 miles + 500 bonus miles for a total of 600 miles.
SimplyMiles is like an online shopping portal – earn miles for taking advantage of offers – but instead of going through a link that tracks your purchase, you spend money with a Mastercard credit card that you’ve registered with SimplyMiles.
One Mile at a Time highlights some of the big offers through SimplyMiles that should be sextupled with this offer.
- Movie Club normally earns 23 miles per dollar spent. This offer should yield 138 miles per dollar (buying miles at 7/10ths of a cent apiece)
- Conservation International offers 40 miles per dollar donated. This offer should yield 240 miles per dollar (buying miles at 4/10ths of a cent apiece)
Register for these offers before you engage in any transaction!
I would absolutely buy AAdvantage miles at $0.004 apiece. I value them at 1.3 cents. I’ll leave to you to sort through the question of whether the miles rebated are a quid pro quo which reduce the tax deductible value of any donation.
Your donation will be made to Conservation International, with proceeds granted to forest restoration projects fulfilled by both Conservation International and World Resources Institute.
Charities on this platform have been recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. Your donation (less any applicable administrative fees and standard card processing fees) will be paid directly to the charity you select. Mastercard is not serving as a professional fundraiser on behalf of any charity and Mastercard does not charge charities to be listed on this platform. Mastercard is serving as the donation platform provider solely to help facilitate the donation.
Honestly this reminds me of TrackItBack and the 2009 US Airways holiday shopping promotion, only easier.
I have to think this will be ‘corrected’ and end early (‘while supplies last’) or get altered. Check to make sure the offer is exactly as I’ve described at the time you log in. Take screen shots.
Already gone
@Steve – I still see the offer, are you trolling or is there a reason you believe it is gone?
I didn’t get that offer either. It seems the offers aren’t the same for everyone.
@Gary – seems to be (loosely) targeted.
Same. No Conservation offer for me either
Ran like a child to find a matercard. No donation offers for me at all.
Trackitback…a few of us really backed up the truck on that offer. I still haven’t fully worked through all those points…(apparently) some 12 years later. You are right – that one was tricky, by memory you had to buy somewhere between something like 11 but not more than perhaps 15 items from different online stores and then have Trackitback post sequentially for maximum effect.
no charity offers, at least for me
I got it and just completed a donation. I wonder how long it will take to trigger the bonus.
Wanna know a great way to conserve the planet…don’t fly
@ Gary — How much are you in for?
Is it possible it’s not a mistake? Maybe they are sharing in the donation somehow by doing this?
Tests, lockdowns, forced closures, masks-on-between-sips, more tests, limited service, boosters forever, statistic bombardment, fear, suspicion, ‘social distancing’, contact-tracing, “papers please”,
That’s travel now.
Hold your nose and vote out the current power-drunk politicians and vote in whoever promises to end the restrictions.
It’s the only way to break the spell.
And it’s a spell we’re under. If those who created it remain in office, you can expect this madness to become institutionalized. Masks forever, tests forever, papers please, new tests to cross borders, yearly boosters or no travel. You want these things forever, even after the virus is endemic? And it’s already endemic!
Hold you nose if you have to and tell yourself you can go back to voting as you regularly would, but the current bunch are drunk on power and are too invested to change their minds in the face of new developments as this virus, as they all do, eventually weakens, to remain but not to be an object of fear, unless that’s continually manufactured.
Enough is enough. Vote them out.
No politicians or government staff in the U.S. have mentioned lockouts in months. That story is just the current FOX news lie. I’m blown away by how much FOX news lies.
Do they get paid by the lie?
And why are people bringing this up in an innocent story about a points offer? Can’t we escape you people just once please? It is the end times as Satan’s helpers seem to be everywhere not just on FOX news.
Geez…..
This is crazy. I had very few offers but I will receive 1,500 miles on a purchase of $200 or more from BestBuy. That includes giftcards
@ Gary — NOW I see why one would ALWAYS need to be connected to the internet! 🙂
Just made $200 donation. Worst case I’ll get 8,000 miles.
@Gavin – Wouldn’t that be 7,500 miles (5 x 1,500) ?
No Conservation for me or my spouse. No offers for either of us that are worth doing. Now I feel like a chump for even signing up at SimplyMiles. Maybe they gave Gary a great offer so he’d blog about it and all his readers would sign up, and now SimplyMiles knows everything we charge on the registered card.
Same as some of the others here. There’s no offer really worth doing except maybe Best Buy, but that is marginal at best.
Just logged in and I had the offer listed. Guess its still up if you’re targeted. Hopefully it really is 5x on the points and not dollars spent.
Apparently I’m not targeted. I could buy some crappy wine for $30, but that’s the only one for miles less than 10 cents. Hard pass.
@gavin The Best Buy terms and conditions seems to exclude gift cards.
Don’t worry, when these don’t pay out, these bloggers and miles “experts” will complain and cry that they are done with AA and will never use their program again…
.. though they said that last year. and the year before.
and AA/the portal have every right not to pay out. Screenshots won’t do much.
I’m in for $200 at Conservation. This seems too good to be true so I’m only willing to risk what I’d consider anyway. Plus I’m sitting on 400K AA miles already. Anybody else targeted and go mild or go wild?
I wasn’t seeing it. Sorry for assuming it was gone for everyone. My mistake.
I just did like you, $200.
I read it as an “additional 5x” bonus miles not “additional 5xbonus” miles.
@Gene – didn’t you happen to be online for the Cathay Pacific ex-Vietnam first class fare, and how many others…?
@ AAEPFlyer — “They have every right not to payout”? Based on what exactly?
@ Gary — Indeed!
I’m iffy about buying that kind of stuff. Better off starting a side hustle instead.
No offer out of 83 for me. Might be for those already enrolled. I am a newbie to SimplyMiles. 🙂 Or targeted. Or both.
Done, donated to Conservation International, got a confirmation email of 40 miles per dollar. I took a screenshot of the 5x bonus offer, let’s hope it works out!
Simply Miles will not let me join and I am Platnium. Think the site is down
Just took a shot at this for $250. For those that the donation offer isn’t showing for, the offer went straight through “Mastercard Donations”, and it’s possible that if you don’t have a Mastercard connected to Simplymiles, it may not show for you. Anyway, just a guess.
$500 to Conservation. Was already registered for the program as a data point. So either 22,500 miles if it’s an extra 5x per $1 or 120,000 miles of is an additional 5x the total earned. It looks like it’s the later according to the emails others (not me) are getting.
Also, will I be getting 1000 AA Loyalty Points next year for the co-branded credit card purchase since it will post on Jan statement?
I wonder if this is tax deductible, and will AA send you a 1099 for the miles.
@Gary Steiger – see my latest post for discussion of tax deductibility. The value of any donation should be reduced by the value of what you receive in exchange. In my opinion the value of the miles is at least as great as what you give, so this should net to zero. Although there are a few wrinkles.
Any ideas how one can get in on this? I dont see it — either does my wife.
No offer for me on two AA Mastercards.
if you don’t see offer , try putting in conservation in the search box. came up for me. gave $400, good cause, printed out copies of each page of transaction. Suppose you could always dispute cc charge if they don’t pay out.
If this is still alive it has to be specific accounts. Tried Barclay Aviation, Barclay Arrival, Citibank AA Business. Searched in box and manually and it wasnt there.
where would the link be for this deal?
40 miles per dollar donated time 5 comes to 200 miles per dollar donated there? Is this right?
What’s the MAXIMUM we can donate or maximum miles they will give us???
Help restore the Earth’s most vulnerable forests.
Earn 40 AAdvantage® miles for every $1 donated.*
I just donated $500… When should I get all the miles?
Does SimplyMiles restrict which MasterCards? It wont let me sign up with an Apple card.
I used a VISA card to give this $1000… When do we get these 240,000 miles… I need them NOW!
@Gary , when do we get the miles. I send the Conservation $1000 with my VISA card… When do I get my 240,000 points? Did anyone get their points yet??
Is this still for REAL? Can my wife also buy some now??
Any news on this? When do we get our miles??
I’m way curious how much money that conservation donation got in the last 24 hours???? Must be CRAZY?? Unexpected donations from everywhere… Even FOREST HATERS sent money… Any forest haters admit to giving???
I bet even the Taliban would have gotten donations if they joined this program!!