Many people these days, including myself, prefer to do most of their shopping online. And now that we’re in the Christmas season, there tends to be a huge spike in online shopping. But what a lot of people miss out on, and probably don’t even realize, is that many airlines, hotels, and credit card companies like Chase and American Express have their own online shopping portals.
Why is this important? Glad you asked.
These airlines, hotels, and credit card companies partner with hundreds of online retailers, and when you access those retailers using an online shopping portal you can get miles credited to your account for each purchase. Let’s walk through an example using a shopping portal that I use often: the American Airlines AAdvantage shopping portal.
AAdvantage Shopping Portal Home Page
As you can see, AAdvantage partners with over 850 online stores, and one of the featured deals includes 3 miles/$ spent at JCPenney. These offers fluctuate throughout the year, and at times you can earn double, triple, and sometimes higher during promotional periods. If you have a specific store in mind, you can do a search for that store, or simply browse through the entire inventory of stores. You can also shop by category of store and you can sort by earn rate to see which stores are offering the greatest miles/dollar spent. You can also get large chunks of miles by simply signing up for plans with companies like DirecTV or Verizon, so if you’re making the switch anyway, why not get some miles added to your account.
This premise is the same for all other online shopping portals. The key to remember here is that in order to receive those miles, you must click on the link to that store from the shopping portal. The shopping portal will redirect you to that store’s website, where it will “track” that you clicked through the online shopping portal so you can get credit for those miles (note: ensure your computer’s cookies are enabled in order for this to occur).
Comparing Portals
With seemingly every airline and hotel having their own shopping portal, there needs to be an easy way to compare which portals are offering the most bang for your buck. Fortunately, there are a couple of ways to compare portals without having to check each one.
EVReward. EVReward allows you to easily compare multiple online shopping portals. It also lets you compare cashback rewards programs and it provides a list of coupon codes that can be applied upon checkout. It’s not always 100% accurate and it doesn’t include every online portal, so if you’re interested in seeing what the Alaska Airlines shopping portal will give you, you’ll have to go to that specific portal. However, this does provide you with some great starting information. Sticking with the JCPenney example, here is a screenshot showing you what you can find on EVReward.
EVReward is a great starting point for maximizing online purchases
American Airlines and Southwest are both currently offering 3 miles/$, but Chase Ultimate Rewards is offering 4 points/$, so in this case if there is a specific points currency you’re looking to stock up on, you have options.
Cashback Monitor. Cashback Monitor functions similarly to EVReward, but with a couple noticeable differences. First, their results are a little bit more robust. More rewards programs are included in the results, particularly in the cashback field. Second, Cashback Monitor also shows how many points/miles you can get if using an airline or hotel branded credit card. In the example below, you’ll see United Mileage Plus included twice, once with using the credit card and once without. It’s basically telling you that when you use your United-branded credit card when checking out, it will add an extra mile/$ spent, so instead of the normal 2 miles/$, you’ll get 3 miles/$. That is important to know.
Results from Cashback Monitor
These are the main 2 sites that I use to get an idea of where to start. There is another site, the Mileage Mall by Web Flyer, but I find it to be a bit clunkier and often has outdated information.
Using the right Credit Card
Once you’re ready to check out, selecting the right credit card to pay with can boost your miles even more. Using the previous example, when using the United Airlines shopping portal, you can get an extra mile/$ just for using the United Airlines credit card. However, if you wanted to accrue United and American miles, you could use the United shopping portal and pay with an American Airlines credit card. Also, if you have the Chase Ink card, you can still get 5x the points when buying online from Staples or Office Depot. This is called double-dipping, which, Costanza would agree, is the way to go.
Shopping Portals
For reference, here are a list of some of the most popular online shopping portals:
Airlines
| Alaska | Delta | Southwest |
| American | Hawaiian | United |
| British | JetBlue | Virgin America |
Hotels
You’ll notice that many hotel chains such as Hyatt, IHG, and Club Carlson do not participate in the online shopping portals. However, in these cases, you could always use the Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR) portal and transfer those UR points to Hyatt since Hyatt is a transfer partner for UR.
Credit Cards Rewards
Key Takeaways and Reminders
- In order for you to take advantage of these offers, you need to have a loyalty account with that particular chain. So the first thing you need to do is create an account (costs nothing) and get that loyalty number!
- Whatever store you want to use, don’t forget to click on the link provided in the shopping portals, and don’t forget to enable cookies on your computer so that the store can track your account and credit you with those well-deserved miles.
- Compare points/miles offers using sites like EVReward and Cashback Monitor.
- Keep track of all your loyalty account balances with Award Wallet. This way you can easily see which loyalty accounts you need to top off.
Online shopping portals are a great way to top off your mileage/points accounts, especially during the Christmas season. Additionally, getting miles through shopping portals prevents your miles from expiring, but just keep in mind that those miles sometimes take 4-8 weeks to post to your account.
What other sites do you use for online shopping that can benefit the travel community?
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