How to kill it using shopping portals
If you’re not using a shopping portals for online shopping, you’re wrong. Here’s a good introduction to it. In my opinion, and in many others, cashbackmonitor is the best shopping portal aggregator, to find the best deals in your regular shopping, in addition to your manufactured spend. Below, I detail how I utilized them to make a killing for a regular purchase.
Back in November, magazines.com had a week-long period where they were offering 60 miles/dollar on all purchases through the AAdvantage shopping portal. I’m a medical resident, and my program offers up to $250 per year on CME (continuing medical education), that can be used a variety of ways, including medical goods, conferences, or journals. 60 miles/dollar is about the highest payout I’ve ever heard of (I’ve only been in this game for about 2 years), so I was just perusing their site, looking for the most expensive magazine subscription, specifically whether there were any medical journals worth getting. I noticed there was one, a British journal called GP, that talked about primary care issues, that went for $248.14/year for a subscription.
I browsed a couple issues online, and decided it was worth getting (seeing as more patients will be using the ER for primary care). I clicked through the portal, purchased it with a card for which I was hitting a minimum spend, and got the email confirmation that it went through. I didn’t get an email confirmation from AAdvantageshopping, but this particular site doesn’t always send them. One smart thing I did, and what I always recommend to my readers, was take a screenshot of the confirmation page.
Unfortunately, it took quite a while for those miles to post…6 months in fact. After a month, I emailed the portal (run by Cartera, which runs many of the airline portals; read View from the Wing’s interview) with the screenshot, and after many back and forths, I finally got the miles!
14,889 AA miles, which I value at 2 cents/mile, so almost $300 for a magazine subscription! (It says pending, but I received the miles – they told me it’s not confirmed until a year into the subscription). And I got that charge reimbursed by my program for CME, and I got a decent medical journal to boot! I’d call it a triple dip!
What are your most lucrative shopping portal payouts?
Thanks for the link to cashbackmonitor. It’s one I forgot. I use evrewards but not as good. Neither of these feature BA Avios earnings which can be much better. They change all the time but for awhile last year I was buying through drugstore.com (which I do normally) earning 9 avios per $ plus the credit card avios or point per $ and getting cashback rebate on drugstore.com and tax free where I live with free shipping. At the same time most of the other airline points showing on these sites had drugstore at like 4 points per $ or less.
@DaninSTL – I had no idea BA even had a shopping portal. I’ll have to email cashbackmonitor and see if they can add it! Thanks!
Appreciate your effort…but not really a great post. First, the deal has been dead for ages. Why not just blog about the SPG.com 500 point booking bonus?
Also, your reimbursement situation is very rare. 99% of readers won’t have their mags/journals reimbursed.
You should try to have your blog appeal to a wide audience. And, the real should be at least somewhat recent.
@mark – we try not to post about something that most of the other boardingarea blogs are talking about. My goal with this post was to prod people into using shopping portals if they’re not, and giving an example how you can potentially play it big. I think even w/o getting reimbursed for the journal subscription, it was worth it, but that was an added bonus.