The other day I got an email from one of our readers that seriously made me chuckle. I can totally picture myself doing something similar. Oh, the things we do for miles and points… I’ve asked Seth if I could share it with our readers, and he happily agreed. Enjoy!
“So, this Sunday turned out to be a pretty good day from a points perspective (without any credit card sign ups).
After about a decade of procrastinating, we finally bought a new sofa. With all the holiday sales I thought we should try to cross this off our list. We walked into a West Elm store and quickly agreed on which couch to get. A true miracle: everyone was happy and on the same page.
That’s when the fun starts. Shouldn’t we make sure we’re earning bonus points for the couch? I quickly pulled out my phone and saw that West Elm purchases earn 6 points per dollar at the British Airways Avios online shopping portal. Cashbackmonitor website is a good place for that, by the way. Then I checked the United Mileage Plus X app and saw that they had West Elm store listed at 3 points per dollar. Perfect! I could buy gift cards at 3 points per dollar and then click through to the Avios portal and earn another 6 points.
$1500 X 9 points + credit card earnings equals lots of points!
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been burned by gift card purchases in the past, so I wanted to make sure that I executed the online purchase while I was still in the store, in case something went wrong. Especially since the sale was ending that day. I certainly didn’t want to make a mistake and be stuck with tons of gift cards to a furniture store.
This is where it got a little crazy. Mileage Plus X only sells West Elm gift cards in $250 increments. So I had to execute many separate purchases on my phone. Then toggle over to their website to enter the 16 digit codes and 8 digit passwords. Over and over and over again. It took a few minutes to figure this out and get into a rhythm. Meanwhile, the kids are getting restless, hungry and impatient.
Don’t they know how many points this is?
For simplicity sake, I tell them it’s enough miles for a roundtrip to Miami. My girls love taking vacations, so that does the trick. Fortunately, I was able to finalize the purchase before anyone had a meltdown. There may have been better ways to maximize earnings, but I was happy.”
Author: Leana
Leana is the founder of Miles For Family. She enjoys beach vacations and visiting her family in Europe. Originally from Belarus, Leana resides in central Florida with her husband and two children.
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