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Sears brings back 10X!
Every month, the Ultimate Rewards Mall has new month-long specials. Last month, I wrote about the July specials in the post Ultimate Rewards Mall July Edition.” Today, I’ll show you how things look for August.
Thanks again to HikerT for updating his website that shows the Ultimate Rewards Mall payouts for different Chase cards. You can find his website here:lakebagger.com/ur/.
First the bad news
As expected, some of the goodies from last month went away 
- Lowe’s dropped from 10X to 5X
- Office Depot dropped from 10X to 3X (5X for the Freedom card)
- Bloomingdale’s dropped from 10X to 6X
- Avis dropped from 5X to 3X
- eBags dropped from 15X to 8X
August Goodies
Now on to the good stuff!
Sears 10X (Ink & Sapphire 10X. Freedom 3X)
I’ve been waiting a long time for this! When I first started blogging a year ago, Sears was at 10X and I wrote many posts about ways to take advantage of this. One of the best things about Sears is that they will pay points for Sears gift card purchases and purchases made with gift cards. This means that you can earn 20 points per dollar by buying gift cards and then using them through the Ultimate Rewards Mall! I will follow-up with many more posts on ways to leverage this throughout the month.
Staples 5X (Ink 5X, Sapphire & Freedom 4X)
Last month Freedom cardholders got 5X from Staples. This month, 5X moved over to Ink card holders. This is great news because Staples is one of the few stores to sell gift cards online and, despite the listed Terms & Conditions, they give points for gift card purchases. Even better, when you buy merchant gift cards (Marriott, StarBucks, etc.) there is no fee and no shipping charge. When you combine this 5X with the automatic 5X that the Ink Bold gets for office supply purchases, this becomes a 10X deal!
ShoeBuy 15X (Freedom 15X, Ink & Sapphire 10X)
Freedom cardholders can once again get 30X by double-dipping! See “Shoebuy double dip 30X. Is it worth it?” for details.
JC Penney 10X (Freedom 10X, Ink & Sapphire 6X)
This one held steady from last month. JC Penney gift cards often sell for 25% off or more through resellers (search giftcardgranny.com). A nice double-dip is to buy gift cards at a large discount and then go through the Ultimate Rewards Mall to JC Penney to use them.
A few more:
- Lancome 12X (through 9/30)
- HSN.com 10X (Ink 10X, Freedom & Sapphire 4X)
- Drugstore.com 10X (Ink 10X, Freedom & Sapphire 8X)
Prediction Results
In yesterday’s post “Ultimate Rewards Mall Reminders and Predictions” I made some predictions about what would change in the mall. Let’s see how I did:
- Target: I said Target would increase to 3X or so. Result: FAIL. Target held steady at 2X
- OfficeMax: I said OfficeMax would increase to 5X. Result: FAIL. OfficeMax held steady at 3X
- KMart: I said KMart would pop up to 4X or 5X. Result: FAIL. KMart held steady at 2X.
- Sears: I said Sears would jump up to 5X, and I mentioned the possibility of 10X. Result: Success! Sears beat my expectations by jumping all the way to 10X!
- Staples: I said Staples would hold steady at 4X and drop the 5X from the Freedom card. Result: Mixed. Staples did drop 5X from Freedom, and they did hold steady at 4X for Sapphire cardholders, but they bumped up to 5X for Ink cardholders.
- JC Penney: I said was likely to hold steady with 10X. Result: Success!
- Kohls: I said was likely to hold steady with 10X. Result: Success!
- DrugStore.com: I said was a likely 10X. Result: Success!
- J. Crew: I said would jump to 10X. Result: Fail. J. Crew held steady at 5X.
Overall score: 4.5 out of 9. I suppose if this were baseball you could say I did all right batting 500….
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[…] has new month-long specials. Last month, I wrote about the August specials in the post ““Ultimate Rewards Mall August Edition.” Today, I’ll show you how things look for […]
Where do I buy UR points?
no UR mall bonus points for buying giftcard at Staples, however you get the regular 5X for the office supply points
[…] a “double dip opportunity”. If you don’t know what I am talking about, mosey over to the The Frequent Miler’s Laboratory and see what I mean (or just email me if you are completely […]
[…] dip opportunity”. If you don’t know what I am talking about, mosey over to the The Frequent Miler’s Laboratory and see what I mean (or just email me if you are completely […]
Yes, my experience with Lowe’s was a bit fishy, too. Last month I bought a $400.00 Larson storm door. When the payment screen came up I clicked submit and the web page went blank. Had to call Lowe’s, who told me the charge/order went through, then early last week I called CSP account rep as the 10x points had not hit my account. They checked my click history and showed that I added the door to my shopping cart, but it didn’t show that the door purchase was completed. The CSP rep compared this with my credit card charge history, saw it was legit and issued a 4000 point credit to my Rewards account.
Anyone experiencing delays in getting these UR points posted for Sears purchases in August? I have been waiting for 10 days now since Aug 1st ….still no points!
Milezjunkie, I had two separate Lowe’s transactions paid with UR cards and the points were reversed a few days later for reason: “online return” which is bogus as I have not returned the items….There is something fishy with Lowe’s….
@Howard-I just did that yesterday. Doing a trial purchase of sears.com egift card and exchanged instore for BP Gift card.
Just went to Kmart today and saw other gift cards I could use. BP, Southwest, Red Lobster. iTunes, and more. Consider exchanging your Sears GC if you can’t find anything you need right now. You’ll get a minimum of 10X.
Can you tell me what sites I can get points on through the UR Mall for e-gift cards? I’m know that Sears does but I’m looking for other types of cards. Thanks!
I made a Lowe’s purchase last week and had the points reversed a few days later. I sent a SM to Chase and awaiting their response but I’m 95% sure it’s because I used a non-Chase card. I think the double dip is coming to an end. I’ll report back when Chase responds to my inquiry.
[…] The Ultimate Rewards Mall put out their August earnings list; check out the Frequent Miler post here. […]
I bought 2 of the FAR deals, one for me, one for my son. First one got the bonus, second one, not yet.
@Dan – I used Chase UR mall for the Trend Micro – I received the 600 UR points for the $150 purchase.