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UPDATE 10:52 am EST: Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this happen so quickly before. The portal now shows only 4 points per dollar at Sears. I wonder if that’s an error? Stay tuned…
Today, the Southwest Rapid Rewards Shopping Portal is offering 9 points per dollar at Sears.
What makes this particularly interesting is that Sears gift card purchases are allowed. So, you can double rewards: go through the portal once to buy e-gift cards (or to reload an existing gift card), and then go through the portal a second time to use the gift card to buy merchandise. Total rewards earned: 18 points per dollar plus credit card rewards.
5X more
This quarter, both Chase Freedom and Discover cards offer 5X at Sears online (both limit 5X to a total of $1500 in spend for the quarter). Use either of these cards to buy the Sears gift cards as described above, and you can increase total rewards to 23 points per dollar! Note that physical (by mail) gift cards will not count for the Freedom bonus since these gift cards are sold and shipped by Kmart.
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Quick question, the point will be earned when purchasing the specialty gift cards on Sears website, or only apply for actual Sears gift card?
Your advise is appreciated.
Thank you
Points will NOT be earned for buying specialty gift cards from the Sears website.
Points will be earned for buying Sears & Kmart gift cards from the Sears website (as long as you go through portal first)
5x UR points through Freedom or 5% cash back for Discover quarterly bonus + 9x for gift card purchase + 9x for making purchases with the gift cards: 5 + 9 + 9 = 23
Wow, that was a quick reversal. Also the Sears bonus on Ultimate Rewards loggin in with my CSP was 5 miles, just cut to 2 miles. So it seems it’s not just the SW portal where they’ve cut back.
I’m confused about the Chase Freedom and Discover offers. I understand getting 5X for buying Sears gift cards and another 5X for purchases, but how does that add up to 23X per dollar?
Couldn’t find this anywhere–do you know if reloading Sears gift cards on the site will count toward the 5x promotion in the UR Mall? I’m not talking about Freedom 5x cash back for Q4, but the UR mall portal for Sears. Reloading gift cards does code as Sears.com purchase (tested this morning)
Yes, in my experience you do earn portal points for reloading Sears gift cards.
I agree with FM and can confirm on SW and AA Portals. Last few weeks when they ran portal bonuses I reloaded the cards for 500$ each and got the points.
When I follow your link to the portal the sears offer is only 4 pts / $. Do I need to wait until a certain time?
No, unfortunately they surprised us by dropping the rate from 9X to 4X in a matter of hours. Hopefully this is just a bug and they’ll fix it, but I don’t know for sure.
Order Sears GC at 10:14am EST, hope to get the 9x.
That was quick. It’s gone. Now showing 4 points per dollar.
When I visit the Southwest Rapid Rewards Shopping Portal I am only seeing 4 points per dollar spent, even when I log in with my Southwest Rapid Rewards account.
Damn, I just bought $3k in Southwest e-gift cards. I’m sure there will be opportunities to spend them in the future when it comes back. This has been a wild week!
Thanks for the heads-up. I can’t believe how quickly that changed!