Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is almost done! The last two weeks Greg, Nick, and Stephen competed to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines. But who completed the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
Update 2/12/22: Use caution when deciding whether or not to do this Verizon prepaid offer via the American Airlines shopping portal because they’ve started clawing back bonus miles. See this post for more: American Airlines eShopping clawing back miles for Verizon orders.
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The American Airlines AAdvantage eShopping Portal is now offering 6,200 miles for new Verizon service. This includes prepaid service, which can be a fantastic deal here since a single prepaid line can cost less than $40. This can be stacked with either an Amex Offer or a Chase offer to earn miles for next to nothing. Note that these miles also count as Loyalty Points. I recently opened a Verizon prepaid line and I’ll be opening more today for easy Loyalty Points.
The Deal
- The American Airlines eShopping portal is currently offering 6,200 miles for select Verizon services including prepaid service. This can be a great way to generate miles and Loyalty Points at low cost thanks to stacking offers.
- Direct link to this AAdvantage eShopping offer
Key Terms
- Not eligible on business orders made through Verizon Business Markets, contract renewals (upgrades) and gift cards.
- Not eligible on Verizon Fios orders.
- Only eligible on new phone service plan contracts and add a line once Verizon has confirmed your order payment has been processed and service has been activated.
- Please note that this merchant can only research missing rewards for 60 days past the order date.
- Not eligible on purchases made with coupon or discount codes that are not found on this site.
- Not eligible on gift cards, gift certificates or any other similar cash equivalents.
- Purchases made with a gift card may be ineligible.
- Not eligible on any free products, trials, services, memberships, subscriptions and retailer marketing subscriptions.
Stacking for easy status points
This is obviously a terrific deal if you actually want Verizon prepaid service. Personally, I’m happy to get this deal just for the miles, though with my recent car shopping having a burner line to give to car dealers is nice.
I recently did this deal myself for only 3700 miles and I can confirm that a prepaid line worked. I had the miles in my American Airlines account in just a couple of days. I don’t yet know for sure that it can be repeatedly infinitely.
Here’s how to stack it:
Chase Offer
There is a current targeted Chase Offer for $30 back on $40 at Verizon prepaid. I used this offer on my first prepaid line. Since the total for a single line on the cheapest plan was initially $39.40, I turned off the autopay to take away that $5 discount and paid $44.40. That triggered the Chase Offer, so my total out the door was a net $14.40 (I received the email alerting me that I had qualified for the Chase Offer about a week after buying prepaid service).
Getting 6,200 miles for $14.40 is a stellar deal of less than a quarter of a cent per mile and Loyalty Point.
Amex Offer
There is also a targeted Amex Offer on some business cards for $75 back on $75 or more at Verizon for business. Despite the terms indicating that it only works on business services, people have reported the offer being triggered by other types of Verizon charges. Note that the terms of the offer say that it is only valid when spending $75 or more at one time. I don’t know for sure whether that will be enforced or if two separate orders adding up to $75 will work. I will report back on this.
Assuming the offer wording is being enforced, that would mean you would need to buy the most expensive prepaid plan, which is the $75 Unlimited Plus. After $75 back from Amex, you’d be out of pocket even less for 6200 miles. I believe the taxes should be about the same as above, so you’d be on the hook for about $5 for 6200 miles.
If my experiment of charging two separate prepaid lines works, I’ll double up the miles on this offer.
Is this worth it without an offer?
Opening a prepaid line might be worth it even if you don’t have an offer to stack and don’t really care about Verizon service. At $39.40 for a prepaid line for a month, you’d be paying just over six tenths of a cent per mile to pick up 6200 miles and 6200 Loyalty Points. Again, I don’t know that this could be repeated endlessly, but if you can open multiple lines for this bonus, clicking through and opening a line for $39.40 each time would get you 124,000 American Airlines miles for 20 lines at a cost of $788. That’s just 1,000 miles short of Platinum Pro / oneworld Emerald status, which you could easily complete with the Babylist offer for no additional cost.
Is Platinum Pro worth about $800? I’m not sure that it is, but I’m not sure that it isn’t.
Keep in mind though that while the redeemable miles come through pretty quickly, Loyalty Points won’t begin posting to your account until March. You therefore wouldn’t get elite status until at least March (and I’m not sure how quickly everything will post over on the Loyalty Points side).
Again, I don’t even know that it is possible to do this with 20 lines. For starters, I don’t know that you’ll get the bonus again and again. Verizon also asks for an IMEI number (from the phone you will use). I don’t know if you can re-use the same IMEI for multiple lines. I furthermore don’t know that Verizon will let you add endless individual prepaid lines. I once got banned by Straight Talk (and as an extension from Walmart.com) for years for buying too many prepaid lines. I imagine it wasn’t worth it for them to figure out whether I was reselling phones and service cards or I was really a drug smuggler / other criminal, so they just banned me. I had to go to Walmart to buy a physical Straight Talk service card to pay my bill as neither Straight Talk nor Walmart would take any of my credit cards online (I obviously switched service eventually). Thankfully, after some number of years, Walmart let up on that. My point here is that if you also have Verizon postpaid service and you don’t want a big hassle, it’s probably worth going easy with a line or two.
Bottom line
If you’re playing the AA loyalty status chase game with us, this is an offer to take up while it’s available. I wouldn’t wait on this as I noticed the payout increased yesterday and just didn’t have a chance to get it published until now. I wouldn’t count on this lasting for a long time. It certainly might last for days, but I’d want to take advantage sooner rather than later in case it doesn’t.
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Is there any update on the Verizon prepaid issues with AAdvantage eShopping? They currently explicitly list prepaid plans from $35 on their 6200 mile bonus… then say in the terms that prepaid plans are not eligible (!?!). Seems scammy to be honest… but I am about 10k Loyalty Points short of status this year so it would be good to know if it actually works/posts!
This deal appears to be back and available for the Prepaid lines (all prepaid exclusions and 45 day active language has been removed). I’m going to be brave and place another order. Wish me luck….
I don’t see where it specifically says prepaid lines qualify, all I see is “new service”. Is that what you’re assuming will count for prepaid? Keep us posted, I’m curious if the points even show pending for you.
There are multiple specific mentions of prepaid service if you scroll down the advertised promos.
I successfully got them to award the miles on 4 orders from the first go around…. So I’m going all in to get platinum pro on this one. I’m sure I’ll have to fight, but I’ve got a good precedent now…. And I took more screenshots for proof just in case
Did your orders track? Pay out?
Not yet. I’m assuming this will go the same way it did last time: offer never posts so I file a ticket after 14 days, it takes Verizon like a month to respond to them and they come back with some complete fabrication that i used some unauthorized coupon, i respond to aa shopping saying that’s a lie and Verizon needs to furnish proof (of which none can be found because it’s a lie), then about 2 weeks later the points finally post.
They don’t make it easy and Verizon plays a dirty game. But it should be worth it once I’ve got my platinum pro
@Spike, any updates on success with getting your 2nd round of Verizon prepaid to track w/ AA?
Tldr: it’s taking longer than last time but still working with them.
They are actually being much slower this time and pulled a new one, claiming that some of my orders were already credited to a different AA account, which makes absolutely no sense… Worst case i will dispute the charges from Verizon as i had to do once before… And I’ll keep emailing to get the numbers credited. Then they can overturn the dispute… And if they are too disorganized to do so, well, i have no sympathy for them
I filed a missing miles report with Aadvantage shopping and today got a message that Verizon says: “The merchant has indicated that the commission for order # 9%^$&(&^$$ was payable to another party outside of our network.”
This is false and I am not sure what I can do now. I feel that they stole my money. What is the recourse?
I filed the same report as you for the missing Verizon prepaid miles and received the exact same response as you this AM. I know it’s bogus, the only reason we made this purchase was for the AA portal, we weren’t clicking around for other deals or coupons. It has to be on Verizon’s side, they’re just getting themselves out of paying everyone for this offer.
I received this response today for the missing miles report I had filed 15 days after my purchase.
For what it’s worth, I responded saying that I was disappointed and that I expect the offer to be honored as advertised on the site. Today I received a response that the case was escalated, that they are working with Verizon to get “these cases” looked at again, and that I will be kept updated as things progress.
I received a positive resolution to this: I followed up on Monday after not having received any updates for a month. I then received a response that the “order has been added to your account”. Yesterday I saw the 6,200 miles on the aadvantageeshopping website and today they showed up in my AA account.
Same here: after I was told that my order was ineligible because it was “payable to a party outside of our network”, I decided to push back and tell them I wanted proof. All of a sudden, my purchase was approved and I got the miles in my account.
It looks like 4 of these are now pending reversal in my AA eShopping account (on Feb 8 and Feb 10). Is this happening to anyone else?
Ordered one line on 1/17; had problems, but it did ship and I activated the line. No points in the portal, but have requested. Is the deal now dead (or back)? Still a bit new at this.
Prepaid is listed on the AA Eshopping site and the terms and conditions do not talk about prepaid…
To cancel after delivery of the order has been an absolute nightmare trying to get to the Prepaid department. I really hope they pay out on these orders as trying to reach verizon prepaid department has been impossible. Chat is even more worthless. Anyone of their miles posted yet?
The AAdvantage shopping portal is actively investigating my 2 prepaid lines that have not tracked, no order numbers or anything.
Thanks. Most of mine tracked with $0.00. There are several missed tracking due to the Verizon System Errors that popped up. Not sure if the portal can add those orders or not. I activated all sim cards except for 3 since those 3 orders didn’t come with the Sim cards and that has been a nightmare trying to get a hold of Verizon Prepaid. Very frustrating and that is why I am hoping they pay out
My apologies for not thinking to comment here sooner, but if you see this fast and you have these Verizon lines, you can turn a nice profit porting them to Visible. Particularly if you have some lines you got charged for where you didn’t get the miles from AA, this is an easy way to turn lemons into lemonade: Visible is offering a $200 gift card (you can choose from stuff like a Mastercard GC, Amazon, Best Buy, etc) when you port a number and bring your own device and have service for 3 months. Code 2FOR22 gives you the first 2 months for $22 total ($11 per mo). My post explains how to get month #3 for $25. You should be all-in for $47 to get a $200 gift card thanks to having a line to port. More details: https://frequentmiler.com/visible-mobile-byod-offer-stacking/
Note: I think it’s only on until about 11:45pm Eastern on 2/3/22.
I contacted Aadvantage eShopping support today regarding none of my points showing as is it has been 15 days since I made my 2 Verizon prepaid line purchases. My order info doesn’t show up in the portal or anything. Here is their response:
“ After reviewing your account, I was able to confirm you accessed Verizon through AAdvantage eShopping but according to Verizon’s Terms and Conditions listed below, rewards will be credited 60 days from the order date. If the rewards for Orders do not post by Friday, March 18, 2022, please contact us back and we will be happy to research this further.”
Sounds like they’re giving me the Heisman.
I have two orders placed on 18th and 19th but neither tracked. Now sure what to do. Thinking of returning both if it is possible
I think a lot of us are in the same boat at this point. It was a gamble and it has yet to pay off. I am waiting for the 15 days to elapse so I can submit a ticket on the item. If that doesn’t work I will explore returning.
So Verizon was removed from the AA eshopping portal…now it’s back. It does not list ‘prepaid service’ as a line item of a bonus category, however: when clicking through (using a shopping portal coupon for $15 off prepaid), it shows my order is being tracked/activated. I am using my old ipad and sign up for new service (not currently a Verizon customer), so it seems like the 6200 miles would/should still activate for the ‘new service’ option listed on the portal?
I could have sworn the updated terms when it came back a few days ago made it clear that it was only valid on postpaid, but reading the terms now they seem very similar to before. Let us know if it tracks. In my experience, the miles show up pending in the shopping portal the day after your SIM card ships and post to the AAdvantage account a day after that (2 days after shipping), so you should know pretty quickly whether or not it worked.
Hi, any news on this one? I was about to get a prepaid line with the Chase Ink offer, but it would be nice to know if it still works.
Thank youuuuu
Anyone still have VZ orders tracked at $0.00 but no points actually credited
Yes! I have quite a few orders from the 17th and 18th. All tracked correctly at $0.00 but no points have credited yet to either Aadvantage eshopping or AA.com. I just followed prpilot’s suggestion and confirmed my email address for about half of them, and activated a fair number, so will A/B test on those and see what happens.
I had confirmed a few email addresses the day I ordered 1/18 and didn’t seem to do anything… Please report back on the activation. I don’t think this does anything as a friend had 2 orders post points from the 18th and others not, no emails confirmed or sims activated
Did you use the General [Shop at Verizon] link from AAdvantage or the prepaid specific Button from the shopping portal? I used the General shop at Verizon button. It shouldn’t have any affect due to the cookie tracking but I’m wondering… – my first orders were placed right after this post went live. Nothing posted yet. All tracking at $0
I think it’s just a tracking issue that’s going to take time and/or require a headache. I don’t think we did anything wrong here.
I placed a small handful of orders. Most tracked and posted to my account (all at $0.00, all of the ones that worked went pending the day after shipment and posted to my AA account 2 days after shipment).
I just clicked the general “Shop Now” button, not the prepaid-specific one, and I have only confirmed the email address for one of them (and still got the miles on orders where I didn’t confirm the email). I haven’t popped any of the SIM cards from this week’s orders into a phone.
I just think Verizon screwed up tracking here, no doubt connected to how they were showing a “payment failed” message while actually taking payment.
Do you think we will have to submit for missing miles after 15 days or they will get it figured out
My order is tracked at $0.00 with an order number even after I confirmed my email and activated my SIM card.
But no points?
No points
I still have multiple orders from the 18th and 19th, tracked at $0 but no points pending
I don’t think “tracked at $0” means anything (apart from it having tracked I guess). Even the order I placed on the 8th that I’ve had points in my account from for almost two weeks shows $0. For whatever reason, the AA portal doesn’t get a dollar figure here – I’m guessing probably because the offer (and therefore their commission) isn’t based on spending a dollar figure but rather signing up for service).
But yeah, I have a couple of orders that tracked and no points. I suppose I’ll eventually have to follow up on those.
I have 10/10 all tracked at 0, none produced points
Still no points for me either. Several tracked at 0.
Same.
Let’s hope they pay out
I took a chance and ordered a prepaid line on Sunday, received the SIM yesterday and no points. The portal tracked the order at $0 right away but no points.
Bummer. Thanks for reporting back. I noticed that the portal was up to 6500 miles today, so I wondered whether anyone was still receiving points on orders after the offer for prepaid was pulled. Again, thanks for reporting back.
Looks like you killed the deal, Nick 🙁
probably a dumb question (and caveat that we aren’t even sure the prepaid lines are still going to trigger the offer), but if you wanted just order the prepaid line without intending to actually activate it, what do you put when it asks for the IMEI? Or do you actually have to have a phone to use for the sim card to activate?
How does one track down an order? The order numbers in the emails I received from Verizon don’t seem to match with the order #s on the eshopping site (at least for the ones that did track). I still have one that is showing as shipped but nothing has tracked.
If your miles have not posted for this deal, you might want to double check that you confirmed your email address with Verizon. To do this click the link and enter your new number. If you didn’t take a screen shot of it on the initial sign up, you should be able to find it in the documentation that came with the sim card.
At this point it cant hurt. I had one order go through no issue and another two that errored out. None are tracking so who knows, maybe this will help. Here’s to hoping .
My first order tracked without having to confirm the address, but the second has not. Hoping it works.
what link are you referring to? can someone provide the link to confirm email address? thanks
The portal now has AT&T for 6200 points and Nakedwines for 3700 AA points. Any ideas if this will work the same?
AT&T offer specifically excludes prepaid — says it has to be a 2-year contract whether new service or add-a-line.
NakedWines is a decent offer.
I’ve been working on a centralized place for the data for the past few hours, so be on the lookout for a place to look for those types of things and what might stack.
Since the thread title hasn’t changed, does this mean you believe the Verizon offer still includes prepaid? I think there’s about a 2% chance of that still working.