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American Airlines AAdvantage eShopping is offering a higher-than-usual 6x for purchases at Apple.com today (Thursday, May 16th), though note the exclusions in the key terms below.
The Deal
- Earn 6x miles per $1 at Apple.com through the American Airlines AAdvantage eShopping portal
- Direct link to this promotion
Key Terms
- Note that the AAdvantage portal notes that: “Newly released products may not be eligible.”. I think it’s anybody’s guess as to exactly what that means.
- Full terms:
- Please note these terms & conditions: Rewards are issued by this site, not Apple. Newly released products may not be eligible. Additional products not eligible are: gift cards, gift wrap, Bose products, and expedited shipping. Apple sells and ships products to end user customers only; you may not purchase for resale. Eligible only to a customer for up to five (5) units per eligible product, except iPhone, in which case only two (2) units within a thirty-day (30-day) period are eligible. Employee Purchase Plan sites are not eligible. EPP purchases are not eligible. Apple Developer Programs are not eligible. 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.
Quick Thoughts
This is a decent paqout for Apple products and could be especially useful if you’re planning to make a larger purchase. Looking over the 15-month historical rates at CashBackMonitor.com, we can see that rates rarely eclipse this level. Near the top of the page, the portal suggests that this should work on the iPhone X, which would pull down a nice haul of miles — and as I posted about this morning, i think AA miles are far from worthless in my estimation. If you’re a frequent buyer, you might get tripped up on volume as well (see the terms above).
If you have a different preferred airline, you may just want to keep an eye out over the coming days as other airlines sometimes follow suit on promotions like this one, though we certainly don’t know what to be the case here.
H/T: Mommy Points
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This really isn’t a good idea. I know someone will say “but it is 12,000 points on a $2,000 Apple Computer”. Excluding the 2,000 points you get anyhow, it is 10,000. And at 1 cent per point it is $100, or if you are really generous at 2 cents (definitely too high) it is $200.
Unless I’m mistaken you are buying it from the Apple store. So that means tax for most people, lets say 5% or $100. There goes most of your savings. Throw in the fact that there are authorized sellers that often have $100 or $200 off Apple’s price AND some charge Zero tax and including free shipping, it is usually a very poor idea to chase points on Apple products.
You’d have to crank up the points multiplier much higher to make sense to buy computers (maybe phones aren’t discounted as much) through a portal via Apple.
For what its worth I bought an iPhone X on the chase portal a month ago at 2points/Dollar. I financed my iPhone (through Apple’s online site) and since the installment program was sold to citizens financial I assumed I would only get a shopping portal bonus for my first payment, but Chase gave me over 2,000 points so they do include the entire balance.
I’m hoping the AA portal is the same – my wife was planning on buying an iPhone this week anyway so perfect timing.
after at least a couple bad experiences, i’ve mostly lost faith with the ABC-miles shopping portal system. They purposely insert BS legalese like “some products not eligible” so whenever the system fails to properly track your purchases, no matter how much proof you send in, they’ll use that line of BS legalese as a way to weasel out of the miles you should’ve earned.
case in point : here’s the BS legalese for Abt Electronics via the portal, which is clear as mud :
“Not eligible on select electronics.”
there’s zero indication anywhere on the portal or on the merchants’ site regarding which products are actually excluded, and there’s no customer service who can actually give you any definitive answer before you make a purchase.
TLDR : use it only if you have the lowest of expectations, and treat any miles credited as icing on the cake.