It’s been an exhilirating first month of the AA Loyalty Point Games. We’ve seen great opportunities with offers like Winc, Spot/Tango and Verizon that have given us plenty to be happy about. But the portal gods don’t always smile on us, despite our best efforts, planning, execution and persistence.
It Seemed Like Such a Good Deal at the Time
When we started looking through the AA Shopping Portal in earnest, Stephen noticed that Future Fitness was listed with a very worthwhile bonus of 3700 Loyalty Miles upon signing up for virtual personal training.
Now, I’m not terribly interested in virtual personal training, but 3700 is a number I can get behind. The problem is that said trainer will cost about $300 for the two months that AA is requiring you to have it. Luckily, our friends at American Express had a great idea:
Perfect! AA wants us to give Future $300 and give us 3700 Loyalty Miles. AMEX wants to give Future $300 on our behalf. It’s the circle of life, Simba…what could go wrong?
Challenges can be…challenging
But there’s two problems:
- How do we redeem the AMEX offer and the AA Portal offer when both require a click-through?
- Will the purchase amount reported to AA be $0 and, if so, will that trigger the portal bonus?
There’s only one way to find out: make the new guy do it! So off I went.
First the double click-through issue. This can sometimes be solved by clicking through one offer link, copying the URL from that offer, then clicking through the shopping portal and pasting the copied URL into the post-portal landing page. So I started with the AMEX offer:
I took the URL from the landing screen, then went back through AA Portal and copied the URL onto the landing page at Future Fitness. Here’s what I got:
Ok, so far, so good! *cracks knuckles in excitement* The AMEX offer triggered, but I’m still on the shopping visit that I initiated through the AA Portal. I finished checking out and everything seemed to look good. Future wanted a phone number, so I registered a Google Voice number to avoid any unwanted long-term callbacks. There was one last hitch: Future requires that they send you an Apple Watch to “monitor” your progress (which started to feel a little creepy). This is “free,” but they require a $199 deposit in order to send it. Otherwise, no dice. In the interest of the public good, I went ahead and did it, but I can’t say that I felt entirely comfortable.
The moment of truth
Now comes the time for rewards…or failures. That evening, I checked my AA Shopping account, and found this little nugget sitting there:
It worked! Even though Future reported a $0 sale, it still triggered the portal bonus without needing to wait for 45-60 days like the terms say. I was happy as a clam and started writing the beginings of a quick deal post about the offer. But…not so fast. The next morning, I saw that AA had already clawed back the 3700 pending points they had given me.
That’s not the kind of rollercoaster I’m fond of. After getting through everything, it looks like this will go down to the deal dump, with nothing to show for my effort outside of a $199 charge for a deposit on an Apple Watch I don’t want (and haven’t recieved yet). Admittedly, there is some small chance that after 45-60 days, AA and Future get together and decide they feel differently. However, given that the points were awarded and then clawed back, I think that’s a very small chance.
You win some, you lose some and I lost this round. It takes a village to sort through winners and the losers and someone always has to be the guinea pig. Hopefully my loss is someone else’s gain by not having to give a second thought as to whether or not there’s a points future with Future.
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Thrive Market just clawed back, for no particular reason or breach of terms that I can see. Aren’t games supposed to be fun? Maybe I missed the point and this is one of those educational games.
The title kinda scared me a bit, lol. Thanks for sharing the DP tho!
Sorry for the scare! 🙂
I’ve seen points from deals like this (Spot & Tango) post to my AA account, but the elite qualifier needle hasn’t moved (still at zero). Should I be looking somewhere else in my account for “Loyalty Points” rather than EQMs?
I just found this on their site:
“The first date you’ll see Loyalty Points in your account is March 1, 2022. Loyalty Points earned from eligible activity during January and February 2022 will appear in your account in early March 2022.”
Don’t worry, you’re new still. Your “Future” is so bright you need to wear shades. And while you’re at it make sure to get 4x through the AA portal at Sunglass hut 🙂 Seriously thanks for checking this out. I’ve run into a few weird ones like this. The fact that Future posted it as $0 was the killer I think.
Thanks for taking one for the team, new guy!
Hi Tim thanks for the heads up. This is the sort of hard-hitting reporting we’ve come to expect here.
Must admit I’ve plucked all the low-hanging fruit on AA shopping and SM. I’ve picked up about 20k points and am on the fence about Motley Fool. Any leads would be appreciated.
If you do decide to do Motley Fool, you can tack on a card-linked program to get 1560 Choice, 2160 Caesars (can be converted to Wyndham, I assume), 180 JetBlue, or 1080 Emirates. Stephen Pepper linked to the CashBackMonitor overview for these portals for SunBasket a week ago, here is the one for Motley Fool:
https://www.cashbackmonitor.com/cashback-store/the-motley-fool-card-linked/
Apart from Verizon and Spot Tango, which offers worked for you? I have done StitchFix one as well
Oh lots. Most of the meal kits (except the vegan ones), the wine clubs, some of the publications. A few others. You need to be vigilant about canceling the subscriptions because the non-intro prices are killers, but there’s methods for that too. Check the original post about the Loyalty Points game.
Yep got burn twice small $$ but hurts..