Update: It looks like this isn’t just the AAdvantage Shopping Portal, but other Cartera-managed portals as well. The same language now appears on the shopping portals of Alaska, Southwest and United.
In 2022, American Airlines debuted a new simplified system for earning status: Loyalty Points (LP). In addition to earning Loyalty Points by flying, they can also be earned via many other avenues, including by shopping through the American Airlines AAdvantage eShopping portal.
The AA Shopping Portal has been a popular place for folks cruising for both American Airlines status and redeemable miles. Giftcards.com, an online store for both third-party and Visa/Mastercard gift cards, has been the belle of Loyalty Point ball for some people, especially since it often earns 2-3x when clicking through the AA portal (in addition to any credit card rewards). This means that buying $1000 of Visa or Mastercard gift cards would earn 2,000-3,000 LPs in one shot.
The AA shopping portal has long limited earning on Giftcards.com orders to those that are $2,000 or less. Anything above that would (or should) not earn redeemable miles OR Loyalty Points.
Today, reader Whitney noticed a brand new fly in the Giftcards.com ointment: “Rewards are only eligible on the first $20,000 of transactions, calculated continuously over a rolling 365-day period.”
Quick Thoughts
Most readers will take a look at this new restriction and say, “so what?” After all, spending $20K in gift cards in a year seems like a very niche pastime. However, there’s a decent number of folks who pursue AA status who can easily sail pass that amount, either via paying bills, selling gift cards or both.
If that’s you, mind your Ls and Ps from now on, especially since it’s being calculated not by calendar year, but by the previous 365 rolling days…starting from today. If you hit it hard over the last few months before the status year rolled over, it might be a bit before you can safely start up again.
A couple of weeks ago, AA shut down some AAdvantage accounts that had earned copious quantities of LPs through the AA portal and Giftcards.com (GCC). There had been a quirk where LPs (though not redeemable miles) would be awarded even when GCC cancelled an order – which they often do. Some folks found themselves able to repeatedly make orders that would get cancelled, allowing them to rack up LPs at no cost.
Most people who were shut down exploited that glitch, but I know of some others who were caught up in it through normal (though high-volume) GCC portal activity. Now it looks like AA is paying much more attention and doing its best going forward to cap the upside of earning LPs through online giftcards.
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Is there a mechanism on AA shopping that shows the last 365 days of spend?
So for those who were shut down for this (now defined) infraction, any word on AA restoring accounts? Hard to break a rule that 1) did not exist, and 2) had no way of being aware of.
Ya win some and ya lose some. Sounds like you lost. Time to move on to the next game.
This is not just for AA but for all airline portals. Same thing with Alaska, United
Yeah this is not an AA only thing. Sounds more a GC.com initiated thing.
What, they want to sell fewer gift cards?
yes, because they were losing money on it
Source?
Giftcards.com used to be selling VISA/MC giftcards for less than nominal value, add say 3 miles per dollar (valued at 5% or so) plus LPs and CC rewards and AA Bonus miles and I cannot imagine they were making money on it. Can you? Can you envision selling a hundred-dollar bill for 9 tens profitably? After all if thousands of MSers were making value someone in the chain has to lose value.
But how does this change the math?
if they were losing money on each Visa/MC purchase then, they still do now. The total loss, if there is one, is just capped.
Staples/OD have been selling Visa/MC gift cards for years without fees. I have no idea what their thinking is, but I doubt that the bulk of their buyers are buying a ton of other stuff.
I think they relied on breakage, and the people doing such high volume know what their doing and have much lower breakage.
Thanks. When I looked this morning, that language wasn’t on either of those, but looks like it’s there now.
Presumably it is $20k per portal? I am considering switching from AA to AS, but my AA gc.com spend from last year would disallow AS gc.com spend for a while…
Any more color on the shutdowns? If one did significant GCC volume but didn’t abuse the cancelled order trick do you think they’re safe at this point or are they doing shutdown waves?
I wouldn’t worry about it. If they didn’t shut you down already, I don’t think that there’s much, if any, risk now that the speed limit’s set up.
I saw this on my phone as “American Airlines Shopping Portal now caps annual earnings…” and just about had a heart attack. I didn’t use this method of earning LPs much, so it won’t hurt me, but a broader restriction would’ve been deeply painful.
Yikes! You’re right, that would have been much worse. Hopefully, you didn’t get any permanent damage from the scare. 🙂
Wine clubs?
Do we know if the last 365 days applies retroactively starting today or moving forward starting today? That’s a pretty big distinction that’s not immediately obvious from the language. The “safe” assumption is that it applies retroactively, but did FM independently confirm that with AA or Cartera?