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Today only, Southwest is offering 9 points per dollar at Sears when shopping through the Southwest Rapid Rewards portal. Similarly, Alaska Airlines is offering 9 miles per dollar at Sears when shopping through their MileagePlan Shopping portal (I don’t know if this deal also ends tonight, but my guess is yes). It is possible to take advantage of either deal to buy miles for 1.6 cents each.
1. Go through portal to Sears to buy Sears’ physical gift cards. Earn 9 miles per dollar. Make sure not to buy e-gift cards since those have lower resale value.
2. When you receive the gift cards, sell them to gift card resellers for 84 cents on the dollar (see GiftCardGranny, here)
For example, suppose you buy two $500 gift cards for a total cost of $1000. If all goes well, you’ll receive 9000 miles from the portal and another 1000 miles from whichever credit card you use for the purchase. Then, you should be able to sell those gift cards for $420 each. Your final out of pocket cost will be $80 x 2 = $160. $160 for 10,000 miles equals 1.6 cents per mile.
Warning: many things can go wrong when buying and selling gift cards. The most obvious danger here is that the resale offers may drop if too many people do this. Other risks include: portals not tracking your purchases correctly, losing gift cards in the mail, having gift card resellers reject your sale, etc.
Warning 2: Purchasing miles for 1.6 cents each is only a good deal if you have concrete plans for using those miles towards greater value. With Southwest, it would be difficult to get 1.6 cents per point value, but it may be worth it to get you closer to a companion pass. With Alaska, your best bet for getting outsized value is to use miles on partner airlines for international first or business class awards.
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Greg, my question is regarding the partner purchases on Sears? I saw an item I wanted to buy and when I went to add to the cart, it showed me partner prices that was cheaper. So I clicked that and it added it to my cart and kept me on Sears website. However, I’m concerned if that would negate the points since its not from Sears but their partners. The thing is it’s a higher priced item and so it does save me some money (substantial enough to put me in dilemma) but if it doesn’t count for the points, then it also doesn’t solve the purpose of buying it from Sears. Please advise. Thanks so much. LOVE your blog.
Yes, partner purchases work as long as the website you are on is still Sears.com and you can add the item with the add to cart button
Of course I can use a ton of SWA miles because I have 3 kids, and they are worth more for us because we have a CP. I’m thinking of going for CP #2
I wonder if you can do a little better even, if you turn around and buy discounted SWA gift cards with the money you net from the Sears cards and then buy SWA miles with the 35% bonus.
Can any Sears GC have value added to it, or only the variable loads?
Interesting idea. Can you use SWA gift cards when buying miles? That would be good to know!
Yes, I think that any Sears gift card can be reloaded
I couldn’t find a way to buy points with a SWA giftcard. Glad I was messing around on their site though, I have about $600 in voucher credit for a voluntary bump that I forgot about.
Too bad, it was worth a try!