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Leading up to Valentine’s Day, you might be wondering how to earn the most miles or save the most money when buying flowers, candy, or other gifts. Here is a roundup of some of the best deals I’m aware of.
FTD
FTD: Portals, up to 35X or 20% cash back
Shop FTD via an online shopping portal. Here are the best deals I see now:
- Delta Skymiles Portal: 35 miles per dollar
- American AAdvantage eShopping Portal: 30 miles per dollar
- United MileagePlus Shopping Portal: 30 miles per dollar
- Shop Discover, Shop At Home, Ebates, and TopCashBack are all offering 20% cash back
FTD: Plink
Sign up for Plink, add FTD to your Plink wallet, and register the card you will pay with in order to get up to 750 points (worth $7.50 in gift cards). This is stackable with portal rewards (above).
FTD: MasterCard Easy Savings
Register your small business MasterCard with the MasterCard Easy Savings Program and you’ll earn 5% cash back automatically at FTD if you pay with that MasterCard. This is stackable with portals and Plink.
FTD: Amex Sync 25% off
If you have an American Express card, check out the “Offers For You” section when you log into your account. You’re likely to see the following:
If you apply that offer to your account and click through the given link, all prices will be automatically 25% off. This is better than getting 20% cash back from a portal. It is stackable with Plink, but not with MasterCard Easy Savings because when you go through this link you are forced to pay with an Amex card.
FTD: $10 gift card
Regardless of which approach you use to shop FTD, you should see the option to earn a $10 gift card if you choose early delivery:
Note that this gift card expires on 3/31/14 so its not exactly as good as cash.
1-800-Flowers
1-800-Flowers: Portals, 12X or up to 20% off
Get 20% cash back via Shop Discover or Shop At Home. Get 12 points per dollar via the Southwest Rapid Rewards Shopping Portal.
1-800-Flowers: Plink
Sign up for Plink, add 1-800-Flowers to your Plink wallet, and register the card you will pay with in order to get up to 750 points (worth $7.50 in gift cards). This is stackable with portal rewards (above).
1-800-Flowers: Amex Sync $15 off $50
If you have an American Express card, check out the “Offers For You” section when you log into your account. You’re likely to see the following:
If you apply that offer to your account, then you will automatically get a $15 statement credit if you use that Amex card to spend $50 or more at 1-800-Flowers. This is stackable with portal promotions and with Plink.
1-800-Flowers: Discover Extras $10 off $39.99
If you have a Discover card, log into your account and click on “ViewExtras” (near the bottom right of the home page). You may see an offer like this:
This is a great alternative to the Amex Sync offer in case you don’t have an Amex card or in the unlikely event that your total purchase comes to less than $50. This is stackable with portal promotions and with Plink.
Miscellaneous Others
- Amex Sync: ProFlowers, Spend $50, get $10 back (stack with portal offers, including 25% back at Shop Discover)
- Amex Sync: Godiva. Spend $50, get $7.50 back (stack with portal offers)
- Amex Sync: Wine Country Gift Baskets, Spend $39, get $10 back (no apparent portal offers)
- Find the best portal offers here: CashBackMonitor.
A note about flower / portal offers
When a portal offers miles or cash back for shopping for flowers or gifts, it is almost always just the base price of the flowers or gifts that earn rewards. The substantial shipping and handling charges are not including in the calculations. So, “30 miles per dollar” usually turns out to be considerably less than 30 miles per dollar based on the final bill. On the other hand, offers in which you are automatically paid based on a charge appearing on your credit card are based on the entire purchase price. This includes Plink, MasterCard Easy Savings, Discover Extras, and most Amex Sync deals (but not the FTD deal because that one applies an automatic 25% savings rather than an after-the-fact statement credit).
Amex Sync
For more about Amex Sync offers, please see this series of posts:
- Maximizing Amex Sync offers. Part 1: sync multiple cards
- Maximizing Amex Sync offers. Part 2: extreme savings
- Maximizing Amex Sync offers. Part 3: shopping elsewhere
- Maximizing Amex Sync offers. Part 4: forget shopping, get points and cash for free
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[…] there are an awful lot of promotions out there right now for Valentine’s Day flowers. Here’s one […]
As usual, great summary.
One finding: MasterPass gift card for FTD. see http://www.ftd.com/masterpass-ctg/product-masterpass
Around December of 2013, I made my first three times ever online flower orders from FTD to surprise my wife with my Chase Ink card. She was surprised twice indeed 🙂
why two? because there was a masterpass twice of $25 credit twice.
I shared about my experience in case you are interested. http://goo.gl/0gxPlM http://goo.gl/8il3JU
Cheers
It’s true that you sometimes have higher prices when you go through a portal, but its actually more complicated than that. I checked FTD and 1800Flowers.com with and without a portal for one particular bouquet each. With 1800Flowers, the prices were the same. With FTD, the prices were about 10% less without a portal. However, you can go through a discount link to FTD (like the Amex one) to save much more than 10%.
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So, as a general rule, check to find the best prices you can (through discount links, with discount codes, via cash back portals, etc.) and then compare that to the value of miles you get back. In the case of 30X miles, I’d be very willing to pay 20% more in exchange for those miles.
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All of that said, do keep in mind that it is usually far, far cheaper to go pickup flowers in person at a grocery store or discounter.
I know TrueBlue program also does 20 miles per $1 spent on FTD as well.
Agree with others above. Surprised you didn’t mentioned the usual higher prices for going through a miles portal for flowers.
I had spent some time researching, in reality it is cheaper to go through a different site (personally went with ProFlowers) using discount codes unless you’d like to pay greater than 1 cpm for going through a portal.
Hmm, I looked too, but found that at 30X I was basically buying miles for about .75 cents each by forgoing the best alternative discount. YMMV
Just go to the local grocery store for your roses and save 70% off of FTD’s ripoff prices.
That’s true. I originally had an intro saying basically that, but took it out when the post was getting too long!
The price is usually higher ($10 more) when you go thru a portal to earn miles.
Nice post. Heels First also has some addl. info.
http://heelsfirsttravel.boardingarea.com/2014/02/01/current-mileage-offers-valentines-day-flowers/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=current-mileage-offers-valentines-day-flowers
I posted a few weeks back that the FTD 30 mile per dollar deals with both United and American were available with ‘kickers’ — 250 additional miles with United, and for the American offer 200 additional miles for Citi co-brand cardholders.
See http://boardingarea.com/viewfromthewing/2014/01/12/best-current-miles-flowers-offers-30-miles-per-dollar-take-tax-deduction/