The American Airlines elite year now runs from March 1st through the end of February. This means that as this post publishes, those chasing elite status with American Airlines have just over a week left to achieve status that will last from March 1, 2025 through February 28, 2026. With a week to go, I find myself within reach of American Airlines Gold status. I’ve been given an offer to buy Gold status from American Airlines (spoiler alert: it’s an awful deal), but I can see an easy path that wouldn’t cost me much. Should I do it? Hopefully, writing this post will help me decide.
Current situation: 27.9K Loyalty Points and about to lose AAdvantage Platinum status
For context, I currently have American Airlines AAdvantage Platinum status, which I earned almost entirely through the shopping portal when American Airlines began counting most miles earned as Loyalty Points.
As a reminder, American moved away from status earned primarily through flight activity to a system that counts most miles earned from things like credit card spend, shopping portals, AAdvantage Hotels bookings, etc, as Loyalty Points. It is therefore possible (and potentially relatively easy) to earn American Airlines elite status without ever stepping on an American Airlines plane.
When this move to counting most credit card spend as 1 Loyalty Point per dollar spent and most shopping portal earnings as 1 Loyalty Point per redeemable mile earned first launched, I was pretty excited about how easy it was to earn American Airlines elite status. I pursued status even though I knew that I didn’t need it just because the pursuit was fun. However, as I knew back then, I didn’t need it and as such didn’t use it much. I therefore haven’t prioritized earning Loyalty Points over this past year. That said, I did use the benefits a few times and I wouldn’t mind having status again.
Last year, I upgraded my Barclays Aviator Red card to an Aviator Silver card in order to spend toward that card’s Companion Certificate, which allows the certificate holder to add two companions to a round trip economy class reservation for $99 + taxes each. Cardholders earn that certificate after $20,000 in purchases during a cardmember year. Notably, that card also offers a boost of 5,000 additional Loyalty Points after $20K in purchases in an elite year. I spent $20K during the elite year and earned the additional 5,000 Loyalty Points for a total of 25K Loyalty Points from credit card spend. Along with some other Loyalty points earned through the shopping portal, I now have almost 28,000 Loyalty Points.
That puts me just under 13,000 Loyalty Points shy of Gold status (or almost 50K short of Platinum status). Platinum status feels out of reach, but should I reach for Gold?
The AAdvantage eShopping portal has cooled
When American Airlines began offering Loyalty Points for a broad swath of activity, the American Airlines AAdvantage eShopping portal had tons of seemingly “hot” offers. Over time, the portal has really cooled.
In part, the problem has been that many of the more attractive offers have been reduced and/or opportunities at particular merchants have decreased. However, I have personally cooled considerably on AAdvantage eShopping in large part because targeted Capital One Shopping offers very frequently provide so much more value as to make the prospect of using AAdvantage eShopping feel really expensive. The ability to earn transferable points through Rakuten adds to the opportunity cost of choosing the AAdvantage eShopping portal.
As an example, while I originally expected that I’d likely earn a number of Loyalty Points with monthly orders from GiftCards.com, I’ve very frequently had targeted offers of between 8-18% back from Capital One Shopping, which has made it hard to consider earning 1-3 miles per dollar spent.
However, being within striking distance, I’m considering a few specific offers to bridge the gap and achieve Gold status.
The portal offers I could use to get to Gold
At the time of writing, there are three specific offers I’m considering that would yield a total of 13,700 Loyalty Points and as a result would get me to AAdvantage Gold status. All three are food delivery services.
How much would it cost me to trigger all three offers? Is it worth chasing status via these offers?
Nom Nom for 4,100 miles / Loyalty points
- The offer: 4,100 miles
- AAdvantage eShopping offer terms: Only eligible on first month of paid subscription. Only eligible for new customers.
Nom Nom is a dog food subscription service. While the site sells a wide range of one-off products, the terms at AAdvantage eShopping specifically state that the offer is “Only eligible on first month of paid subscription. Only eligible for new customers.”.
I went to Nom Nom and entered the details for a lightweight pup and the meal plan option they presented was as follows:
Annoyingly, it looks like the first delivery is 2 weeks of food, with subsequent deliveries billed and shipped every 4 weeks. As you can see, it quotes a cost of $22.47 per week after the trial. Don’t ask me how the first 2 weeks of food cost $59.94 before the “50% discount” if the plan costs $22.47 per week (which would be less than $45 for two weeks?), but I always enjoy the creative math that goes into making you think you’re getting a deal.
Because the terms stipulate that the offer is for the first month of a subscription but the first delivery is only two weeks of food, I assume that I’d probably end up on the hook for both the first two-week price shown above and the first 4-week shipment (which, by my math, would be about $90 plus tax). In the end, that should be about $140. Paying $140 for 4,100 miles isn’t a good price. This deal isn’t worth doing for the miles alone.
However, Stephen Pepper pointed out that he’d noticed some card-linked offers for Nom Nom when using Cardpointers. I later noticed the same with a tool I’ve been checking out called Savewise. There is both a Chase Offer good for $20 back on $20 or more and an Amex Offer out that’s good for $30 back on $100 or more. That would reduce my initial cost to $120.
In this case, I don’t value the dog food. My wife’s family has a dog, but it is an old dog with a pretty specialized diet. I’d probably just end up donating the food to an animal shelter, so if I did this deal I’d consider it to be buying miles at a cost of around 3c per mile. I’d only consider this deal if I valued reaching elite status.
Blue Apron for 4,800 miles / Loyalty Points
- AAdvantage eShopping offer: 4,800 miles / Loyalty Points
- AAdvantage eShopping terms: Only eligible on first month of paid subscription. Only eligible for new customers. Missing reward inquiries cannot be researched unless the subscription remains active for at least forty five (45) days.
Blue Apron is a meal delivery service. Out of the many meal delivery services we’ve tried, Blue Apron is the one that we’ve found to be most consistent and least exciting. That is to say that we almost always like the meals well enough to be satisfied with having it for dinner, but we’ve rarely ever been excited about a Blue Apron meal (and almost never had something that we wouldn’t have ever thought to cook for ourselves). The flavors have been a solid “fine”.
Ironically, though we’ve found most of our Blue Apron meals to be pretty boring, I value the food more highly because we rarely ever find it to be a waste. That said, it isn’t cheap.
The terms indicate that the offer is only valid on the first month of a paid subscription, only for new members, and only one subscription per Loyalty account member. I haven’t tried signing up many times, but my wife and I have subscribed separately at different times and earned the Loyalty Points through my same AAdvantage account more than once. If I did this again, I’d probably sign up a relative and have the boxes sent to their house and I’d expect the offer will very likely credit.
However, as you can see, the first order would cost $33.57. At the bottom, it notes that I’d have to pay $57.95 weekly after the promotion ends. The good news is that the there’s a discount of 30% off for the first 5 weeks. I’m not sure that shipping is free after the first delivery, so I’m going to assume that Week 1 costs $33.57 and weeks 2-5 cost $43.56 each. The terms require a month of subscription but note that missing mileage claims can’t be made for 45 days (which is a little more than 6 weeks). I’m going to assume that it won’t take 45 days for the miles to post, but I’ll conservatively guess that I need to pay for 6 weeks of meal delivery as follows:
- Week 1 = $33.57
- Weeks 2-5 = $174.24 ($43.56 x 4)
- Week 6 = $57.95
That’s a total of $265.76. Again, this isn’t a good deal for the miles alone. Keep in mind though that if the miles post right away and the free shipping keeps up, I could theoretically cancel after a month and the deal would only cost me $134.28. It might get a bit better yet with a Chase Offer that’s good for 15% back up to $13.50. I’d only expect to get that on the first purchase, so it would only make a difference of about $5, but that’s better than nothing.
Again, that’s not a deal for the miles alone. However, the cost here isn’t completely unreasonable if I value both the miles and the groceries. The food being delivered adds considerable value since it eliminates some time spent meal planning / going to the grocery store / etc.
Astute readers may notice that I’m basing my numbers on the lowest-level packages: 2 meals per week that serve 2 people. My wife and I have two kids, so that wouldn’t feed the whole family. That’s true and it’s fine. Our youngest has a very limited palate anyway. We’d either just make something simple and separate for the kids or use these meals for lunches since we both work from home.
Hello Fresh for 4,800 miles / Loyalty Points
- AAdvantage eShopping offer: 4,800 miles / Loyalty Points
- AAdvantage eShopping terms: Only eligible for new customers. Subscription must be active for a minimum of 60 days.. Eligible in customers current delivery area only.
Years ago, my wife signed up to be a recipe tester for Hello Fresh. That was a pretty sweet gig while it lasted: they would send her recipes and give her Amazon gift cards worth the estimated cost of the groceries to make them. She’d then cook them and provide pictures and a review of the meals. While that’s obviously different than subscribing to a meal service, we enjoyed essentially getting groceries for “free” and being forced outside the normal routine to try some different recipes.
We then subscribed to Hello Fresh once or twice when they ran good deals. We often found Hello Fresh to have the most interesting recipes of the meal services that we tried — we often ended up making something that we wouldn’t have made otherwise, and at times it was a huge hit (there are a few things my wife makes to this day that came from Hello Fresh meal kits). However, this was balanced by meals that we didn’t particularly enjoy — and, unfortunately, by the inconvenience of quite a few times receiving meal kits late or with already-spoiled produce. That was a bit of an annoyance since we sometimes didn’t go shopping because we knew we had a meal kit coming….and then we had to go shopping because it wasn’t all usable.
That said, as noted above with Blue Apron, I do value the convenience of a meal kit when it saves the time and effort to meal plan and grocery shop. It’s been years since we last tried Hello Fresh, so I’d be happy to give it another go.
As you can see, the first box total would be $34.47. It goes on to note that we’ll receive an additional $91.92 off across our next 8 boxes. Assuming that’s $11.49 off per box evenly split over those 8 boxes, it means that those deliveries would presumably cost $56.45 (which is the $56.95 pre-discounted total shown above minus $11.49 per box from the discount, plus $10.99 shipping since I assume that’s only free on the first box).
The terms indicate that the subscription here must be active for 60 days, which means we’d have to pay for 8 weeks. The total cost would then be:
- $34.47 for the first box
- $395.15 for the next 7 boxes ($56.45 per box)
That’s a total of $429.62 for 32 total servings. That’s considerably more expensive than Blue Apron, both in part because of the longer subscription term but also because it comes out to around $13.43 per serving. If subsequent boxes still feature free shipping, chop about $2.75 off per serving, but it’s still expensive.
The good news is that there’s an Amex Offer that’s good for $10 back on $50 or more that can be used twice, so I’d be able to save at least $20 over the course of the deliveries (maybe more if I could switch the card on file a couple of times).
Again, I value the convenience of having the food pre-portioned, packed, and delivered to my doorstep, but not enough to justify the full cost here. After accounting for ~$60 worth of miles, I’d look at this as being more than $200 in cost over where I’d call it close enough to even money with what I’d ordinarily spend anyway.
Adding it all up
In total, my worst-case out of pocket would be $835.38 for what would be 13,700 redeemable miles, 56 servings of food, some dog food that I’ll likely donate, and the resulting AAdvantage Gold status. Keep in mind that’s a worst-case scenario — if I’m able to cancel Blue Apron after 4 deliveries and/or if I get free shipping on multiple deliveries with either service, and after triggering a few card-linked offers, my real world cost may drop by $100-$200 or even a bit more
Is that worth it? It’s hard to say.
The food certainly isn’t worthless — we’ll eat it. If I’m willing to pay $4 per serving, that’s about $225 worth of food. If we generously value the miles at 1.5c per mile, it’s about $200 worth of miles. That means that I’d be over-paying for these deals by somewhere between $200-$400 depending on the real-world cost and card-linked offers.
Is having AAdvantage Gold status worth $400 to me? The math gets murky.
AAdvantage Gold benefits
I’d enjoy the following benefits with AAdvantage Gold status.
Things like complimentary upgrades sound nice, but don’t feel very likely with lowly AAdvantage Gold status. I don’t book paid flights often enough for the additional miles on paid flights to matter to me.
Key benefits for me would include the complimentary preferred seats at time of booking and Main Cabin Extra at check-in. I’d much rather be able to snag Main Cabin Extra at the time of booking, but that’s a Platinum-level benefit. Preferred Seats are generally just closer to the front of the economy class cabin. My wife doesn’t prefer to sit closer to the front unless we’re getting more legroom, so the seating benefit would be lukewarm for family trips.
While we almost always check a bag, my wife and I both have the Aviator Silver card, so we already get free checked baggage.
I do appreciate priority check-in, particularly at those times when there’s a long check-in line and we’re flying in economy class.
But do I value any of those things highly enough to pay as much as $400 for them? Probably not.
In fact, as I wrote about which of these benefits I value, I remembered that I still have the ability to choose a reward for having earned 15,000 Loyalty Points. My reward choices include Priority Privileges (like check-in and security) and Group 4 boarding for one trip, 5 Preferred Seat coupons, or 1,000 Loyalty Points. I could therefore choose Preferred Seat coupons for my whole family if I thought that would be important one time this year.
Alternatively, it dawns on me that I could choose the 1,000 Loyalty Points, getting myself to 28,900 Loyalty Points. That would mean I’d be 11,100 Loyalty Points from status. The Blue Apron and Hello Fresh offers would yield 9,600 points. Perhaps I could find a cheaper way to earn another 1,500 Loyalty Points rather than the Nom Nom deal.
Sill, I think that the net cost here is likely to be greater than if I just purchased Preferred Seats (or perhaps even Main Cabin Extra seats) the next time I want them rather than chasing elite status.
American’s bad offer to buy status
Noted at the beginning, American Airlines has targeted me for an offer to buy my way to AAdvantage Gold or AAdvantage Platinum status. I received a notification in the app and had to log in to see my targeted offers to buy Gold or Platinum status:
Keep in mind that the above prices only include status. As you can see, it would cost me about as much to buy status as it would to buy status, 13,700 redeemable miles, and a whole bunch of meal kits. I couldn’t see buying Gold or Platinum status from American Airlines for these cash prices. I certainly wouldn’t part with enough miles for a business class ticket to most regions of the world in order to keep Gold status (and I don’t find the Platinum offer any more compelling).
Bottom line
When I started out this post, I thought for sure that I’d go after AAdvantage Gold status. I figured that it probably wouldn’t make a ton of financial sense to do so, but I figured that the cost would be close enough to make it worthwhile simply to be able to access the benefits. However, after running the numbers, it just doesn’t make sense to me. I could buy the associated “benefits” for the few times per year when I’d need them for far less than my cost even after accounting for the value of the food I’d receive. I think I’ll let my AAdvantage status slip to “none” when the new member year starts on March 1st.
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There are a few things for which the AA portal has good rates. But it has not been enough to sniff Gold for me. It also is a bummer that SimplyMiles has such little utility. I think AA dining is the only thing that is really generating miles and LPs for me.
On the benefits end I am beginning to feel like there’s less and less upside to American Airlines status for those traveling with a family like Nick is, not just at Gold but at higher levels as well.
The main benefits status gives that you can’t get holding most co-branded cards are free checked bags on shorter international itineraries (Canada, Mexico, Caribbean, etc.) and priority check-in & screening. And you can get the latter if you pony up for the AA Executive card from Citi.
I made the shopping portal push to reach Platinum for the next year but the lack of MCE seats on flights we’ve taken and that are coming up has me pretty uninterested in going for it again. If you do a lot of transcons, Hawaii, or international I can see it being more useful. AA flies 737s and A319/A320s on most routes under 4 hours (or regional jets) and there just aren’t many MCE seats on those flights.
For those close to status, there’s a promo for 2500 aadvantage points for a pointsyeah subscription
Enjoy earning lots of MR points through Rakuten and Capital One miles through Capital One Offers while it lasts.
Nick is spot on, that when AA dumped elite qualifying miles/dollars/segments and went to Loyalty Miles, the offers through AAdvantage EShopping portal were monumental. I was able to earn Gold partially through the EShopping portal contributing about half the miles i needed. However, that was surely a loss leader by AA to get people tied into the AAdvantage ecosystem and now I find the AAdvantage portal offering about the same payout at most portals run by Cartera.
Having said that, it makes absolutely no sense for Amex to be selling MR points to Rakuten for 1 cent per point (as they give you a choice of cash back or MR points at that ratio). Yes, some idiots cash out for gift cards or travel and get less than one cent a point. However, when someone transfer points to partners, they have to losing money unless they (MR) are buying points/miles at 1 cent per point/mile.
Ditto with Capital One, they have to be not making any money and more likely losing money on some of the Capital One offers. With Capital One transferrable miles being the new kid on the block of transferrable currencies along with Bilt, they have to be more aggressive in promotions. Having said that, I strongly suspect they are selling miles for less than 1 center per mile in some circumstances and then turning around and buying points/miles at more than 1 cent per mile. The super duper offers through Capital One Offers are living on borrowed time much as the AAdvantage EShopping portals back in the day.
I don’t think that Gold status is enough for just one traveler. If you travel with family it might be. If you fly economy it might be worth getting an extra legroom seat for 4 that would otherwise cost $80 – $200 per person.
What’s the site for Savewise? I’m not able to find it….
It’s a Chrome extension https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/savewise-cashback-rebates/mmdidpkgkknffjbnnbpcdpchhbmdmbga?hl=en
Thanks, Stephen. Will that interfere with my Cap One Shopping extension that I already use?
It shouldn’t do.
I’m about 7,000 points away from maintaining Platinum. I didn’t realize I was going to be so close or I would have done things differently. I’m not an AA professional (originally got status through a promo). You think the math is better for me as a Platinum to spend $400-500 to have Platinum over Gold? Is the hotel portal reliable?
I’ve had Gold status for the last couple of years and it’s pretty worthless. If you really want to save money, learn how to cook instead of using those meal services. You will save a fortune.
To me, a 12k head-start on qualification in 2025 is worth more than gold for 2025. The cross over point might be if I only needed 5k LP.
Platinum with AA is where things start to become interesting since you get benefits on other oneWorld carriers as well. If you had Platinum this year and didn’t find it worthwhile to requalify at that level you probably won’t find a lot of use in Gold.
Last year I was denied a second Blue Apron bonus on the same AA account, so I wouldn’t assume you can get it more than once. Only worth it if you can stack the order with a credit card offer so that your initial out of pocket costs close to nothing.
I was worried about this potentially happening and have hopped around between meal kit services and streaming bonuses to avoid duplicates. A lot of bonuses have that “once per loyalty account” wording in it.
If that is consistently enforced across all these higher bonus offers then you’ve only got one to two years you can lean on AAdvantage EShopping heavily before the most lucrative offers are off the table. The meal kit, streaming & phone service, and Motley Fool offers give so many points with options to stack SimplyMiles and Citi/AMEX/Chase offers that they can be worth doing just to buy AA miles for under 1cpp with status being a cherry on top.
I think Nom Nom is being very sneaky with its T&Cs. Sadly, I did subscribe to the two week trial a week ago and I am beginning to doubt that my regular purchase (that will start in early March) will count towards this year’s qualification (assuming it counts at all).
If the meal kits have no value to you, just do a ghost stay through AA hotels. I have found $150 hotel stays that earn 10k-15k and no requirement to remember to pause/cancel, etc… like others in the meal kit universe, I just pause after the first shipment until my points post or the minimum time has elapsed.
I said in the post that the meal kits *are* valuable to me, just not the dog food. Good technique though.
The other (a)advantage of doing AAdvantage Hotel “stays” (real or imagined) for points is that they post reliably — unlike so many anecdotal reports I’ve heard about the EShopping portal.
I have had my eye out for this after hearing Greg casually say it on a podcast a few weeks ago but have yet to find outsized value… alas the hunt continues
Can you give more info on the ‘ghost’ $150 hotel stay that earns 10-15k? Thanks
Question about AA status – if you earn status in, say, August, is it good only through Feb 2026? Or Feb 2027?
For the remainder of the current qualification year plus all of the following qualification year. So, February 2027.
Given this, Ben at OMAAT has written about the strategy of qualifying early in the cycle every other year. That is, qualifying in March/April of year 1, it lasting through al of year 2, re-qualifying in March/April of year 3, it lasting through all of year 4, etc.
The concept might be applied to any loyalty program.
Best of luck.
In theory, yes. But it’s hard to get 40k LP in a month or two, even by MSing on the aviator silver
Maybe hard for you (and, generally, for me as well). But it’s a mistake to figure that everyone’s situation is the same as yours. If you need hotels in that month, for instance (and aren’t particularly brand loyal) it’s pretty easy to generate tens of thousands of points. Other people have other ways to generate lots of spend, either organically or through manufacture.
Nick, how often do you fly American? How much would it cost if you were to pay up for better seat selection (or whatever)? How does that cost compare to the unnecessary spending you would do to obtain those benefits via tier status?
I said in the post that it would cost me less, which is why I said I’m not going to go after status.