Groupon launches mileage earning partnerships

Groupon has launched a new program whereby you can sign up to receive a promo code to earn miles or points on your Groupon purchases with the following programs: Alaska Mileage Plan, American Airlines AAdvantage, JetBlue TrueBlue, United Airlines, Choice Privileges, IHG Rewards Club, or La Quinta Returns. The terms state that these will not stack with portal rewards, though time will tell whether or not that is the case.

The Deal

• Earn 5 airline miles or 10 hotel points per $1 spent on Groupon Local
• Earn 4 airline miles or 8 hotel points per $1 spent on Groupon Getaways
• Earn 3 airline miles or 6 hotel points per $1 spent on Groupon Goods
• New Groupon customers whose first purchase on Groupon is a Local offer that is $30 or more before taxes will receive an additional 1K airline miles or 2K hotel points in addition to the earning structure above
• Direct link to get started

Key Terms

• You must sign up for and use the promo code associated with your loyalty program of choice
• You will receive your points or miles within 4-6 weeks of your purchase
• Select deals and items may be excluded (you will need to check the fine print of a deal — if it says it is not eligible for promo codes or discounts, it will not be eligible for this offer)
• Link to full terms and conditions

Quick Thoughts

Upon clicking the link under “The Deal” above, you’ll click the button that says “Get Started”. Groupon will prompt you to choose which loyalty program with which you would like to earn miles and points.

You’ll then be prompted to enter your loyalty account number – presumably so Groupon knows which account to credit when you use the coupon code.

The fine print in the above screen shot explicitly states that this “cannot be stacked” with other discounts and whatnot — “including but not limited to any third party cash back and/or loyalty programs”. So that makes it pretty clear that this isn’t intended to stack with portal payouts. However, we know that terms aren’t always enforced exactly as written.

For what it’s worth, the coupon code given when you sign up isn’t exactly unique — I wonder if it might at least work with the given airline’s shopping portal (or if perhaps the portal rewards for Groupon will move to requiring this coupon code and therefore payouts will become a standard 5x at each of the airlines).

Of course, the other big downside here is that this is a coupon code — so you won’t be able to pair it with other Groupon coupon codes. That will surely make this much less valuable, though there have been times when I have needed something found on Groupon and there hasn’t been an available coupon. This could come in handy for those purchases in the future as I value 5 Alaska miles more than any of the current portal payouts given the relative difficulty of collecting Alaska miles in comparison….except for the payout with the Chase Freedom:

If it stacks, all the better.

Bottom line

It’s interesting to see a new partnership like this between Groupon and select airline and hotel loyalty programs. Though it says it won’t stack with portal rewards, I will be making a test purchase today to see if this works and will update our Laboratory results when I find out whether or not it worked.

H/T: Mr. Lance H.

Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.