Update #5 12/30/21: This morning, miles from the SimplyMiles offers have deposited into American Airlines accounts (including both the base miles and bonus 5x). Oddly, the SimplyMiles side shows 0 miles earned and lacks any information about past transactions, but you can see each transaction in your American Airlines account (backdated to the date of purchase / charge).
As I expected, the actual offer posted as “base” miles and the 5x portion posted as a bonus. In the new program starting on 1/1, I expect that base miles will count toward status (note: the miles from this offer will not, but base miles earned from purchases from 1/1/22 onward should count). If the 40x rate continues for Conservation International, it may be worth making a donation on 1/1 to earn 2022 Loyalty Points. Keep in mind though that Platinum Pro and Executive Platinum choice benefits still require 30 segments on American Airlines and partners (though award tickets on flights marketed and operated by American Airlines should count).
Update #4 12/29/21: No sooner had the bonus miles reappeared than they disappeared again. It therefore seems like there’s something still wonky with the SimplyMiles website, so hopefully the miles return permanently soon.
Update #3 12/29/21: As mentioned a couple of days ago, people had seen bonus miles post to their SimplyMiles account, but then account balances were zeroed out. Many people are now seeing those miles credited back to their SimplyMiles accounts, so we’ll hopefully see those balances reflected in AAdvantage accounts soon.
In even better news, some people whose transactions from the early morning on December 14 before the promo ended that hadn’t previously tracked with the 5x bonus are now seeing that bonus on their accounts.
Update #2 12/27/21: Note that sometime this evening the pending miles disappeared, putting mileage balances back to zero. Don’t panic; I actually find this encouraging. While many of us had seen the lion’s share of our miles pending this afternoon, many people who had transactions during the morning hours of 12/14 did not yet see bonus miles and some of us were missing 5x multipliers from smaller transactions that should have qualified. Based on the screen shots from the many people who had pending miles today, SimplyMiles has clearly tracked many purchases correctly. At this point, my assumption is that they are figuring out how to rectify those miles that were missing without needing to field a million individual mission miles tickets. I would bet that these miles come back within a few days — clearly American’s intention isn’t to zero out everyone’s miles. Just be patient and relax — all signs point to this deal being honored as expected.
Update 12/27/21: The pending miles from these transactions are beginning to show on the SimplyMiles site. This happened within the last hour or so as I had just checked around noon and did not yet see these miles, but then a reader commented to say that they were seeing miles from a CVS transaction so I checked again and found the miles pending from most of our charges, including from Conservation International. Note that miles are not yet available in our American Airlines accounts. That is expected — it will likely take some amount of days or weeks before the miles move over. Still, it’s great news to see that this tracked automatically and as expected.
Note that both my wife and I see the miles pending on the SimplyMiles site. She donated on 12/11 before we posted and I donated on Monday 12/13. In both cases, you’ll see that the miles are under two transactions — one for the initial 40x and one for the extra 200x. I’m not sure why the odd amounts rather than even numbers (no idea where the extra 200 / 100 miles came from).
I’ll add a note from my account, I made a purchase at GoPro on 12/13 (before the deal ended), but it shows up in my SimplyMiles account dated 12/15 and therefore it did not get the bonus 5x. I assume this is because GoPro didn’t ship until 12/15 and therefore probably didn’t finalize the charge until shipping. I’m not terribly surprised about that and would imagine that other readers may be in the same boat on various website that didn’t charge the card during the promo window. That stinks, but I doubt there is any recourse. In my case, we got enough of a deal that I’m certainly not going to complain over a few thousand miles more, but I might feel differently in different circumstances. Hopefully many readers are seeing a lot of miles today!
If you don’t yet see anything pending, don’t panic. This changed within the past hour and I wouldn’t be surprised if AA is somehow processing these in batches. If you still don’t see anything in a few days, it might be time to follow up with SimplyMiles.
If you got in on the American Airlines AAdvantage SimplyMiles offer for 240x miles per dollar donated to Conservation International, congratulations: View from the Wing reports that the deal is being honored for those who made purchases by 10am Central time on Tuesday, December 14, 2021. This. Is. Epic.
Note: These miles have not yet posted to any accounts. SimplyMiles offers take up to 15 business days to post, so it is possible that these miles won’t post for several weeks (and when they post, we expect you will receive the base 40x miles first and the bonus miles later). To my knowledge, there is no sort of email that anything tracked. You just have to wait. Trust me, when the miles start posting to accounts, the chorus of joyous screams will be loud enough to hear from wherever you stand.
Also note that in the past, SimplyMiles offers have taken some time to post but are backdated to the transaction date. In other words, it is certainly possible that the miles won’t post to your AAdvantage account until 2022, but don’t expect them to count as 2022 loyalty points. All of Stephen’s transactions from the 2019 version of this deal posted to his American Airlines account backdated to the date of purchase. We have no reason to expect any different this time. The only thing to do now is wait and see, but things certainly look good.
Read the original post here along with updates: 5x on SimplyMiles offers (awesome deals). To be clear, this deal was pulled on Tuesday, December 14th. It is no longer active.
With each passing day, I have been feeling more confident that American Airlines and Mastercard were working out the details about how to honor the deal. If they didn’t intend to honor this, I expected that word would have come sooner as it takes a writer a lot less time to draft a statement than it does to negotiate the cost (and payment terms) of a transaction worth millions, or more likely billions, of airline miles.
And today we got confirmation that the deal is done. Gary reports that American Airlines released the following statement to him:
We are pleased to credit AAdvantage accounts with miles for those customers who activated the SimplyMiles 5X promotion and made purchases and donations by 10 a.m. CT on Tuesday, December 14, 2021. We are excited that members are able to use the SimplyMiles platform to earn AAdvantage miles on every day purchases.
That is absolutely amazing and hands down the best case scenario (and in my mind the “correct” answer). It was at approximately 10am central time on Tuesday that the SimplyMiles site had mostly ceased functioning, with most people unable to log in (and even on an account where I was logged in I couldn’t sync offers). By 11am central time, a banner displayed that the promotion was over.
This means that all those who took advantage of the offers while the promotion was live should expect to see the miles with what I imagine is one small caveat: if you ordered products (whether a meal kit from Blue Apron or a computer from Best Buy), your credit card may not get charged until the item ships. I am just making an educated guess, but I would bet that those items for which a charge was not yet finalized to your card before 10am central time on Tuesday, you may be out of luck.
However, the headline offer here was absolutely donations to Conservation International at what was a total of 240 miles per dollar donated. My wife made a $5,000 donation on Saturday the 11th before we published the deal and I made a further donation on Monday December 13th after American Airlines confirmed the deal to View from the Wing, so in total my wife and I are expecting around 1.5 million American Airlines miles between those donations and the other deals we activated and used while the promotion was live. That is incredible and will represent a nice slush fund of miles at a price of 0.4166c per mile.
In my opinion, there are several key takeaways from this deal:
- You have to strike while the iron is hot. We have often said that when a deal sounds too good to be true, that often means that you need to jump immediately. There was some risk that this wouldn’t pan out, but in many cases the risk was minimal and the reward was huge (especially for those considering relatively small donations — this was 24,000 miles for every $100 donated!).
- It pays to read the comments. On this weekend’s podcast, we discuss the rationale behind not headlining the 240x offer when we first published, but one of the things we mention on the show is that the 240x angle was identified in the comments soon after publication on Saturday December 11th. It is also worth following multiple good blogs in this space: I later found out that Bougie Miles actually highlighted the 240x offer before anyone else on Friday, December 10th.
- It is worth signing up everyone in your family for loyalty programs, promotions, shopping portals, etc. I nearly made a critical error here: we only had my wife signed up for SimplyMiles. New users didn’t see the charity deal immediately. Luckily, the deal lasted long enough for me to get in on it also but it certainly may have died sooner. This is why it makes sense to make sure that everyone is signed up for this stuff because you never know when a smoking deal is going to come around.
- Sometimes programs do the right thing. There were a lot of cynics here because we have become accustomed to loyalty programs devaluing or not honoring promotions as anticipated, but American Airlines and Mastercard showed that they understood the right thing to do and a willingness to do it. Kudos to them for getting it done.
Overall, this was an absolutely incredible opportunity. Those who got in scored American Airlines miles at less than half a cent per mile — some in unbelievable quantities.
It is amazing to see this opportunity honored. It reminds me of the crazy Iberia 90,000 Avios offer a couple of years ago, but better. I highlight that opportunity intentionally: that was another offer where the deal was pretty clear but many skeptics questioned it because it sounded too good to be true — yet it was ultimately honored. Now add this American Airlines SimplyMiles offer to the pile of amazing opportunities that come to those who hustle to get on a deal while the gettin’ is good.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
I’ve still had nothing post as of 1/11 (not even the 40x). I made two transactions w/Conservational International on 12/13. SimplyMiles has ghosted me when I’ve tried to contact them and I’ve gotten the run-around from both AA and MasterCard. Does anyone have thoughts about how to escalate?
Same here. I’ve contacted both SimplyMiles and American twice each, and have heard nothing back. I have confirmation emails that my purchase qualified for 40x and was during the 5x offer, but instead of 240x miles, I was only credited 1x miles for the basic purchase. Obviously, there are quite a lot of us in this boat. Greg & Nick, any suggestions for how to pursue this with SimplyMiles or AA?
No, I don’t know. Maybe contact Gary at View from the Wing since he seems to have contacts there.
Larry, Nick — please post back if you hear anything. I’m in the same boat.
After my third trouble ticket with simply miles, I finally got an email response yesterday. I provided my email confirmation on the orders and my credit card screen shot showing when my mastercard was authorized (December 13). I am waiting to hear back. This was for other vendors, not the 240x, but if you have not been able to email simply miles directly, you may try emailing them with your receipts to see if that will get it resolved. Bad customer service to ignore hundreds if not thousands of customers. customerservice@support.simplymiles.com
Nothing posted as of 1/6. Checked multiple times. I have two emails when I made the transactions, one in 12/12 and one on 12/16. So far, no progress.
It’s now 1/14 and my $100 charged on 12/12 still hasn’t received miles.
Is it because I don’t have the same voice like you guys do here? My complaints aren’t being received by SimplyMiles and I’m very discouraged and not sure what to do.
Any advice?
Mine still haven’t posted to either side as of 1/3/22
Did anyone else do the Vinesse offer? Did your Simply Miles post?
My order was tracked on AAdvantage eShopping, but I’m still missing the Simply Miles. I tried to send a message to customer service, but I get an “access denied” error. All my other offers from December already posted.
The Conservation International 40x offer is gone now.
My miles posted and just booked RT to St Kitts for 20,000 miles. Park Hyatt as well.
My miles posted, unfortunately it’s only 30,000 miles…lol. I didn’t want to risk too much and only contributed $125. I wanted to contribute $300 but didn’t want to take the risk it would not work. Oh well. 30K is sitll a decent amount.
Awesome! My miles on AA posted as well. All 500,000! Now hopefully I can actually use my miles. Most awards show skyrocketed from previous levels on routes that I normally go.
Congratulations, you can now attempt to use your miles on flights that will be cancelled due to all the AA employees getting sick from Omicron.
Wish I had all the points & credits Simply Miles, AA, & Uber posted then yanked this week, Y2K had nothing on this mess
Correct amount of AA miles were posted in AA account after reading Nick’s new post.
It’s kind of hilarious that (as of this morning) SimplyMiles shows 0 miles earned, but AA.com shows the full miles posted!
Notable that the non-5x portion is shown as base miles so if 40x for Conservation International continues indefinitely, we’ll be able to earn Exec Plat status each year (starting in 2022) with a $5K donation. That’s a very big IF, though. The 40x offer is supposed to expire 12/31/21.
Good point!
So, it’s interesting to see how the miles post. For a $250 conservation donation, 10k posted as “base miles,” which I think will qualify for loyalty points according to guidance from AA in the last couple of days. The rest posted as bonus. Still, if they continue 40x in a couple of days, I probably will make another donation to qualify for loyalty points. It is going to be interesting tracking what posts as bonus and what posts as base.
Yeah, agreed. 40x posted as base and that could be kind of interesting. If I understand things correctly, a $750 donation on 1/1 should theoretically get you 30K miles and AA Gold status. That’s not a highly valuable status, but it does significantly reduce your path to other levels. Similarly, it could be worth donating more for someone who values the incremental benefits — though keep in mind that you still need 30 segments on American or partners to get the choice benefits at Platinum Pro and Executive Platinum.
At 40x I would probably feel comfortable deducting 60 percent of the donation value too.
So If you donate $3125 on 1/1 and 40x holds, will you get Platinum Pro (125K loyalty points), even if you do not fly 30 segments?
And is it worth it ? or choice benefits is really where the action is
Thanks
Raghu
Yes that is correct on all fronts. That’s why I’m only lukewarm on this. If I knew I would fly 30 segments in 2023, I’d probably do it as you’d both end up with the benefits while flying those 30 segments and get the choice benefit. But I’ve never flown 30 AA segments in a single year and current developments don’t have me feeling bullish on flying AA more often than ever in 2022.
All my CI donation miles* have posted to my AAdvantage FF account
*”Simply earned Miles”
Same here, no others just yet.
All my miles posted to my AA account overnight. 🙂
points posted to my AA account at 1:00am central, but 60K short of what I was supposed to have received…
The points are now showing in my aa account.
All?
Yes everything except the cvs offer which did not ship until later. Should have picked it up.
Someone at AA has a bet with someone at SimplyMiles about how many posts they can make you publish 😀
Is that it? I thought they might be trying induce heart attacks to reduce the payout.
My 1.2 million showed up again this morning and now gone again???? WTF
I just logged in today. I don;t see any miles. Mine posted on 27th, then disappeared.
Nothing after that
Yuppy!! The miles posted to my AA account as published here. Simply miles shows nothing (I don’t care), the final destination is what matters.
Donated for 240x offer ~ 9 pm Pacific on 13th. Nothing yet.
Ready, willing and able to dispute if they try to weasel out.
Good luck with your forthcoming dispute. You might want to check with those who “Rode The AA Train” a couple years back, and see how their post-smackdown disputes went before you start packing for that flight to Male.
Fact is, AA can and will claw back points and close accounts and ban you from their AAdvantage program when they decide someone has played them for suckers with a “too-good-to-be-true” deal (even if those playing have a reasonable basis to believe they did nothing wrong). There was a lot of that going around exactly 2 years ago.
I don’t pretend to know how this will end up (and I have no skin in the game). Those who went big on this may come out happy and smug. Or they may be left with their accounts closed and nothing to show for it all but receipts for lots of “donations” and end up howling at the moon in outrage. Nobody should be shocked at either outcome. Time will tell.
Thankfully I don’t have to find out; the miles posted in my case.
Nick, you’re getting whipsawed on this issue. Miles DID re-post but then disappeared YET AGAIN three hours later. I mentioned in a comment to a different post that another AA web site had a banner notice saying that it was undergoing system maintenance and points-related information was subject to inaccuracies. Bad timing.
It is probably best if everyone takes a deep breath and remembers that the offer’s terms and conditions said 8 weeks to post. Once points post to Simply Miles, they will post to one’s AAdvantage account within 30 days. If anyone feels this is unfair, the person lacks gratitude that AA and MC are honoring this offer.
Yeah, I saw that. I’m actually off today so Greg or Stephen made this last update and must not have seen that the miles had re-disappeared. They’ll update again, thanks.
Veruca Salt (from Willy Wonka) got in on the deal. About her points, she said, “But I want it nooowww.” It would seem that Veruca — like so many other readers — hasn’t been following the story or anyone else’s comments.
A dissappearing act that would make even Houdini say “Bravo”
miles have been added back.. same amount as before.
disappeared again.. LOL
Adding a DP: miles from the morning of 12/14 have posted correctly as well. This. Is. Awesome.
Same here with correctly posted early morning 12/14 transaction
12/29 update — disappearing miles have reposted on SimplyMiles’ webpage. Whew!
Mine too YAY!
Get ready for a massive devaluation if MC/SM honors the ultra high rollers with no limit. I know Greg doesn’t use AA but some of us don’t live in a DL hub.
This promotion had a set number of miles allocated to it to begin with. The fact that it went to a smaller number of people and ended early is not going to cause inflation/devaluation (at least not any more than it would have caused if the donation option never existed).
I agree with you if they stop with their original mile pool.
It doesn’t seem like they’ll do that though, since SM posted a banner about honoring purchases up to a certain date.
Bought a $250 delta airlines gift card from Best Buy around 1 pm on Tuesday est. the banner on the site said “the 5x deal has ended” decided to skip the donation but I had wanted to buy the gift card regardless. good news is 21,000 AAdvantage miles posted today on that purchase. A win is a win.
Also had my miles show up correctly as earned in my Simplymiles account earlier today and now they’re gone.
Multiple reports of this happening today.
lucky. Tried signing up for SimplyMiles acct w/ my AA # and never could it get it to work. Too late on P2.
I also lost my 1.2 million miles – WTF
And now all the points/transactions that were showing earlier today are gone.
my correct 240x miles showed up a couple of hours ago but i just checked again now and all of the transactions and miles are gone from simplymiles and no change to my aa account. i am sure it is just a hiccup. they wouldnt have posted if they hadnt planned on delivering.
All the pending transactions have disappeared for me too.
me three
Same. Easy come, easy go.
Mine only posted for 1x without the 5x. Took screenshots with banner still live but did it on the last day @ 7:30 AM EST. Should I be concerned?
Hopefully they’re doing this in stages. It seems reasonable to me that they are first crediting purchases made during the dates where the offer was valid all day long. Then, separately (hopefully), they’ll go through the ones that squeaked in on the last day.
Nick – any idea if a non-AAdvantage Mastercard has worked for the BestBuy offer as the terms of that offer specifically named an AAdvantage Mastercard. Thanks
Yes, I got the Best Buy offer and I don’t even have an AAdvantage Mastercard.
Though I will add that the terms of that offer *did not* mention the AAdvantage Mastercard in my account nor in my wife’s. I don’t have an AAdvantage Mastercard, she does, neither of us had anything in the terms about needing to use an AAdvantage Mastercard. Some readers reported that (and they copied and pasted the terms, so I believe that it truly did say that for some people), but those terms did not exist on the offer for us.
I don’t know for sure how it would have worked if you do have an AAdvantage Mastercard and had those terms and used something else, but I strongly suspect that the AAdvantage Mastercard wasn’t really required.
Thanks for your quick reply. You think it will trigger on in-store GC purchases
Thanks Greg and Nick. Mine posted as well. I also did the in store Target , I paid $52 with taxes (at 8.25%, the cost of gods was < $50), but 5X posted any way 52 * 2 = 104 and then another 520
So taxes does count towards > 50
Thanks
Raghu
My purchases at 9:14 CT are tracking as 1x points
Mine too 🙁
It is going to be interesting to see if the conservation 40x gets renewed and if simply miles points end up being counted as loyalty points 1:1. Even at a mere 40x, it really puts buying up to status levels in play, and you can do some good for the environment. Especially if one itemizes and makes a decision with a CPA that the value of miles is such that you can take a healthy deduction even with 40x.
Good point!
Since the value you received is more than the donation, I would not think you can take a deduction.
I don’t think you understood my post. The question is whether at 40x this would be good even without the 5x multiplier to earn loyalty points next year. At 40x, I would feel very comfortable taking a tax deduction because the value of the miles would not be equal the contribution. I agree that at 240x you cannot take a deduction.
Oh yes, I was not reading your comment carefully. 40x yes
Bravo! What a win for you!
Made my donation at 11:37PM Eastern on 12/13 and the 40X and 200X are showing on my account as of right now.
Got my 96k! It was a decent risk/reward play. Thanks to FM for giving us the heads up. I was already enrolled in SMiles, but didn’t realize what a deal the donation was until you guys posted second time. Everyone ought to be wishing you the best in the New Year. Thanks again.
Saw your post and check simplymiles. The miles are there! Hooray. Thank you Nick and Greg.
I have 240,024!
Anyone else notice that the Conservation International offer seems to be tracking at 40.004 miles per dollar for the initial spend (and then 5x that for the extra bonus)? I guess they figured that 40x wasn’t generous enough.
Yeah, that Nick Reyes guy mentioned it in the post update up at the top.
That Nick Reyes guy is pretty good at this miles stuff.
Haha! Just kidding. Thanks for your coverage of this great deal.
And so he did. Maybe I should read his stuff sometime…
Nah.
Fingers crossed again. My 12,480,000 miles in 6 accounts have not been posted yet.
Not that I think this will ever matter to anyone, but I got the miles for the Lugless offer even though it was the like insurance add-on that brought me over whatever the required spending threshold was (I think you had to spend $50 and I spend $33 on shipping and $18 on their insurancey add-on for a total cost of ~$51 to ship something I needed to ship anyway and got 6,000 miles.
GoPro didn’t post because it didn’t charge right away. The offer was 1,000 miles for any purchase. I bought “The Tool” for $4.99 and only got the 1,000 miles because it got dated 12/15. Had it been dated during the promo, I should have gotten an additional 5,000 miles. Not going to complain as I got plenty of miles overall and even 1,000 miles for $5 isn’t a bad deal.
Thanks for the update. How is your bestbuy deal? Posted?
Yes and “ummmm”.
I made a purchase on 12/13. I actually thought I made two purchases (one for me and one for my wife), but going back through records I *think* that I only made one for the SimplyMiles deal (she bought something also while the promo was active, but not with a Mastercard and I have no idea why).
The part that makes me go “ummmm” is that I have two Best Buy transactions pending: the 2500 + 12500 for one of the transactions (what I expected as the offer was 2500 miles with $200 spend).
On the other transaction, I got 1500 + 7500. I don’t remember a 1500 point Best Buy offer and I don’t think I have a record of a second purchase during the offer period, but now I need to go back through everything with a fine-tooth comb and see if I can figure it out.
Anyway, yes, the Best Buy offer posted and all I bought during the offer period from Best Buy was eGift cards, so whatever transaction(s) have posted were eGift cards.
Nick, I have this on P2/P3 as well. Also, I was only targeted for a lower 1500+7500 offer for Best Buy (not the higher offer you and my P2/P3 got). Seems like some wires got crossed and anyone targeted for the higher offer is getting both credited (for now).
In case anything like this comes up again, it’s worth noting that I activated the AT&T offer and prepaid $60 of my AT&T bill, and I now see 27,600 miles pending. Yes, the offer said it was for adding a new AT&T line. No, I didn’t add a new AT&T line.
Nice play and good to know.
I did the same and it worked like a charm.
Amazing! Probably the only time I’ll be disappointed to receive “only” 60,000 miles for $250.
For future reference, my Winc order was under $30 before taxes but over $30 with taxes and I received the full miles with bonus.
Glad to see them showing up!
Best Buy, wine.com, Winc, Fulton Fish, Hungryroot, CVS and the donation look good!
GoPro, Vinesse and Target didn’t post the bonus. I made GoPro and Vinesse purchases online on 12/12 and Target in the morning on 12/14. Will have to reach out to them at some point.
I’m only showing the initial 40x from conservation international posting to my account, but not the additional 5x. I made my donation before 8am central on 12/14. I know you said they post separately, but any cause for concern or is there just a lag between the two showing up? I have screenshots and receipts, but just wondering if I should be preparing for a fight haha.
It’s so early that I don’t know for sure, but at least Rob (the comment before yours) is in the same boat. I’d probably wait a day or two before polishing up my pitchfork in the hopes that it happens automatically.
I am seeing the bonus for 12/12 and 12/13 CI transactions but not the 14th. I made the 14th purchase just after midnight on 12/14 (only a few mins into the new day) many hours before the first banner appeared on the SM website. I will note that the first banner saying the deal was depleted implied that the deal wouldn’t be honored for 12/14. While that was taken down this behavior is consistent with that. I’ll give it a couple of days (I believe you have to wait 15 anyway) and then submit a complaint. I have screen shots of everything.
Just after midnight EST? I was fearing the same would happen to me after reading your comment, since I made one of my donations at 12:08 AM EST on the 14th; but thankfully, the 240x is showing correctly.
I just double checked and it was actually 1:15 AM 12/14 EST. So slightly later than I thought but certainly well before 11:00 AM EST cutoff for 5x. Maybe they working through the 12/14 transactions and yours got approved. Fingers crossed.
Now that I think about it if SM is on CST then your transaction was still on 12/13.
Yeah, this is probably the case – the date of transaction is showing as 12/13 on SimplyMiles.
Same, only showing the 40X. Donated early morning on the 14th.
I donated $5k the morning of 12/14 and I’m only seeing 200,000 miles pending. Only posted the 40x for me.
VFTW posted that transactions would be honored on 12/14 up to 11 AM EST. I suspect there is probably some manual review going on for that date so it may just take a few more days for the 5x to post assuming you made it under the wire on that date.
I have a Best Buy that took place on the 14th at 10:45am EST and it’s posting but the bonus is not posting correctly yet …. Holding on hoping for it to be corrected soon.
Thanks, ya I made the purchase at like 5:30am Eastern Time on the 14th, so I’m keeping the fingers crossed.
Me too..My $100 million donation is only showing 4 billion miles posting.
Does this make me a billionaire now? I sure hope so because I have no money left.
Looking forward to the 24 billion miles as I’m planning a party in Doha and taking 171,142.8571 of my closest friends…..
Oh, phooey…I forgot about the $7.85 tax each way on the tickets and my friends are too cheap to pay. Can anyone front me the $2,515,800 for the taxes?
Yep. My miles just posted as well. I got over 1,000,000 miles! Was great. I wish I wasn’t such a wuss and did the $5,000 I was planning. Still glad that I got these miles. Was a great promotion!
I donated $5k to Conservation International, and 1.2 million miles are now showing in my SimplyMiles account. (They just haven’t reached my AAdvantage account yet).
Same here. My post update published literally at the same minute that your comment came in. Awesome!
When I log in to SimplyMIles, I now see that I earned 5x for a CVS deal I did during this period (I didn’t do the Conservation International one). Miles are not in my AA account yet, but usually that takes some time.
[…] It looks like the “deal of the century” is getting through: The 240x SimplyMiles deal is being honored, by Frequent Miler via VFTW. […]
Nick, In reference to the Iberia promotion that you mentioned was eventually honored… Several people, including myself got railroaded by Iberia, which did not honor a lot of purchases. They refused to honor certain flights I purchased, with a canned unprofessional, robotic response, Often moving the goalpost and making up rubbish claims… For the flights they did not honor, I took them to claims court as they operate out of my city. I won plus court fees!!!
Don’t understand why bloggers feel the need to divulge they gave thousands of dollars. We know you are subtly bragging. Just say you got in (as did I and many others)!
Dude, your bragging isn’t so subtle.
Congratulations! Your optimism has been rewarded.
The risk reward for those that had the funds made this almost a no brainer.
Congrats man. Wish I had an account already made before the deal went up.
Thank you, Nick. Wish I can donate as much as you can. Did you do any other deals besides bestbuy, gopro and Blue Apron?
The terms say you can get 5x on three offers.
@Nun, no, that’s not what it said. The email was poorly laid out, so I can understand why some people misunderstood it, but the large print clearly said an extra 5x on all offers site wide.
Follow with me to get to where the confusion about three times comes in.
The extra 5x offer was scheduled to be valid until December 27th. It said that the extra 5x was valid on all offers site-wide on SimplyMiles until December 27th “or while supplies last”.
In the email advertising this deal, immediately under that section about the extra 5x, they advertised a deal for Target (the store) that was 465 miles with a $50 purchase that was valid until 12/31/21.
Then, in the fine print at the bottom, there was a line about being valid until 12/31/21 up to 3 times. That small print line had the 12/31 end date, so I am 100% sure that it was referring to the Target deal for 465 miles back on $50 being valid up to 3 times, not the extra 5x deal which had an end date of 12/27.
Sure enough, if you pulled up the offer terms for the 465 miles with $50 purchase at Target deal, the terms indicated that you could use that specific deal 3 times.
I know people commented saying that some other blogger(s) said the limit was 3 offers, but I think that was just confusion from not reading it closely. Like I said, I am as near to 100% confident as I possibly can be that the fine print there that referred to an end date of 12/31 was just about the Target deal, not the extra 5x deal which in that email explicitly said it was valid on all offers site-wide.
That is great news!
I had read it on the other blog and found the extremely fine print myself in my email, thinking the grinch was about to hit a LOT OF VERY UNHAPPY people this weekend!
@AlexL: I did a handfull of deals. Best Buy, GoPro, Blue Apron, Lugless, Vinesse wines….there were probably a few more.
Nice. Wish I looked into those deals too.
What was the GoPro offer?
GoPro was 1,000 miles with any purchase (so 6,000 miles with the extra 5x). I bought “The Tool” (no, I have no idea what it is) for $4.99.
Is their cut off 10:00 AM Eastern (what you have in bold in this article) or 10:00 AM Central (what Gary said in your quote)? Luckily, I made my Conservation International donation on the 13th, but I made an AT&T payment at 10:49 AM Eastern on the 14th.
Central as in the quoted statement from AA within the post. That reference to Eastern in my commentary was a typo on my part. Fixed, thanks!
I found out about this offer near the initial controversial cut off time (I am eight hours ahead of CST so who knows)… I didn’t have a simply miles account and I didn’t want to go through the trouble of a another possible Iberia situation… And who knows if I would’ve been targeted anyway. Water under a bridge but glad for those who were able to take advantage of the offer.
Can’t complain though because I amassed over 1 million points earlier this year on a military assignment (stacking the different hotel promotions) and I’m currently on a 4 month extended vacation overseas mostly in presidential suites as a result.
This is to say, everyone has their time!
Cheers!!!!
I got in on Monday at around 6 PM PT, and got confirmation via email right away from MasterCard Donate (which referred to the simply miles program), but I never received confirmation from SimplyMiles that I used the deal. I verified I used the MC listed in my SM account. I clicked through using Safari from my iPhone in a regular / non-private browser window. I took screenshots of each step. Should I expect to get the miles automatically? Or will I most likely need to follow up?
Yes, automatically. I’m going to put an update at the top because people keep asking about it. Short story: it might take a couple of weeks. Don’t panic. Don’t expect any confirmation that anything tracked. Just wait. You’ll hear when the miles start posting.
Sounds good, thanks Nick!
I’ll believe it when the miles post
Curses!
I’m traveling and have NO Mastercard in my travel wallet and had no way to access my cards to sign up. Nick was kind enough (on Frequent Miler Insiders) to suggest some ways around that if I had any cap 1 cards, but I don’t.
Another FMI user suggested keeping all your CC info on lastpass (which I actually use and have in my phone) which I’ll set up when I get home (in the copious spare time I’ll have while NOT traveling on my millions of free miles).
Even better, I keep photos of front and back of every card in an album on my google photos. And my google acct is secured with an intense lastpass password and two factor.
I work for Mastercard, very nice to see them step up and do the right thing. It doesn’t surprise me though, great company. I actually also work with the sustainability team, so as wonderful as the mileage haul is for everyone, it’s also a great cause for the only planet we have.
Guys, your blog is SO GOOD that its become the ONLY blog (and podcast) I need to follow. I’m a bit disappointed you didn’t headline this deal. I missed out. But I still love you guys and will continue to follow your blog. Keep that in mind though, some of us rely on you exclusively for our points & miles info.
Thanks! Listen to tomorrow’s podcast for our thought process about how we handled it.
You did it RIGHT.
Thanks for this happy update! Re timing of credit card charges – my donation didn’t post on my AAviator card (a primitive system compared to Chase) until Tuesday PM sometime, and my Wine.com charge still hasn’t posted. Both from Monday evening. But I do have email receipts from both right after I hit the “buy” button, which I fully expect to be honored. As you say, the card is charged later but the purchase commitment was made in plenty of time.
Anyone seeing their transaction in SM? I have the email stating that I earned 40x miles on my contribution but the SM transaction history shows “no qualifying transactions “.
Takes up to 15 business days for the miles to show up.
My donation posted the same day so I should be good. But I signed up for Blue apron on the 13th and it didn’t post til the 17th. Wonder how that’s going to turn out.
I still haven’t been charged for Blue Apron. I doubt the miles will post correctly for that. Thankfully, if my donation miles post, it won’t matter very much to me. The Wyndham points mostly offset the cost of Blue Apron anyway.
Yeah true. We do have the Wyndham email as proof we signed up before the deadline.
In addition, you were able to help a good cause AND that will be a very nice writeoff on your taxes as well. I was late and didn’t get to take advantage. Poop
The advice is to adjust your deduction to account for the value of “goods” received, which (if you did so, or were audited) would wipe out the deduction.
Now the question is when will the miles post?? They would count as loyalty points aka status of posted in 2022 correct?
In the past, Simply Miles often post weeks later to your AAdvantage account, but the date listed on AA corresponds to when the original transaction was made.
Awesome! I only did $250 so have some regrets but am still happy with how it ended up going. Definitely something to watch for when loyalty points are a thing.
It’s epic only if you had the offer. My simplymiles never had the “conservation” offer – even at the beginning.
I made a donation at around 2PM eastern took a screen shoot and the offer was still up strange that they put a cutoff before the banner was taken down, well, you win some you loose some
You must be thinking of a different day. The banner was gone at noon Eastern.
Yeahhh, you are right I did donation on Monday
hmmm. well i bought miles at 10:06 am. NIce. I didn’t bother to see if the banner was still there.
It’s everybody else’s fault. Not mine.
VFTW is saying 10 AM Central time. Nick has 10 AM Eastern time above, so you might still be ok if VFTS has the correct time zone. The actual text Nick posted above says 10 AM central, which would be 11 AM Eastern. What time zone are you in?
7:06 PT, nogt holding my breath…mainly because doing so causes more brain damage than I already have…..
Hey Nick, you’re going to need that new Family Truckster to haul around your huge hoard of MR points and AA miles!
Nick – thank you (and Stephen for the research in 2019) for highlighting this deal. I appreciate all of the efforts the FM team puts into running such a trustworthy source for all info miles/points. You (Nick) are far and away my favorite writer in the travel blogosphere.
I made a very modest donation of only $50. It was showing as pending but now as a transaction, but it only is showing as earning 50 points. Hopefully the multiplier kicks in in a day or so.
Well, I certainly knew all along that this deal would go through.
And this is why I keep a card for each network – Visa, MasterCard, Amex and Discover. SimplyMiles is only for MasterCard holders.
Nick: I donated $5,000 to Conservation International on Monday at around 5:30 pm. It showed as “pending” until sometime Tuesday. I should be fine, right?
Yes, I think so.
Thanks!
Pending where? With your credit card or in your SimplyMiles account? Wondering if anyone is seeing anything happening in their SM accounts related to Conservation International donations?
Pending with my credit card, which was a Capital One Mastercard. Haven’t seen anything in SimplyMiles at all yet.
This mind blowing. Life-altering.
Not life-altering . Coronavirus is life-altering. This is simply an amazing deal. Congratulations to all who got in. Happy for you, sick for myself.