While perusing the American Airlines shopping portal last night, I came across a great deal for anyone after some relatively easy AAdvantage miles and Loyalty Points. Even if you’re not interested in those, alternative portal options include the opportunity to earn $80 cashback or 7,500 Membership Rewards, on top of this break even – or possibly moneymaking – T-Mobile 5G Home Internet offer.
The Deal
- Stack two offers with T-Mobile 5G Home Internet:
- Get T-Mobile 5G Home Internet service & get a $150 virtual prepaid Mastercard gift card.
- Earn through a shopping portal
Key Terms
- Terms for $150 deal:
- Limited-time offer; subject to change.
- Register code within 30 days of activating new unlimited Home Internet line.
- If you have cancelled Internet lines in the past 90 days, you may need to reactivate them first.
- $150 via virtual prepaid Mastercard; requires 60 days service before validation; use online or in-store via accepted mobile payment apps; no cash access & expires in 6 months.
- The Virtual Prepaid Mastercard is issued by Sunrise Banks N.A., Member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Mastercard International Incorporated.
- This card may be used everywhere Debit Mastercard is accepted.
- Allow 1 week from fulfilment of offer requirements.
- Lines must be active and in good standing when card is issued.
- Max 1/account.
- May not be combined with some offers or discounts.
Quick Thoughts
There are two separate deals here, so let’s cover them separately. The first is that T-Mobile is offering a $150 prepaid virtual Mastercard when getting their 5G home internet service and maintaining it for at least 60 days. There are three pricing options for this services:
- $50 per month – internet only
- $45 per month – internet when bundled with a Go5G, Magenta, or Essentials phone plan
- $30 per month – internet when bundled with a Go5G Next, Go5G Plus or Magenta MAX phone plan
If you don’t currently have T-Mobile phone service, you’d be looking at paying $50 per month. You have to keep service for 60 days, but given the timelines involved I’d be wary of cancelling right at 60 days. I’d therefore be inclined to keep the service for three months worth of payments which comes to $150 – the full value of the Mastercard gift card, thereby making this a break even deal which, in isolation, wouldn’t be worth the hassle unless you were interested in switching to T-Mobile 5G home internet anyway.
This deal gets much better though if you have phone service with T-Mobile, especially a Go5G Next, Go5G Plus or Magenta MAX phone plan. If you do have one of those plans, you’d only be paying $30 per month for the home internet service. The $150 Mastercard would therefore cover five months of those payments which isn’t too shabby.
It’s the stacking opportunity that makes this deal even better. While T-Mobile Home Internet isn’t available on all shopping portals right now, the ones that it is on are offering some generous payouts. You can compare the current rates here, but at the time of publishing this you could earn $75 or 7,500 Membership Rewards from Rakuten or $80 cashback from the Citi Bonus Cash Center or USAA MemberShop portals.
For anyone looking to earn American Airlines AAdvantage miles and/or earning status with AA, their portal might be of most interest. That’s because their portal is offering both 7,400 bonus AAdvantage miles and 7,400 Loyalty Points. That’s a nice chunk of both miles and Loyalty Points, particularly for those after a quick Loyalty Points boost before February 29 – the end of the elite qualifying year. The American Airlines portal states that miles from T-Mobile Home Internet typically post within 1 to 2 days, so you should earn the Loyalty Points well before the end of February. The quick posting of the miles and Loyalty Points could also be useful for those currently doing a status challenge which runs on a different timeline.
Important note: Rob has pointed out in the comments that portals have wording stating that portal earnings are only eligible to new customers without an existing T-Mobile account. That would mean those with existing T-Mobile service wouldn’t – in theory – be eligible for earning additional cashback or miles. There might be a workaround, but I don’t know if this would definitely work. You could set up the internet service under a new email address, then after you’ve received the portal rewards and $150 Mastercard, you could ask them to link that account with your account which has phone service in order to get the additional discount. This carries the risk though that using a different email address might not be sufficient to qualify as someone without T-Mobile service. If that’s the case, you’re paying more for the internet service for 2-3 months versus the $5-$20 monthly discount you’d receive for having a cellphone plan with them already.
Nick has used T-Mobile home internet service in upstate New York for a few years and has had a very good experience, even more so since upgrading from 4G to 5G. There are no data caps and no cancellation fees. They also have a Test Drive feature which lets you try out the service for 15 days; if it doesn’t work for you, you can cancel and get a full refund.
n.b I haven’t linked directly to the $150 Mastercard gift card deal above because I don’t want it to have any chance of interfering with your portal earnings. When clicking through from a portal, it should show that offer regardless; it certainly did when clicking through from the American Airlines portal anyway.
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Finally received my GC via email. It arrived from donotreply@notifications.t-mobile.com
There is a link to click and activate it, where it asks you to verify your phone number. I have tried every one of my numbers and nothing works. Anyone else receive the GC and were you successful in retrieving it?
I still haven’t received mine, but my guess is that it wants the phone number associated with your T-Mobile Internet device. If you look at your bill, the modem has a phone number associated with it. I’d bet that number is the one you need.
I tried that as well….no dice
I tried it again today and it worked.
Anyone who signed up mid-January receive the gift card yet?
Nothing received here yet…Wondering where it might be coming from so i can be on the lookout. Want to receive the GC before canceling the service
I’ve received my portal points but no GC and when I called in TMobile they said “not eligible “ with no further info given. Ordered activated submitted promo info etc. def canceling now if
What number at T-Mobile did you call?
Also- Curious what your promotion status shows when you go to https://promotions.t-mobile.com/
Do you need to activate to earn the miles and gift card?
It’s up to $200 now
When I click through the portal for this offer the button shows green, but once I put my address in and continue through the button goes back to blue and there is no way to turn it back green. Did any one else have this issue? I’m a little gun shy with the shopping portal issues.
Does anyone else have the same problem? –
I placed an order, received and activated router already.
However transaction still doesn’t show up in AA portal under “Recent transactions” it shows only in “Recent store visits” with the amount of $0.00
Can it be the reason ? Basically no points until first T-Mobile bill is paid ?
Ive got the same thing…although i never activated the router. Its still in the box – ready to be shipped back after the 3 months
Update for those interested:
7400 points are Pending under “Recent transactions”.
Possibly router activation did the trick ?
So this offer requires a hard credit check?
Also, do the point post for this year, or last year?
Does anyone know if you have to actually setup the modem, or if you sign up for the service and the offer, does that suffice?
Did the price go up? Its showing $60 for new customers and $40 for customers on magenta max.
It may have. When I signed up Dec 27, 2023 it was $50 but recently, I read somewhere that Tmobile was increasing it to $60. Customers who already have it, would be grandfathered in at $50 (internet only).
Same. $65-5 for auto pay. AA still says $50 but that appears to no longer be true.
This is what I came to ask. When I went through the process, I got $60 with autopay.
Looks like a great offer, but sadly TMobile home internet not yet available in my town. Thanks for sharing.
This seemed like a great way to top off my AA account with some bonus LP before 2/28 but decided to pass on it for a few reasons-
1) I am already a Tmobile wireless customer and the terms state its only for new T-Mobile customers
2) The terms state that you have to keep it for 60 days which makes me concerned that I wont get the LP for at least 60 days which would be well into March
Regarding your second point, I wouldn’t be too concerned about that. I’ve always had Loyalty Points post at the exact same time as miles, so I can’t imagine that being any different here. The 60 days wording would presumably relate to clawbacks of the miles in the event that someone cancelled the service early. FWIW, even if the miles were clawed back, it’s unlikely that the Loyalty Points would be.
Hmmm Maybe ill give it a whirl then. I realized that my cell phone plan is actually not in my name.
I was recently tempted by the 7400 miles (and even better, Loyalty Points!) offer for T-Mobile 5G Home Internet in the AAdvantage eShopping portal, but no luck. Existing T-Mobile mobile customers beware of the fine print: at least in that portal, “Only eligible to new customers without an existing T-Mobile account,” which would seem to exclude existing mobile customers. Oh well!
Ooh, I’d missed that in the terms. I’ll highlight that in the post – thanks for the heads up.
Fwiw I am an existing T-Mob cell customer and have been for some time. Added the home internet service ~7 months ago and was able to get the miles and LP. Didn’t credit automatically but the customer service desk did award me the miles. Probably a ymmv type thing.
How long from when you ordered did you get them to add the points? I am also a current customer, and need the LPs…I am worried that they will tell me that there is a wait for automatic posting, which is what Amex does. They make you wait the ENTIRE possible wait until they will even RESEARCH.
Great data point, thanks. Currently paying Verizon $75/month, have been thinking about trying this out for a long time. The $150 MC card alone was worth it, but now I’ll know to go back in a few days and ask about the points if it doesn’t track automatically.
Hi Stephen – It was worth a shot to try to sign up for a new account even though I have an existing cell plan with T-mobile. I used a different email and phone number, but because it requires a hard credit pull on your SSN it prompted the following message: “Looks like you’re already a T-Mobile customer! Log in to review home internet plan details and add service to your account.”
Time to transfer my existing account responsibility to player 2 🙂
Hello Stephen, thank you for doing the honorable thing and not posting a referral link. My main concern is speed. I’m not sure what kind of speeds are available in my area which does have 5G.
They offer that 15 day free trial, so if you’re potentially interested you could test it out before canceling your existing service.
Has anyone’s order been tracked by AA shopping yet? I did the offer 6 days ago and haven’t heard anything back regarding the miles so far
same but I just messaged them about the offer and saying that I haven’t gotten my points yet.
Hopefully it’s not because of the existing T-Mobile account and just taking some time
How did you message them if it has not been the required 15 days?
Tracking always seems to be an issue. For me, it’s routine. Typically you need to wait 15 days prior to submitting for missing points. Just follow the instructions. Your LPs will be based on the transaction date. So, don’t sweat the end of February end date.
When we switched to T-Mobile a while back, we added home Internet for $30. Obvious savings over cable and good service. Plus you get Netflix and Apple+ and free WiFi on certain airlines. Strongly recommend.