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When shopping through portals to earn miles, points, or cash back, many merchants have terms that exclude portal earnings when purchasing gift cards. But, some merchants do not enforce that policy. That’s why we keep track of what works and what doesn’t on our Frequent MIler Laboratory page.
In previous experiments, people had found that buying e-gift cards from Neiman Marcus did result in earning portal rewards. Then, last weekend, first the Alaska portal and then the United portal offered 15 miles per dollar at Neiman Marcus, and at a number of other stores. And, many people took that opportunity to buy Neiman Marcus e-gift cards in order to earn huge numbers of miles.
At first, with the Alaska promotion, the miles posted and everyone was happy… except, apparently, Neiman Marcus. Those who received miles from the Alaska portal promotion had the miles clawed back. And, many if not all of those who bought e-gift cards through the United portal promotion never received the miles at all.
It is always a risk to try to earn miles through portals in ways that are prohibited by the portal terms. Often the risk pays out dividends. In this case, not so much. Apologies to anyone who bought and received gift cards! Some had their gift card orders cancelled. Count yourselves fortunate.
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[…] When the Neiman Marcus Amex Offer and Alaska airlines portal promotions coincided this past winter, Alaska did not award the miles on purchases of gift cards. I was very surprised when that happened as I had been buying gift cards at least once a month and […]
I don’t think I’ve seen this much *itching in a long time. Yes, my miles got clawed back too but I chose to take the risk along with all of you! It was your decision and nobody forced you to do it. You’re responsible for what you choose to act upon. And for all of you that are alluding to unsubscribing or not utilizing the affiliate links, please do so as Greg’s following clearly needs to be cleansed of unaccountable crybabies. Get a life.
Well, after a recent call from Cardpool it appears that NM cancelled my GCs, but has not refunded the charges. I’m going to dispute. I don’t know why I bother with GC arbitrage anymore. This would have been a decent one if it had worked, though.
These marginal, high risk deals are rarely ever worth the trouble. Too low of an expected payout.
YMMV. All comes down to scalability and selling rates/relationships.
Well this deal really had neither.
You’re right, the $750+ I made makes me really salty. Damn you FM!!
Btw, I never said I was salty at FM. Of course I understand the YMMV nature of these deals… That’s why I avoided this given the high probability of this one being a fail…. And the fact that NM GCs just don’t hold much resale value.
Um yeah okay, $750 on this deal.
Just proving a point since you wrote “this deal had neither.” Unless you consider $750 not worth your time then your comments were an inaccurate blanket statement.
Not trying to slight you here, just illustrating that virtually everything in this community is YMMV and where one finds a worthwhile pursuit another doesn’t and it doesn’t make one position right or the other wrong. Hence YMMV.
Well if you were one of the lucky ones that didn’t get the clawback then whoopdeedoo for you. It doesn’t change the fact that the expected payout on a deal like this is still too low to make it worthwhile… Unless your time is worthless.
You’re a hard nut to crack… I didn’t get anything from the portals. That was the entire point of my replies to you about this being worthwhile. That’s strictly a bunch of amex offers and playing the margins on the gift card alone.
Umm, nothing new to crack here. i know what the margins are on these GCs… But I also know what the risks are. Congratulations, guess what? You just turned yourself into a high risk business.
High risk business? Alright buddy, you’re obviously going to think whatever you want here. If you know what the margins and risks are then you wouldn’t make this deal sound like it’s bad for everyone. Flat out, speak for yourself but not others. I made my point so I’m done with this little charade.
Yep, it’s a high risk business. Have one or more of the GC cards get cancelled after you’ve sold it? Now you’ve got to spend time sorting out the mess. Have someone do a charge back and defraud you? You’ve just eaten a loss. Yes it’s a high risk business. Oh, and I assume you’re filing a 1099-MISC on that “$750” gross profit right? If not you probably shouldn’t be posting on public forums.
If you’re working with bulk sites the risk to you personally for fraud and charge backs is slim. Yes there is risk but you can say that about many things. The reward outweighs the risk in this situation but again, YMMV.
[…] We shared a great deal the previous week on buying Neiman Marcus gift cards to earn miles. Unfortunately, Neiman Marcus clawed back all the miles. […]
Chase UR shopping clawed back too at least for me
[…] The bad news is that merchants are beginning to crack down on double-dips (where you go through the portal to buy gift cards and then go through the portal again to use the gift cards). First Sears stopped offering portal rewards when reloading gift cards, and then Neiman Marcus stopped offering portal rewards when buying e-gift cards. […]
All 3x and 15x AS miles clawed back over the weekend. All TCB clawed back now as well. Only thing that stuck was 4% eBates which explicitly permitted gift card purchases. Damn, should have stayed with the safe bet. $8/card was much better than zero. Oh well. Pigs get fat. Hogs get slaughtered. 🙁
Well, TCB nullified all CB I earned from GC purchases at NM before Alaska Portal deal. It seems because of that Amex offer, NM realized how much CB or miles they have to pay, and decided to clean the mess. Well, at least there was some profit from amex deal themselves.
I really don’t understand what everyone is so cranky about:
1) The original post was very clearly YMMV.
2) Deals will be more fleeting now that there are now hundreds of thousands (maybe millions?) of people in this hobby. One (or a dozen) blogs is not going to change that fact.
3) Cardpool is still buying Neiman Marcus cards for 83.5%, so just unload yours and move on.
Well, thanks Greg.
While I just lost a few thousand Alaska miles – you lost about 15 CC sign ups this year thorough your links from me
You didn’t “lose” anything. You just didn’t earn the points that you shouldn’t have earned in the first place. The terms of the portal clearly state that GCs will not earn points. Not sure what your problem is here.
Stop being such a drama queen.
Other portals are paying out on cash for these purchases.
Greg, through his “lab”, suggested that Alaska would. So I went with that suggestions rather than buying through another portal.
So yes, I did “lose” something.
Greg offered advice and its up to us to absorb it and make our own decisions. You decided what portal to use and as such that’s your responsibility. It seems like you’re new to MS/Churning so one bit of advice: it’s very YMMV and sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. All you can do is play with the odds in your favor and write off the losses and be happy with the wins.
And that changed. Is that Gregg’s fault? Of course not. As mentioned, the portal explicitly said that GCs were excluded form CB and you went along with it anyways. NO Cartera portal is paying out for the NM GC purchases. Nobody held a gun to your head and made you hit submit. This is the risk we take.
So again, stop being a drama queen and accept this.
I spend a lot of money at Neiman’s. Nothing from me was clawed back! I actually prefer they claw back anyone playing only gift cards with no history of being a good customer!
Of course they’re not going to claw back purchases of non-GC products, as that is allowed. GCs are specifically excluded, so I never expected them to pay out for them. It was a risk I was willing to take and it didn’t pan out.
I don’t understand the angst. This was always an unlikely payout. Everybody should have known the risk and the fact that it was so lucrative and thus being hit so hard made it even more risky. We moved the needle and NM noticed and made their practice conform with their terms. Not a huge surprise.
how is everyone getting rid of their Neiman Marcus GC’s now?
Did anyone have their Alaska miles posted if they bought merchandise only?
I purchased merchandise on the 15 points/$ day and received the goods already, but no miles have posted yet. Wanted to see if anyone else had the same issue
Mine posted 2-3 days later
Ordered physical merchandise with GC and while the GC amount was taken back the physical merchandise points posted to AS and remain.
Mine still haven’t posted. Getting worried. I didn’t see any specific exclusions on the portal, except GC, but I’m wondering if they aren’t honoring it for all merchandise? I also bought some merchandise via the United Airlines deal a few days later and nothing there either.
Why blame the bloggers when something goes bad? You should know the risk when playing this game. I saves lots of money by following Greg’s post. Last year’ British airways business class tickets two days sale alone saved me over $5000. Do you ever share your profits with Greg when you make money from his posts? Stop blaming others. If you can’t take the risk, don’t play this game. By the way, I bought $4400 Neiman Marcus gift card using Alaska portal and all of my miles are clawed back. I’m fine with it. The portal says very clearly no gift card. And I decided to take the chance and I take responsibility for my own decisions.
Since so many people follow the different bloggers, any time there is a good deal these days it gets canceled or all gone within hours. What’s worse is when the company that was giving the good deal claw backs the incentives.
If the bloggers did not blast the info to the whole world, the great deals would last a little longer.
Nevertheless, I have benefited multiple times on various deals that do not involve buying gift cards, reselling, or manufactured spending.
The best way to get a great deal these days is to find them on our own and keep it to ourselves.
The travel blogging arena unfortunately has attracted a lot of wanna bes who think they can make easy money by blogging. But it is no different than selling any other product – the gifted and lucky people get the big bucks and the rest get pennies or nothing.
>>If the bloggers did not blast the info to the whole world, the great deals would last a little longer.
Right on, and if people used the gift cards for the purposes they were intended for in the first place, the great deals would last even longer.