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When Home Depot first began offering 10X through the Ultimate Rewards Mall, the question on everyone’s mind was how best to double dip? Could we go through the mall to buy gift cards and then go through again to use them for a total of 20X? Or, what if we search GiftCardGranny.com for discounted gift cards and then go through the UR mall to use them… Would that work?
Home Depot’s Terms & Conditions within the Ultimate Rewards Mall say “Not eligible on gift cards.” I hate when vendors do that. There is no indication of whether that means you won’t get points for buying gift cards, or you won’t get points for using gift cards. In this case, sadly, it appears that both are true: no points are awarded for buying or using gift cards.
Lab Assistant Jeff tried both buying and using gift cards, but neither has resulted in points. I’ve also heard from a couple of other readers who have had similar results. So, unless anyone out there can tell me differently, I’ll declare this potential double dip dead and update the Laboratory page.
To maximize points at Home Depot, simply log into the Ultimate Rewards Mall, click through to Home Depot, and shop without gift cards. If you use your Sapphire Preferred card to pay, you’ll get a total of 11.77 points per dollar (10X from the UR mall, 1X from the card, .77X from the annual dividend).
If you want to take advantage of Home Depot’s 10X offer, you might need to hurry. I can’t find it right now on the site, but I have a vague memory of seeing a statement along the lines of “available through March 31”. That is, if my memory is correct, today may be the last day! We’ll see tomorrow…
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This will be my first time to use Ultimate Rewards Mall. I clicked through the link and it gave me the “Now Leaving Chase” warning. I completed my transaction on HD.com but received no confirmation that it was processed through the UR mall. Is there somewhere I can go to at least see things in Pending status?
Joe: Unfortunately, no. After 3 or 4 days, you can look for it by logging into Ultimate Rewards, find the top right menu that says Rewards Activity and under that select “Ultimate Rewards Mall & Travel Earnings”. By then it will be April, so make sure on the resulting page to switch the view to March.
[…] Pulling the plug on Home Depot […]
I also had same experience as Elizabeth…I still think you need a small portion on a credit card for the points to post…it always works for me…
I had the same experience as Elizabeth. I put a small portion on my credit card and received points for the total purchase.
Lab assistant? Are you and him wearing white lab coats when you conduct your experiments? 🙂
Got the Bold Ink card today. I may buy toner and paper to last me a few years at least to get started on the 5k min spend:-)
@Steve: UR Mall is only showing the 10 points/$ through 3/31, unless it gets extended…. Nice thought though!
BTW, all sorts of nice Home Depot deals today, guess they are doing some sort of ‘Spring Black Friday’ sale today.
Starting April 1, the rotating 5% category on the Citi Dividend card is at Home Depot, so go through UR mall, and use the Citi Dividend card for 10X UR points +5% cashback.
I received the 10x when using a gift card, but for an odd amount.
Order was for $65.22 paid with giftcards.
XXXXXXXXXXXX7411 GIFTCARD $4.93
XXXXXXXXXXXX7417 GIFTCARD $60.29
Rewards
——-
03/24/2012 03/27/2012 Online Purchase homedepot.com ORDER # XXXXX47648 $48.09 $48.09 481 Points
@Ryan I bought a Barnes and Noble e-giftcard and got the 10x points for the same. Although purchase from gift card didn’t earned any points as clearly mentioned in the terms and conditions.
So if you want to purchase something, just go ahead and buy something with the credit card.
I received 10x points on a Home Depot purchase made through the UR mall using the combination of a Home Depot gift card and my Sapphire Preferred card about 2 weeks ago. I was worried that I might only get points on the Sapphire Preferred portion but received 10x on the whole purchase (except for the sales tax).
Hey FM, i saw that for the Barnes and Noble that you said not to get the e-gift card…i looked at the conditions and they said the UR points was only ineligible for customized gift cards…any reason why you said to get the physical card (with its’ shipping) vs. e-card with no shipping costs?
infamousdx: Yes, clever, but shady…
Ryan from MA: There’s no problem with buying e-cards from B&N, the only problem is with selling them. I think that Cardpool may accept e-cards, but they have a limit to how much cash back they’ll give through cash back sites, so I prefer to go with Plastic Jungle which only accepts physical B&N cards.
Elizabeth: Great to hear! It is possible that you get points as long as a portion of your purchase is made with a credit card. Anyone else have that experience?
What I did last year during the holidays was buy a bunch of stuff through the UR mall and if I didn’t want it, return it to any store for store credit in the form of a GC (w/o receipt). Then use that GC as a method of payment through the UR mall again. Effectively, that’s a double dip but obviously it’s the shady way to do things.
I remember seeing the March 31st deadline too however I can’t fit it anymore. Need to make one last purchase but wanted to check out the item in store first. Guess I’ll have to make a trip out today after work