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10 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar is a great return for Sears purchases. In this post I’ll list numerous ways to leverage this deal.
Background
This month, Chase’s Ultimate Rewards Mall is offering 10 points per dollar for Ink and Sapphire cardholders when shopping at Sears.com. The deal is good through 8/31/2012.
Leveraging the Deal
Shop
This is almost too obvious, but it needs to be said. If you have Sears’ purchases you were going to make anyway, shop through the Ultimate Rewards Mall to earn 10 points per dollar (in addition to the points earned automatically with your credit card).
Tips for saving money:
- For free shipping, you can usually select “pickup in store”.
- Look for coupon codes before you shop. One great one available today only is “AUGUST35” which will give you $35 off a $350 order (hat tip HikerT). Note that the code will not work for buying gift cards.
- If a competitor (with a physical retail presence) has a lower price, fill out the online Price Match form. Sears will match the lower price and take an additional 10% off (hat tip MSPDeltaDude)
- Make sure to signup for Sears’ Shop Your Way Rewards program. You will earn points worth the equivalent of 1% of your order.
Buy gift cards
If you do not currently have a need to buy stuff from Sears, consider buying Sears gift cards instead. The beauty of this is that you will get 10X now and have plenty of time to make purchases later. The other big advantage is that Sears’ gift cards can be used in a variety of additional shops: Lands’ End, KMart, Sears outlet, My Gofer, Crafstman, Kenmore, etc. If shopping at KMart, checkout Cuckoo for Coupon deals for some great bargains (hat tip IrishTiger).
Does the purchase of gift cards count for 10X? YES. In the recent 15X deal via the Southwest Rapid Rewards portal many readers bought physical and e-gift cards and received points for each.
Buy gift cards and upgrade
I have used Sears gift cards many times in Kmart and Sears to buy other gift cards. In the past I’ve bought BP cards and EBay cards, although I noticed recently that my local Kmart no longer carries EBay. Note the risk: some people have reported being unable to use gift cards in-store to buy other gift cards. Your success will depend on the policies and cashiers at your local Kmart or Sears store.
Double Dip for 20X
This is one of my favorite tricks which I’ve done successfully at Sears.com many times. The idea is to go through the portal once to buy gift cards (physical or email), then go through the portal again to use the gift cards for buying merchandise (no, you can’t buy gift cards with gift cards online). The net effect is that you end up earning 20 points per dollar for your purchases! The downside is that you won’t get purchase protection or extended warranty coverage that is given by many credit cards. Caution: one reader has stated that Chase revoked their points for a purchase made with gift cards. I’ve never had anything like that happen so my guess is that it was a one time fluke, but be prepared for the possibility.
Double dip, buy and sell merchandise. By finding deals at Sears.com for merchandise that can be easily resold via EBay, Amazon Marketplace, or Craigslist, you can potentially get Ultimate Rewards points at a very low cost. The idea is to first double dip (buy gift cards for 10X), then buy re-sellable merchandise with the gift cards (for another 10X). The last time Sears was at 10X in the Ultimate Rewards Mall, I earned almost 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points by doing this trick. See “Mileage Run Shopping: Buying 162,000 Miles for $500” and “Mileage Run Shopping Results.” In that adventure, due to the costs of buying and selling (taxes, merchant fees, shipping, etc.) I lost 17% of the money spent, but the points earned more than made up for that. If you are a member of Sears’ Shop Your Way Rewards program, you’ll earn 1% back in the form of Sears credit! Caution: many things can go wrong when buying and selling, so this option is not for everyone. You may have trouble finding buyers, you may find merchant fees and other costs to be higher than expected, buyers may return items that can no longer be sold as new, etc.
My Take
I find Ultimate Rewards points hugely valuable so I will definitely play the “buy and sell” game. I’ll follow up with tips about how to find re-sellable items as well as some of the dangers and headaches involved in reselling. I’m heading out for vacation today so I don’t have time to jump in yet, but when I’m ready I’ll probably target earning 120K points or so. That would mean purchasing and then spending $6K worth of gift cards. Luckily I have all month to get this done.
How about you? What are you going to do to leverage this deal?
Related Posts and Links
- Mileage Run Shopping: Buying 162,000 Miles for $500
- Mileage Run Shopping Results
- Sears 15X: Leveraging the deal
- Sears 15X: Shopping for 110,000 points
- How to ensure your portal points
- An Infinite Number of Uses for Sears Gift Cards
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Chris F: Not I
Has anyone received SYW Rewards points for purchasing gift cards, or just for merchandise? I saw the T&C state not eligible on GC purchases, and haven’t read explicitly where people did receive SYW points for these purchases.
Oh yeah – thanks to FM for the idea. I will make sure to put my next round of card applications through your links.
Andrew
Not sure if anyone is following this thread anymore, but thought I would post my final results as I just sold the last item I bought today. In August, I bought 9 Nikon cameras when there was a 10% off online promotion on cameras (4x D5100, 3x D3100 & 2x D3200). I bought $5K of gift cards and then spent $5,377.28 on the cameras (I missed out on almost 4,000 points by not buying enough gift cards). There were delays in seeing the points post, so I waited to sell until September, then I got busy with work, then Sandy hit (I live in NYC). I sold the D3100’s through Amazon fulfillment which I thought worked very well. I sold the other 6 through Craigslist which was a pain, but turned out OK. In hindsight, I should have just sent all the cameras to Amazon. Demand was strong for the D3100s and the D5100s but the D3200s really hurt my average. Final results: Spent $5,377.28 on cameras. Sale proceeds were $4,445,57. Loss = $931.81 plus $49.98 of Sears Shop Your Way Rewards = $881.83. I earned 95,689 UR points or essentially paid $0.9216 per point. Will I do it again? Probably.
[…] gift cards when Sears again offered 10 points per dollar in the Ultimate Rewards Mall (see “Sears 10X: Leveraging the Deal” and “Sears 20X“). This time, though, the secret gift card rack was […]
I am screwed! The points have not posted. Now I have $10K worth of merch.
I was surprised too. Looked through the whole page here and no one has been asked for that. I will try and call again hope for a better CSR.
I made two purchases in August last week. 2.5K each, first for sears gcs and second with gcs and a small amount. Both with Inkbold. No points. Enquired 2 times by phone and 2 times by SM and now they are asking me to send written letter to consider as “You have exasperated your phone and SM limits”? What?
hsinaz: I’ve never heard that one before!
@Gmash: It wasn’t a double dip. It was a straight up purchase to verify 2 things.
1. Do points from large purchases through the UR mall using the intended (in this case Chase Sapphire) credit card post?
Result – Sofar NO… Haven’t received any notification. Chase says nothing tracked.
2. Do points from Large purchases through the UR mall using a DIFFERENT credit card post?
Result- SUCCESS! Used my AMEX and the points posted.
HAH! I now find myself in the boat of my first transaction NOT posting in the UR Mall Earn Activity after 3 days. And go figure, it’s for some sizable purchases (but nothing larger than i’ve already done). A $850 e-GC and a $1100 camera on 9/13 (the purchase on 9/12 posted). My question to everyone here, what’s the biggest gap you have in Sears purchases on your UR Earn Activity log? I.E. the difference between “Transaction Date” and “Posted Date”. Obviously some people have had to wait 3 weeks to get their points to show up, but is there still a 3 week time frame displayed in the UR Mall? I also wonder if this has anything to do with any previous orders being cancelled. I just recently had one cancelled (not by my own doing…by sears’s idiocy) and wonder if that is what’s affecting some of the points posting.
Gabriel: Yes, I have one that shows 20 days between the transaction date and the posted date. That was my first gift card order. And, I have one that shows 16 days between the transaction date and the posted date. It was a large order in which I paid with gift cards. There were no cancellations involved.
I agree Jay buyig for returning is def not a good practice at all.
question though…how did u get the double dip if u bought using ur CC. I understand u first bought GC using ur CC and then bought the product with some portion of the charge on ur CC again.
Thanks for sharing Jay!
Quick question – when you return u’ll get 6K worth of gift cards…wat do u plan to do with that..or is there a neat trick with that too 🙂
btw..you guys rock!!
Oh as I mentioned earlier…I made both purchases using a credit card.
So when I do the return, it’ll go back to the credit card.
I’m 99.99% sure that the points will be deducted. let’s see.
I do NOT recommend buying things JUST to return them in order to earn points. It’s selfish and bad karma as far as I’m concerned.
Jay: Great info, thanks for sharing!
Actually this was an experiment. I bought platinum earrings. I wanted to see if the points would post or not…because the last time I used UR mall for Sears, I didn’t get the double dip.
No points posted for the purchase made with the gift cards. I lost about $600 on that deal.
.
So I decided to make a large purchase using a different browser and see if the points would post or not.
So far the results are successful. I am going to return the earrings. If the points get deducted, I don’t mind because I don’t deserve them anyway. If they don’t get deducted, I shall consider that Karma. 😀
Congrats Jay !
Would you mind sharing what you bought from JC Penny? Was that something you really needed or there is some nice thought behind that 🙂