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The Southwest and United shopping portals each have three-tiered promotions at the moment that are offering the opportunity to earn up to 2,500 bonus points/miles when hitting spending thresholds.
The Deals
- Southwest shopping portal:
- Spend $100 & earn 500 bonus Rapid Rewards points
- Spend $250 & earn 1,000 bonus Rapid Rewards points
- Spend $500 & earn 2,500 bonus Rapid Rewards points
- Direct link to offer
- Expires August 10, 2026
- United shopping portal:
- Spend $150 & earn 500 bonus MileagePlus miles
- Spend $350 & earn 1,000 bonus MileagePlus miles
- Spend $600 & earn 2,500 bonus MileagePlus miles
- Direct link to offer
- Expires August 9, 2026
Key Terms
Terms below are for the United portal:
- During the “Back-to-School Bonus” offer, which runs from 7/13/2026 through 8/9/2026 at 11:59:59 pm ET (the “Bonus Period”), Member will earn a one-time bonus of up to 2,500 MileagePlus bonus award miles on qualifying purchases made through the MileagePlus Shopping mall or from purchases made through MileagePlus Shopping in-store offers.
- This one-time bonus award will be based on Member’s cumulative qualifying purchases made during the Bonus Period using one of the following tiers: Tier 1 bonus: 500 miles for qualifying purchases of at least $150; Tier 2 bonus: 1,000 miles for qualifying purchases of at least $350; or Tier 3 bonus: 2,500 miles for qualifying purchases of $600 or more.
- “Qualifying purchases” do not include returns, cancellations, shipping and handling, taxes, gift card or other cash equivalent purchases, and certain products that are not eligible for bonus miles. Please see the MileagePlus Shopping mall site for details on product eligibility and other restrictions.
- Please allow up to 10 weeks after the Bonus Period for bonus award miles to post to your MileagePlus Shopping account.
- The Tier 3 bonus provides the maximum number of miles that will be awarded.
Quick Thoughts
The Southwest portal is offering the more generous return on spend seeing as you can earn an effective 5X bonus at a couple of the spending thresholds, but many will prefer earning United miles instead.
That said, it doesn’t have to be either/or. Both of these spending promotions are running for the next four weeks, so there’s more time than usual to hit the spending requirements for both of them if you’re interested. I wouldn’t be surprised if we also see the Alaska, American, and Delta portals launch similar offers in the next week or two as well.
United’s portal is potentially easier to meet the spending requirements on thanks to its card-linked in-store feature which the Southwest portal doesn’t have. Considering eligible card-linked stores include Petco, Ikea, CVS, Sephora, and more, that gives even more opportunities to spend up to $600.
With the Southwest portal, be aware that although regular points that you earn from shopping are Companion Pass-eligible, the 500, 1,000, or 2,500 bonus points from this promotion don’t count; they’re only redeemable Rapid Rewards points.
As always, gift card purchases are listed as being excluded, but purchases from Giftcards.com do count if you want what’s perhaps the easiest way to max out these promotions.
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Hey Stephen – thanks! Would it be better to do 2 $100 Southwest portal purchases, rather than 1 $250? Seems like a better return (1000 points for $200 vs $250). Or does this work only on one purchase?
You can reach the spending thresholds across multiple purchases. However, you can only earn one set of bonus points and that’ll be for whichever the highest spending threshold it is that you reached.
That means that if you spend $100 twice, you’ll have spent $200 overall. That means you’d only earn the first threshold of 500 bonus points – that wouldn’t be doubled for spending $100 more than once.
Ty – you’re the best!
I always take advantage of these when I can get Giftcards.com to work. But I would say about 75% of the time when I try to use Giftcards.com, the order momentarily goes through, and then is followed by, “We were unable to process your order. Unfortunately, it was cancelled during our security validation process, which we use to keep all our customers safe.”
I tried placing orders with my VPN paused, my address matches my credit card address, etc. Giftcards.com is the only site that I ever problems with.
I would love to hear some suggestions on how to get Giftcards.com to work more often.
Are you placing an order while logged into a Giftcards.com account? If so, try using guest checkout. Also try using a different email address to the one you’ve been using – that’s fixed it for me before.
Awesome! I’ll give it a shot.
Et tu, AA/AS? 😉