At the beginning of each month, new promotions appear within the Ultimate Rewards Mall. Tomorrow (or soon thereafter), I’ll provide full coverage of what’s new: both good and bad. Today, I’ll provide some completely baseless guesses as to what we might see. Keep in mind that I have no inside knowledge whatsoever. In fact, last month I scored only 43% correct. Let’s hope I do a little better this time…
Predictions
- Home Depot and Lowes will remain at 5X
- JCPenney will stay at 6X
- Kohl’s will stay at 10X
- Staples will increase from 2X to 4X
- OfficeMax will increase from 3X to 5X
- Office Depot will stay at 5X
- Sears will stay at 5X
- Best Buy will increase from 1X to 2X
Yes, I’m predicting a very boring December. Sorry. I hope I’m wrong.
Scoring
Once we see the real outcomes, we’ll score the guesses as follows:
- Correct guess: 1 point
- Directionally correct guess: half a point (e.g. if Staples increases, but not to exactly 4X, I get half a point)
- Wrong guess: 0 points
With the above scoring system, it is easy to turn the results into a “percent correct” calculation. %Correct = (# points / # of guesses) X 100.
Since bonus points vary across cards (Ink, Sapphire, Freedom), we will always look to the highest bonus across all cards to determine results. For example, if JCP is 6X for the Ink and Freedom cards, but 7X for the Sapphire then we’ll use 7X as the correct number, and we’ll count the 10X guess as being directionally correct.
Play along
Feel free to put your own guesses in the comments below. See if you can beat my score!
Use HikerT’s UR Mall Earnings by Portal page to see (mostly) current bonus points across cards.
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I was traveling yesterday but my prediction would have been no change, similar to what happened last month. Unfortunately that appears to be the case. That said, there do appear to be quite a few new merchants.
I know UR Mall specifically forbids it, but anyone have luck getting points from Staples buying tech like hard drives?
I’m spoiled. Where’s the update HikerT? Website was last updated 11/23!
I also was wanting apple 10x doesn’t look like it’s going to happen though 🙁
Rob – not necessarily true. Almost all, if not all, merchants listed in UR say gift cards are not eligible but several still award points anyways. Somtimes it is hit and miss.
Double dipping won’t work anymore if you buy gift cards.
Any places to buy 3rd party gc for points?
hah – i’m hoping sears goes up for the holidays… i need new tires, and a nice double-dip wouldn’t hurt…
I hope sandman is right with the addition of amazon, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
The UR Mall with both my CSP and Freedom cards have been extremely uneventful this year. We didn’t even get Apple.com at 10x for Cyber Monday like we did last year. Have you seen the 2013 Freedom Rewards categories, what a let down, too.
My prediction: they’ll be adding Amazon.com, but only for certain categories.