Sears brings 10X to Freedom holders, but drops Ink and Sapphire to 4X.
Every month, the Ultimate Rewards Mall has new month-long specials. Last month, I wrote about the August specials in the post ““Ultimate Rewards Mall August Edition.” Today, I’ll show you how things look for September.
As always, thanks goes to HikerT for updating his website that shows the Ultimate Rewards Mall payouts for different Chase cards. You can find his website here: lakebagger.com/ur/.
First the bad news
Here are some of the goodies from last month that went away:
- Sears dropped from 10X to 4X for Ink and Sapphire cardholders
- Staples dropped from 5X to 4X
- Office Depot dropped from 5X to 3X
- HSN dropped from 10X to 4X
- Shoebuy dropped from 15X to 10X
- JCPenney dropped from 10X to 6X
- Drugstore.com dropped from 10X to 8X
September Goodies
Now on to the good stuff!
Sears 10X (Freedom 10X. Ink & Sapphire 4X)
A couple of days ago I predicted that Sears would extend 10X through September. I was hoping that would mean that I would get 10X from either my Sapphire Preferred or Ink Bold card. However, Sears’ bonus earnings for both of those cards has dropped down to only 4X. For Freedom cardholders, though, there’s great news: Sears now offers 10X bonus points if you log into the Ultimate Rewards Mall with your Freedom account! For information about how to leverage this deal, see “Sears 10X: Leveraging the Deal.” Also, please see “Sears 10X final days?” for additional information.
Sony 10X (Ink Bold 10X, Freedom & Sapphire 2X)
Note that past experiments have shown that it is possible to double-dip here to get a total of 20X, but you need to be very careful. Buy only physical gift cards (not e-cards). Then, when using the gift cards, make sure to avoid products excluded via the T&C:
Not eligible on Sony outlet, refurbished, clearance items, and Sony Ericsson locked phones, or Employee Purchase Programs.
See “Sony 30X success” for more information.
Buy.com 10X (Ink 10X, Freedom & Sapphire 4X)
From an old Frequent Miler post, I found the following about buy.com:
A reader has reported success in getting 5 points per dollar by going through the Ultimate Rewards Mall to Buy.com to purchase merchant gift cards (Home Depot was his example). They do charge a small shipping fee ($2.99 for the first card, $.99 for each subsequent card), but they also give you 1% back in the form of “Super Points” which can be used for future purchases.
For some reason, this info never made it into the Frequent Miler Laboratory (I probably simply forgot about it). I plan to redo this experiment this month before putting it in.
Bloomingdale’s 10X (Sapphire 10X, Ink & Freedom 6X)
Time for a new double-dip experiment!
OfficeMax 5X (Ink 5X, Freedom & Sapphire 3X)
Note that in a previous Frequent Miler Laboratory experiment, buying OfficeMax gift cards through the mall did not result in points.
Home Depot 5X (Ink & Freedom 5X, Sapphire 3X)
In past experiments, buying gift cards from Home Depot did not result in points, but using gift cards did results in points as long as part of the payment was made with a credit card. See “Is the Home Depot double dip alive?” for details.
A few more:
- Macy’s 5X (Freedom 5X, Sapphire & Ink 3X)
- Ralph Lauren 5X (Sapphire 5X, Ink & Freedom 4X)
- Pottery Barn 5X (Sapphire 5X, Ink & Freedom 3X)
- Lord & Taylor 5X
- Dell Home 5X (Sapphire 5X, Ink & Freedom 2X)
- L.L. Bean 5X (Freedom 5X, Ink & Sapphire 2X)
- Tiger Direct 5X (Ink Bold 5X, Freedom & Sapphire 2X)
- KMart 4X
- Living Social 3X
- New Balance 3X
Predictions
Near the end of most months I write up a post with my predictions for how the mall will change. I didn’t do so at the end of August other than to predict that Sears 10X might stay around longer (partial success!). Sorry if you were expecting a more complete set of predictions! I’ll plan to do the usual prediction posts at the end of each month going forward.
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Larry: yikes, you’re right. Also, Sony used to show up in the UR Mall under “gift cards” but it doesn’t any more. When I tested it, the terms excluding gift cards were not there
A Bruner: good idea! I’ll see if we can do that
The ur link to sony.com now says gift cards are excluded. Is this new and does it signal the end of double dip?
General suggestion — can you put the year on the date of the post instead of just month and day? There’s no way to tell if the post is outdated unless you look at the dates of the comments. thanks
@FM, did you successfully get your UR points post yet by buying Home Depot GC at buy.com? I’d like to buy HD GC @ buy.com but not sure if the points will post.
xina: Yes, please see “Buy.com experiment success“
[…] Rewards Mall, Chase Ink cardholders can earn 10 points per dollar at Buy.com this month (see “Ultimate Rewards Mall September Edition”). On September 2nd, I launched an experiment: Could I buy gift cards at Buy.com and […]
Update… both posted today. two different orders, one paid with amex other with freedom.
Mike: Great!
for sears purchases on the Ink UR portal they posted after 3 days, if they posted at all. So far it’s been 6 days on Sears purchases through my freedom UR portal and purchased on the freedom card to be sure and they haven’t posted, anyone have any success yet?
Has anyone try buying Lord & taylor gift card and got points?
@Brett: I purchased a $300.00 gift card from Sears.com on 8/29, but the points have not yet posted to my UR account, should I be concerned?