BigHabitat
Level 2 Member
The United shopping portal is on fire at the moment. We have 2 hot deals. I’ll tell you about them and what you can do with them.
first up… Staples 5x portal bonus means Staples 10x
5x shopping portal bonuses on Office Supply Stores are rare. I mean rarer than independent Office Supply stores that sell gift cards and are not Staples. Heck I was pretty excited earlier in the week to see a couple of 4x bonuses.
And as you’ve already mentally calculated if you read the blog… 5x portal bonus means 10x when paying with your Chase Ink card.
What to buy at Staples?
- How about the Dell e2215hv monitor – $99 on Staples and $126 on Amazon (or $137 with Prime shipping)
- Or the Dell p2314h monitor – $159.99 on Staples and $219 on Amazon.
- Or the Toshiba L55D-B5364 at $429 at Staples less $50 MIR = $379; on sale at Amazon for $469 (but a slow seller – #4608 in computers)
Staples weekly ad – Free $20 Gift Card on $300 of Visa / Mastercards
A promotion which never gets old. Ok, the 1 easy rebate per household gets old real quick, but basically its a buy 2 $200 gift cards make $6 and 2000 miles deal.
Sears 8x through United Mileage Plus portal
Yes, 8x really means 19x by the time you buy gift cards then go back to purchase items from Sears.
As we know, pickings are pretty slim at Sears these days so its often a grind to spend down big gift card purchases.
With Sears the strategy (assuming you don’t have discounted gift cards) is to use the 19x double dip on items on sale or with points back, and then apply coupons if you can.
Here’s one idea – a nutribullet for $89.99 with $30 in points back on their deals page, and then $10 back for a site-wide promotion, so it was showing a total of $42 in cart. I then applied a $10 off $75 they had recently sent, and now $52 in points is coming back. The fee for selling on Amazon is about $23 if it sold at $89.99, so about $60 net cash back plus $54 in points after shipping it to Amazon. The net cost is about $95 for me with tax, so if all goes will I might make about $19 if I can get full value from the Shop Your Way points I get. Plus I will be getting some 1710 miles ($90 * 19 miles per $). Do that 10 more times and you’ve amost burned up a $1000 in gift cards. Damn I wish they had higher value items that you could make a small profit on like Staples…
Crap, looks like I could have done $5 better with a $15 off $75 coupon. Need a $15 off $75 coupon? Try the Shop Your Way choose your benefits page. Looks like VIP members can grab one there (and no, it won’t screw up your benefit choice)
Idea #2 – A net $5 or $10 blender
I admit, I haven’t really researched blender pricing, but Sears has another deal that seems good if you need a blender.
You can buy this Oster blender for $29 and get $20 back in points. Now a $10 blender seems pretty good, but I also had a $5 off $25 coupon which made it around $4.40 (ok, like $6.40 with tax!)
Ok, I’m not going to start reselling $30 blender, but if you need a blender, that’s pretty damn cheap whether its $6 or $11…
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