BigHabitat
Level 2 Member
Today on the Southwest Rapid Rewards portal Sears has a pretty amazing 10x bonus. And as you all well know, purchases or reloads of Sears gift cards specifically earn portal points, so its easy to get 20x by buying gift cards through the portal than going and buying merchandise.
But the question in recent months for Sears has always been, now buy what?
I’ve spent an hour or so looking for deals and here’s what I’ve found:
- Sears gaming inventory is now virtually non-existent. Sears has basically no consoles for PS4, XBox, Wii, etc. For a long time my go-to item was a red Wii mini. For a nice run of 6 months or so I could count on buying these for $99 (and usually less with coupons), and getting $115 on average, which essentially covered the 6% tax and 8% Amazon referral fee. Now Sears is OOS and its $99 on Amazon anyways…
- Sears PC department is now a refurb outlet for Dell and HP. 90% of computers are now refurbs, with no good way to filter for just the new items.
- Sears tablets are 80% junk, 10% brands you can’t sell as new, and 10% too overpriced to make any attempt at a deal.
- Sears points deals are now super lame. I don’t want 30% back in points on useless tablet accessories and overpriced headphones. I want 90-100% back in points on that garbage
Yes, I have bought things today. But they are not worth sharing. Why? Because they are just not that good. They are not high-volume items like ipads or Nexus 7s.. I never mind sharing those because even if all my readers piled in we are not going to really move the market pricing. These are different… they are fragile deals where if 10 or 20 people jumped in the sales price would start falling, and we all would lose.
What can you do with the Sears 10x portal bonus?
- Reload gift cards and try to upgrade the gift cards in-store to a better store to liquidate (e.g., gas cards, Staples, etc). I’ve bought Visa cards in the past. Of course this is a YMMV activity,..
- Buy marginal deals and count on taking a loss for the points (even these are hard – like off-color Chromebooks)
- Load up on gift cards here with 10x and hope for better deals to use them
- Use this opportunity to take your Sears / Shop Your Way VIP benefit for a deal that gives you 100% points back (obviously you are betting that Sears or Kmart will have something worth buying at some point)
- Find a tech item and price-match it to another store, than pay with a gift card. Even if you don’t get portal credit for the purchase, you get the 10x for the gift card.
- Move on to something else
- Walmart has a 5x portal bonus through Southwest Rapid rewards. If only you could buy Visa gift cards at Walmart and get the 5x bonus. But the Frequent Miler Laboratory says it won’t work. If you want to try anyway, please let me know the results. But, there are some things worth considering at Walmart (I’m sure there are more. too).
- Ipad 32gb ($379 vs. $422 at Amason)
- “New” Nintendo 3dsxl – this “New” version seems to be supply limited, so Amazon pricing of $220 or so is above the $199 retail price you can buy at Walmart. There is a bundle with “Majora’s Mask for $220 at Walmart that would be a little better since you pay $20 more but you should net $28 or so with the game..
- Microsoft has 5x through Alaska. Good bonus, problem is most Microsoft tech items are “signature editions” with no bloatware. While that is nice, it means your item will have a different UPC / ASIN number and will be much harder to find on Amazon.
- Kohls has a 8x bonus with Southwest Rapid rewards. Unfortunately, you won’t earn Kohls cash. With my limited knowledge of things to buy at Kohls, that’s a deal killer for me
. - Staples 4x through Alaska Mileage Plan and Delta SkyMiles. So this is a 9x opportunity with Chase Ink. Here are a few ideas:
- Toshiba c55-B5362. $349 with $50 rebate for $299 net price. $378 on Amazon, #3000 in computers
- Dell 2015hv monitor. $79.99 at Staples, $110 on Amazon (note Amazon has for $94, but OOS for 3-5 weeks)
- Dell e2715H monitor. $209.99 at Staples, $259.99 on Amazon
- Use coupons on the monitors!