BigHabitat
Level 2 Member
BigHabitat Self-debates Merits of Competing Sears Portal Bonuses
In the spirit of The Colbert Report… and my previous rip off of this format here.
BigHabitat 1: So the Southwest shopping portal RapidRewardsShopping has an 8x portal bonus going on for Sears. That rocks.
BigHabitat 2: Touche. (<< somehow that word just doesn’t look correct in print, but I checked the spelling). While I concede that that sounds totally awesome, remember Discover Deals has 10% on Sears, so clearly it’s the winner.
BigHabitat 1: DiscoverDeals? That’s the popular yet lazy and shortsighted view. Southwest points are unquestionably worth more than 1 cent, and likely much closer to 1.5 cents. So lets call it 12%. Advantage Southwest.
BigHabitat 2: Ahh, a heartfelt but feeble argument, Discover will be doubling all cashback this year, so that 10% is really like 20% cash back assuming all goes well. Check.
BigHabitat 1: But if you have the companion pass (and I do, and looks like I won’t be taking you next trip!), the Southwest miles actually double in value since you can get two people to fly for the price of one. So it’s like 24% cashback. Checkmate
Guest Speaker Phil (Milesabound): Gents, gents. Even assuming you could decide which one is better, what the #$%## can you buy at Sears at the moment that is worth reselling?
BigHabitat 1 and BigHabitat 2: You sir, are a formidable opponent!
So what can you buy at Sears at the moment that is worth reselling?
All kidding aside, it’s pretty slim picking for any resale items. Old standbys have been decimated. Sears seems to have exited video games, most new brand name tablets or computers (except Samsung which cant be sold as new), and even today they seem to have taken out most cordless phones (not glamerous, but had been a good way to grind down gift card balances using coupons on smaller orders).
But a portal bonus like this is too good for me to pass up. I know there will be something, there always is if you wait for it and having these portal economics means something’s going to work. Worst case is there is another round of VIP deals coming July 1 and they usually put some high points back Platinum items, or other VIP days like we had a few weeks ago where you get 15% back in points up to $1k.
But I’m not going hog wild either. I have a lower tolerance for tying up large amounts in Sears gift card purchases.
Staples 4x through AAdvantage Portal
Doesn’t sound huge in itself, but remember that this is almost always bundled with the Chase Ink. So it’s like 9x. Not many huge deals, but if I hadn’t gotten scolded already I might have considered the Ipad Air 2 64gbs for $539. This would also be killer if you were targeted with an Ebay 4x points offer (10%), where you could buy Staples gift cards from Paypal Digital gifts and pay with your Chase Ink card to get the 10% and 5x.
Instead I may be forced to buy some old Ipad Mini’s in store for $199 which seem to be going for over $240 on Amazon.
Oh, yeah, does that Staples format look a little different? Looks like Staples has tweaked the design of their website. i don’t really care how it looks, I just want some deals.
Elusive Exclusive Offers spotted at Staples.com
See that black box in the product description below? That’s an Exclusive Offer. They seem to come and go at times but I love these because they pretty much stack with any other coupons and they usually are not volume limited. So when there is an online coupon, these are em, money.
This is a YMMV item which you definitely may need to go into incognito mode and try several times to get the discount, or a higher % off. These used to be bigger, up to 20% or more on these routers so hopefully we will see some better ones come along. Today I saw them on this Nighthawk and the X6. If you see any good ones leave a comment.
No Dice on Chase Ink Retention today…
I’ve read from the Doctor O’ Credit and others that Chase was cracking down on new Ink applications. Well maybe it’s just me but they seem to be less generous with handing out retention bonuses. I tried and came out with nothing despite being a very “good” customer (i.e., burning through the $50k 5x bonus category). Since my understanding is that the available offers are shown to the initial rep I wonder if they had crunched the numbers on my bonuse category spending and decided that they didn’t need to throw additional money at me to retain me… And they are right…
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