One the things that hurts me the most is when people buy things online and don’t use Shopping portals. Shopping Portals can be a very easy way to
accumulate airline miles and hotel points by buying things that you would buy anyway. The American Airlines shopping portal is the main method by which I earn miles on that program (18k as of the time of writing. I have never credited a flight to American Airlines).
What are Shopping Portals?
Shopping Portals are websites that offer an incentive for shopping at various online retailers. This incentive comes in the form of airline miles, cashback or credit card points.
How do Shopping Portals work?
If, for example, you wanted to buy a new TV from Best Buy for $399. Instead of going to bestbuy.com you would go to a shopping portal website. In this case we’ll use American Airlines AAdvantage eShopping.
Login using your Frequent Flyer ID. Some portals require you to sign up with the portal website itself, it depends on the shopping portal.
Go to the list of stores and look for Best Buy and click the link. A window will pop up showing Store details & terms and all you have to do is click Shop now. You’ll be redirected to Best Buy’s website and you can buy your new TV. Your frequent flyer information is tracked on Best Buy’s website via cookies (Quick tip: If you use a lot of shopping portals use a Incognito window to make sure you are crediting to your desired program).
Once your purchase is shipped or you pick it up in the store, you’ll be credited with 400 aa miles. It usually takes a week or 2 for the miles to credit to your account. In some rare cases it can take up to 8 weeks.
One of the things to beware of is item exclusions. You can read about item exclusions on the Store detail & terms. Most things that are excluded are store gift cards, warranties and services.
How do you know which program to credit your miles/points to?
I’ll credit my miles to either Alaska or American Airlines depending on which one give me the most points for that particular store. Sometimes if I need to extend my account expiration or top off my account for a reward, I’ll shopping at that particular shopping portal. I recently did this to extend the expiration on my Virgin America account. You can use a site like EvReward which aggregates the earn ratios for all available online stores in one place to also help you decide.
Do I need to use a particular card to get miles through shopping portals?
The answer to this question is no. In fact if you have a rewards card you can double dip on the number of miles earned. If I paid for my TV with my American Airlines card, I would get 400 miles from the shopping portal as well as 400 miles from my credit card company.
List of Shopping Portals
American Airlines – https://www.aadvantageeshopping.com/
Alaska Airlines – https://www.alaskaair.com/MileagePlanShopping
Delta Airlines – http://www.skymilesshopping.com/
Southwest Airlines – https://rapidrewardsshopping.southwest.com/
Spirit Airlines – http://mall.spirit.com/
United Airlines – https://shopping.mileageplus.com/
Virgin American – https://flystore.virginamerica.com/
Hilton – https://www.hiltonhhonorsshopping.com
Marriott – https://www.marriott.com/marriott.mi?page=sky-mall
Chase – https://ultimaterewardspoints.chase.com/shop-with-chase