In Spencer’s guide to Amex Offers yesterday he mentioned stacking the offers with shopping portals, which reminded that I’ve been meaning to put together a post on how to leverage Cashback Monitor for…possibly months.
Continue reading: How To Use Cashback Monitor To Maximize Points From Shopping
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
I recently became aware that there are shopping portal opportunities with Marriott. How do those work -- can you book a post-paid hotel stay through a portal and still get the bonus points after your stay? Seems like a great opportunity for some extra benefit that I had been missing out on all this time.
nice. I used to use evreward (when I remembered). This looks like a bit more robust of a tool
Hi! Just a quick question: It looks like you could also get 5% cashback through Discover. While I obviously don’t know if you’ve got an eligible Discover card I’m curious to hear wether you would even consider cashback instead of miles since 5% cashback does sound better that 3.something % „cashback“ through miles. What are your thoughts on that?
3 weeks ago, I bought an Macbook (ordered on Apple' educational online store, but picked up in store) through British Airway Shopping Portal, but I haven't got the points yet. Do the shopping portal excludes Apple's educational online store???
@ Frederik -- I think it depends on the individual? Lots of people prefer cashback to miles, but while I "value" miles at roughly the rate I'd pay to accrue them, I typically redeem them in ways that are far beyond those rates.
@Tiffany
Thanks for your reply! I appreciate your time and effort to write an article about shopping portals!
Agreed that it depends on the individual. I get what you’re saying but aren’t you essentially accruing those miles for a higher price than you’d usually would? Wouldn’t you have consider the opportunity cost for NOT getting the Cashback? E.g. you’re buying sth for $100 through a shopping portal and have to option to either get $5 back or $3.9 worth of miles and you choose the miles. Doesn’t that mean you are essentially accuring these $3.9 worth of miles for $5 of (potential) cashback meaning you’re forgoing $1.4 and therefore actually “paying” more than you normally would be willing to spend to accrue the miles?
That being said if you redeem the miles for higher value it would obviously make sense to take the miles instead of the money but keep in mind you are really buying those miles for more than you are willing to pay for them normally, according to your valuation.
I stand to be corrected but wouldn’t you have to value one mile (Avios) at least ~1.7 ct for it to make sense to get the miles instead of the money in this case?
Again, I’m not trying to say you’re wrong or something, I’m just curious how the math adds up since at least for me it looks like you’re essentially buying these miles for a higher price than you’d usually be willing to pay...
@ Frederik -- Sure, but you can't necessarily purchase miles at the rate that I value them, so when I say the cost to accrue I'm already factoring in the opportunity cost, and it's not a direct comparison to "paying" regardless. I feel like scale also matters. $5 is probably better than 3.9 miles. But I can get way more than $100 worth of travel out of 7,800 miles.
Travis did a series on how to value miles that gets into all the math, and might be interesting to you: https://onemileatatime.com/value-miles-points/ I don't take it quite that seriously 😉
But yep, it's always tradeoffs, and something everyone has to consider the options individually.
Anyone have an idea how often these are updated?
Also, any idea how quickly the alerts are sent out (once per day? )
There are times when cashbackmonitor misses things; the same can be said for evreward. Is there any other tool out there that mitigates this inaccuracy or advice on how to insure we are getting the best information to make an educated decision?
A bit off topic, but I'd recommend using caution when this tool recommends TopCashback. Despite doing everything right, I have found them to be extremely unreliable, with only about 20% of my transactions tracking correctly using their system. Requests to customer support - even with correct documentation take upwards of 3 months and sometimes end with a response that approximately says: "Well our terms don't guaranteed anything". Reader beware.
Hey Tiffany have you ever tried to use a portal to earn miles while purchasing miles? I’ve never heard you talk about that. Odd.
I've said it before but in most cases you'd be making a mistake to buy Apple products because of bonus points. If you assume a fairly high bonus of 3 AA points per $ then for a $2,000 iMac you'd get 6,000 points that are worth somewhere between $60-$120 (1-2 cent value per point).
There are online stores (e.g., B&H Photo) that will usually give you a discount of $100 or more off Apple's price AND unless you live in that state (NY), you also don't pay any taxes. So you'd easily save $200+. A much better deal than reaching for points. I went that route recently and saved $150 + free shipping + no taxes off a $1500 computer. A much better deal than 3 pts per $.
@Evan - CBM gets updated twice a day now, and it checks alerts whenever there is an update. Check this twitter for more information.
https://twitter.com/CashbackMonitor/status/1035490352327782400