Everyone knows Amazon.com and most people do some or like in our case, a lot of their shopping there. We have had the Amazon Prime membership for several years for the free shipping and music streaming benefits. Our purchases have been everything from clothing, electronics, groceries and luggage from Amazon. Actually we get so many packages with the free shipping that our recycling bin overflows every two weeks with the empty cardboard boxes. So that begs the question… How can I get Free Points from shopping on Amazon? There are three great options to Amazon Free Points and these are in addition to the points you can get from your travel credit card.
Amazon Free Points – Option #1 – Shopping Portals
There are many different shopping portals that offer miles or cash back. Unfortunately most of the cash back divide it up by department with lots of exclusions. This is why I usually look at Jet Blue Airlines shopping portal. Jet Blue offers 3 miles per dollar on all purchases.
Jet Blue has a large presence on the West and East Coast and not as much in the Midwest. Right now, I would fly out of Minneapolis or Chicago and be routed most likely through Boston for any flights. But keep in mind, these are free miles just by going through one link before doing your purchases. Just by doing a quick search, I found I could fly from Chicago to Boston (One Way) to see a Boston Red Sox game for as low as 4600 miles. So just by using the link and spending over $1500 over a year on normal purchases could easily get me a ticket out to Boston. The points usually post within a month.
Jet Blue has recently had rumors of being purchased, or purchasing other airlines over the last one to two years. If this happens, the points usually transfer to that carrier also. Additional flight options may be opening up in the future.
Amazon Free Points – Option #2 – Gift Cards and MileaguePlusX App
Some credit cards allow for bonuses on gift card purchases at supply stores. Our older Chase Ink Business Plus (no longer available) and the Chase Ink Cash offer 5 points per dollar. We pick up gift cards for Amazon all the time at Staples or Office Max. This will give me 6.25 to 10% back in free travel on that purchase depending on how I want to do the redemption.
If I forget to stop at Staples, I always hit up my trusty MileagePlusX app on my phone. United Airlines offers an app for your phone where you can purchase gift cards for many businesses and get United Miles for the purchase called MileaguePlusX. One of the best things about this app is you can create your “gift card” for the specific amount you are spending at some vendors. Amazon unfortunately is done in flat amounts. The rates for the gift cards is smaller at 1/2 miles per dollar, but its better than doing nothing.
Some of the better point options with this app that we use quite often are 5 miles per dollar for Bath & Body Works, Panera Bread and Applebees, 4 miles per dollar for IHOP, Buffalo Wild Wings, and Chilis. Joni often reloads her Starbucks account from this app getting 2 miles per dollar. Keep in mind this is above the miles or cash back you would get from your credit card.
Amazon Free Points – Combo Option
When you stack rewards you can get even more points for your purchase. For example, I need to buy something for $100 from Amazon. I pick up the gift card from Staples when I am in town. At 5 miles per dollar this nets me 500 Chase Ultimate Rewards points which I would value at $10.00. I then go home, sign into my Jet Blue Account and use the link to go through their shopping portal for 3 miles per dollar. This is 300 Jet Blue miles which is $5.02. I got this amount by looking at the flight for 4600 miles that costs $77. On this purchase when combining these steps I got $15.02 back towards travel on the $100 purchase. This is just over 15 percent back on something that I would be purchasing anyways, by just adding two simple steps.
Travel hacking doesn’t have to be hard. By doing just a few simple steps before making your normal purchases and you will be surprised how quickly you can use those benefits to travel.
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