Alaska Airlines offers extra miles while shopping In Store and Online
Earning extra miles by shopping online is nothing new for most seasoned veterans of the miles and points world, but recently airlines have been jumping into the brick and mortar sector. Now, by simply linking your credit cards to your online shopping account, you can earn extra miles by shopping in stores that you go to every day.
Quick Online Shopping Recap
Just a quick refresher. If you know about online shopping skip to the next paragraph! Airlines will reward you with extra miles when you shop online by going to their website FIRST and then shopping as normal. Alaska Airlines is actually offering a 500 mile bonus if you’re new and haven’t signed up. You can do to their website here.
Take a website like Nike for example. If you just simple open your browser and type nike.com you can shop and all is well with the world. If you take one extra step and go to the airlines website first, you’ll still be re-directed to Nike.com, but you’ll earn a few miles per dollar as well. Why? Because Nike is giving them a little kickback for directing you to their site, and in turn you get a bonus from them (in the form of miles).
Top Cash Back
With websites like TopCashBack and Ebates you can earn money instead of miles for each purchase, but I like airline miles more. ☺
I also use a website called CashBackMonitor to find out which websites have the best deals and go there. It could be British Airways, it could be American Airlines or even United. Having miles in a bunch of different places is a good thing!
Linking for In Store purchases
Now you can earn those same miles by simply passing along your credit card number to the portal. When you make a purchase in store, that information will track and you’ll usually receive a text message stating that you’re good to go. I recently went to an Office Depot and after linking my Visa card got a text saying that it was all linked.
Not only did I earn the miles from my credit card purchase like normal, I also got 3 extra miles per dollar just for linking the accounts. While 291 extra miles doesn’t seem like much, just one of those purchases a month translates to thousands of extra miles every year, literally for free, and just for shopping as normal.
Restrictions
There are still restrictions however, as many of the websites state that you can’t earn miles for things like gift card purchases. While I find that is usually true for large purchases (it didn’t work for a $600 purchase of gift cards at the store) it does work for small amounts (like $25 or $50). The cut off seems to be under $100. Keep the purchases low and it doesn’t grab anyone’s attention.
Every little mile adds up
Like I said before, it may not seem like much just earning a few hundred extra miles every time you shop is that big of a deal, but if it really is as easy as adding your card to a website then why not? I know that most of you are sitting at your desks at work reading this right now and aren’t actually working, so why not head over to your favorite airline’s shopping portal? Signup if you haven’t done so already and then get to linking.
