shopping portals Archives - Your Mileage May Vary

My Two Favorite Ways To Prevent Miles And Points From Expiring

Earning points and miles to reach your travel goals is hard work. It doesn’t matter if you earn them through signing up for credit cards, flying on airplanes, staying in hotels or even if you write out and send in 188 postcards. All of these actions take time and effort. The last thing you want to happen is to have your account go inactive and your balances zeroed out.

Depending on the program, you’ll lose all your points if you don’t have any qualifying activity within a certain time frame that can vary from three years to just THREE MONTHS!! Using a website, such as AwardWallet, helps keep things organized so you know when points will expire. There will be times when you won’t have a flight on a particular airline or a stay at a specific hotel chain planned before your points will disappear. All is not lost though, because there are many other ways to keep your accounts active. Here are two of my favorite ways to have some account activity and keep from losing my points. Continue reading “My Two Favorite Ways To Prevent Miles And Points From Expiring”

“Surprise Gift” In Hotel Room, What To Do About Unfair Rental Car Fee, How To Tell If Redemption Is Good, & More!

Happy Sunday to all of our travel friends, both near and far! Here are some articles we’ve read from other bloggers (and other sources) that we think you may like, as well, so we’re passing them along.

Continue reading ““Surprise Gift” In Hotel Room, What To Do About Unfair Rental Car Fee, How To Tell If Redemption Is Good, & More!”

What Happened To Ebates?

Ebates was our go-to cash portal for online shopping. Sure, there were other websites that might offer 1-2% more cash back but for most of our purchases, it’s not worth it for the extra dollar or two to worry about opening up and keeping track of another cashback website.

But if you go to www.ebates.com nowadays, you’ll no longer end up on the Ebates site.

Instead, you’ll end up here.

Continue reading “What Happened To Ebates?”

Save Money On Every Fill Up With Fuel Rewards

Fuel Rewards is a program that provides discounts at Shell gas stations. It’s free to sign up and everyone who joins automatically gets some type of savings. You can save more by taking certain actions (i.e. using a shopping portal or dining program) or by having a card belonging to one of their partners.

Let’s first talk about signing up for Fuel Rewards.

If you’re not already a member, you can get 25 cents off per gallon on your first fill up after joining. We have a referral link where we’ll also get a credit for for new signups. You want to support YMMV, don’t you?

Once a member, you have automatic gold status for 6 months. The ongoing membership process is a little more difficult to follow:

Continue reading “Save Money On Every Fill Up With Fuel Rewards”

When Should You NOT Use A Shopping Portal For A Purchase

I’m always looking for ways to maximize the number of miles and points I can earn with every purchase I make. Besides using a credit card with the best multiple for that category, I’ll look to see if I can get extra miles by starting out at a shopping portal (For more information about shopping portals, check out our article on how to find out which one is best for each purchase).

Last week, I was excited when I saw several posts and received an email advertising a limited time offer for bonus points for purchases from the Apple Store.

There were several things about this offer that immediately made me happy:

The usual payout bonus is 1 mile per dollar, so this was a great deal.
The offer was good for the newly released Apple iPhone and iPad products, which are often excluded from shopping portal bonuses.
There was an offer of 500 bonus points for purchases over $200.

The only drawback was that this offer was only available through the United MileagePlus shopping portal. While I have no plans to fly with United ever again, there are still uses for MileagePlus points. I logged into the MileagePlus shopping website and clicked through to the Apple Store.

Continue reading “When Should You NOT Use A Shopping Portal For A Purchase”