MilesBuzz! - Maximizing Shopping Miles

As I start my online holiday shopping, I am looking to get the maximum possible miles (in addition to my credit card miles). I seem to recall seeing something about a site that cross references merchants with various mileage programs and/or portals. I did a search, but came up empty. Does anyone know of a site like this?

As I start my online holiday shopping, I am looking to get the maximum possible miles (in addition to my credit card miles). I seem to recall seeing something about a site that cross references merchants with various mileage programs and/or portals. I did a search, but came up empty. Does anyone know of a site like this?


http://www.andrewcram.com/frequentflyer.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=270587

Here is a little thing that some of us have been putting together.

I do remember that site, but I think it went down a while ago

As I start my online holiday shopping, I am looking to get the maximum possible miles (in addition to my credit card miles). I seem to recall seeing something about a site that cross references merchants with various mileage programs and/or portals. I did a search, but came up empty. Does anyone know of a site like this?


Check out the Shopping link at:
http://www.freefrequentflyermiles.com/index.htm

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=270587

Here is a little thing that some of us have been putting together.

I do remember that site, but I think it went down a while ago

Andrew Cram's website
http://www.andrewcram.com/frequentflyer1.html

was last updated August 19, 2004, but it definitely isn't down--I just used it last night. Though it doesn't have anything about the current mileage shopping bonuses (i.e., American's AAdvantage eShopping bonus, etc.), it is incredibly comprehensive in listing sites and the standard mileage offerings from all sorts of airlines, Gold Points, etc.

I was thinking of a site called rewards lookup, or something like that

You could search the vendor name, and it would tell you all the sites that this vendor was a member of.

Had a much better interface than Andrew's site, but then again, it was always crashing ;)

SmarterLiving.com (http://www.smarterliving.com/ff/). Use the Partner option in the Mile Finder box.

Thanks jfe for pointing us to the terrific SPAM thread you started. Somehow I missed that.

I like Andrew and pgary's sites. Here is another that I use although I am not sure how often it is updated:

http://www.geocities.com/freeairrewards/OnlineCrossReferences.html

I am not sure if this is what you want but if you go to the SPAM forum, the very first thread is a sticky from our intrepid moderator jfe. The first message has a list of the portals. Check each of those out that corresponds to the mileage programs you belong to.

That should get you started.





Edited to give credit where credit is due!

Thanks, I was just trying to help :o

Sometimes I found it's better to get miles for shopping, say FTD's 30 miles per dollar (although I won't buy from they since they changed my pink rose to 4 different colors..:(), but most time I found $$ back is better IMHO. So always check: www.fatcash.com, www.ebates.com,www.digdigdeal.com and even upromise.com. They all offer % cash back for online shopping. :)

:)

SmarterLiving.com (http://www.smarterliving.com/ff/). Use the Partner option in the Mile Finder box.

pgary....I find that www.smarterliving.com is not very accurate. The staff doesn't seem to update pages frequently.

You suggested using the Mile Finder box to find partner offers. When I look at Northwest and American communication partners, I find Smarter Living shows offers that are not the best mileage offers available on the airlines site. They say NW and EarthLink offer 5K but on the WorldPerks Mall it offers 10K. TMobile and MCI offers on the WP Mall are higher than what www.smarterliving.com shows too. Also, Smarter Living list partners that are no longer even part of NW and AAs program (ATT Worldnet and ATT Consumer). :td:

Honestly, I like your site a great deal ^ so I'm surprised you're recommending a site that is so unreliable. There are so many errors on smarterliving.com com that I think it might deserve its own thread to see what others think about it.

I didn't see the FTD offer for 30 miles per $. Where is it? AA site only lists 20.

Sometimes I found it's better to get miles for shopping, say FTD's 30 miles per dollar (although I won't buy from they since they changed my pink rose to 4 different colors..:(), but most time I found $$ back is better IMHO. So always check: www.fatcash.com, www.ebates.com,www.digdigdeal.com and even upromise.com. They all offer % cash back for online shopping. :)

:)

pgary....I find that www.smarterliving.com is not very accurate. The staff doesn't seem to update pages frequently.

You suggested using the Mile Finder box to find partner offers. When I look at Northwest and American communication partners, I find Smarter Living shows offers that are not the best mileage offers available on the airlines site. They say NW and EarthLink offer 5K but on the WorldPerks Mall it offers 10K. TMobile and MCI offers on the WP Mall are higher than what www.smarterliving.com shows too. Also, Smarter Living list partners that are no longer even part of NW and AAs program (ATT Worldnet and ATT Consumer). :td:

Honestly, I like your site a great deal ^ so I'm surprised you're recommending a site that is so unreliable. There are so many errors on smarterliving.com com that I think it might deserve its own thread to see what others think about it.

It would be incredibly difficult and time consuming to keep any of the sites I recommend up to date. Thus I say on my website "But they are always out of date, so you might miss an occasional miles earning opportunity by relying on them." Perhaps I sould make that statement a bit stronger, by suggesting the use of these services only as a starting point.

Andrew's excellent list was last updated August 19 2004. His site has shown the most potential for being incredibly useful. But I suspect he has discovered (as have I) that site maintanence is much more time consumming and much less interesting than the creation of site. Perhaps we could help him by each of us volunteering to him to weekly or biweekly send him an update of changes on each shopping portal he lists. Perhaps someone here

Will contact Andrew privately to see if he would be willing to program the updates that come to him if we can find people to monitor each of the portals he lists (not me - I do enough maintaining my website),
Will list this suggestion on this formum as a separate topic, and
Will participate in this endeavor

If Andrew says he has just given up on the project, perhaps someone with rudementary HTML programming skills (hey - the site is already designed) could offer to take over the project from him, if there are enough volunteers to monitor each of the shopping portals.

Here is an opportunity for folks who want to contribute more to our common goal to do so. If it is worth getting it done, then it is worth your time to do some of it. So if an insufficient number of people volunteer to help, I would conclude that the project is not worth doing. (Yes, I have an army of readers contributing information to me for my website.)

Andrew's excellent list was last updated August 19 2004.


Actually that's a mistake, I last updated it in November but forgot to update the 'last updated' info...


His site has shown the most potential for being incredibly useful. But I suspect he has discovered (as have I) that site maintanence is much more time consumming and much less interesting than the creation of site. Perhaps we could help him by each of us volunteering to him to weekly or biweekly send him an update of changes on each shopping portal he lists. Perhaps someone here

Will contact Andrew privately to see if he would be willing to program the updates that come to him if we can find people to monitor each of the portals he lists (not me - I do enough maintaining my website),
Will list this suggestion on this formum as a separate topic, and
Will participate in this endeavor



I am happy with this approach.


If Andrew says he has just given up on the project.....

I definitely have not and intend to keep it going for some time to come. I have made updates based on feedback received from fellow FTers. I had been running though my mind whether I want to include limited time offers in the table or not though since it is an exponential increase in the maintenance burden and would be very hard to keep up to date.

Well I have done a bit of an update and simplification of the site this morning - I know there are bound to be some imperfections with the table (and I use the table rather than some database lookup because a) it is alot easier to set up b) far more compatible when using different browsers [I am both a Mac and PC user so am particularly aware of the number of sites that aren't fully compatible] c) it lets you scan down the page more easily to see companies you might not have thought to look up etc...).

If anyone spots anything that needs updating then please either post the specifics here or email me (contact info on the website) and I will endevour to update when I am able. I have scrapped the single page complete table because it was too hard to maintain 2 seperate versions of each entry and the page itself was becoming ridiculously unwieldy and bandwidth intensive.

Andrew

I really like the ease of Andrew's site to find out who, if, or how many miles per $ for a purchase. As one who can't even get a link here to work right I applaud you for all the hard work you have done in setting this up. I have even found places that I wouldn't even have thought of for purchases!

Cheers!
JudyJFLA