Beware of purchases made with Sears - inevitably Sears failed to post the transactions across the board on ALL shopping malls I have bought from them - UR, BA, Priority Club, and UA - all with multiple bonus miles cut from when I made the transactions. So far none of the claims have ever been answered by the portal operator - the infamous Cartera.

Chase on the other hand, just went ahead to give me courtesy adjustment for the 8x bonus on a $25 test purchase when I SMed about the no show.

I have read about others experiences on Sears and HD purchases - they are notoriously no show for MONTHS.

I went through the Chase UR shopping portal to buy 2 tix on AA on Hotwire since they were the same price I was getting everywhere else and Hotwire was giving 2 extra pts/$.

However, on my statement, it says "AMERICAN AI 001xxxxxxxx" instead of Hotwire as the vendor. The flights aren't until February, so technically I shouldn't get the points until then, but should I contact Chase about this? If it didn't post as Hotwire, I would have used a 3x airfare card, but this was effectively 4x (2x travel + 2pts/$ extra).

Tickets were almost $1500 so it's about 3K points ...

That's interesting, because Sears was good to me through those shopping malls you have listed (except for PC, i haven't tried). UR posted Sears purchases fastest, although they will post only after Sears have shipped the item. Sears did not provide tracking # for GCs but, once they have arrived at my house, UR posted em just fine.

All my test buys were GCs. Everyone shipped within 1 week of ordering. None posted. The one from BA was ordered on 07/29. I waited 45 days then filed missing miles claim, 4 times, and received 0 response.

With UR there was no place to file claim so I just SMed Chase and got the courtesy adjustment in 2 days. Actual transaction has never showed up.

UA - Cartera has promised to "investigate" as those purchases were also part of the Month of Misery promo. I have not heard back from them since the initial response. (I got the offer of 1000 miles per every 2 partner transactions but if the partner transactions do not post, the promo would be useless - the fiasco is so big that the Month of Miles promo is now dubbed Months of Misery).

PC also does not have any place to file claim but Contact Us with email. I haven't bothered to chase that.

I think this was the culprit. All of my non-GC Sears orders were posted without fault.

I just got the 50K bonus for spending $3000. Transferred them to CO. Instant transfer. Very cool.

I also noticed that even if you have a small number of rewards in your account and you try to book a flight through the portal they will offer to reduce the fare by using the points in your account. This is a good way to get rid of these stray points hanging around (if you are planning to get rid of the card and have no other Ultimate Rewards cards). I'm not sure if I will pay the annual fee when it comes due. My spending habits are not high and I don't think the number of miles I'll get for $95 is worth the cost.

Yes, the executives which Chase hired from American Express are doing a reasonable job replicating some of Membership Rewards' best features, and adding a few (transfers to other UR accounts) that American Express has resisted.

Any reason you don't have the Chase Freedom card? Yes, having to tailor your spending each quarter to the categories chosen by Chase is a little irritating, but -- to repeat what I've suggested upthread -- getting 5 miles/dollar for category spend (up to 7500 miles/quarter) beats just about any other standing offer for a credit/charge card.

They were all eligible purchases - I have screen shots on the conditions. I dont have any need to buy anything but if GC works I can buy some and use them later when I do have the need. Before I go out of my way to buy a bundle, I chose to test them at each potential site. The BA portal is actually tested to find out if it would post so in case I need to use this for renewing the BA miles I can rely on it. Obviously it does not work the way it should have. However since I have transferred some AMEX MR pts to BAEC accounts in July when there was a 50% bonus offer, I dont need to worry about the life of it until 3 years from Jul 2011! Hopefully before that we would have used some of those stupid Avios.

All GCs purchases qualified when they are purchased. Paying a purchase with a GC does not qualify. These are the conditions across all shopping portal - they are displayed in identical format - hence I know they are all run by Cartera.

An FTer did tell me her Sears and HD purchases - physical merchandises - did not post after several months. UR just threw up their hands and gave her the points, all 4K+ earned + some change to make up for a 5K total when the goodwill was thrown in.

Based on the above, the issue does not seem to lie with GC.

I had a Sears GC purchase worked in 2009 when I used to renew UA miles. It worked and posted on the 7th week. But then at the time the mall was NOT run by Cartera. I actually got someone replied my inquiry when the transaction not showing up by the 5th week. The response was on UA website.

Now with Cartera runs all those e-Shopping Mall, the services went down hill big time.

I love our Freedom cards because it also earns 10 bonus pt per transaction when linked (automatically) to a Chase personal checking account.

Those small purchases at drug stores suddenly earn a lot more... $1 earns 11 pts for example.

Wow, I didn't know about this ^

By "linked", I assume you mean it is on autopay?

Sapphire Preferred + Freedom + Chase checking could really rack up some serious points.

Cartera is the operator of the AA, DL and UA portals:

http://www.cartera.com/clients/index.html

Incentive Networks is the operator of the BA and VS portals:

http://www.incentivenetworks.com/clients.html

In my experience Incentive Networks is very responsive to inquiries, but the BA and VS sites explicitly excludes gift card purchases. These are called gift vouchers in British English:

https://www.shopping.ba.com/ref/pgfaq

Yup. That is exactly how ours are being set up though we only have 1 Sapphire Preferred now because we want to replace the existing one with a 2nd card in the household when the anniversary rolls over next year - that way we can avoid paying the $95 fee but still would have a Sapphire preferred to pull all points together if Chase keeps current set up.

No. If you have a Chase personal checking account, both the bank account and the Freedom would be auto-linked by your SSN. You dont need to do a thing - Chase's system figures it all out and the earning rates automatically change to 10% bonus on all transactions, 10 bonus pt on each transaction. If you are one who shop the drugstores weekly "deals" which force you to break up transactions any way, this would work very well.

I didn't have to do anything to link them. Chase automatically did it (I assume based on SSN, as Happy mentioned).

Do event tickets count as travel & entertainment 2x points? Ie: ticketmaster, stubhub , etc