Earn 8X-10X Points For Dining Out
 

Few people realize that the Dining Rewards Network who partner with AA, UA, Southwest, US Air, Alaska, Hilton, Priority Club, etc. allow you to register not only your credit cards and debit cards, but also your GIFT CARDS which are branded by a credit card company (Visa, MC, Amex).

I've been buying the $200 GC at office supply stores using my Chase Ink Bold and earned 5X, then I earn another 5X per dollar for anything dining transaction I make with the Gift Card.

I registered with the United MileagePlus Dining Rewards Program and basically earn 10X United Points for eating out.

I broke it down and if you use the Amex Premier Rewards Gold Card at Grocery Stores which sell the $500 Gift Cards, you can basically get $0.17 cents per mile. Wish I knew how to upload the Excel sheet here to show you guys.

I posted about this on Twitter earlier, but it seems the FlyerTalk community isn't following me on Twitter, so I'll post it here as well. Let me know if anyone has any questions. I respond to twitter faster than FlyerTalk, but i'll check this forum daily.

I understand what you are saying and it is a way to partially liquidate a GC, however, why use the GC instead of the CC's you have registered with the diners club programs?

Using the cards you have registered you earn the dining points "&" the CC points. So, unless there's something extra you earn for it being a GC, I don't see a reason to lose the CC points by using the giftcard.

Am I missing something here?

Moderator action
 

I believe the idea is to combine the category bonus earned for buying the giftcards at a office supply, supermarket, drugstore, with the dining points. Assumes you have a card which earns more miles per dollar at office supply etc than at restaurants.

Thread has been transferred to Credit Card Programs because this is category shifting rather than manufactured spending.

If you spend $200 at a restaurant using the OD GC, you're spending $6.95 for 1035 UR

If you spend $200 at a restaurant with your Sapphire Preferred, you're getting 428 UR for no additional cost.

That means you're spending $6.95 for an incremental 607 points, or 1.15cpm, and have to keep track of all your gift cards. It might be worth it for some, but it's not as great of a deal.

I use my Citi Forward which gets 5x and redeem them at 1.33cpm each, so I'm getting $13.30 worth of travel for $200 of spending at restaurants. If I decide to go the Ink/OD route, my opportunity cost is actually $20.25 for that 1035 UR, or 1.96cpm, not a good deal at all.

Actually, this quarter, I'm using Chase Freedom for 5X+ UR!


Keep in mind that the Dining Rewards bonuses are separate from all this, because you get that on any card. The bonuses aren't tied to the category bonuses you earn on the card either, it's just per $.

Can you clarify the $0.17 cents per mile? Not really making sense the way you put it...

I think you meant a 17% return in miles, kinda a sorta 17% cash back, but in miles...but not completely sure.

Huh. That's weird!

How dare we?

The way I see it is:

You buy a restaurant gift card at OD with Ink and get 5x UR points. Then you take that gift card, register it on the site and earn 5x United points on that gift card. So essentially, this way you get 3 extra UR points for getting the gift card at OD instead of just getting 2x UR points for restaurant category + 5x United points.

However, there is a flaw with this logic. A lot of restaurants that are on the United Dining site are small pops and moms shops that do not have GCs sold at OD and even if they do... you do not start earning 5x United points until you dine 11 times to get VIP 5x points instead of regular 3x points.

I don't believe that restaurant gift cards can be registered with iDine, only prepaid American Express, MasterCard, or VISA. Hence the need to factor in the fee for purchasing the prepaid card.

Not sure if you meant that the Dining site include mostly small mom and pop restaurants or if you were referring to GCs being sold at OD. The Dining Network has recently expanded to include a lot of new restaurants. If you live in a large metropolitan city, you should not have any problems. New York City has 872 eligible restaurants, Los Angeles has 466 eligible restaurants and Chicago has 315 restaurants nearby.

If you were talking about GCs being sold at OD, then it has nothing to do with small mom/pop shops. You can use any Visa, Amex or MasterCard gift card.

Even with the fee factored in, you can come out on top. Even with the $5.95Gift Card fee, you are still only paying $0.297 per mile at Office Supply stores after using the entire $200 Gift Card on dining as a VIP.

For those of you without a Chase Ink Bold/Plus card can use the American Express Premier Rewards Gold card or any other card that earns bonus points for purchases at grocery stores and purchase Gift Cards with a $500 maximum value for the same $5.95 fee and pay only $0.17 cents per mile after using the entire $500 Gift Card on dining as a VIP.


http://thrifty-tourist.com/wp-conten...ntsPerMile.jpg

Without getting into our difference in calculation in cpm, which people can differ on....I see your point.

But carrying around and keeping track of GCs is a personal choice. When the OD variable rate (up to $500) GCs were still around, it was still a hassle for some to go buy them and carry them around. That has not changed, if not has become a little more cumbersome because you need to buy more with only a max $200 limit now. But at the same time, the ability to get 5X points for spending on "normal everyday spend" such as restaurants where most people earn 2X using their Sapphire Card, can now be increased to 5X (plus another 5X for dining rewards). You can factor in the $5.95 fee and not think it is a great value, but the fact that you are not restricted to the Chase Ink Bold Card or an Office Supply store make this deal more unique. You can use the Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard at most Groceries Stores and purchase the $500 and get 1100 points for the same fee (2X + 10% rebate).

If you are going to eat out anyways. Why not earn 5X + 5X? Yes, for a fee, but it's a good deal, even with the fee.

But, if I'm going to earn the 1000 or 2500 dining points for using any credit card registered with my dining program, then I have to subtract those points from the total haul and measure the cost per additionally earned points solely against the purchase of the gift card--that's the added value. And, using that calculation scheme, your chart can underestimate the cost by more than triple. For instance, in the $200 gift card purchase, I'm only earning 1000 extra miles for the $5.95 cost as I'll earn the 1000 through the 5X credit given for my dine if paid by a registered credit card. That means the cost rises to nearly 6 cents per additional point.

And, in fact, for each of the scenarios in your chart, the cost per mile for the extra points that you can't get by just paying for the dine with a registered credit card is exactly the same--almost 6 cents per point, not 0.165 or 0.17 per point.

Unless you can give me a persuasive explanation as to why my methodology is wrong, nothing here has increased my desire to become one of your Twitter followers.

Lately I've been looking for restaurants that are listed on Rewards Network AND on MOGL (which I know is mostly local to the southern California area, but they are expanding) together, this gets me 5 UA miles, 10% back, plus credit card spend which for me is currently 5 UR points with the freedom card. I've recently started looking for restaurants that also sell vouchers on Restaurant.com - which can be purchased through the UR mall at 15x. I've found a few that participate in Restaurant.com, MOGL, and RN.

One example of how this would work:

buy $25 Restaurant.com certificate for $10: 150points UR bonus plus 21 point cc spend (if purchased with freedom, grandfathered into the old "exclusives" program)
Spend $50 at restaurant (minus $25 certificate) = $25 spend. (~137 UR points via Freedom rotating restaurant category, plus exclusives 10+10) (125 UA points via RN) (2.50 cash back from MOGL)

Combining these three resources you would spend $32.50 for a $50 meal (After MOGL cash back and the Restraunt.Com cert are factored in) and earn:
308 UR points
125 UA miles

or roughly 13.32 miles / dollar. Plus a steep discount of almost $20.

The real problem is none of the restaurants I patronize are on the dining reward network. Fail