The AARP Home Depot gift card discount was recently discontinued. You can get a 3% rebate on Home Depot gift card purchases through Ebates.

Maybe I'm not grasping this, but, say you bought a $1000 home depot gift card through Ebates and then got $30 cash back. Then you took that $1000 gift card and went through the Aadvantage Eshopping portal, and bought stuff on homedepot.com, using your $1000 gift card. You'd actually get miles for that??

Yes.

Daaaaannng.

I thought if you weren't using a credit card, you wouldn't get miles.
Don't ask my why I thought that though.

I don't think you can do that. AFAIK the gift cards can't be used on line, so you can purchase them at a discount, but not get miles for using them. On the other hand, if you use a mile producing credit card to make the gift card purchase, you should get miles for the purchase of the gift card. Or, right now it ought to qualify for the current quarter 5% promo (up to $400) from Discover Card, but I can't say I've done that. (Or, it would qualify for the 5% Citi Cashreturns card introductory promo if you are within the 3 month window). So, potentially you could get 1000 miles from your credit card, plus $30 from ebates for a $1000 purchase, or $20 cashback from discover, plus $12 from Ebates for a $400 purchase.

Alternatively, right now you can register for the Moms, Dads and Grads NWA worldperks promo, then go through the NWA portal to purchase Home Depot gift cards. That gets you miles or $ from the credit card you use, 1 Worldperks mile per $ spent and 500 miles per $50 of giftcertificates (up to 50,000 miles). Your $1000 purchase could net 1000 miles from your credit card, 1000 miles from the mall and 10,000 bonus miles. That could be the better deal if you have a use for Worldperks miles.

it's not that difficult to find a 10% coupon for home depot (e.g. can be bought on ebay for <5$)

anyone know if you can use a 10% off coupon with gift cards?

You can use 10% off coupon with gift cards.

have you done it before?

(i just want to be 100% certain before i buy the gift cards)

Don't forget about buying restaurant gift certificates through the I-Dine program. The miles post quickly after purchase, and the gift certificates can be used on any day, even days that wouldn't ordinarily earn the extra miles.

with absolute certainty/

In fact, bring in a LOWES cupon and HD will even take that! Even if paying the HD store with a HD gift card. (and I'm pretty sure it works the other way too)

Maybe you could take your HD GC obtained via AFAIK and then go to the store and convert it to a HD one. To do this I would imagine one way would be to use the AFAIK one to buy HD GCs online. Then take THOSE to the stores to buy things. Or, take the AFAIK one to the store and buy something but then return it or most of it and get a new GC. You could even do that in the same visit. (Usually when you return something bought with a GC, they give you a GC so this breaks no rules) That new GC will be a HD one so you can now use it to buy any way you wish going forward!

Just trying to be creative here. I'm sure the ethics majors will love me. After all, thinking up things like that could be a crime in itself, right?

I had hoped as much... Lately, NWA has not had HD on its list of such promos. It's not in the one you mentioned so this wont work. I used to use them to milk all NWA promos but they must have figured that out. Plus, while I use the NWA mall now and then, I no longer really rely on them for miles as I used to. They have botched up most of their promos in terms of posting miles. I had this problem with the UA mall (where buying HD GCs does work but I know of no promos right now) but have never had a problem with the AAdvantage mall (buying HD GCs no longer works for miles there though)

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but when I registered for the WP Mom's, Dad's and Grad's Promo, the T&C's specifically say "Purchases of merchant gift certificates will not qualify for this promotion except Giftcertificates.com and Home Depot."

I agree that NW WP Mall botches a very high percentage of miles postings, but they should count Home Depot gift certificate purchases for purposes of this promo.

or just look up the merchant on RewardsDB.com which is a lot easier!

You can of course buy gift cards from merchants that allow rewards payment for those purchases - obviously GiftCertificates.com does but not all merchants do, and not through all portals - so read the rules for the rewards programs closely.

I did not really read all the rules when I signed up. I did notice that like another recent NWA promo, HD was NOT in fact listed on the stores shown in the initial register page. I know it's a NWA mall merchant and I know that with NWA at least, they specifically do say you can get miles for purchases of GCs at HD or GC.com, but if the merchant is not listed in the ones the promo wishes you to use, then does this mean it's not doable or does this just mean they only listed a sample of them?

Of course, if the rules clearly do indicate, as they often have with their promos, an actual mention of GCs at HD or GC.com, then one would think this does in fact mean you can use those stores. However, this being NWA mall, there could very well be a discrepancy and you would find yourself battling to get miles someone would eventually tell you you never should have gotten to begin with. The reason wont be because you bought a GC, although many here and some in the mall's own employ may mistakenly think so, rather, the reason may be because they used a boiler-plate set of rules commonly associated with most promos and there never was a way to earn the miles at HD with this particular promo even when you assumed you could because of the rule.

Make sense?
Well, if you think we can in fact earn there, I will be buying a GC or two anyway from them, and hey, if I get 500 more miles then that's great. If not, I will have to chalk it up as me being unfortunately correct about the above instead of my falling into one more failure of their inability to post.

Sadly, I am basically done with chasing them. Hence, I have significantly tapered my use of their mall. (It's all run thru skymall now anyway so goooooood luck chasing!) and I figure over time others may do this to the point where the airline feels the impact.

Oh wait--they have!... they are merging with Delta anyway, so this means we will be lucky to get any nwa promo points soon.