Mrp Alert

I am working on finding the cheapest ways to get the requisite 28 points besides staying/transferring hotel points. Please feel free to post any updates or better deals than what I have found so far. I will update this list as deals are found.

1. Dividend Miles Shopping Mall: $200 or more $200
2. Buy or gift miles at usairways.com or points.com: max 1 1000 miles = $50
3. Share miles with a friend at usairways.com or points.com: max 1 transfer 5000 miles for $75
4. AIG Auto Insurance Switch your insurance
5. Awards for Mortgage and Real Estate Do Business With Them
6. Biscoff 0838: COCONUT MACAROONS OR 0840: ORGANIC FOREST HONEY $13.95 + s&h
7. Bose Click Buy then click Shop Online - Replacement boom microphone windscreen (useless) 25' Acoustimass® module cable for 3·2·1® systems $9.99 (useful for me)
8. Charlotte Observer $8 = 1 month M-F in a qualifying zip code
9. Chase Home Mortgage
10. DHL
11. Dividend Miles Dining
12. Dividend Miles Wireless Samsung U520 or Treo Accessories run $9.99+$4.99 S&H
13. E-Miles FREE
14. Energy Plus
15. E-Rewards FREE
16. FTD.com item# MS06 Nature's Song Summer Birdhouse = $19.99 + $9.99 S&H
17. getAbstract $179!
18. Giftsense.com Same Offer as FTD
19. Homeloancenter.com
20. iNest.com
21. ING Direct - ShareBuilder
22. LendingTree
23. LifeLock
24. Marriott Vacation Club (ownership purchase) couple thousand dollars
25. Microsoft Live Search Club Play Spelling Bee and cheat
26. Netflix
27. Network Solutions
28. Office Max
29. Philadelphia Inquirer Daily News Valid in PA/NJ only 5 weeks = $28
30. Realestate.com
31. Reservations Rewards
32. Sentry Insurance FREE
33. SkyMall
34. SuperShuttle & ExecuCar (counts as one partner)
35. TD AMERITRADE $2,500
36. Thanks Again
37. Trackitback.com
38. US Airways Cruises
39. USA Today $13.95 = 4 week subscription
40. Wine Insiders

Beckles

I'm trying to get 24 at least and see if I can get Gold and I'll go for 28 if I get 24, but quite frankly this is not an easy offer like some alluded to earlier in this thread. I will get six hits for Hilton stays probably and a few on rental cars. I might do one credit card and get a hit that way. ING Direct - Sharebuilder is actually a super cheap one, basically however much you decide to invest.

(off topic story, I did ING Sharebuilder, the Roth account was funded on Tuesday, I bought $100 each of six different stocks (BAC, KBE, IAT, GLS, JPS, and PWE) that day, that was less than two days ago. The portfolio is now worth over $710 in less than two days. I should be able to retire early if that keeps up!) (On topic note, the miles for Sharebuilder posted very quickly, within one day of the initial trade.)

USA Today will not work, the miles don't post for three months.

$2,500 for TD Ameritrade is not really a "cost", you can just fund an account and put it in a money market account.

Trackitback is not too bad, $35 investment and you get 25 miles/dollar on $30, so 1,250 miles plus the bonus.

E-miles won't work if you already have an account with them through another airline. Plus it would take a while to accumulate enough miles without over-priced purchases if you had to start from zero with a new account.

I don't think this is very easy to do without hotel stays/rental car credits.

TribeFlyer

Most of the hotel partners are in Amex Membership Rewards. If you have Amex points to burn, you can do a double transfer into Dividend Miles. Unfortunately the exchange rates are pretty poor, as has been mentioned. The best I saw was 9990 Amex => 3000 Starwood => 3000 US. Other alternate currencies to build hotel point totals for the transfers if you're short are e-Rewards (Hhonors) or Coke points (IHG Priority Club).

Beckles

I have Diners Club, which is better than AMEX in terms of hotel exchange rates, but the transfer rates are still terrible. Other than Starwood, I think the transfer rate just from hotels to airlines is generally terrible anyway.

ExitRowAisle

Mrp Alert:

Your list might be made more useful if you indicate whether a particular activity is restricted in some way (e.g., Sentry is limited to certain states, e-miles and e-rewards are probably off-limits to those who already have an account set up with another airline, etc.). I wouldn't necessarily go into any of the details, but an "*" with a footnote would at least put people on notice.

Although the bonus has obviously not posted yet, I figure I have 4k in the bag for less than $10 (I Dine, Thanks Again, LSC, and Sentry) and that ignores the miles I earned for each of those partners. I expect the next four will cost quite a bit more to cobble together.

ArizonaGuy

Is there actually a limit to the number of times / how rapidly one can redeem the 4300 club tickets for 2500 miles? It seems ridiculously easy to score this reward. Hell, even have your kids do it (without cheating, heh) to practice their brains while earning you miles too.

EDIT: I see the daily earning limit is 1000 tickets. Still, that seems easy enough to acquire, and if you can hit that daily you can redeem for a total of 25k miles every 45 days if there are no limitations.

Mrp Alert

Anecdotal evidence suggests that you should be careful amassing a ton of points this way. I just wanted my 100 miles and then quit playing. Apparently, Microsoft is watching what people do and not awarding everyone miles. YMMV.

jmsfla2002

I noticed that the sharing miles fee on Points.com ($6.95) had been wavied for certain airlines/hotel programs but not DM. Then I saw that DM doesn't participate in the share points with friends/family feature. Do we think that means points.com isn't a possibility or that any transfer from points.com will count?

Beckles

I believe that for it to count you would have to "Share Miles" through the link on USAirways.com.

ExitRowAisle

Some, if not all, points.com activity is specifically excluded from this promo (see the T&C's). Why bother with this partner when there are others that are clearly less risky?

jmsfla2002

I did read the T&Cs. They state:

"Buy or gift miles at usairways.com or points.com: max 1 hit
Share miles with a friend at usairways.com or points.com: max 1 hit per member"

I was just looking for another low-cost or free option. The Delta thread does this during the Delta partner promos and is often very helpful.

ExitRowAisle

I stand corrected. However, given the following language:

"The following activities do not count as Qualifying Partner Activity or Hits . . . Dividend Miles earned by exchanging (“swapping”) another loyalty currency into Dividend Miles at points.com", I would steer clear of points.com.

It would seem that GPX activity at points.com would qualify, but that assumes that points.com will somehow code the transaction differently than its standard exchange offering AND Northwest will actually recognize this nuance. I wouldn't count on both of these occurring.

cltwbb

Has anyone determined how you go about getting credited for using a partner? For instance, I want to use FTD.com today to send my wife flowers - but how do I make sure that gets credited?

I'm confused...

Beckles

For most partners, just click the appropriate link or follow other instructions that you can get to from the USAirways.com Get Miles page.

b1513

When you click on a link there is a place for your FF#. Just make sure there's no typo. That happened to me with FTD and it took me forever to get the points credited. I'm not sure if I entered it incorrectly or if they punched it in wrong. My hunch is that I made the error.

Bobette