Delta New Member Bonus - My Final Tally

Last August, Delta came out with a promotion for people who had never had a Skymile frequent flyer account. I wrote about the nuts and bolts of the promotion here and here. In summary, the promotion gave you points for completing various tasks ie flying, buying, getting credit card all within the first year. Since I never had a Delta account, I signed-up and it has been a fun ride.

My year ended last month and I earned 69,691 miles due to it.

Earning over 69,000 points in one year with little effort is pretty darn good.

How I Did It

First, I took a flight to Atlanta and earned 6,000 miles (1,000 actual miles + 5,000 First Flight Bonus)

+6,000 miles

Delta.com

Next, I applied and was approved for the Delta Amex Gold. The promotion I went with was 45,000 miles after spending $5,000 in 6 months. I wrote about getting the card here. The New Member Promotion gave 5,000 extra miles for being approved for the Amex Gold card. The 5,000 New Member miles did not post automatically. I had to call and fight for the points.

45,000 AMEX Sign-Up Bonus
5,000 New Member Bonus
5,011 Miles Earned for Spend
----------------------

+ 55,011 Miles

The final section of the New Member Bonus I completed was the partner section. I wrote about it here and here. I earned the rest of the miles through various partners.

Super Shuttle Trip                     550 miles - 50 miles for the trip and 500 Partner Bonus Miles
eRewards                               1000 miles - 500 miles transfer and 500 Partner Bonus Miles
Club Carlson Point Transfer      750 miles  - 250 miles transfer and 500 Partner Bonus Miles
Dining Rewards                      1790 miles - 90 from dining, 1,200 sign-up bonus and Bonus
DoubleTree Stay                    1000 miles - 500 miles per stay and 500 Partner Bonus Miles
Hilton Stay                             1000 miles - 500 miles per stay and 500 Partner Bonus Miles
Hilton Stay 2                          1000 miles - 500 miles per stay and 500 Partner Bonus Miles
SkyMiles Shopping                  510 miles -  10 miles from purchase and 500 Partner Bonus Miles
SkyMall Purchase                    520 miles -  20 miles from purchase and 500 Partner Bonus Miles
Fedex Package                        508 miles -  8 miles for cost + 500 FEDEX Bonus
----------------------

+8628

I did not get the partner bonus from FEDEX package because it did not post prior to the close of my year. I wish the terms and conditions were a little more clear about this, but its an interesting story.

As a mathematician might notice that everything above adds up to only 69,639, but my point balance is 69691. The last 52 miles were things I tried to trigger the bonus. My failed attempts included Thanks Again and Transferring 5 US Airways miles into 1 Delta Skymile. Therefore, not all partner bonus will trigger the bonus.

Conclusion

If I could have done anything better, I would have tried to take more flights. The promotion would have awarded me 2,500 miles in addition to miles flown for my next 4 roundtrip flights. Every time I needed to take a flight, I tried to book with DELTA, but it never worked out. Either the price was to high or the routing did not work.

The other regret was the FEDEX slip up. For two months, I wanted to send the package to earn the points, but I didn't. I can only blame myself on this one.

Overall, this promotion was tons of fun and very reminiscent of US Airway's Grand Slam. I am unsure if the promotion is still alive; however, the web page is still up. If it is not, Delta Points has a code for 5,000 miles for new accounts.

Thanks for a fun year Delta!

Now the next challenge, how to spend these Skymiles?

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I Did It For The Points: Ordered an Ebook

Yes, I ordered an ebook. Normally, this would not be blog worthy except that I have no use for the ebook nor do I plan on downloading it. I simply Did It For The Points.

A little back story....

One of the first promotion I wrote about on the blog was Delta's New Member Bonus. A promotion that I have written about here, here, here and here. If you have never had a Delta Skymiles account, you can sign-up for this promotion and earn extra miles by completing tasks within one year. One of those tasks is purchasing items for Delta's partners.

My promotion year was coming to an end quickly and I had 2 partner opportunities available or 1,000 miles left. With few partner options left, I saw that I had not purchased from SkyMall. Now the question was to find an item that did not cost to much.

One of the tricks I learned from US Airways Grandslam is how to get all the products to appear in order by cost. To do this, type a quotation mark " in the search engine box:

Then choice to sort results from low to high:

After doing these steps, all of the products offered by Skymall will appear in order of price. Here is are some of the cheapest items Delta Skymall offers:

I thought of buying a adapter plug for South America, since I could use it later in the year. I even thought about buying a Bieber manual toothbrush as it would be a gag gift. The problem with both wasn't the price, but that added shipping cost. Skymall charges shipping rates by the amount you spend.

My Bieber toothbrush would cost me over $10 ($2.99 regular cost + $7.25 delivery cost) to get shipped to myself.  A little too much for a gag gift!

I started to look a little further down the list and came across three eBooks with "free delivery." This was just what I was looking for:

I choice the Change book, checked out and a few days later the points arrived into my account:

SkyMall gives you 5 miles per $1 spent with them. So, I earned 20 miles for spending $4 on the eBook.

The 500 miles came from the New Member Promotion. My $4 purchase netted me 520 miles or 105 for every $1 I spent. Not to shabby.

So I spent $4 on an eBook, I don't plan on reading. But I walked away with 520 miles.

Do It For The Points in action!

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SkyMall: Only Something to Pass Time on a United Airplane

We all know SkyMall. Its that magazine that we all look at to kill time on an airplane.

Skymall offers a wide range of items from useful:

              

To the bizarre:




Regardless of what you need, Skymall most likely will have it. How many miles will you earn with your purchase? ZERO. That's right goose egg. I was planning on writing a post for our United miles series, but I could't find out the earn rate.

Not on the United Skymall page:

Or on the Skymall landing page:

Other airlines proudly display the earn rate of Skymall purchases.

For example, Skymall purchase through American Airlines earn you 5 miles per $1.

2 miles with Southwest:

And 5 miles with Delta:

The only way I learned that United has bailed on Skymall is by calling the 1-800 number. The agent could not find the earning rate. She told me to look on their website. Which I responded that I did. She put me on hold and came back with bad new,  "United is not offering any miles for purchases."

Conclusion

Skymall is now only useful for killing time on the airplane. No points = useless

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US Airways Grand Slam Lite - My Plan

US Airways bummed many of us by not renewing Grand Slam, last year. In its place, US Airways has offered various bonuses for buying and trading miles, but no real replacement to Grand Slam. That is until last week.

As reported here, here, here, here and many other places, one can earn bonus points by making purchases through US Airways Partners. The amount of bonus points one earns is determined by the number of purchases completed:

Number of purchases	Bonus miles
1 - 3	25%
4 - 6	50%
7 - 9	75%
10 - 12	100%

Let's call each purchase a "hit," because I like to bring up old memories. One can get a "hit" for shopping at the following merchants from April 22, 2013 to June 23, 2013:

• 1800Flowers (25 miles per $1)
• FTD       (25 miles per $1)
• FedEx    (1 mile per $1)
• Teleflora (15 miles per $1)
• Vinesse (2000 miles, when you order 6 bottles of wine)
• Wine Insiders (1000 miles, when you order 12 bottles of wine)
• Dividend Miles StoreFront (varies - must spend $50 to count for hit)
• SkyMall (10 miles per $1)
• DM Dining (varies)

One important part of the deal is that for a Storefront purchase to count towards this promotion it must be a minimum of $50. There are no minimums, at the moment, for the other partners, but that might change. 

My Plan

I have spent the past week thinking about my plan to get to 12 hits. Here is my road map for this promotion:

Hits 1-6 - Dining Rewards

Hit 7 - SkyMall

Hit 8 & 9- FTD/1800 Flowers - Mother's Day Gifts

Hit 10 - Wine Insiders

Hit 11 - Dividend Storefront (Best Buy)

Hit 12 - Dividend Storefront (Kiehl's)

Things might changed on who I use for Dividend Storefront based upon changes to the amount of points per dollar merchants offer. However, I need items from Kiehl's and Best Buy; therefore, it would be wasted money.

My plan is to only spend $100 on wasted items ie things I don't need. We will see if I am able to get 12 hits with only $100 wasted...

Important Steps to Do Now!

First, register for the promotion, here. 

Second, register most of my credit cards for US Airways Dining Rewards.

Finally, create a Google Spreadsheet to track hits.

I will blog about my progress in the next few months .  . .

Happy Batting!!!!

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