Check Your Email - United Offer

Check your email to see if you received this great offer. United MileagePlus is offering selected members a chance to earn 500 miles for completing 2 partner offers.

There are four partners to choose from:

Each of the four partners offer easy way to earn points and should be in your points earning repertoire. I have written about each of the partners before:

MileagePlus Shopping

MileagePlus Dining

OpinionMiles Club

ScoreBig

For me, I have already did the OpinionMiles Club (survey site) and MileagePlus Dining. I should be 500 points richer in about 6-8 weeks.

Say you just found this offer in your email. There is no need to register for the promotion, but you should be selective in your 2 partners. 3 of the 4 partners offer bonuses for first time use:

MileagePlus Dining - 500 miles for signing-up and another 500 points per dine, up to 5 in the next 30 days 

OpinionMiles Club - 300 or 600 miles for first completed survey 

ScoreBig - 2000 points for purchasing 2 tickets

You have until June 30th to earn points from the partners. 

Check your emails to see if you qualify for this promotion.

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Harvest Bonus Miles Posts

In October, I wrote that you should check your email for a possible bonus offer from United dining rewards. Known as harvest Bonus, the email could have been easily overlooked as another junk communication from the dining rewards network.

In reality, the offer was simple. Participate in one dine through the network and earn bonus miles. "In my instance, I could earn 2,000 miles after one dine. This was a must participate offer.

How simple was this offer. This $6 smoothie

Earned me 2,018 United miles:

Not to shabby for something I was going to do anyway.

The lesson here? Always look at promotional emails. The ones that look junk maybe the diamond in the rough.


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Check Your Email for Great Dining Rewards Offer

Recently, I received an email from Dining Rewards. This isn't abnormal, as Dining Rewards sends out emails constantly with catchy subject lines. This one;s subject line was Harvest Those Bonus Miles.

Typically, I ignore these emails, because they are just trying me to use the program. However, I am super happy that I opened this one, as it was a bonus:

 "Earn 2,000 MileagePlus bonus award miles when you dine from October 15 to October 29. This 

  fall, you'll gather 2,000 bonus miles just for dining out with the Happy Harvest Bonus. Search 

  for all the delicious places you can visit and review to earn those bonus miles. No registration       required. See details below."

Well the details below didn't provide much detail:

 "To earn through this bonus, you must dine at participating restaurant, bar, or club between

  October 15 and October 29. Please not that all dines must occur during a valid reward 

  period and be paid for with a credit or debit card registered with MileagePlus Dining. You

  may earn this bonus only once. Offer is not combinable with other MileagePlus Dining

  bonuses. Please allow 6-8 weeks from the date of your qualifying dine for any bonus miles to

  post to your MileagePlus Dining account. All account inquires related to this bonus must be

  received by December 29."

As you can see, the details did not provide much information on what one must due to earn the miles. I called the customer service number and learned that the I need only to dine once between October 15th and October 29th and complete the survey. 2,000 miles for only one dine. Easy breeze.

The offer is only for those who received the email, so check to see if you are eligible.

Remember DON"T LEAVE POINTS ON THE TABLE.

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Final Results: How Many United Miles Did I Earn In August?

In July, I wrote about 31 Ways To Earn United Miles. In August, I wanted to challenge myself to earn as many United miles as possible.

I made four rules that I had to follow:

   1) Spend the least amount of non-justified money ie money I wouldn't spend anyway

   2) Everything has to be ethical - would my grandfather be embarrassed by what I am doing?

   3) Can only apply for one new credit card that earns United miles

   4) Only miles earned in August and credited by September 30th count

Now the big question: how did I do?

Drum roll please . . .

My goal was to earn 75,000, so I am very pleased with earning 78,000+ miles.

Here is how I did it:

First, I applied and was approved for the Chase Ink Bold.

After spending $5,000, I would earn 50,000 Ultimate Reward Points, which can be transferred to United MileagePlus at 1:1 ratio. I earned 56, 558 points from the credit card.

Here is a breakdown of how the points were earned:

The other 22, 443 miles in a variety of other ways

The graphic shows I earned 22,734. That number includes 280 miles earned from Opinion Miles Club (see here) and some points earned from my United Credit Card.

Here are the ways I earned the other miles:

Here is how I earned the other 22,000+ miles:

  760 - Opinion Miles Club
  500 - eMile
1500 - Marriott Gift Cards (expired)
 186 -  Purchase on my MileagePlus Shopping Mall
1932 - Chase United Credit Card Purchases
1150 - ScoreBig
5000 - Purchases on my Chase Sapphire - Transfer from Ultimate Rewards
1120 - Dining Rewards
5670 - Purchase from Shoes.com
2500 - Vinessee Wine Purchase
2000 - eRewards Surveys

Now the question, how much money was wasted?

Here are the items that I paid money for and the amount of money I deem wasted:

Marriott Gift Cards - spent $1 on shipping
Kiehl's (MP Shopping Mall) - nothing
Scorebig - $10 (the extra cost of money)
Vinessee - $10 (the wine was only worth $5 a bottle)
Shoes.com - nothing, needed both pairs
Chase Ink Bold - $31.60 - 8 VRs @ $3.95 each
-------------------------
Total: $52.60 wasted


Conclusion:

78,000 miles with $52.60 wasted is amazing.

My little experiment goes to show that anyone can earn miles with a little bit of effort. Yes, 80% of my points came from credit cards. However, I didn't really purchase anything, except VRs, that I didn't need. For those wondering, I use the wine for the anniversary party and gifts.

Overall, the amount of ways you can earn miles/points is numerous. The only thing standing in your way is you.

Did you participate in my challenge? How did you do?

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Big Spending At A MileagePlus Dining Rewards Restaurant Soon? Earn Up to 1,250 Bonus United MileagePlus Miles

The Dining Rewards program is a great way to easily wrack up points while dining out and spending exactly what you would already be spending. If you haven't signed up for a program yet you can pick your favorite airline (I choose United of course) and you register your credit cards so that every time you register a dine at one of the participating restaurants you earn points, simple as that! Though if you have the Alaska Airlines program apparently Bank of America registers you automatically in the Alaska Airlines dining rewards program. It's easy for me to get points as my favorite Thai food place by work participates so once a week I go and earn my 60 points and take my spicy fried rice and all is good in the world!

A few days ago I got an invitation from the MileagePlus Dining program advertising bonus miles for dines at participating restaurants. If you spend over $100 you will gain an extra 250 bonus miles and you can repeat the bonus up to five times for the potential of up to 1,250 bonus miles.

Big Spender Bonus We want to thank you with up to 1,250 MileagePlus® bonus award miles! For a limited time, you can earn 250 bonus miles every time you spend $100. Register today to earn this special bonus up to five times for a total of 1,250 bonus miles. Register now >

This is really a bad promotion on the whole because 250 bonus points for spending so much money is not worth it. But if you have a big group going out to dinner soon or are heading to an expensive restaurant that participates in the program you might as well earn the bonus points. This is one of those promotions that you register for just in case you need it. The offer is targeted but it doesn't hurt to try and register just in case you find yourself willing to "treat" all of your friends at dinner. Don't worry, I won't tell them you did it just for the points. ;) 

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Is There An Opt Out Option, Bank of America?

I detailed here that one of the credit cards I recently applied for was the Bank of America Alaska Airlines credit card. The sign-up bonus was 25,000 miles after your first use. The miles sign-up bonus us great, but I really wanted $119 companion fare for an upcoming trip. I didn't get instant approval, but the card arrive a few days later.

Ever since, Bank of America has been mailing me stuff about the various features of their credit card. Most of the junk went straight to the shred pile until I received this insert below. What caught my attention was that I would receive "up to 5 miles per $1 spent at participating restaurants."

My initial reaction was cool, a feature I did not know about the card. That was until I turned over the flyer and read # 4: "Your Visa Card will be automatically enrolled in Mileage Plan Dining Rewards by Rewards Network and a Welcome Kit will be sent to your explaining your restaurant earning opportunities"

Really, your going to automatically enroll me? No choice? No opt-out?

Why am I making a big deal out of this, you might ask? Typically  Dining Rewards offers you a bonus to sign-up and spend a certain amount of money in your first 30 or 90 days. The bonus is typically only for new members. My gut tells me that there will be no bonus offer in my welcome kit.

I love Dining Rewards. I have written about it here and encourage people to sign-up for it. It takes minimal time, but has the potential for big rewards. Eat out, take a quick survey, earn miles/points.

What bothers me is the automatic sign-up for Dining Rewards! I could see this being a new trend with credit card companies, because it saves Dining Rewards money. Automatically signing people up reduces the need for spending extra miles on luring people to join with attractive sign-up bonuses. This is one time I hope I am wrong.....

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The One Time Everyone Will Agree It's OK to Instagram Dinner

If you ask most people who do not use the social photo sharing application Instagram very much, I imagine they think it's something like this College Humor video (Caution a few NSFW words in the song).

The act of taking a picture of your perfectly made latte or a wonderful dish at the latest to open restaurant has become the hallmark of the digital generation and something that is loved or maligned by people everywhere.

But...could there be a reason that possibly Instagramers and Instagram haters  could all get together to share a picture of their food? Bring in MileagePlus Dining Rewards.

GO TO YOUR ACCOUNT View as a webpage

You could win the $1,000 grand prize just for Instagramming your meal! Once you enter through this email only, simply follow these steps:

1 Visit a MileagePlus DiningSM restaurant. 2 Snap a photo of your meal. 3 Submit your photo via Instagram and include #FoodstagramUA, @rewardsnetwork and the name of the restaurant.

You already share foodie photos, so now here's your chance to be rewarded!

 If you are trying to earn points while you dine you should already be a member of a dining rewards program. Since my airline of choice is United, I stick with MileagePlus dining. By simply going to the restaurant and paying with a registered card you will earn miles on that purchase. With this contest if you snap a photo of your meal and include #FoodstagramUA, @rewardsnetwork and the name of the restaurant in the caption, you will be entered to win a prize of $1,000, $500 or $250!

Happy Dining, don't forget to add a filter!


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