Earn Up To 50,000 Marriott Points With Refer A Friend

Marriott is out with a new promotion that earns you points for refer friends to the Marriott Rewards Program.

I learned about this promotion from an email sent earlier today. The promotion is kinda simple.

• Refer a friend that isn't a Marriott Reward Member
• If that friend enrolls and makes a stay within 365 of enrollment, you and they earn 2,000 points
• You/They will earn 2,000 points for each of the first 5 stays within 365 days of enrollment
• You can earn 50,000 points from this promotion

Looking at the terms and conditions, you can find an important rule:

• Sponsorships are limited to 5 new members each calendar year. New members who join through the Refer A Friend program must designate Marriott Rewards points as their earning preference.
• Miles earning preference is not an option with the Refer A Friend program.

Therefore, your friend must choose Marriott points for you to earn the bonus.

You will need a Marriott Reward account to participate. To start the invites, go to this website:

http://www.marriott.com/marriott-rewards/refer-a-friend.mi

If you aren't a member of Marriott Rewards and would like an invite, email me at jdteitelman@gmail.com

Not a bad way to earn points . . .

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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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 Follow us on Twitter @doit4thepoints! Have a question for me? E-mail me at jd@doitforthepoints.com