Giftcards.com
Giftcards.com has had a storied past with shopping portals, with rules that spanned the entire distance between “rewards on nothing” and “rewards on everything”, and plenty of stops in-between. Most recently, they’ve only awarded spend on a rolling $20,000 in purchases in a rolling 365 day period. Terms didn’t make it clear about whether that was per loyalty account, per shopping portal, per giftcards.com account, or something else. While science made progress in answering the question, the point is now moot because that weird language is gone. All the major airline shopping portals have reverted to the following terms:
Orders over $2,000.00 are not eligible. To qualify for rewards, you must complete your purchase within the same session you start the purchase without exiting your browser. Opening a new tab or returning later will result in rewards not tracking.
Changing it again is a bold strategy Cotton, we’ll have to see if it pays off for them.
Barclays+[Frontier,JetBlue,Arrival+]
Today, Barclays has both card linked and shopping portal offers for card holders under a program named “Barclays Simple Earn”. Maybe giftcards.com will show up here too? I’ve been able to find press releases about Frontier, JetBlue, and Arrival+ cards, but I’d be surprised if they don’t show up on AA and Hawaiian co-brand cards even though both will soon be leaving the Barclays portfolio.
Barlcays has had “Barclays Card Rewards Boost” for a long time, and from the outside it appears to be run by the exact same technology and backend provider as the US Bank shopping portal. My educated guess is that they’ll use the exact same thing for co-brand cards, so tricks that work at US Bank’s portal will probably work here too. (Thanks to David)
Southwest T-0
Today is the last day for the old Southwest way of doing things. Basically, you’ve got until midnight in who-knows-which timezone to do the following:
- Book travel that includes free bags on all fares
- Consolidate Ticketless Travel Funds (TTF) now, because they’ll have expirations if issued after today
- Book Wanna Get Away or Wanna Get Away+ fares before they pumpkin
- Convert LUV vouchers to flight credits which are transferrable and have no expiration
- Add any companions to existing reservations to ensure they’ve got old-school benefits too
Thanks to Southwest guru Brian M for the comprehensive list!
Happy Tuesday!
Giftcards.com’s analysis team uses cutting edge technology to calculate its optimum rewards strategy.