Tutorial: How to Use Shopping Portals, Step-by-Step

As I wrote about in this post, I always use shopping portals to earn extra miles, points, or cash back when shopping online.  And I try to always shop online if possible, even when I do the in-store pickup (as you will see below).  I had some questions from readers about using the Shopping Portals, so I am going to give you the following step-by-step tutorial showing how to use shopping portals.  This is a demonstration of a purchase that I am making for my niece’s birthday (don’t worry, she will not read this & it will not spoil her dollhouse furniture surprise).

The Easy (Level 1 Travel Hacker) Way:

1. Go to Portal Finder (ex. CashBackMonitor) – I start by using a portal finding website to decide which shopping portal I am going to use. I know it sounds like a lot of hoops to jump through, but it does become second nature after a while. I used to use Cashbackmonitor.  Although I prefer the look of the EvReward website, I can force my eyes to deal with Cashbackmonitor for the sake of all things accurate.  Plus it only takes a few seconds before you are on your way to spending your hard-earned money at your chosen store.

   CashBackMonitor results for Kmart and Bank Rewards points

    

   EvReward search for Kmart – was not accurate for UR Mall today

    

2. I clicked on Chase Ultimate Rewards – As you can see, Cashbackmonitor gives me choices for Cash Back, Airlines, Hotels, and Bank/Credit Card Points.  Your decision about which you want to earn will be based on your own needs at the time.  Sometimes I am scrambling to add extra miles to top off a particular balance & sometimes I just want to pad my pockets with extra cash.  This time, I chose the Chase Ultimate Rewards (3x per $1 at the moment) just because I felt like it

   Will Chase UR make me as happy as these people?

3. The Shopping Portal (my example here is Chase UR Mall) will take me to Kmart (my chosen store for this purchase). It will look exactly the same as if I just typed in Kmart’s website, except magically behind the scenes in the web underworld, they will know that you clicked through the Chase UR mall to get your 3 extra points per dollar (don’t worry mom, they are not stealing your identity…probably).  This isn’t a huge purchase (sorry to my niece), so I will earn about 75 bonus points ($25 x 3 points = 75 points).  Plus the 1 point per dollar I would get for putting the purchase on my Chase Sapphire Preferred card.  Total = 100 Chase UR points. If I went directly to the store to buy the dollhouse furniture, I would earn 1 point per dollar for using my credit card, so I get an extra 75 points by doing it this way.

 

 

The Crazier, but still easy, (Level 2 Travel Hacker) Way:

This is what the crazy people (including me) do: In order to earn even MORE points/miles, you can sometimes go through the portal to buy a gift card (sometimes an e-gift card that will be emailed to you) for the same amount of money as your purchase. For the sake of simplicity, I went through the Chase Ultimate Rewards shopping portal:

1. Went to Staples (2x points per $1) to purchase a $25 e-gift card that was sent to me by email (total = 50 points)
2. Used my Chase Ink Bold card to pay for gift card because I get 5x points at office supply stores like Staples (total = 125 points)
3. Went (via portal) to Kmart to make purchase using my gift card (chose in-store pickup, so no shipping cost) for 3x per dollar (total = 75 points). As an extra precaution (usually for a big purchase when I really want those points) I will make the gift card value to be less than the total so that I can pay off the remaining balance with my credit card just, just in case.
4. The total in this example (which I actually did) is 250 Chase UR points (which I will probably transfer to Hyatt for an upcoming redemption I am planning).

 

 

Some notes & tips about using Shopping Portals:

• Sometimes the payouts are much higher, and it becomes especially exciting with a large purchase (we got lots of points for our refrigerator from Sears & television from Best Buy).
• I will usually go to the store website first if I need to browse around before filling my cart.  Once my cart is full, I close the window.  When I go back through the shopping portal, my cart (always, in my experience) has the items in it still.  Then I can just click right on the cart to complete the transaction.  It may be paranoid, but I don’t like to take the chances with all of the random clicking around I do when I am browsing through online stores.
• It can take several weeks for points/miles to post, so don’t panic.  Just make a note to check your AwardWallet balances several a few times an hour a week to see if your points have posted.  There are times when people have to get in contact with the shopping portal because the points aren’t posting, but that has not happened to me (or I missed it if it did).
• Sometimes you can use coupon codes (I usually do) and sometimes you can’t, you have to read the fine print
• If you return the items, you will lose your points.
• If you are going to order the e-gift certificate before your purchase, make sure you aren’t in a hurry because it can take time before the gift certificate is emailed to you.