I know, I know, this is not travel related, and for those that would never shop at Bloomingdales, I thoroughly apologize. However, this does link to earning Chase Ultimate Reward points, so bear with me here. And for those shoppers, this is a great way to get a deal at Bloomingdales. To get this savings you must: 1) use the Friends & Family code, 2) shop online and go through the Chase Ultimate Rewards shopping portal, 3) use a points earning credit card, and 4) purchase a discounted gift card through a cash back site.
Step 1: Purchase a discounted gift card at www.cardpool.com. The amounts vary, but all of them give 6.5% off the gift card value. To really maximize on the deal, you must purchase an electronic gift card where you can use online instead of an in-store only gift card. UPDATE: Reader Joy reminded me that you can purchase a giftcard at cardpool.com through a cash back site. Both BeFrugal.com and TopCashBack.com give 2% cash back for this merchant.
Note: I personally have never purchased a gift card from cardpool.com, but it seems reputable. Cardpool.com does state in their purchase protection guarantee: “If you purchase any gift card from Cardpool, we guarantee it will be valid at the merchant and to the dollar amount specified on your order. We make such guarantees for up to 100 days from the date of your purchase, up to a maximum of $1000 per customer.”
Step 2: Go through the Chase Ultimate Rewards shopping portal. You will earn 10 points per dollar spent if you have the Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card. Now, you can go through a different shopping portal, but you’ll earn less points. Make sure if you have both the Chase Ink Bold (or Plus) and the Chase Sapphire Preferred to go through the Chase Sapphire Preferred account (the Ink Bold and Ink Plus will only give you 6 points per dollar spent). Going through the shopping portal will literally take one extra minute and ultimately put you directly on the Bloomingdales website. To learn more about the Chase Ultimate Rewards shopping portal, read this prior blog post.
Step 3: Add the items to your shopping card. At checkout include promotion code “FRIENDS12“. This is available to anyone and everyone and will give you 20% off your entire purchase (keep in mind though that some brands and find jewelry are excluded – typically your really really expensive high end stuff. Also, Bloomingdales has waived the shipping fees, so free shipping for all!
Step 4: Use a points/miles earning credit to earn even more points for your shopping!
So how does this calculate to 40% off? Let me first preface this with it is not a perfect science and I’ll point out some of the caveat’s along the way! Let’s say you want to purchase a $100 item, here are your savings:
- The Friends & Family discount of 20% will bring this order down to $80.
- Gift card purchase will save you 6.5%, bringing the cost down to $74.80.
- You received 2% cash back on the gift card purchased, bringing the cost down to $73.30
Now, the points you earn on the purchase is the following:
- You will earn 10 Ultimate Reward points per dollar spent by going through the shopping portal, so 800 bonus points.
- You will earn 1 point per dollar spent by purchasing the gift card, so let’s say 80 points.
If you value your Ultimate Reward points at 2 cents per point, this is giving you $17.60 worth of points. So you can then really think of your item as costing you $55.70, thus a 44.3% discount! But remember, you really are paying that extra $17.60 so you can’t think of it as a shopping discount and a free travel redemption and count it twice!
As I mentioned before this is not a perfect science. If you go through another shopping portal you will not earn as many points, and you might value your points differently. Also, this is assuming a perfect opportunity to purchase an $80 gift card from cardpool.com. You might end up with a balance on your gift card depending on the cards available. There is also the risk that the gift cards will sell out.
Needless to say, this can be a great discount for many! The Bloomingdales Friends & Family promotion goes until October 1. Enjoy!
I think you meant “bear with me” not “bare with me”. This is generally a fully-clothed blog! 😉
@colleen – whoops! Well that’s been updated. Clothing always wanted!
Also if you buy your Cardpool Gift card on Top Cashback- you can sneak another 2% in there…and yes I have done this before 🙂
@Joy F – Thanks for the tip!
“If you value your Ultimate Reward points at 2 cents per point”
Not here.
@HikerT – What do you value them at?
Nice strategy! One question: if you use the Friends20 code, doesn’t that invalidate the bonus points you get from the shopping portal? My understanding is that some portals won’t give you points if you use additional discount codes. Have you tested this out w/ Chase before?
@PaulB – When I make a bloomingdales purchase I am almost a) Using a gift card, and b) Using some sort of promotional code. I’ve always receive my Chase UR points, but haven’t tried yet with this specific promotional code. Almost positive that it will work, but can never be 100% sure.
@dealswelike, it depends… If I was selling or redeeming UR I’d want to get at least 2 cents of value out of them. However, if I was buying them as you are doing here, I wouldn’t value them more than 1.5 cents, probably closer to 1.31 per frequent miler’s fair trading value analysis.
@HikerT – When I redeem I absolutely try to get at least 2 cents/point value. This isn’t really buying them as I wouldnt suggest doing this for items you don’t need, but for items you were purchasing already.
How do you buy online only gift cards for bloomingdales on that website? I can’t find them
@ben – at the bottom of the page it says eGift cards in small print underneath the gift card value.
You’re using referral links for your BeFrugal and TopCashBack links. This should be disclosed.
@truthiness – Yes, those are my referral links. There are times I miss pointing them out, so thanks!
So one can get UR 10 points per dollar for Bloomingdales purchase when accessing Bloomingdales from UE website, even if you use a non Chase form of payment like a gift card? Is that true of all UR merchants, i.e., can use gift card to pay and still get the points for the UR portal?
I used to be a fan of this blog until I discovered that it’s not “clothing optional.” There goes all the fun…
@A.S. – haha!
Seriously, who cares if they’re your referral links? I still don’t understand what the nonsense is all about with readers needing to have this disclosed or you’re somehow wronging them.
@bender – music to my ears. I agree with you and thanks! I thoroughly encourage others to not use my links for groupon like purchases an to go through one of the online shopping malls and to post their own referral links in the comments section for sites like topcashback.com, etc.