Generally speaking, it is not the best way to save money to buy flowers online. However, it can be an incredibly lucrative way to earn miles if you do plan to order flowers! In this case, we have a combo of AAdvantage’s shopping portal and their payout of 16 AA miles per dollar with an Amex offer that will give you $15 off purchases of $50 or more.
Combine 16X AA Miles and $15 Back on $50 Spend
To make this happen, you need to do two things – go through the AAdvantage shopping portal and have an Amex card that has the deal for 1800Flowers saved to it. One other thing to be aware of – you will receive an extra 350 miles for every $175 you spend (up 1,050 miles). Let’s build this and see what is possible and then look at an extremely lucrative twist (if it works!).
Saving the Amex Offer for 1800Flowers
Log in to your American Express account and click on any of the cards you have in the account. Scroll down to the Offers portion and you should see the following offer waiting for you!
Here are the details:
- Must be used by December 31, 2014
- Must be used online
- Works on the whole family of brands – 1800Baskets.com, fruitbouquets.com, Cheryls, Fannie May, and the Popcorn Factory
- Enrollment limited (in other words, save this offer to your card now)
To maximize it, add the offer to separate cards, simply login to your American Express account and then choose to duplicate the tab (if using Google Chrome) as many times as you have cards. Once they are all open, select a different Amex card in each tab and select to save the offer to the card. This shows up as available on every one of my cards – charge cards, business cards, and personal cards.
Go Through The AAdvantage Shopping Portal
Today, AAdvantage is offering 16 miles per dollar spent at 1800flowers.com. After you have saved your Amex offers to all of your Amex cards, go to the portal page – here. Don’t forget to login with your AA account info!
You will notice coupon codes on this page – you are free to use any of those on your purchase. It will not disrupt your earnings. But, do not use coupon codes not found here.
To Max This Out, Spend At Least $175 Across All Purchases
Remember, for every $175 level you reach in purchases between now and November 24, you will receive an additional 350 bonus miles. This does not have to be in all one purchase, just the amount of purchases you make through the AA portal until November 24.
The Earnings? 25AA Miles Per Dollar!
If you do 4 separate purchases using your Amex cards (and each purchase at $50) totaling $200, you will earn a total of 3,550 AA miles and will get $60 cash back from Amex. That comes out to spending just under 4 cents per mile on the AA miles. That is not a great deal for buying miles, but if you are doing gifts at the same time, it is a nice side bonus. In the end, you will have earned 25 AA miles per dollar (factoring in the Amex offer and the $175 in purchases).
Putting a Twist On It For More Savings – Potentially Getting AA Miles At A Profit!
NOTE: The conditions on the AAdvantage portal says that miles will not be awarded for the purchase of gift cards, but it has happened before that the miles were awarded on the purchase of physical gift cards. So, buyer beware!
To make this a great way to purchase AA miles, you could attempt this. Again, the conditions say that miles will not be given for gift card purchases, but people have received the miles before, so it could work.
Instead of buying product when you go through the AA portal, but a $50 gift card with your Amex card (that you saved the offer to).
Now, go to one of the many gift card selling sites (check them out at Cardpool.com) and you can actually sell that 1800Flowers gift card for right around $31. If you buy a gift card from one of the other 1800Flower families, you can actually sell that for a little more. A Fannie May gift card at giftcards.com actually goes for $36.25!
Putting it together
Ok, so let’s say you use your Amex card to buy a $50 Fannie May Candies gift card (going through the AAdvantage shopping portal). You do this 4 times to get past the $175 mark. Now, you sell each of those gift cards for $36.25. Here is how the math works out:
- Spend $200
- Receive $60 back from Amex
- Earn 3,550 AA miles (16X + the 350 mile bonus)
- Sell gift cards for $36.25 each
- Totals – PROFIT $5 and earn 3,350 AA miles
If anyone has recent experience with AAdvantage and 1800flowers when buying gift cards, please leave a comment below and I will update this part of the post. Remember, the chances are (according to the conditions) that you will not receive the 16X miles, but you will still profit $1.25 per card.
