Ultimate Rewards Mall October Edition

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JCP returns to 10X for Ink and Freedom cardholders. Freedom cardholders can get 15X at Kohl’s. 

Every month, the Ultimate Rewards Mall has new month-long specials. Last month, I wrote about the September specials in the post “Ultimate Rewards Mall September Edition.” Today, I’ll show you how things look for October.

As always, thanks goes to HikerT for updating his website that shows the Ultimate Rewards Mall payouts for different Chase cards. You can find his website here: lakebagger.com/ur/.

First the bad news

Here are some of the goodies from last month that went away:

  • Sears dropped from 10X (Freedom) to 5X for all cardholders
  • Sony dropped from 10X to 2X
  • Buy.com dropped from 10X (Ink) to 5X (Sapphire) 
  • Bloomingdale’s dropped from 10X to 6X
  • Home Depot dropped from 5X to 3X
  • Tiger Direct dropped from 5X to 2X

October Goodies

Now on to the good stuff.  Sadly, I’m not seeing any killer deals like we’ve seen the past couple of months, but there are a few decent ones:

JCPenney 10X (Ink & Freedom 10X. Sapphire 4X)
JC Penney gift cards often sell for 25% off or more through resellers (search giftcardgranny.com).  A nice double-dip is to buy gift cards at a large discount and then go through the Ultimate Rewards Mall to JC Penney to use them.  Several readers have reported success with this in the past.

Kohl’s 10X (Ink & Freedom 10X, Sapphire 2X)
Yes, Kohl’s has repeated 10X every month for over a year, but it is more interesting how.  This quarter, Freedom cardholders get 5X for shopping at Kohl’s (up to $1500 spend in bonus categories), and so will get 15X by shopping through the Ultimate Rewards Mall and paying with the Freedom card!  Checkout this old post of mine to see how to stack multiple discounts and rebates at Kohl’s: Fantastic points and savings at Kohl’s.

Shari’s Berries 15X
15X is a very nice return, but note that shipping and delivery charges are usually not included in the amount that is given 15 points per dollar.  Since shops like these tend to have very high delivery charges, your actual return will be lower than 15X.

Sephora 10X (Sapphire 10X, Ink & Freedom 5X)
Note that in May we saw Sephora at 20X so this isn’t very big in comparison.  Readers have tried to double-dip in the past (buy gift cards through the Ultimate Rewards Mall and then use the gift cards to buy merchandise to get double points).  Two readers reported success, but one reader reported not getting points for the gift card purchase.

Paul Frederick 12X
Men’s clothing.

UGG Australia 10X
Ugh.

Saks.com 7X
Saks was 10X in June.

Brookstone 9X
Maybe you can use those Brookstone Groupons you bought recently and double dip?

Prediction Results

Over the weekend I made 10 Ultimate Rewards Mall predictions.  Let’s see how well I did:

  1. InterContinental Hotels Group (Holiday Inn, etc.) will increase from 4X to 10X.  Wrong.  IHG stayed at 4X.
  2. JCPenney will increase from 6X to 10X.  Correct!
  3. Buy.com will repeat at 10X. Wrong.  Buy.com dropped to 5X.
  4. Sears will take a break from 10X and stick to 4X or 5X.  Correct!
  5. Kmart, which dropped from 4X to 2X sometime during the month will pop back up to 4X. Half right. Kmart increased from 2X to 3X.
  6. Macy’s will drop from 5X to 3X.  Wrong. Macy’s stayed at 5X.
  7. L.L. Bean will drop from 5X to 2X. Half right. L.L. Bean dropped from 5X to 3X.
  8. Best Buy will try to grab some iPhone 5 orders by jumping from 1X to 2X or 3X.  Wrong. BestBuy stayed at 1X.
  9. OfficeMax, OfficeDepot, Staples: 2 out of 3 will go to 5X (currently they are 5X, 3X, and 4X).  Wrong. Only OfficeDepot went to 5X.  Staples dropped to 2X.  OfficeMax dropped to 3X.
  10. Groupon will increase from 5X to 12X.  Wrong. Groupon stayed at 5X (Sapphire).

Total score: 30% correct.  That should teach you better than to believe any of my predictions in the future!

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