UPDATE: The offer cited below is targeted to specific Plink users. If you didn’t receive this offer via email, then you won’t qualify for double points.
Last Saturday I told you why I wasn’t too excited by Plink’s double points at Sears promotion (see “Sears double Plink sounds great, but…“). Now, though, Plink has added double points at Kmart, and that changes everything.
Once you signup for Plink (see my Signup Links page), make sure to add Kmart to your Plink wallet, then you can follow the steps I outlined previously in the post “Plinking Sears“. The idea is to go through an online shopping portal to Sears and buy a $50 Sears’ physical gift card. This will show up on your credit card statement as a Kmart purchase and so Plink will treat it as such. By paying $50 at a time, you can maximize your Plink points per dollar spent. Normally you would get 6% back in Plink points this way, but with this new promotion, you’ll get a staggering 12% back in the form of points redeemable for gift cards.
Best portal?
I’ve recently re-confirmed that buying physical Sears’ gift cards results in points via the AAdvantage eShopping portal, the United MileagePlus portal, and the Ultimate Rewards portal. Unfortunately, none of those portals are currently running good Sears’ promotions. Instead, the best current options I know of are:
- ShopDiscover: 10% cash back
- EBates: 6% cash back
- MrRebates: 6% cash back
Make sure to subscribe to my QuickDeals page to receive alerts when particularly good portal offers appear.
If you have a Discover card, the ShopDiscover portal is clearly the way to go. I’ve even had success in the past going through ShopDiscover and paying with a different credit card. It may be safer, though, to pay with your Discover card.
Add it up
If you go through the ShopDiscover portal and pay with the Discover It card (which offers 1% cash back), you’ll earn 11% cash back from Discover. Then, from Plink, you should earn 12% back in the form of Plink points. Those points could be redeemed for various gift cards including Walmart and Amazon.com. If you value those gift cards the same as cash, then you’ll have earned 23% back when purchasing Sears gift cards! Even if you value those gift cards a bit less than cash, you’ll still get a staggering return.
If you want to see ways to take this deal further (and to ridiculous extremes), please see: Gift card alchemy. For more details about getting Plink rewards when buying gift cards, see: Plinking gift cards.