One of the guidelines when earning miles and points is to maximize every purchase. That could be by choosing the correct card to use, using a shopping portal for online (and now in-store purchases), buying gift cards for places you shop at other stores that pay a higher multiple (such as supermarkets and office supply stores) or using a dining rewards program or MileagePlus X.
Another way to earn extra miles is when banks load offers onto your account, r pay an additional bonus or cashback when you spend money at specific merchants. American Express is still the leader in this market with it’s AMEX Offers program.
Since American Express’ offers were so popular, it’s no surprise that the other banks wanted to get into the action. So now we have:
Chase Offers
Really original name there, Chase.
When the program launched, I kept checking my account to see which offers I was targeted for. I figured they’d want to generate interest and make the offers valuable enough that people would take advantage of them and keep looking back for more.
I must say that I was disappointed. I didn’t even bother to take advantage of the first offers and subsequent emails haven’t seemed any more interesting. After 2 years, I just stopped looking.
Some things to know about Chase Offers:
- The offers will be different for each of your cards and not every card will receive offers.
- The offers will be limited to a certain amount of money back.
- The offers may have restrictions in that they’re only good for single-use, even if you don’t earn the maximum amount back from that purchase.
My biggest issue with Chase Offers is that they usually cap the amount you can earn at a ridiculously low amount. For example, here is an offer that shows up on several of my Chase cards for Starbucks.
10% back with a $3 maximum. Womp Womp.
The only reason I checked my Chase Offers was that I saw a post on Frequent Miler about a 10% back at HomeDepot.com offer worth up to $25. Spending $250 at Home Depot is not difficult, and using a Chase card would make sense to earn 10% back.
I checked all of our Chase accounts and not one of them was eligible for the Home Depot offer.
What was nice to see was an offer for Hyatt on my World of Hyatt card.
Stacking a 10% rebate with the 4 Hyatt points per dollar earned for Hyatt stays with the card is a nice bonus, if you’d be staying at a Hyatt hotel soon, anyway.
Final Thoughts
The first decent Chase Offer I’ve heard about in a long while and we’re not targeted for it on any of our cards. It’s no wonder that I stopped looking for these offers long ago. It’s not worth my time to see if I can save $3 at Starbucks.
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
9 comments
I agree. I find very little of interest in these offers. I did manage to save about 80 cents at Autozone.
To be fair, I’ve been consistently underwhelmed by Amex offers as well.
This is why I am paying attention:
Congrats! You’ve successfully redeemed one of your Chase Offers
Chase Sapphire Reserve Card
Crystal Cruises
$642.00 earned
Now thats a good one….I saw that one as well.
I got 15% back on all Marriott and Hilton properties with $60 cap. So there can be some value. There is one for AirBnB too – 15% off but I almost never use Airbnb.
Also, if you actually eat at the restaurant from time to time, no reason not to max with a gift card for later use. Can do the same with Starbucks. If you’ll make the purchase anyway, might as well save a few bucks here and there. Not ignoring these.
Definitely choose a shopping portal, but be careful. Sometimes the highest payer is only a setup. For instance, TopCashBack is often the highest payer but they also also routinely deny the rebate and cite unverifiable reasons. Read their reviews — best to use an established one and avoid TopCashBack and the hoard of low-quality copycats like them.
I agree, the majority of the offers don’t seem to hold much value to me. However, I do add the Starbucks offers to my Sapphire card when they pop up. I’ve found that when I use my Sapphire card to purchase a Starbucks gift card through the MileagePlus X app, I still receive the restaurant category bonus point spending on top of the United miles and regardless of the disclaimer, each time I did this I received the discount through Chase offers. The MileagePlus X app makes it easy to reload the gift card to my Starbucks account, so there has been an overall benefit.
For the most part, Chase offers stink. I think I’ve saved $2.80 so far. Meanwhile with Amex offers, I’ve saved multiple thousands already.
Not only do the offers stink, but you can’t see the details of an offer without activating it!
Didn’t realize that until I accidentally activated the Starbucks offer when researching this post.