1-800-Flowers Mother’s Day Extreme Savings
1-800-Flowers is back with another round of holiday promotions (this time Mother’s Day). When combining them with other moves from Shawn’s Ninja Tricks toolkit, you can end up with a great relatively low-effort deal (or an even better deal, via some higher-effort moves discussed below).
As you may (or may not) know, 1-800-Flowers is affiliated with a number of other websites where you can find a variety of different kinds of gifts. These include items ranging from flower bouquets to fruit baskets, to fine chocolates, to popcorn tins, to even steak and lobster! While many items they sell are arguably priced at significant premiums, with these tricks, you can end up getting some of them for effectively “free” (depending on your perspective of course!). Let’s take a look.
Start the Savings!
Portals
Shopping portals are an important part of maximizing your return at 1-800-Flowers. Currently the two best portal options are:
- Ebates: 22% cash back
- United MileagePlus Shopping: 30X miles
After determining which portal you want to use, here are the steps to follow:
1) Pre-Deal Moves
- Load the recent 1-800-Flowers Amex Offer (for $15 off $50+) onto all of your American Express cards. (For more information on loading offers, see: this post.)
- Go to 1-800-Flowers through your chosen portal and sign up for their “Celebrations Passport” free shipping (for a year) service for $19.99. (The normal price is $29.99 but it is on sale!) Use one of your Amex cards linked to the offer to build towards your $50 spend on that card. You will also receive either 22% cashback or 30X miles on this purchase! Yes, the $19.99 is an upfront investment. But if you take advantage of these deals (that come along multiple times per year) often at all, it will more than pay for itself.
- Sign up for the free “Celebrations Rewards” program.
2) Buy Physical Gift Cards – Click through from your chosen portal to 1-800-Flowers and purchase gift cards. You might want to use the card on which you bought the Celebration Passport to buy a $30.01 gift card to fill out the $50 required for the Amex Offer. On all other Amex cards it is probably best to just purchase a $50 1-800-Flowers gift card to trigger the offer. Make sure to click through the portal for each gift card purchase in order to receive full credit. Since you have to purchase physical gift cards, if you haven’t done this yet, then it may be too late for Mother’s Day but there are always good promos.
Update: For some strange reason 1-800-Flowers seems to be sold out of gift cards.
3) Buy Stuff – Find the items you’d like to buy for yourself (or gift to a friend or family member, or donate to a charity) on 1-800-Flowers and it’s affiliated websites. You will see those affiliated websites listed along the top of the 1-800-Flowers page. Importantly, usually any item you put in your shopping cart from one of the websites will show up in the cart with items from the other websites. You can use up to 2 gift cards per order.
4) Checkout with Promos – Make sure you are logged into your 1-800-Flowers account, so that you get credit for the Celebrations Passport free shipping and Celebration Rewards benefits. Checkout and pay with one or two of the gift cards you purchased with your Amex card to trigger the offer.
When checking out, use either coupon code SW36 (to earn 1,750 Southwest Rapid Rewards Points) or TB1750 (to earn 1,750 JetBlue TrueBlue miles). Each coupon code has a limit of 5 uses per account and requires a minimum purchase of $34.99.
Note: You could also use the United portal again to earn another 30X, however promo codes and portals cannot be combined so you have to choose one or the other.
The Math
To make things easier, let’s look at the math on a single $50 purchase. We will assume you go through the United portal for 30X miles.
- Merchandise Cost: $50
- Amex Offer Credit: $-15
- New Cost: $35
So you are paying $35 out of pocket for the merchandise. Of course, you are also earning a lot of miles. Let’s look at the scenario if you choose the Southwest promo code.
- United Portal 30X on $50 gift card purchase: 1,500 miles – (~22.50 Value at 1.5 cents per point.)
- Southwest Points Earned on merchandise purchase: 1,750 (~$24.50 value at 1.4 cents per point.)
So now let’s take into account the value of the miles. Feel free to use your own valuations, especially for United miles.
- Out of Pocket Cost: $35
- United Miles Value: $-22.50
- Southwest Points Value: $-24.50
- Final Cost: $-12
As you can see, you have the potential to get back more value than the price of the items you’re purchasing. And you get the merchandise to do with as you please! It is probably only worth it if you’re really going to enjoy receiving or giving the items, but a pretty good deal either way!
An Alternative to Earn AAdvantage Miles
If you aren’t into United miles, there is another play you could make to earn American AAdvantage miles. American Airlines currently has a promotion where you can earn 10,000 for interacting with their partners including 1-800-Flowers. You do have to use their link so it wouldn’t stack with the United 30X portal (or possible the Southwest promo code either), but it is a good alternative. For more info, see: this post.
Final thoughts and Considerations
A few other “pro tips” to consider, both potentially positive and negative. On the positive side, you will also be generating points under the 1-800-Flowers Celebrations Rewards program. As with many programs, you’ll typically earn 10% towards future purchases (for every $200 you spend).
On the negative side, as warned, there is always the potential that shopping portals won’t track. Thus, you should keep records and put in a claim with the shopping portal if it doesn’t track within a reasonable period of time. Of course, this can be time consuming and there is no guarantee you will get paid, although I have had success utilizing these methods.
I have also found that 1-800-Flowers, and some of their affiliated websites, can be questionable in the customer service department. I’ve had lots of Fannie May (chocolates) orders messed up, with late or incorrect deliveries (even as presents to friends/families). To their credit, they usually will do a replacement delivery and/or offer a full refund. But, again, this takes some monitoring and time.
Finally, if you want to get even more advanced, Frequent Miler has more tips & tricks. What have your experiences been with 1-800-Flowers and their affiliated websites? What are your favorite items to purchase? Let us know in the comments.
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I just added the celebrations passport to my cart and it is not on sale
I see $29.99 now also. I guess sale is over.
Darn you, Danny. You broke it.
I was unable to use promo codes at checkout (SW36), and the ebates terms specifically said no promo codes can be used with 25% cash back. And the passport is $29.99 for me still, not $19.99 like you mentioned. However, I still went forward with the deal as so:
$29.99 — 24 roses for mom
$29.99 — passport membership
$8.97 — tax & fees
– $15 amex offer
– $15 ebates
– $29.99 membership cancelation within 30 days
_____________
$8.97 net cost
I’m happy with that.
Thanks for all the comments.
Good point regarding the eGC. Definitely do NOT buy those assuming they will trigger the Amex Offer. Whenever websites go to xxxxx.cashstar.com for eGC, it is highly unlikely to trigger Amex Offers.
And that’s a bummer they aren’t selling physical gift cards right now. Hopefully they will again soon, as they have definitely triggered the offers and earned portal credit in the past. (Perhaps someone could call their phone line and see if they are still selling them, and report back.) And good point that you can get their cards via Discover, but not sure if that’s the best use of Discover cashback (will let others be the judge of that).
I’ve seen mixed reports on earning portal credit when using gift cards, but it should work unless the portal terms exclude it (taking a screenshot of terms is always a good idea – and checking to make sure you got credit later, although I admit that’s a pain!).
For anyone complaining that these deals don’t really make the item “free” … I’d suggest maybe relaxing. That’s why we posted: “for effectively “free” (depending on your perspective of course!)”
The bottom line is that you can buy some otherwise-typically-overpriced gifts for an effectively cheap (or free!!) price, depending on how you value the Amex Offer, portal credits and coupon miles. I’ve enjoyed sending gifts to others … and myself!
With all due respect, I take offense to the fact that you call people out as “complaining” about a deal and to “relax.” Further, who exactly are you referencing? There was only one remote possibility (ahmed) who didn’t agree with your conclusion here and there was nothing derogatory or offensive about their post. And who’s to say that people are uptight about this deal? Is this not a comment board where people sound their opinions? Every hear the sound of one hand clapping? If there was deleted comments that weren’t made public then I stand corrected but as of now I see nothing that would warrant commenting that people are complaining and need to relax.
I find it hard to believe that as a blogger you’d expect everyone to agree with you and as such I don’t understand why you’d call anyone out for having a different opinion than yours.
Fair enough that there was only one comment in disagreement. My apologies if my choice of words was stronger than necessary.
well its not just your choice of words dude. youre telling the general audience (not just one disagreeing comment or maybe even a non-comment lurker) that if they dont share your view on this deal that they need to relax. haha. cmon man. this is not an issue with being a word chef. its about your attitude.
in general, people value their team differently. meaning, the math of “free” significantly changes for those people so this deal may be a no-go just based on “too much work”.
My mother’s day arrangement said I could not apply the southwest promo.
egift cards are not a qualifying purchase for the Amex offer. Plus, as noted above, they are out of stock.
Gift cards are not available on the website per SGNfan.
I’ve never been successful in getting miles when I use gift cards to buy merchandise. I get cashback when I shop to buy the gift cards but never when redeeming. You need to be cautious here.
If you have Discover cashback, you can get a $30 eGC for $20. Contrary to what some might think, you do get miles w/ these eGC’s. I’ve had 1800flowers try to deny me miles a few times but always prevailed. There is nothing in the T&C that states you can’t use a promo code in combination w/ the eGC.
Nothing is free dude! you invested $85 or even more to get these benefits. You are paying for flowers and miles.
Unless you see something different, either 1-800-Flowers stopped selling gift cards or has been sold out for days now and I don’t believe e-gift cards earn miles. Also, the United offer seems to be earned by using a promotion number which I don’t believe earns points on buying gift cards but does when using the gift card.
Anyone else seeing this when they go to buy a gift card?
1-800-FLOWERS.COM® Gift Card
We are sorry, the product you have selected is not available. Please select from the list of products below or click continue shopping.
whenever you and FM talk about extreme stacking this merchant, I always dread the nuisance factor. i prefer to limit tracking multiple moving parts. but its so tempting. its probably the reason its still alive unlike Match.com. too easy to abuse.
Yep, I factor in 3 reasons why it’s not for me (emphasis on “me”)
1) As you stated, the nuisance factor, being time and possibly what I call the PITA factor (pain in the ass) if any moving parts go awry.
2) I don’t buy from 1800flowers so I can’t just assume the initial $19.99 up front cost will be worthwhile going forward. It’s (for me) definitely part of the “out of pocket” cost. Granted, some of this is offset by what you’d save on shipping if only capitalizing on this one deal.
3) I know this blog is geared towards travel, and while it’s become industry standard to apply a dollar value to miles/points, I’m not a fan of converting them into a dollar value when calculating my final cost of something. Just like those who shop CVS and their EB program or even Kohls and KC, it’s not a same-as-cash basis since I wouldn’t value each buck, kohlscash or mile as 1:1 to cold hard cash. For what it’s worth, I’ve read other blogs using KC as a cash savings which again I’m not a fan of. It’s counting apples with oranges and expecting to make apple juice.
I agree with that assertion, but you do need to figure out what the miles mean to you. I urge everyone to figure that out for themselves and to calculate based on that. There really is no wrong answer when it comes to value.
I think another point that is often lost in these debates is that you are receiving something of value. Is much of their merchandise significantly overpriced? Sure. But I still get some value, whether I’m sending it to myself or sending it as a gift to friends/family.
I didn’t lose sight of the gained value. To me, it’s implicit within the discussion of whether or not this is valuable enough for YOU to proceed. In a way it’s a math equation where you place value on the numbers and let the rest unfold as it may.
I think the question comes down to whether or not the gained value is more than offset by the lost value, in this case being what I listed above. Like Shawn said, there really isn’t any wrong answer here though.