Earn Airline Miles and Hotel Points on Each Groupon Purchase
A new Groupon loyalty program gives customers the option to earn miles and points with every purchase from American Airlines AAdvantage, Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan, Choice Privileges, IHG Rewards Club, JetBlue’s TrueBlue Program and La Quinta Returns.
Groupon users can begin earning airline miles and hotel points from top frequent traveler programs just for buying a Groupon local, travel or shopping deal. So this will work as a shopping portal, but you will need a promo code that will be applied at checkout.
Earning Miles and Points at Groupon
To start earning miles and points through Groupon purchases, you need to get a promotional code for any participating loyalty program. You can get started here.
You then select a partner and link your account by entering your loyalty program number. Here’s the current offers:
- For American Airlines AAdvantage program, Alaska Mileage Plan, JetBlue TrueBlue, United MileagePlus:
- Earn 5 miles or points per $1 spent on Groupon Local
- Earn 4 miles or points per $1 spent on Groupon Getaways
- Earn 3 miles or points per $1 spent on Groupon Goods
- New Groupon customers whose first purchase on Groupon is a Local offer that is $30.00 or greater before taxes will receive an additional 1,000 miles or points in addition to the 5 miles or points indicated above.
- For Choice Privileges, IHG Rewards Club, La Quinta Returns:
- Earn 10 points per $1 spent on Groupon Local
- Earn 8 points per $1 spent on Groupon Getaways
- Earn 6 points per $1 spent on Groupon Goods
- New Groupon customers whose first purchase on Groupon is a Local offer that is $30.00 or greater before taxes will receive an additional 2,000 points in addition to the 10 points indicated above.
Key Terms
- You will receive your points or miles for your identified loyalty program within 4 – 6 weeks of your purchase.
- Cannot be stacked or combined with any other offers, sales, or promotions, including but not limited to any third party cash back and/or loyalty programs.
- Select deals and items excluded – if the Fine Print of a deal or item states the deal or item is not eligible for promo codes or discounts, it is not eligible for this offer.
Analysis
I was excited when I first saw this but after reading the fine print, looks like this won’t be a very good method for earning miles and points. Terms state that it cannot be stacked or combined with any other offers, sales, or promotions, including but not limited to any third party cash back and/or loyalty programs.
This means that you cannot get cashback or miles and points from shopping portals, but what’s even worse, you cannot apply one of these promo codes along a Groupon promo code. We usually see codes for 20% off or more, so getting 5X miles or 10X hotel points instead of the discount won’t make sense for most people.
If there’s no Groupon codes available and I need to make a purchase, then I’ll be willing to test this out.
Conclusion
It’s nice that you have the option to earn miles and points, but with the current structure, this new program won’t entice many. Since we often see discounts of 20%+ on Groupon, opting for miles and points means that you would have to value those miles at 4cpp and hotel points at 2cpp.
Anyone excited about this?
HT: Frequent Miler
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