Well, I am the perfect example of someone who makes a lot of mistakes. As I juggle raising two little ones, my marriage, working full time, and the blog, I have to cram in my research and attempts to earn miles at every chance I get. Thus why I end up staying awake late into the nights some times, or getting up really early in the mornings, to try and fit it all in. Now I have made another mistake in my quest for the Grand Slam promotion with US Airways. This is the perfect example where sometimes I need to slow down and double check what I am doing…but who has time for that when your toddler wants to play trains? Choo-choo daddy, pleeeease!

My first several hits were easy because they were free, and I have had accounts with some of the survey and reward partners where I was able to build up enough to cash in over the course of the past year. However, other hits I waited to earn until there was something we actually needed. I did not want to just go around spending money for the sake of earning miles. My previous free hits can be read about in my earlier post on the US Airways Grand Slam promotion. So far my account is up to four hits, or 3,000 bonus miles (plus miles earned).

Mistakes to Earn New Hits

Well we happen to be addicted to Groupon. My wife and I love watching the daily deals, especially for ones that would be great family activities and/or restaurants in our area or ones we would like to try. So when our local Groupon had several restaurants listed within our new home town one day, we jumped at the chance to buy them.

Typically, we always used our Discover Card ShopDiscover portal to earn a whopping 15% back on our Groupon purchases. However, with all the various promotions, and particularly the US Airways Grand Slam promotion, I look for new ways to capitalize on our options.

My first step was to go to the US Airways shopping mall, find Groupon, and earn one mile per dollar spent. This will also earn me my one purchase via the shopping mall as a hit. The only thing that made me nervous was the restriction “Gift card, gift certificate, and coupon restrictions may apply.” Groupon sure seems like it falls into this restriction if you ask me, but then why would they be listed as an affiliate in the US Airways Shopping Mall? They never mess with us on the terms, right? In reality, even though it has been over a week and the miless have not credited yet, I do not foresee an issue receiving my hit and miles. Total cost = $10.

This is where it starts to get confusing, and I can not seem to retrace my path to track down my miles. Since there was a second Groupon I wanted to purchase, I went to the US Airways site, and I thought I clicked on Thanks Again, where I knew I already had an account that I opened years ago, but never actually used it much. However, now that I try to do it again, I can not figure out how I would have used Thanks Again because there is not an option for Groupon now. Of course in my rush I forgot to make screen shots of my transactions. Total cost was only $12 though.

On top of it, even if I had used Thanks Again, I just realized my account I created years ago was associated with Delta apparently, as that is where my previous rewards were credited. So I assume I would have had to open a completely new account with US Airways to get this to work. Maybe I threw my money away.

Then fast forward to a little over a week later, and I have a Thanks Again 12 mile credit in my US Airways account. So by me clicking through to Thanks Again through US Airways, it somehow must have worked. So hopefully it all counts as a hit, and maybe my assumptions were wrong.

See, all the other blogs tell you how to do stuff correctly. I tell you about the mistakes and money I throw at the system in hopes that I can get miles or points. I like to think painting my misery for everyone is more enjoyable to read (I am joking.).

So basically I made two Groupon purchases in a rush, and even though I was going to purchase them anyways, I will have to wait and see what comes through as a hit.

Here are some other hits I have been working on.

Points.com Transfer

I am a newer member of Points.com, and never really took advantage of the program until the Grand Slam promotion came around where it became worthwhile to score a hit. I currently use Yodlee to track all of my accounts, and had no need to add another consolidation group to the list. However, points.com has the ability to transfer points and miles between programs, which in the Grand Slam promotion, can earn me a hit.

The conversion rate is not always the best, but I am also looking at very low level transfers to get my hit the easiest way possible. After adding in all my accounts to points.com, I then attempted a swap to see what it would take to earn 1 US Airways mile. Unfortunately, a lot of the partners that could be swapped required a minimum number of miles in the account or to transfer. Therefore, those were not feasible. I had opened up Frontier Airlines accounts for all of us earlier this year, and had 1,000 miles just sitting there waiting to be transferred. The problem…I needed a minimum of 1,001 miles in my account to initiate a transfer to US Airways.

So luckily, the points.com system would allow me to transfer 5 US Airways miles to 1 Frontier Airlines mile to get me over the threshold. Then, once my Frontier Airlines account had 1,001 miles, I could initiate an exchange back at 6 Frontier Airlines miles to 1 US Airways mile. The only downside, none of this happens instantaneous. So you might have to wait several days and keep going back into your account to make it all happen. Regardless, all went through, and the process counted as one of my first initial four hits.

Biscoff Cookies

After our InACents contest ended, I ordered the Anne’s assortment of cookies for the winner, Susie from MoneyandMap.com. The price went up over the course of the week, so we earned a couple of extra miles. Total cost = $17.95.