Home Depot Slyness

So, as many of you have noticed, it's Spring.  (finally!  I'm not a winter girl) With spring comes the time when homeowners everywhere spend WAY too much trying to get their yards/house in order so they have pretty things to enjoy in just a few weeks/months.  We are in this category. 

What does this have to do with travel?  Well, we found a way to "capitalize" on the system.  See, we're frequent Home Depot visitors.  So much that every time we go in, a good 20 mins is spent just saying hi to all of the people we know there.  Just earning miles on our Aadvantage credit card wasn't enough to appease my dear hubby.  Nope, we found a way to earn even more miles.

Home Depot is an AA Shopping place where you can shop online for items and earn additional miles through the website.  So, if you go to https://www.aadvantageeshopping.com/ and find Home Depot, you can earn 3 miles for every dollar spent by ordering through that URL.  Use your Starwood card (that earns you 1.25 miles per dollar) and you're looking at 4.25 miles per dollar spent.  Sweet!

And here's where we take it a step further, as we usually do.  You can order gift cards through this website and earn your 3 miles per dollar on those, paying for it with your Starwood card for 4.25 miles per dollar.  THEN, once you get the card in the mail (which is fast, like 4 days tops) you can turn around and order the items you want through the Aadvantage shopping site, paying for it with your gift card for another 3 miles.  Make sense?  The miles are earned for simply using the site, not a card, so you get miles twice over by using a gift card purchased earlier.  Voila, you now just earned 7.25 miles.

Example:  you priced out a fan you like at Home Depot and it's $100.  You have 2 options:

1) Pay for this fan at your local store and earn 125 miles using your Starwood card.

2) Order a Home Depot gift card online through Aadvantage shopping for $100 using your Starwood card.  Earn 325 miles.  Buy the fan online through Aadvantage shopping, pay for it using your new gift card and select in-store pickup to save on shipping.  Earn an additional 300 miles.  Total= 625 miles

One requires a tad more work than the other, although mostly patience, but the results do not lie.  Order gift cards in larger numbers at one time and you'll always find a way to use them if you're doing home projects!  So if you order a $500 gift card from HD and shop online, you're looking at 3,125 miles. 

Yet another simple way to max out your mileage earning potential. :D