A few weeks ago, I was talking about some of the shopping portal bonuses that various companies were offering as part of the week surrounding Black Friday.
Those deals are expired now (though there are a few shopping portal bonuses this week!), but at the time, I walked through a plan where I was planning to earn 51,000 points from taking advantage of all of the portal bonuses
Total rewards:
- 23,725 Ultimate Rewards
- 8,770 United MileagePlus miles
- 7,400 American AAdvantage miles
- 8,540 Southwest Rapid Rewards
- 2,780 Delta Skymiles
Do gift cards track in shopping portals
My plan was mostly to buy discounted Gap / Old Navy gift cards at Staples in order to meet the bonus targets. All of the Ultimate Rewards came from the 5x using my Chase Ink card. I was aware that Visa gift cards and Mastercard gift cards did not track through shopping portals, but I thought that buying merchant gift cards tracked for shopping portals.
In any case, I thought I’d give it a shot, and at the very least, the 20% off deals that Staples was offering would let me at the very worst break even reselling the gift cards
Checking portal bonuses to see if gift cards track in shopping portals
Let’s fast forward a few months and check my portal accounts. Here’s my American shopping portal account
Just has one transaction that I made on Office Depot on Black Friday, and none of my merchant gift cards at Staples. Let’s check United
Nope, nothin. So it seems pretty clear that the answer to the question if merchant gift cards track in shopping portals is a resounding no. This might be old news to some people, but I just thought I would throw my data point out there as well.
Happy shopping to everyone!
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
No change, huh? Not good news, but good to know. Thanks.
Every now and again, I will have a merchant gift card purchase through the Southwest Rapid Reward program post portal points.
I bought quite a few third party gift cards thru eBay and all credited fine. However, I did use a $600 staples gift card online @ staples.com through the AA portal a month ago. Nothing posted. I did contact them and they said it was in processing, whatever that means. With the bonus it is a matter of 4000+ miles tho so I hope they hurry