Get more points for every pound with airline eShopping portals
In my recent post, I shared how you can earn points and miles via credit card spend. That covers pretty much every single scenario and is likely the easiest way you can earn while spending but there are next levels you can go to in order to earn more miles and points when making transactions online at many stores.
Introducing eShopping portals. Almost every airline has these and they are all very simple in features and functionality. Go to the eShopping portal, find the retailer you're looking for, see their earning rate and click go to site which will then track your visit. If you make the purchase, it'll recognise this and the points will be deposited into the site within a period of time. These are extremely similar to cashback sites like Quidco and TopCashback except you are earning airline points instead of money back into your Quidco or TopCashback account.
The primary eShopping portals I use are British Airways eStore, Virgin Atlantic ShopsAway and Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer Spree.
British Airways eStore is probably the best out of all three. The User Interface is the most polished and is pretty easy to navigate around. The biggest bonus is that a number of retailers, for example Apple UK or BT Shop, offer express points awarding meaning that you could get the points within five days as opposed to upwards of 90 days. This is a big advantage, particularly if you are making a big purchase somewhere like Apple UK online. British Airways are also the only one in my list that offer a dedicated application that is linked into the Executive Club - which is useful to keep track of visits to sites, transactions in your frequent flyer account and then options to use them points.
Virgin Shops Away is similar and offers mostly the same shops as BA eStore. I have found, per pound, that earning rates could often be one point less per pound than British Airways equivalent meaning I will generally opt for BA's offering. The primary reason I will use Virgin Shops Away is for retailers that BA do not offer, in particular eBay where you can earn one Virgin Point per pound.
Finally, Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer Spree (such a mouthful), is the worst of the lot in terms of usability. It feels like a site that hasn't had much user testing, such as login screens that fail, as well as a design that looks pretty dated. That being said, I am trying to pivot my points earning to Singapore Airlines so I will look past this to earn more KrisFlyer points - for example on my bookings with Hotels.com.
Caveats of these sites
The biggest omission in terms of retailers is Amazon. None of these sites offer the possibility to earn when shopping at Amazon, this is likely because of the large pull of the site and that regardless of price many people will opt to buy from Amazon for fast delivery or just not bother looking elsewhere. Next, is the inability to stack points earning with cashback sites. If you try to do both, there is the risk of both not tracking at all. I advise you to assess whether you prefer to receive the cash back or points in return for transactions - I've gone towards the latter. Finally, discount code usage can result in lower earning rates or no earning at all. The terms and conditions on this can often be very fuzzy so it can be a shot in the dark as to whether you will get any money back at all. Personally, I will take the discount at checkout and risk not earning the points or getting less - I am not that mad not to take money off for the sake of points!
What's your thoughts on these sites? Do you prefer cashback? Let us know in the comments!
