OK, this one will take some explaining, but stick with me! Gilt.com are offering 500 free Elevate miles on your first purchase if you register with them via the Virgin America site. I'm interested in getting Elevate miles, but only at minimum spend. First, is this offer good value? You can buy 500 miles from Virgin America, but only at a price of $26 (£18.13). That's expensive. You can also buy 500 points from Starwood, which can be converted into Elevate miles, but only at a price of $17.50 (£12.21). Again, expensive. Plus you need to convert a minimum of 2500 Starwood points to get Elevate miles. But you can get the 500 Elevate miles with the Gilt offer for only £7.50. This is tempting so I decided to have a go. Gilt.com is an American company, so it's not a simple matter of buying something for £1 like the Avios offer. Anyway, here's how it's done: Register with gilt.com through this link: https://www.virginamerica.com/cms/elevate-frequent-flyer/partners/shopping-partners/gilt You'll be directed to Gilt who will ask for your email address, a password and your Virgin America membership number. Once registered, do a search for 'Small Pinecone Ornament' (it's the cheapest item I can find on the site). It's $2. They'll add on $0.88 tax. Add it to your basket. International shipping is $20 which is crazy, so you'll need to send it to a domestic US address in the US to take advantage of the $7.95 shipping. I'm sure you can find one - you're not bothered about a $2 pinecone are you? Whoever you're sending it to, tell them they can keep it. Total will come to $10.83, which is £7.55. Points should post 6-8 weeks after your purchase. Probably not worth it if you already have stacks of Starwood/Elevate points, but I don't, so I'll grab any opportunity that comes by...
To my annoyance, after my purchase, I was offered free shipping for the next hour. Shame they don't offer it on first time purchases, it would have been a fantastic deal then...
Reminds me of the strange purchases from numerous merchants that I made as part of US Airways' Grand Slam promotion a few years back. Rubber band balls was one of them.... Still....it netted 40,000+ Dividend miles, which are now AAdvantage miles.
Got my 500 points today. Took three weeks. So I have 3250 points in all. Now to find some more cheap Elevate deals that I can wangle some points from!
If you use this link (it's not mine, sadly!), you'll get at least 1,050 Elevate Miles from your first Pointshound booking. Unlike RocketMiles and Kaligo, you can get some really cheap places on Pointshound (easily less than £30), so if you can find somewhere cheap that fits in with your existing travel plans, it's the equivalent of at least a £15.85 discount off the hotel (or buying the Miles at that price), if you value the Elevate Miles at £7.55 per 500 as in the Gilt example above
Indeed, I looked into this when booking a Gatwick hotel recently, but went another route. Along with Rocketmiles, it's on my list of ways to earn Elevate points!
