Earning Stories: 540 AIR MILES Rewards Miles for buying Gift Cards at Safeway

Welcome to the next post in the Earning Stories series right here on Rewards Canada.
For years we have provided you with the details on earning points and
miles (both regular earning and bonus opportunities) and these stories show the actual offers in action.

Screenshot from Rewards Canada’s Instagram account on Nov 27

Back in November and December we shared with you two great AIR MILES Reward Miles earning offers from Safeway. Actually there were more than two great offers from Safeway during the holiday but the two in question here are these posts about the bonus miles for buying gift cards at Safeway.

Nov 21: Huge Air Miles Bonuses for Gift Card Purchases at Safeway – 1.1 Reward Miles per $1 spent Nov 21-27

Dec 29: Huge Air Miles Bonuses for Gift Card Purchases at Safeway – 1.4 Reward Miles per $1 spent (until Jan 1, 15)

Anytime bonuses come up for gift cards you should really consider jumping on the offer if retailers you regularly shop at are included (sometimes Safeway has offers on any gift cards except their own). Don’t go out of your way to get them if you won’t use it (or gift it!)

In the case of these two sets of offers I found retailers that we use so I went ahead and printed the coupons so I could earn the bonuses. Two simple trips to Safeway, first one I was driving by and had the coupons on me so I stopped quickly and grabbed these six cards. Each with 55 AIR MILES Rewards Miles bonus. Total time spent was less than 5 minutes!

The second time, I had to grab a couple of small items at Safeway on our way to a New Year lunch and printed off coupons for the places I knew I would be using soon. Total time spent was only about 10 minutes

For about 15 minutes of my time I earned 540 AIR MILES Rewards Miles or more than a third of the miles required for a short haul flight. On top of that I put all these purchases on my American Express Gold Rewards Card which earns 2 points per dollar on Grocery Store purchases which means I received 900 Membership Rewards Points (equates to 900 Aeroplan Miles or British Airways Avios) for buying these gift cards. Had I not bought the gift cards and chose to use my Gold Rewards Card at any of the above retailers I would only earn 1 Membership Reward point per dollar. (This is that one trick we always talk about around holiday shopping season that can be applied anytime of the year! Buy gift cards at category bonus merchants for retailers that don’t offer your credit card a category bonus)

Tips for Shopping Bonuses

– When taking advantage of shopping bonuses that are not gift card related make sure you do some price checking first, you don’t want to be spending more on a product than you could be elsewhere (the bonus would have to really be worthwhile!)

– Always check the flyer at the front entrance of grocery stores. More often then not they have bonus offer coupons for hitting a certain spend level.

– Use a credit or charge card that offers category bonuses when shopping at Grocery Stores, Drug Store, Restaurants etc. and don’t forgot to swipe your other loyalty cards if the retailer participates in programs like Aeroplan, Air Miles, SCENE, etc. 

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Have your earning story featured!

Not only are Rewards Canada Earning Stories featured in this series, we
want to feature your stories as well! Have you earned a lot of points or
miles by utilizing offers posted on Rewards Canada? We would love to
hear about them and potentially feature them here on Rewards Canada.
Tell us your earning story by emailing us the details of what you
earned, screenshots if possible of those points/miles posting and what
offer on Rewards Canada you took advantage of. Email it to us info@rewardscanada.ca