As some of you probably know, most airlines have "shopping malls" on the net, each with perhaps 40 or 50 merchants. If you go to the mall for a particular airline and click through to the mall you want to shop at, you get a certain number of frequent flyer points for each dollar spent at the merchant. A great way to accumulate miles if you do much shopping.

One of the problems I have had is in choosing which mall to go to for a particular merchant. Sometimes one of the malls will give you 1 mile per dollar, while for the same merchant another will give you 3 or 4. I just discovered that someone posted a chart on their website that lists each merchant and how many miles you get at each frequent flyer mall. If you shop on the internet much, this is a very handy tool:

http://home.earthlink.net/~frequentflyerresources/frequentflyerALL.html

Although perhaps not entirely clear on the website, to get to a particular frequent flyer mall, just click on the points value listed for a particular merchant at that mall.

Note that American Airlines presently is giving twice the usual number of miles for purchases at its mall, assuming you register for the promotion first.



(Message edited by LAguy on August 29, 2004)

Laguy, very useful link. Thanks.
JKarp

I did not even know American had anything like this. I am kicking myself, as I have spent money in many of these places. I guess better late than never. Thanks again LAguy.

The American mall is new, perhaps in the last two or three months. Others have been around a long time. Although I have been using these malls for perhaps a year, I too wish I knew about them earlier (and also had a chart like the one linked to above).

I should mention one other tactic for obtaining miles. You can purchase gift certificates at giftcertificates.com through the Northwest Airlines mall (www.nwa.com/mall). You then get 3 Northwest miles per dollar spent (or six when they have double miles promotions at the Northwest Mall). At giftcertificates.com you can purchase gift certificates for a number of merchants, both internet and otherwise. One such merchant is amazon.com, which otherwise does not give miles. The amazon.com gift certificate will be emailed to you and you can then immediately place it in your amazon account. As a result you get 3 miles per dollar spent at amazon plus whatever you get for using your credit card. Also, if you don't belong to the Northwest Airlines program, there are some other airlne programs that give you 2 miles per dollar spent at giftcertificates.com, see the chart linked to above.

Try idine.