Maximizing my Groupon Purchases

I just made some Groupon purchases, and I earned more than just one point per dollar spent. Here is the method to my madness. This method also applies for almost any online store entity.

First, I use my Chase Ink card and purchase a Groupon e-card on Staples.com. For the $100 purchase, I earn 5X using my Chase Ink card since Staples is an office supply store.

 

 

It took a few days for my e-card to be delivered, but once I received the card, I went to my Groupon account and loaded the gift card value on to my account. 

 

 

After loading the value, I closed out my web page. Then I opened a new tab and went to evrewards.com to find out which portal has the best bonus for Groupon. It was a close call between ShopDiscoverDeals and Chase UR portal. Discover offered 5% back, and Chase UR had a 4X bonus on Groupon. I value UR points ~2 cpm, or in this case 8% back. UR shopping portal it was. 

 

 

Just because I shop through a shopping portal does not mean that I have to use the credit card associated with that portal. After completing my purchase through the UR shopping portal, it took me about an extra 5-10 minutes to go through my extra steps. But here are the results of my actions.

For my $30 purchase, if you used a regular credit card, you would earn 30 points, and at ~2cpm, at best that is 60 cents value.

Using my method and only accounting for the $30 spent:

$30 X 5 UR points = 150 UR points; purchasing the Groupon e-gift card

$30 X 4 UR points = 120 UR points; purchasing through the UR shopping portal

270 UR points @ 2cpm = $5.40 value returned on a $30 purchase or 18% return vs 2% return.