Q4 for the Chase Freedom 5x points has officially started October 1 and will go through December 31. During this time period you will earn 5x points at hotels, airlines, Best Buy, and Kohls when using your Chase Freedom card. The bonus 4x points on the regular 1x point on all purchases is up to $1,500 spent, so you can receive up to an additional 6,00 points. After the $1,500 is spent and on all purchases that fall outside of these bonus categories you will earn 1x point. Through a slight roundabout way, these points can be transferred to United, British Airways, Hyatt, Marriott (just to name a few…).
You MUST activate this spend bonus by December 14th, however, I highly suggest registering now so you do not have to think about it again. If you are not sure what is including in the airline and hotel categories, you can check out this sample merchant list.
Also, for the month of October you will receive 10x points for all online purchases made at Kohls through your Chase Ultimate Rewards account for the freedom card. This means you can get a total of 15x points per dollar spent!
2012 Bonus Spend Categories:
- January-March: Gas Stations and Amazon.com
- April-June: Grocery stores and Movie theaters
- July-September: Gas stations and Restaurants
- October-December: Hotels, Airlines, Best Buy, and Kohl’s – activate now!
Overall, this is a great card for your typical spending categories, i.e., gas, groceries, dining, travel. It is great to supplement this card with another miles/points earning card for the months/merchants that do not receive the 5x points.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. I will only list the best credit card offers as my goal is for you to travel for free!
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Do you know if they have a bonus for buying at Apple? I’m looking for the best deal and I’ve seen AMEX offer between 5x and 8x with Apple before. Looking to buy a new Mac and that would give me a TON of points 😉
@Derek – Unfortunately AMEX doesn’t have an online shopping portal anymore. Definitely check out what apple gives with the various portals. You can check evreward.com to get an idea, although not 100% accurate.
Wow.. I must be out of the loop on that! I normally don’t buy for those shopping portals, but planned to with buying my new computer. I know last November/December they were advertising 5x rewards points for buying through Apple.
Thanks for the notice and thanks for the evreward site, that will come in handy!
-Derek
I tried buying a USD 346 flight going through the UR portal on travelocity. The charges show up as United. So let’s see if I get 7x 🙂
@Derek
Discover always offer 5% back on apple, and even stacks with education store discount! Although it’s only cash (can be redeemed for some gift cards at favourable terms: e.g. 40 for 50 travelocityincentive gift card).
@Yaokai – Thanks.. Mainly looking for rewards points as I can make those go much further than 5% cash back. But then again, if I cannot find a better option then maybe Discover is the way to go. A $2,000 Mac can return me $100.. still would like points 🙂
Do you think award taxes and fees would count?
@Joe – Yes I believe so, but I can go check my statement to verify this!
@Derek
I think the only mile you can get from Apple is through Hawaii, it gives 1.5 miles. The rest are all just 1 mile. I’d wait a couple of months and see if Chase UR will up the reward.
I’d still just use Discover though, they are offering 5% online as quarterly bonus. So it would be a 10% cashback! To me, that’s much better than 1.5 miles per dollar.
@Derek
Using Freedom to buy Mac from bestbuy is probably another option. You’d get 5X on the card and 1X from UR portal.
Does anyone know if buying a gift certificate on united.com would qualify? I realize it says “tickets purchased with the airline only” but gift card certificate would be sold by united.
The reason I am thinking about it is that the 1500 cap is a b**ch if you need to buy a 3k airfare for instance, which could be paid with gift certficate + sapphire