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AAdvantage eShopping is the official American Airlines shopping portal. In this post, we’ll explain how a small change to your online shopping routine can supercharge your rewards—with almost no extra effort.
We're big fans of shopping portals because they offer the opportunity to earn rewards from more than one source when you make a purchase. You may already be familiar with big online shopping portals like Rakuten (formerly known as Ebates), but sometimes airline and hotel shopping portals can offer a better deal.
AA eShopping is one of the biggest and best of the airline shopping portals, offering a fantastic opportunity to boost your stash of American miles. With all the extra miles you stand to earn, your next AA redemption my be much closer than you think.
What is a Shopping Portal?
Shopping portals are one of the most efficient ways to boost your point and mile earnings on everyday purchases.
The concept is simple: If a shopper makes a purchase with an online store after clicking through a shopping portal, the store shares a commission with the shopping portal. This commission is then shared in part with you, the shopper, in the form of cash back or bonus miles.
Depending on the store, the shared commission can be as little as one bonus mile per dollar spent, or as significant as several thousand bonus miles per purchase. In either case, the earnings quickly add up!
AA Shopping Portal Basics
Sign-up For an AAdvantage eShopping Account
While you don't need a membership to browse the available bonuses, you'll need to create an account to start earning. This requires an AAdvantage number, name, email address, and zip code. The AAdvantage eShopping login is separate from your American Airlines login. If you don't already have an AAdvantage account, you'll need to sign-up for one of those first.
Find eShopping Offers
Once you've logged in, it's simply a matter of finding an attractive offer. You can accomplish this by searching for a specific merchant in the search bar, filtering for the category using the drop-down menu, or by scrolling through all of the offers one by one.
Once you've found the store you're looking for, you'll see the bonus displayed. Sometimes AA eShopping offers a flat bonus amount, and sometimes it's a set number of miles per dollar spent. In either case, make sure you read the terms to make sure the purchase you intend to make qualifies for the bonus.
Once you're ready, press “Shop Now” to navigate to the store's website and complete your purchase.
The AA shopping portal may have more than one offer for a single store. If that's the case, you'll see the option to “View all (store name) offers”. Select that, and you'll be taken to the dedicated merchant page where all available bonuses are listed.
Activate the AAdvantage eShopping Button
To make things even easier, aadvantageshopping.com offers a Google Chrome extension called the “AAdvantage eShopping℠ Button”. It alerts you anytime you're browsing the website of a partnered store, allowing you to activate the applicable bonus with a single click.
Once installed, you'll see a pop-up that looks like this whenever you visit a website that partners with American Airlines shopping:
Click the button to activate the offer and complete your purchase as normal. You'll earn the bonus miles the same as if you had navigated to the website via the AA shopping portal.
The AAdvantage eShopping Button is also useful for displaying multiple bonus options and viewing past purchases and earnings.
AA eShopping Mall Pro-Tips
While the basics of American Airlines eShopping are pretty straightforward, there are a few things to keep in mind to ensure you'll get your miles and that you're getting the best bang for your buck.
- Whenever planning an online purchase, always start by going to a shopping portal aggregator like CashBackMonitor. Sites like these display the AA shopping portal offer side by side with earning rates from dozens of other portals. This lets you find the best rate for the product you want to buy.
- When using a shopping portal, always start with an empty cart. If there are already items in your cart from a previous visit, you risk not receiving the bonus miles for those items.
- Once you're on the merchant website, don't leave the window before checking out. Your original shopping trip was tied to the shopping portal, but your return may not be.
- Your web browser needs to have cookies enabled for portal bonuses to track.
- Always read the full terms of each bonus to ensure that the purchase you intend to make will qualify.
Maximize Your Rewards American Airlines Shopping
The AA shopping portal comes with a built-in opportunity to earn rewards from a second source: If you pay with a rewards card, the points or miles you earn from your bank are in addition to the miles you earn from using the AA shopping portal. This then begs the question: Which credit card should you use?
If you're particularly interested in earning AAdvantage miles, your best bet may be to use an AA co-branded credit card, like the Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard®. Unfortunately, the category bonus options with these cards are limited, often leaving you earning only 1X miles per dollar.
With these perks, it's easy to justify the annual fee of $99, waived for first 12 months.
- Free checked bags for you and up to 4 companions on domestic itineraries
- Priority boarding to help you win the race for overhead bin space
- A 25% discount on inflight food, beverage, and Wi-Fi purchases
- Earn 2X miles for every $1 spent at restaurants
- Earn 2X miles for every $1 spent at gas stations
- Earn 2X miles for every $1 spent on eligible American Airlines purchases
- Earn 1X mile for every $1 spent on all other purchases
Conversely, if your priority is maximizing earnings regardless of the currency, you're left with three options:
- Minimum Spend Requirement — Use the purchase towards the qualification for a new card welcome bonus.
- Cards Optimized for Everyday Spending — Use a card that offers a solid return for all purchases, such as the Citi® Double Cash Card or The Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express.
- Cards Offering a Bonus for Online Shopping — Use a card that bonuses online purchases, such as the AT&T Access Card from Citi or the Bank of America® Customized Cash Rewards credit card.
Bottom Line
If we've learned one thing from all of AA's recent web specials—including 5,000-mile tickets to Australia, 55,000-mile first-class tickets to Asia, and 5,000-mile tickets cross country—it's that with AA, every mile counts.
The AAdvantage eShopping Mall can quickly and easily supercharge your earnings without requiring any increased spending. It takes little-to-no effort to use, yet it can yield massive results!
If boosting your balance of AA miles interests you, you owe it to yourself to check out the AAdvantage eShopping Mall before your next online purchase.
Have you used the AAdvantage eShopping Mall before?
The comments on this page are not provided, reviewed, or otherwise approved by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
The shopping portals will be even more useful and worthwhile once they start counting towards status loyalty points. For now its usually not worth the hassle.
Any word if AW blog comments will someday count towards AA Loyaltypoints also?
The shopping portal is great if you live in the U.S. But for international AAdvantage members the options are very limited. In the past I tried an online magazine subscription but that´s as far as I was able to go.
I didn’t know that AA has an e-shopping portal!! Thanks for the information! and the most important: I will continue earning miles!!
AAdvantage Shopping is terrible. There is always some reason why you don’t get the point you earned. Their customer service is rude and unhelpful and unfortunately you’ll be talking to them a lot. It’s pretty much a joke,
In the health situation that we live in today, electronic commerce is more valid than ever. A very interesting and informative article. Undoubtedly, it offers numerous recommendations to better take advantage of the miles.
Thanks! I didn’t know AA have a portal as well. Is it valid for Argentina?
This is why I love this mileage program. Always good benefits and rewards, even if you live in another country.
Seems that 2020/2021 is triggering a lot of ideas to capture loyalites and clients, this initiative seems to be a good one, i guess companies can track with precision every movement an analyze also the consumer behavior.
SInce covid the online shopping are incresing. I hope we can continue be part of the econsystem of companies that are trying to retain the cosumers, the next years will be hard for companies and costumers and, if it that posible, we must trying to “support/help” each other, from home. Thanks!
Another way to have miles, by shoping online. It´s a great deal since the covid, we all should start shopping more online.
Any idea what kinds of info I might be disclosing by using the button? Generic or personal data?
The “Data Use and Collection” terms for the button are here: https://www.aadvantageeshopping.com/eula____.htm
“Data Use and Collection. The Button is a browser-based software extension that will provide you with shopping offers as you brows web pages. When you click through any link provided in an offer or other text, those links are formatted to allow tracking and reporting of your activity on the retailer site, by retailer’s chosen affiliate network. That information is used to pay to us referral commissions on certain purchases made by you. In addition, such information may be used by retailers for other purposes as determined by the applicable retailer.”
“Use of Information” policy for the shopping portal is here: https://www.aadvantageeshopping.com/terms____.htm
Does the AA Shopping portal include a button to install on desktop? What are your thoughts re security & privacy re installing a button?
AA does have a portal button. And oof, that’s a great question. There’s no doubt that some privacy is given up when installing these types of extensions. Personally, I have made the choice to value convenience over privacy. But that’s definitely a personal call.
This is great info and would earn me a lot of miles, but unfortunately AAdvantage eShopping isn’t available within the EU 🙁
For now I try to book my hotels in combination with booking.com to earn some extra miles when I’m not flying.
I wonder how long it takes for these miles to post.
Thanks for the informativo, its very interesting!
“This requires an AAdvantage number, name, email address, and zip code.”
Such a pity that we Canadians have postal codes instead of zip codes 🙁
This is really good idea. thanks.
great article, thanks for the eshopping tips.
Great Info, need to share this with my newbie miles friends!
They had a great shopping bonus a couple months ago, I hope they keep it up!
Although I have used this shopping portal in the past, I would much rather use the flexible points shopping portals! Rakuten, Chase, Barclays: I will probably earn just as much and I can use those points with multiple airlines rather than just American.
These miles really add up quite nicely.
Just need to make sure not to forget to use the portals when buying stuff online, haha.
I feel that using shopping portals to maximize miles is a must do. It’s minimal effort for more miles for purchases you were going to make anyway.
Thanks for the information. This looks like a great way to earn more frequent flyer miles.
The extension really helps but I try to use cashbackmonitor every time.
Thanks for the info. I have the AA Platinum Select card but didn’t now about the shopping portal.
My favorite way of earning points for shopping online is at Amazon. I stop in at my local Staples and buy a couple hundred dollars worth of Amazon gift cards using my Chase INK Business Cash card. Then I take them home and load up my Amazon account. That particular Chase card earns 5 points per dollar at office supply stores. It also earns 5 points per dollar on internet, cable and phone services (25K max annual spend).
Newbies can learn from this particular trick. Due to its popularity, Amazon rarely shows up in the shopping portals. They don’t need to incentivize shopping with them. So, it’s usually hard to earn bonuses – miles, points or cashback – when shopping there. This is a nice workaround.
Certainly makes sense if you are gonna make a purchase anyway
award wallet is really the best way to keep all your airline miles accounts together
good tip! I didn’t know miles could be earned by this way
Great way to earn extra miles for buying something I was already going to get anyway.
Airline shopping portals are awesome. I use them all the time and the miles always post. Ocassionally, they offer some additional bonuses.
This looks like a great way to earn more frequent flyer miles. I’ll keep it in mind the next time I shop online
Another easy way to get AA miles, along with commenting here. Definitely an easy way to extend your accounts so your miles don’t expire!
They can take a long time to post though, so make sure you don’t leave it too late if your miles are about to expire!
I used to use the United and AA shopping portals earlier but over the past two years i’ve seen that topcashback and rakuten (especially with the Membership Rewards redemption) seem to always beat the airline portals.
The only advantage i see for airline shopping portals are to keep miles alive/active.
i want to like AA but they have been filling planes to max capacity which is dangerous for public health. Not gonna fly with them anytime soon.
If you’re not using AAdvantage eShopping, you are CRAZY. It’s the easiest way to earn miles with no effort, and they pile up fast!
Rule #1: Always check the portals before an online purchase!
Rule #2: See Rule #1
I am about to make an account now. I have the AA Platinum Select card but surprisingly didn’t now about the shopping portal. Thanks for the info!