Update 1/26/21: Bank of America has announced that the ‘Coins’ program will be discontinued on 2/25/2021. Hat tip to reader Chris L & Irene P.
Update 4/9/19: (Correction, not everybody has the same offers, so not available to all. Still worth looking and ticking off any easy coin offers) It should be possible to get four coins and a $5 reward by doing the following:
- Get one coin for turning on any BankAmerideals Alert
- Get one coin for choosing 6 deals
- Get one coin for reloading your Starbucks gift card in app with $5, get an extra coin for completing any BankAmerideals deal
This basically works out to be a free $5 for Starbucks. Hat tip to reader Paul L
[4/27/18: Updated and reposted as program is now live for everyone.]
In an unusual move, Bank of America is adding another rewards structure on top of BankAmeriDeals to provide an extra incentive to make use of the offers. For some background information on how BankAmeriDeals offers work, as well as similar programs at other banks, head over to this post. Log in and head to BankAmeriDeals under “Special Offers & Deals” to find your deals.
How It Works
Every time you redeem an offer, though, you now earn 1 coin. Once you’ve earned 4 coins, you can exchange it for a cash reward—$5 to start. Because “Coins” are an additional layer on top of BankAmeriDeals, they don’t change anything about how BankAmeriDeals offers work.
Exactly like an RPG, once you gain a level every time you exchange 4 coins for a cash reward. Each time you get to a new level, your cash reward for exchanging 4 coins increases by $1. ($6 at Level 2, $7 at Level 3, and $8 at Level 4.)
Your Coins and Level reset every 2 months. In order for a transaction to qualify, you must spend at least $3. If you use a certain deal more than once (e.g. you spend $5 at Starbucks earning $.50 back and the next day spend another $5 at Starbucks to earn $.50 back) it will only count as one Coin toward your reward.
Concluding Thoughts
Quibbles with the transparent psychological ploy aside, this is a good program. If you only use offers you were going to use anyway, you can come out ahead nicely. Since it resets April 25, 2018, there are 138 days between now and the end of the initial run of the “Coins” program, which should be plenty of time to use 4–8 BankAmeriDeals offers “naturally”. It’s hard to complain about a little extra cashback!
It looks to me like this is a trial run of sorts; noting the way the levels are phrased, it’s clear that the exact details may be changed at a later date—once Bank of America has a chance to evaluate the program and its costs.
Overall, I find it to be an interesting addition to BankAmeriDeals, and we’ll just have to wait and see where it goes in 2018.
Questions? Comments? Sound off below.
View Comments (91)
I wanted to add a DP about the whole Deals and Coins situation. My coins expiration date was today Mar 10th as some of you experienced too, today I completed the last deal earning and received the corresponding email about the BankAmeriDeal cashback. When I went back to my account, as per usual, to cash in the 7$ coin for Level 3, and as Jan B mentioned as well, the whole “Coin” levels, coin “progress bar” everything is gone. (Last time I checked was yesterday and everything looked as usual.) Also, I never received any notification of this program cancellation…I ended up calling the Customer Service line, since at this point I would love to receive my $7 coin. Call was 45 minutes long, for the first 35 minutes the lady assured me that the program was not cancelled at all, while she is researching about my coins in my account etc… Finally she apologizes and said that the program is being discontinued tomorrow 03/11/2021 (I see here some people had mentioned 2/25/2021 but we never received an official notification so who knows what’s going on). She said tomorrow so I asked her if there is somewhere where she can see that besides my cashback I would also receive my pending $7 coin for Level 3. After some more waiting she came back and “assured me” that on her system she can see how all the pending Deals and Coins will be sent out to customers on March 22, 2021. I would love to see if that actually happens and if anyone is under the same situation please let me know haha
I wanted to add a DP about the whole Deals and Coins situation. My coins expiration date was today Mar 10th as some of you experienced too, today I completed the last deal earning and received the corresponding email about the BankAmeriDeal cashback. When I went back to my account, as per usual, to cash in the 7$ coin for Level 3, and as Jan B mentioned as well, the whole "Coin" levels, coin "progress bar" everything is gone. (Last time I checked was yesterday and everything looked as usual.) Also, I never received any notification of this program cancellation...I ended up calling the Customer Service line, since at this point I would love to receive my $7 coin. Call was 45 minutes long, for the first 35 minutes the lady assured me that the program was not cancelled at all, while she is researching about my coins in my account etc... Finally she apologizes and said that the program is being discontinued tomorrow 03/11/2021 (I see here some people had mentioned 2/25/2021 but we never received an official notification so who knows what's going on). She said tomorrow so I asked her if there is somewhere where she can see that besides my cashback I would also receive my pending $7 coin for Level 3. After some more waiting she came back and "assured me" that on her system she can see how all the pending Deals and Coins will be sent out to customers on March 22, 2021. I would love to see if that actually happens and if anyone is under the same situation please let me know haha
Yes, I am in the same boat. Glad you have a date, I'll hold off calling until then.
My $5 for coins posted yesterday.
Thanks @veeRob for reminding me! Seems like my pending Coin and Cashback posted yesterday too :)
Coins disappeared when I checked this morning. Bummer, as I had just made a purchase yesterday that would have hit the four coin "bell". I also did the ATT deal last week. I hope BOA doesn't back out on honoring that one.
When I checked yesterday, March 9th, the program said that I had two days left to earn coins. I was at the fourth level with three coins, and was planning to make a purchase today, March 10th, to get the last one ($8). When I checked my account, both via the mobile app and the website, the coins were no longer there.
Similar situation for me, Jan. I ended up calling Customer Service, I just added a post above yours with their response :)
My boa coins expiration date has updated to Mar 10th. Does it mean that it is not discontinued?
My coins are active until 3/10 too. I just earned a coin a few days ago, and reached the $5 level.
Plus I have deals that are available for another month.
I also got an extension on the expiration date, did you earn a coin anytime recently? I did but I am not sure if this factors into the expiration date extension
A few deals are worth chasing (AT&T in particular), but for the most part the deals are meh - example McDonalds 10% cash back but limited to $2.00 total???
So are they keeping the deals but removing the coins aspect? I won’t miss either, considering that I rarely found the deals worth redeeming. But just curious...
Amazon Fresh was the only one that was worth redeeming for me, and I had to call b of a multiple times to get it coded correctly.
I've made a few hundred back from the offers. I got lucky with a few of the larger offers from wayfair, Ikea, Casper etc for purchases I was already going to make. I think I only earned coins 2 or 3 times since the program came out though.
Literally only dissuaded me from using that card because I knew I wasn't going to use 5 or more of their bad offers in a month.
Thank God. Maybe they can think of even a slightly USEFUL program instead, because this was nothing.
I guess different strokes for different folks. This is a big negative IMO. I've made over $1k each on multiple B of A cards thru coins and cashback since the beginning of this program. As someone noted below, it was easy to make small purchases and almost get at least 50% reimbursed thru coins. The biggest takeaway is that now there's no reason to use B of A instead of Chase on these cashback offers.
I made multiple transactions that did not qualify for the offer even though they should have. There was some unpublished minimum for some offers. Gave up trying to do extra offers after that, especially since BofA makes you call to get stuff fixed.
You made $1k or you spent $1k less?
In the entire time the "coin" system has been in place, between my and my wife's accounts, I've only seen one BofA deal worth doing. Maybe now that they're ditching coins, the good deals will come back.