[Expired] [YMMV] Citi Sears Spend Offer: Earn 10% Back At Select Categories

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• Anybody get a random $5 statement credit on this card? No idea what it’s for and none of the promos I’ve had recently would be anywhere near that small as you need to hit a minimum spend first.

• Also, the subject is:
  [name], make your next adventure more rewarding with this offer
  for both the Shop Your Way MasterCard and the Sears MasterCard.

• Note that this offer and the other offer are not "continuity" offers, meaning they are offered *once* in the promotional period, as opposed to the continuity offer which is offered every single month.

• Got the 10% on $1000 spend offer, luckily I’m taking a trip soon so the hotel should cover a decent chunk of that but I wonder what else actually codes as “Travel” or “Entertainment “…?

  I’ve been getting the typical gas/grocery/dining and online purchase categories in the past but this is the first time with something a bit different. Maybe some museum tickets would count as “tourist attraction” for this, but it’s hard to know what the MCC will be.

• My sears offers have been drying up

• Same offer as Jillian but mine is for 15X Thank you points, not a percent back. $500 minimum, 10,000 points maximum. Also have no idea what counts as travel/entertainment with CIti. I also have the 15x on department stores and clothing stores, up to 4,000 points and 10X points on gas/grocery/restaurants up to 25,000 bonus points, but this has a $1500 minimum spend. If I had a need for big gift card purchases at Kroger, this would be great......

  • You could buy Kroger giftcards to get you over the MSR, then use those for future grocery shopping.

    • That's been my strategy all along, but the $1500 minimum spend is keeping the card out of the grocery store for awhile, hoping for a lower spend threshold in Q3. The department store offer is easy, still need to research the entertainment offer a bit better first.

      • I’m not sure what you mean by it ‘keeping the card out of the grocery store’. Are you saying because your natural grocery spending in the time period is too low that you don’t want to extend yourself enough to do the rest of the $1500 on giftcards?

        • I've been buying the Kroger gift cards to meet the threshold in prior months, now I am using the Kroger gift cards as $1,500 minimum spend is 3x as high as it has been before. With no grocery charges, I'm hoping it drops back to the $500 minimum spend that I've had prior to Q2.

        • Aha - I get it - you're using up the giftcards now instead of buying even more GCs and extending your dependence on using the giftcards even further into the future, particularly while you would have to do an extra large amount of GCs to hit the current MSR. Makes sense.

  • How are you getting all these offers? Have had SYW card for six months and have yet to get a single offer.

    • Keith, you’ve gotta use the card for a little while. I got mine in January and only just got my first offer last month. I was putting one gas transaction and one grocery transaction on it each month.
      Also make sure to search your email for “Shop Your Way Card” (the quote marks are important!) so you don’t miss these offers among all the other Sears / Shop Your Way Max emails.

    • just use the card regularly for a month or two. The offers should roll in as their strategy is to get you to carry a balance. On the flip side, if the offers you get require too high minimum spend or the rewards are too low, sock drawer it for a while.

• I got the 15% one, same as Jilian. Any idea on what counts towards travel? Does hotel count？

  • Yun, that info is in the bottom of your offer email (fine print).

    Here’s the info from mine but you should always check your own offer details…

    “Travel purchases are transactions made at hotels, rental cars, airfare, limousines, taxicabs and travel agencies. Entertainment merchants provide amusement and entertainment services; including sports promoters, theatrical promoters, movie theaters, amusement parks, tourist attractions, and video game establishments.”

    • Is Ticketmaster considered to be an entertainment merchant?

    • Thanks！

• I've also got a 10K for $2K spend offer that will stack with this.

  • Nice. My other current offer is $50 back on $750 of spending so only 6.66%, and only one month period, ending 6/21… not really planning any travel/entertainment this month, but I got the same 50/750 offer the month before (ending 5/21), so hoping I’ll get another one and then I should be able to stack these.

• My email offer today looks similar but it is for 15% back in statement credits on Travel and Entertainment purchases that total $500 or more, with a maximum statement credit of $100. So spending totaling between $500 and $666 earns you the 15% back.

  Same offer period (6/1 - 8/31) as post info above so seems different users are getting different rates/spending minimums but same kind of offer.

  • Same offer. Examples of what counts as travel & entertainment is in the fine print at bottom of the email.

    • JT, curious of your plans for the travel/entertainment if you don’t have natural spending… I’m used to giftcards at grocery stores to max out grocery spend, but travel/entertainment specifically I’m trying to think of where I can buy giftcards that will code as entertainment or travel without locking myself into specific cards that will take me a while to liquidate. Thoughts?

      • My offers are for TYP, at the same spend thresholds.

        For the travel offer, I don't have any GC suggestions. We're all vaccinated & hitting the road this summer, so the $500-$667 spend will be easy to hit. For the grocery offers, I also do GCs but not always to the offer limit as my CL is lower than most other cards/banks. I get the 3-month grocery offers 3-4 times annually, bonus points rate varies 5x - 20x with stacking.

        I also have the clothing offer but don't see a useful way of GC arbitrage, as my spending does not align there at all.

        • I don't resell GCs, but maybe airline or hotel GCs might be a viable option, with the caveat that you have to be mindful where you purchase for the merchant category to code properly.

          The entertainment categories are so broad & vague I anticipate a high error rate on what will code. Ages ago, I recall that my Citi TY Preferred coded odd things as entertainment, and missed some more obvious ones.

        • Appreciate your responses. Yeah I don't sell GCs either - I only go for GC deals that I know I will eventually use the cards myself (Groceries or the annual Target $50 off $500 deal, etc.) or have specific people in mind for giving them as gifts for birthdays/christmas or something. I agree that entertainment is not very reliable for coding - I am traveling in July, but to see family and we're using points from another card for the flight / no accommodation costs, so not going to be much in the way of "entertainment" travel. Hmm... maybe giftcards in an Airport store will code as travel... worth a shot I guess, but yeah it's tough to take advantage when not sure how things will code.