Do I need to use the AGR Mastercard in the portal?

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George K

George K

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Sep 7, 2014
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I use the shopping portal of AGR a lot. Anything that I can possibly use from Target, Overstock.com, Petco, etc. gets bought through the portal.

But...do I *need* to use the AGR MasterCard to earn the points? Can I use another card that might give me better rewards on something?
 
Thank you!

The reason I ask is that when I first got my AGR card, I shopped at someplace that had a 20/1 (!) reward (123inkjets.com). When I went to pay, checkout through Amazon was available, and that's what I chose. I have an Amazon Visa that gives me points as well, and that was the method of payment.

The purchase was not posted to my AGR balance, I imagine, because I used another card that has points with it.

AMIRITE?
 
George K said:
Thank you!

The reason I ask is that when I first got my AGR card, I shopped at someplace that had a 20/1 (!) reward (123inkjets.com). When I went to pay, checkout through Amazon was available, and that's what I chose. I have an Amazon Visa that gives me points as well, and that was the method of payment.

The purchase was not posted to my AGR balance, I imagine, because I used another card that has points with it.

AMIRITE?
Click to expand...
I don't think the shopping portal and the card even know the other one exists. I doubt it's because you used a different card. Perhaps the "checkout through Amazon" caused it not to post.
 
You do NOT have to use the AGR MasterCard to pay at checkout. You can use any card.

The advantage of using the AGR MasterCard is that you earn points for using the merchant (say 10 points/$) PLUS additional points for paying with that card (1 additional point/$). So you effectively will earn 11 points/$ for that purchase. If you use another card to pay, you would only earn the 10 points/$.
 
The portal uses cookies.

When you left the portal-approved site and used Amazon instead, the "points" cookie went away because Amazon isn't on the list.
 
George K said:
AmtrakBlue said:
Perhaps the "checkout through Amazon" caused it not to post.
Click to expand...
That's my guess. I get (Amazon) points for using their card, and it probably negated the bonus (20/dollar!) that I would have gotten otherwise.
Click to expand...
It's possible that when you clicked on the "Pay thru Amazon" link, when it brought you back to the original site, it brought you back to the merchant's direct site, but not to the merchant's site via the AGR portal. You must enter the site thru the AGR portal in order to earn agr points for the purchase. If you enter the merchant's site directly, you do not.
If you want to pay with the Amazon Visa card, just click on the "pay by credit card" and chose "Visa" and enter the credit card number. This way, you'll earn points from the merchant (via AGR) plus points from Amazon.

I would contact AGR if you first entered thru the portal (which they can verify). They will open an investigation and contact the merchant, and it will show as "pending" until it's complete. There's no guarantee, but I've had it happen to me a few times and received the points a couple of months later! :)
 
How long does it take for shopping points to post? I shopped through the shopping portal with Sherrie's Berries for Valentines day. Nothing had posted yet.
 
I have found that when I use my Chase Sapphire card for shopping online, the points post much more quickly than when I used the Amtrak Mastercard. Not sure why but Walmart purchases sometimes took months on the AGR MC but only a few days on the CS Card.
 
I also think its because you left the store site to pay although I have used paypal to pay several times and still received my points. My credit card with paypal is the Chase AGR card though.
 

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