Test Success (Payouts Have Arrived): Profitable Costco Membership When Stacking Deals

Update 5/28/20: The $15 in Uber Cash has also been credited to my account now, so this has indeed been a profitable stack 🙂

Update 5/27/20: Good news! Confirmed tracking has started turning into payment/rewards. When checking my United account I noticed that I’ve earned bonus miles from the MPX element of this deal. It tracked slightly lower than I’d expected as I was only awarded 660 bonus miles rather than 720, but I’m not going to quibble over 60 miles.

Seeing as those MPX bonus miles showed up, I checked my Dosh account and the $10 cashback has gone from pending to confirmed and so is ready for payout.

That means I’m only waiting on the Uber Cash now. I haven’t received the $30 Costco Shop card, but that’s because a) we haven’t had a chance to go into a Costco store yet and b) it’ll take a few weeks for it to be mailed to us. We travel full-time and use a mail forwarding service, so it’ll likely be a month or two before we have the $30 card in hand, but I have no reason to believe we won’t receive it.

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There have been a bunch of deals recently when taking out a new Costco membership, but it wasn’t entirely clear whether or not they’d stack with each other. Although I wasn’t really in the market for a Costco membership, I decided to buy one to test if at least two of the offers would stack.

It’s better than that though because at least four of the offers have initially tracked. If they all pay out as expected, I’ll have made a small profit on the membership when taking into account the cashback and value of the rewards earned.

Here are the results so far:

1) United Visa Rewards In MPX App

The offer: 12x United MileagePlus miles when buying Costco membership

Current status: Tracked

Earnings: 720 miles (still to be awarded)

Background: To load the offer, open United’s MPX app, tap ‘United Visa Rewards’ and scroll down until you see the Costco offer. Once it’s viewed, it’ll be automatically linked to your Chase United credit card. You’ll therefore need to pay with that Chase United card for this offer to track, so that’s the card I used.

As soon as I purchased the membership, I got a notification on my phone that it had tracked.

2) Uber Visa Rewards In Uber App

The offer: 25% back in Uber Cash when buying a new Costco membership

Current status: Tracked

Earnings: $15 Uber Cash (still to be awarded)

Background: 24 hours before buying the membership, I added my Chase United card as a payment method in the Uber app. Although the MPX offer requires payment with a Chase United card, this Uber offer doesn’t have such strict requirements. Instead, you can pay with any Visa card provided it’s loaded to your Uber account.

As soon as I purchased the membership, I got a notification on my phone that it had tracked.

Seeing as the MPX and Uber deals are both Visa Offers, I wasn’t convinced they’d stack. I might not end up receiving credit for both offers, but at the very least they’ve both initially tracked.

3) Dosh

The offer: $10 cashback when paying with a card linked in the Dosh app.

Current status: Tracked

Earnings: $10 cashback (still to be awarded)

Background: My Chase United card was already linked in the Dosh app. As soon as I purchased the membership, I got a notification on my phone that it had tracked, plus Dosh sent me an email confirming the same thing.

One thing to be aware of is that it’s worth linking your card in the Dosh app at least 24 hours before taking advantage of a card-linked offer as some people have reported transactions not tracking when adding a card and immediately trying to redeem an offer.

4) TopCashback

The offer: $3 cashback when buying a Costco membership.

Current status: Not tracked yet

Earnings: $3 if it tracks.

Background: After making sure my Chase United card was linked in the above three apps, I went to TopCashback and clicked through to Costco. The next step likely means that I won’t earn the $3 cashback because that offer will probably override the TopCashback offer, but I figured it was worth trying anyway. I’m absolutely fine if it doesn’t end up tracking, so if I do end up earning the extra $3 I’ll just count that as a bonus.

5) UPS My Choice

The offer: $30 Costco Shop card when buying a new Costco membership.

Current status: Confirmed

Earnings: $30 Costco Shop card (this will be mailed 4-6 weeks after taking activation certificate into any Costco location in the US or Puerto Rico).

Background: After clicking through to Costco from TopCashback, I went to upsmychoicedeals.com, logged in, searched for the Costco offer, clicked through from there and purchased the regular Costco Gold Star membership.

The order confirmation screen listed the $30 Costco Shop card, as did the confirmation email that I subsequently received.

Overall Results

I bought a $60 Costco membership and, based on what’s currently tracked, this is what I’ll be getting in return:

• $30 Costco Shop card
• $15 Uber Cash
• $10 cashback (from Dosh)
• 720 United miles (from MPX app)
• 60 United miles (by paying with United credit card)

I value the Costco Shop card and Uber Cash pretty much as good as cash, so that’s $55 of value when taking into account the actual cashback from Dosh. Provided United doesn’t go out of business as a result of COVID-19, 780 United miles are worth in excess of $5 which effectively means I’ve gotten a profitable Costco membership. If the cashback from TopCashback happens to track, that’s just an added bonus.

Important Note

The terms of the offer for a $30 Costco Shop card state that you can’t have had a Costco membership in the last 18 months. My previous membership expired 12 months ago, so we took out this membership in my wife’s name but were able to pay with my card seeing as I’m the only one with a United credit card.