Earn Miles for Dining Out
As I mentioned last week, credit card churning is the most common method for accruing miles, but it may not work for everyone depending on the situation of their credit score and uneasiness about credit cards. A more “soft-core” approach is to earn miles for dining out through Rewards Network.
You will need to first register an account with Rewards Network, which manages the dining for miles programs for all of the major U.S. carriers.
During registration, you provide the card number (Debit/Pre-Paid cards work fine) for each card that you register, and Rewards Network securely saves this information to track each dine.
They make it seem as though you can only sign up for one program, but in reality it’s one program per unique card that you register. Although, there have been instances of receiving credit from multiple programs for a single dine! 🙂
Below are the sign-up links for Rewards Dining with American, Delta, United, and US Airways. Incidentally, Continental used to offer a dining program, but shut it down a fear years back. Eehh, oh well–you can still freely transfer miles between United and Continental if you need to.
The links will direct you to the sign-up pages for a specific dining program with each airline. In addition, each of these programs currently has a new member sign-up bonus for registering then spending $25 or more at participating restaurants by December 31, 2012. Currently, Delta has the largest mileage bonus at 1,200 miles, while the other programs are only offering 1,000 miles.
US Airways Dividend Miles Dining:
Note: Only a select number of restaurants participate. To find which restaurants participate, use the search toolbar at the top of each Rewards Network dining page.
Point Me to the Miles 
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As I have churned CC in the past, I have 9 at last count. Can I sign each credit card up for the Delta program for a total of 10,800 bonus miles (after 9 visits to eligible restaurants, of course)?
Mark,
Good question. I looked up the specific terms of the bonus on the link, and it appears you would not be able to do this.
“*This bonus offer is open to new SkyMiles Dining members or existing members without a dining profile at the time of registration….You may earn this bonus one time for a total of 1,200 bonus miles.”
I like your thinking, however it appears you can only earn it once , since it essentially requires a completely new profile.
Now, there may be two ways you can get around this:
1) Register a completely different SkyMiles number for each card you register. I don’t know how closely Delta tracks this sort of thing, but they generally don’t like people having multiple SkyMiles accounts.
2) Register for one of the other airlines’ programs. Their bonuses aren’t quite as good (200 miles less), but as I mentioned in the post, it is possible to sign up with a different card for each program.
If I confused you, or you have any more questions, let me know.