Virgin America Elevate - "Buying Elevate points — the worst deal ever?"

Check out this scathing blog post (http://boardingarea.com/blogs/onemileatatime/2011/04/27/buying-virgin-america-elevate-points-the-worst-deal-ever/) from lucky9876coins.

So I was curious, how much can an airline really sell points for, if redemption is based on the cost of the ticket?

[...]

I was shocked to go to Virgin America’s website, only to find that their usual sale price is 5.2 cents per point. Now, I could be wrong, but by my math, there’s absolutely no way to get more than 2.5 cents of value out of a Virgin America Elevate point, no matter how creative your math is. Furthermore, by buying points towards an award ticket, you’re missing out on the points you would earn from booking a revenue ticket.

Any other thoughts? When I saw the e-mail about the 20% bonus on purchased points, I just assumed the value would be intrinsically terrible. Looks like that's indeed the case.

Buying points can make sense for programs where there is a fixed number of points required for a ticket which could be $200 or $5000 depending on a variety of factors. For programs where the point value for redemptions is fixed, it is horrible value to purchase points. That is unless it makes you feel good to pay twice as much for a flight to get it for "free" with points later.

I'm sure it's not such a good deal because you're not buying them from Virgin.