Hilton HHonors - Least valuable HHonors Award.....

Or the "why would anyone spend HHonors points for that" award.

My candidate would be the Hilton Hawaii Dollars (http://www.hilton.com/en/hhonors/rewards/exchange_9.jhtml)

No doubt, a terrible value.

Ouch. Had not seen that one before.

I don't think that 25,000 points for $50 at Sharper Image is any great deal either.

One has to wonder if anyone has ever taken that option - and if so, what were they thinking.

How about 25000 points for a one-year subscription to Sports Illustrated or Time, neither of which cost more than $50 when you sign up directly through AOL/Time-Warner?

Time only costs $30, and SI works out to close to $45. If those aren't worse than the above-mentioned ones, I don't know what is. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Mike

How about those car rental rewards (http://www.hilton.com/en/hhonors/rewards/car.jhtml)?

1 free day for 25,000 points? Maybe, just maybe, if I'm renting in a super high cost market... but then Avis "excludes New York, New Jersey and Connecticut."

I think the real waste would be the "Free car upgrades":

Avis: Free 1 car upgrade 5,000 AV1*
National: Free 1 car upgrade 5,000 BN23
Thrifty: Free 1-car class space available upgrade 5,000 TYU†

First, considering that coupons like these come in the mail all the time (at least I constantly throw these away as they seem to arrive with every airline FF programs' mailing) -- meaning that they have no real value.

Then, considering that you would need 20 stays at a Hilton (assuming that you rented with Avis, Thrifty, or National and got your 250 HHonors bonus points with your stay) in order to earn the same "award" with car rentals (250 x 20 = 5,000). That's a lot of $$$ to get a one car class upgrade!!!

;(

Hint: If you really want car upgrades, go buy yourself an Entertainment Book (www.entertainment.com) and you'll get tons of "double upgrade" coupons that likely are as usable.

I'm thinking about transferring about 1,000,000 AA miles to Hilton and buying Sharper Image coupons. I know it's a terrible value but I earn enough miles for my flying needs. Sharper Image says I can combine say 20 $500 coupons and buy a couple of nice lcd tv's if I want to. Is that true? Also Sharper Image told me that they match other merchants prices. I searched Cnet shopping and have a list of about 20 merchants that sell this tv for $3,400 instead of $4,500. Sharper Image said just send them the ad. Before I transfer the miles I want to be positive that they will honor the lower price. It's still not a good deal, but it would be better.

One final question, I have always heard that Hilton award rooms are hard to get (unlike Starwood). I want to transfer AA points to Hilton to use for awards in cities where there aren't Starwood hotels. Are the rooms hard to get?

Thanks for your help.

I would at minimum sit down and calculate a per mile value for the televisions. From what information you provided (1,000,000 miles for 20 $500 certificates) you have a per mile value of .01.

That is not horrible but I would still be reluctant. However, since you seem to have more miles than you know how to use, go for it.

By the way, could you spare two FC tickets to OZ?

Have fun with the TV's.

I'd get my hands on one of the certs and check the small print before I'd commit that many miles.

Thanks for the help. It's even worse than I thought. It would take me 1,215,000 AA miles to get 18 $500 certs. That's 3/4's of a cent per mile. And it gets even worse. Sharper Image will only price match brick and mortar stores (even though none of their stores carry the tv's). Now it's down to 1/2 cent per mile. I may have a lot of miles but that's a complete waste of them.

For diamonds, there are no capacity controls (except in special demand cases). If there is a room at the hotel, you can have it. I've taken advantage of this many times.

marc

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by scrog:
Thanks for the help. It's even worse than I thought. It would take me 1,215,000 AA miles to get 18 $500 certs. That's 3/4's of a cent per mile. And it gets even worse. Sharper Image will only price match brick and mortar stores (even though none of their stores carry the tv's). Now it's down to 1/2 cent per mile. I may have a lot of miles but that's a complete waste of them. </font>

If you have so many AA miles, why don't you go to the coupon connection and try trading them for something that you want? Someone might offer up an LCD TV.