Originally Posted by divemistressofthedark

Not intending to be a pedant, but that's not really what we're talking about here, is it? OP [male or female? I'll assume female] isn't discussing redeeming her points for gift cards. She's using her Amex to buy the gift cards through Bonus Points Mall, and making her returns that way. [Yes, I realize Target, which she originally mentioned, is not a good example, but not every vendor has that gift-card exemption. REI, for example, has exactly zero exemptions.]

This has nothing to do with the cost - either using cash or MR points - of any gift cards. I've actually edited this to remove the 4% number, since the return you get kicks in when you redeem the MR points, not when you earn them - the real number would be 400%, since you'd earn 400 points for 100 dollars in spending, but that's not an accurate number - since we don't know what the OP or anyone else is redeeming the MR points for yet.

I usually shoot for about 10% return on MR myself, since that's what I can get using DL many times...and it's why I rarely use MR points to pay for a plane ticket costing under around $300, since base level MR redemption is usually around 25,000 Skymiles (or 25,000 MR points, if I'm redeeming them 1:1 instead of taking Christian's excellent suggestion at .75:1.)

Only complaint I have is that BonusPointsMall.com loads slower than crosstown traffic, most of the time. It's a real pain when you're in a hurry. Lately I've been getting a lot of 'this site is unavailable, try again in an hour' messages as well.