While this may look idle or contrarian in this venue, I'm obviously getting at offers - programs, promotions - that waste a lot of your money and/or effort and/or time, in reality yielding very little return -- e.g., bogus, or fairly bogus. The good in this thread would be to wave people off of offers that look good on their face, but aren't. Keep in mind even the "big" ones that yield credit that is just too difficult or impossible to redeem, or it translates into pesos on the redemption end. One more component: It must take work -- not the "Well, I was doing it anyway, it was no skin to just have my account number on there" kind. Money/effort/time vs. ROI.

For me, there are three (types):

- The iDine dining programs, especially when there are much more lucrative dining award (actual $) programs nowadays.

- Sweepstakes. No matter how little effort they take. Seems to me that a company does a sweepstakes when they don't want to spend the money on a real promo, but they want to stay in front of us. Admittedly, this is a reflection of the fact that I am an abjectly unlucky fisherman.

- The standard 50-100 miles per car rental, when it involves a miles chasing component.

What say you?