Because that would giving people almost 3 free nights, and it only says 1 free night.

Ie, just because you are going to redeem for 40k doesn't mean the average person does. I suspect most people (especially the ones who are not FTers) redeem between 15k and 25k. (Just because many FTers also have tons of miles and so can fly to the place in the world where the most expensive PCR property is to redeem their free night, that doesn't mean average Priority Club Select Visa cardholder has the miles, money, or resources to go to where they can max out their free night cert. They mostly just use it wherever their travels normally take them...)

I know even I redeemed my 5 nights that I earned during Sweet Dilemma for 15k hotels, because there turned out to be nowhere that I was going before the certs expired that I wanted a hotel that cost more.

They like free night cert precisely because the average person gets less value out of it than they would get out of 40k points, and also because it has an expiration date and so some good subset of certs undoubtedly never gets used and so costs them nothing at all.


... Besides, then they'd be accidentally depositiing an extra 40k in everyone's account, whether they had a PC Select Visa or not, then taking it back, and you'd screaming about that!