Be happy he bothered to ask you - he could have agreed to the deal and then told you after it was too late! I hope you were able to prevent it.

And, yes there are many people that have no clue as to the value of the points they are sitting on - how many people do you know who will redeem Amex MR for gift cards at 1 cpp or SPG points for gift cards at a slightly better ratio, but still a pretty awful value? Well, if you don't know of any, rest assured there are plenty out there and there are those that will even redeem points for merchandise which is an even worse value than gift cards.

Even my dad who does have some sense as to the value of points and will only redeem for airfare (he uses mostly MR points), does not understand that the best value is in redeeming for J or F seats - he sees it as a "waste" of additional points that he could have used for yet another coach seat. After a while I realized it was pointless to keep trying to convince him and that he is an old-timer that just doesn't want to get with the program so I gave up. At least he's not flushing them on some cruise at a fraction of their value!