Originally Posted by
ThriftyTourist
Even with the fee factored in, you can come out on top. Even with the $5.95Gift Card fee, you are still only paying $0.297 per mile at Office Supply stores after using the entire $200 Gift Card on dining as a VIP.
For those of you without a Chase Ink Bold/Plus card can use the American Express Premier Rewards Gold card or any other card that earns bonus points for purchases at grocery stores and purchase Gift Cards with a $500 maximum value for the same $5.95 fee and pay only $0.17 cents per mile after using the entire $500 Gift Card on dining as a VIP.
But, if I'm going to earn the 1000 or 2500 dining points for using
any credit card registered with my dining program, then I have to subtract those points from the total haul and measure the cost per additionally earned points solely against the purchase of the gift card--that's the added value. And, using that calculation scheme, your chart can underestimate the cost by more than triple. For instance, in the $200 gift card purchase, I'm only earning 1000 extra miles for the $5.95 cost as I'll earn the 1000 through the 5X credit given for my dine if paid by a registered credit card. That means the cost rises to nearly 6 cents per additional point.
And, in fact, for each of the scenarios in your chart, the cost per mile for the extra points that you can't get by just paying for the dine with a registered credit card is exactly the same--almost 6 cents per point, not 0.165 or 0.17 per point.
Unless you can give me a persuasive explanation as to why my methodology is wrong, nothing here has increased my desire to become one of your Twitter followers.