Just got a beautiful catalog from Marriott of items we could use our Marriott Rewards points for. Now I'm sure that there are members of this forum that are savier than I am. I choose when to use my points in a way that will maximize their value.

I accrued lots of MR when I bought a timeshare from Marriott and used their credit card for a while to get even more. Then I saw how many points it took to get their hotel rooms and I began to balk. Case in point - next summer I'm using 150,000 Marriott points for 5 nights at the Ritz in Maui, but only 48,000 points for 5 nights at the Princeville in Kaui.

Most people rate points at 1 cent per mile/point. I try to hold out until I can get at least 5 cents. I'll use points to pay for coach and upgrade to first class on that Hawaii trip. Two tickets for 60,000 points saves me $3,200 for 5.3 cents per point.

Back to the catalog - it's beyond belief! Looking at the point value versus the retail price of the items results in values of way under one-half cent per point. I guess they think that the beautiful pictures will make us stupid. It's a sham and I hope that Marriott has to swallow the cost of this debacle. I hope that my fellow Marriott point holders are too smart to waste their points in this way. I'm disgusted.