A Category 1-4 is worth at most 18,000 points which cost $324 during the standard buy points promotion. Comparing to retail prices is fun for some FTers, but is completely wrong. Nobody would pay you $350-400 for a Cat 1-4 certificate.

Since the brand explorer certificate is valid for a year, one might not apply as much of a value discount due to the short life meaning it gets used sub-optimally fairly often. $250-$300

This little game can be a win-win though, so I wouldn't knock it quite so hard. I very much doubt that I would have ever gotten around to trying Thompson, Alila, Secrets, etc. except for this promo, but now I am quite happy to try other hotels in these brands. The fact that I might have paid an extra $30 for the Thompson or spent an extra hour travelling to the Secrets is now irrelevant.