travelpony85

Hi All,

I'm a frequent traveler for work and don't much care to travel on my time off. Well, at least that's true right now, and I'll probably very much want to travel recreationally in a few years once I "retire" from travel-based work, but I'm terrified of all of the points devaluations over the last few years and don't feel comfortable savings points for a trip 3+ years out.

As such, I tend to clear out all of my built up points as I earn them. UR points become cash in my Chase Checking account at 1 cent per 1 point. I'm a first time poster but a long time reader of these forums so I know many people here value Chase UR at 1.3+ cents per point, but since I don't care about travel, and don't want to risk selling them, the cash option is pretty good for me, especially since it's free money (reimbursable travel expenses from work get to go on my personal credit cards, hehe).

I'm at a loss for what to do with my AMEX MR points. I signed up for a new card and now I'm sitting on 60k points. It looks like the cash options are pretty terrible at 0.6 cents per point. So I started looking at the gift cards.

Zappos seems to be the one that makes the most sense to me because their gift cards are 1 cent for 1 point and I wear clothes everyday so Zappos seems somewhat useful even though I don't need any clothes from there right now, I might in the future. But $600 worth of clothes from Zappos is quite a bit more than I'd need in a really long time.

I looked into selling my MR and got one quote of 1.4 cents per point, and given I don't care about my relationship with AMEX, I don't care about the risk of adverse action, but I do care about the risk of winding up with nothing for my points. For all I know, the buyer pay pals me money, I transfer the points out, and the buyer claims fraud, reverses the paypal payment, and I'm stuck with zero points and zero payment.

Long story short, I want to know what the best use of my MR points is if I don't care to travel and I don't have any relatives/friends that I want to gift travel points to. I don't mind waiting a little while if AMEX offers regular promos on gift card (or other non-travel) redemption. However, having lived through several significant devaluations in the last few years, I'm antsy to get rid of these points ASAP. The Marriott devaluation hit me hardest where they increased the gift card redemption (through points) by double or triple over night. Every minute I hold onto these MR points is another minute I risk AMEX deciding to devalue them.

Also, I've already wasted over two hours reading Flyertalk, Slickdeals, Fatwallet, and random travel blogs trying to figure out what the heck to do with these stupid points. I'm very close to cashing them out for 0.6 cents each and closing the account. It's my own stupid fault for not researching enough before I applied. I tried to research on the AMEX site to see what I could cash in points for, but unless you're an AMEX member, the site is severely limited. And I was used to UR points where you could cash them out for 1 cents per point and assumed MR were the same. I took for granted the various information I got from sites where people claimed the points were worth 1.3+ cents each. Oh well, live and learn.

xchpstang

subscribing. I'm in the same exact situation and would like to see if anyone replies with good info.

Gagravarr

Do you have any friends or family who might need to book some flights or hotels any time soon? Saying to them "You give me the money you'd have paid for economy/coach, and I'll book your business tickets with my points" or "You give me the money you'd have paid for a 2* hotel, and I'll book you into a 4* one with my points" can be a surprisingly good way to cash out AND make yourself popular at the same time! (Assuming suitable award availability that is...)

travelpony85

I do not.

mia

Nothing of consequence has changed since this discussion:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...giftcards.html

There are no non-flight redemptions which return more than $0.01 per point. There is no "best" $0.01, it's a matter of personal preference.

If you do not value premium class air travel rewards Membership Rewards is not a compelling program. You would do much better with a card offering $0.02 per dollar cash back.

llbad

I agree with getting a 2% cash back card coupled with 5% category cards. However, I disagree that there are no non-flight redemptions which return more than $0.01 per pt. There are cash for points websites which will gladly take those UR points off your hands for more than 1 cent/pt - although they may or may not be against he rules of this forum and/or chase.

mia

For USA issued accounts there is no mechanism for transferring points to another Membership Rewards account. There is no longer any mechanism for transferring Membership Rewards points to another person's frequent flyer account, unless you open a supplementary card account in the person's name. This means that the points broker will, most likely, ask you to transfer the points to your own frequent flyer account, and redeem an award ticket for a stranger. This will create a clear audit trail from the broker's customer to both your airline account and your Membership Rewards account.

hamhead

Unless you really need the cash now, I see no real point in redeeming now.

Either you get 1% back with your points now or 1% back later on. But the benefit to redeeming later being that you might get more than 1 cent per point value in travel later on - if things change and that is no longer the case, then you can redeem for cash then. I highly, highly doubt that statement credit redemptions are in any risk of being devalued at AmEx.

And like what has been said, if you don't redeem for travel or forsee yourself doing so you'd be much better off with any other straight cash back program where you're going to be earning 1.5% - 2%.

llbad

Hey, I never said it was easy I just said it was an option

op stated "I don't care about the risk of adverse action"

sdsearch

All redemptions that don't involve transferring to a travel program are done exaclty the same way (by AMEX turning points into cash), so are all valued exactly the same (unless someone makes a mistake), and thus no one of them can be a better value than another.

Travel programs offer better value (sometimes) because they are basically offering you deals on their own "excess capacity". There is little in this world other than travel programs that works that way, and so most things other than travel programs devolve to nothing more than one variation or another on "cash back".

travelpony85

Per the linked thread above, I can trade in Delta Skypesos for AMEX cash gift cards. Is that still true? The thread is 3 years old and every program has been significantly devalued since then.

I have 150k Delta Sky Pesos with absolutely nothing to do with because there doesn't appear to be any way to cash them out for any kind of gift card. Perhaps if I had an AMEX Delta CC, I would be allowed to cash them out. That's how SouthWest works whereby I am not allowed to cash out for gift cards unless I have the credit card.

If so, what is the redemption of sky pesos to gift cards? Is it worth getting the CC to be able to cash them out if that's the case?

skibum7732

Highly unlikely that the value will drop<$.01/point so no reason to drop them ASAP in my opinion. There will always be devaluations, but if you want to travel in the future then miles are going to help you defray those costs substantially. I am sitting on >3M airline, >1M hotel, >700k variable like UR and MR. I travel quite a bit and use 1-2M points a year, but my balances still keep rising. I would never cash them out though, as I will get better value and enjoyment out of travel in the future.

sdsearch

I think you need to do some rational math on the amount of devaluation, rather than guestimating based on your "impression" of it.

The thing is, most airlines/hotels have not devalued their travel-based redemptions to the point where using the miles/points for cash/gift cards 3 years ago would have been a better value than using them for travel now!

So I think your assumption that the miles/points will devalue in 3 years so much that you should cash them out now at poor value is flawed.

If you were cashing them out on travel now vs travel later, that one thing. But I think it's invalid to assume that the degree of devluation within travel redemption in 3 years must be greater than the degree of instant devaluation by using miles/points for something that's not their primary purpose.

I can often get 5c per mile or more when redeeming for business class overseas. Let's say that gets devalued by 50%. That's still 2.5c. Let's say that gets devalued by 75%. That's still 1.2c. So that's still greater value than redeeming now at 1c for gift cards!

In other words, redeeming even for "anytime" awards (or the top tier in Delta) is still often a much better value than redeeming for gift cards. Do you really think that in 3 years "saver" awards (or middle tier in Delta) will be higher than "anytime" awards (or top tier in Delta) are now???

OneHourPhoto

Good to know

travelpony85

I don't necessarily believe that points will be devalued for travel within 3 years more than the loss is to use the points for gift cards right now.

However, what I do believe is I will continue traveling for work for several years, and I'll have a bunch of new points over the next 3 years. I'm sure the redemption value of those points for gift cards in 3 years will be lower than the redemption value of those points for gift cards today.

Thus, it makes sense for me to cash out the points for GCs now, and use the points I earn in the future for travel that won't happen until the future.

At least I think it does, which is why I started this post. It seems like everyone so far who's replied has made it an either/or type of situation. Either you use the points for travel, or you don't and everything sucks so it doesn't matter how much it sucks because it's going to suck regardless.

I do think there's a difference between cashing out points for 0.6 cents as a statement credit versus 1 cent for a Zappos GC so while both may suck compared to redeeming for travel at 30 cents per point (which is what some people seem to juice out of them, exaggerating, haha), compared to every other non-travel option, the Zappos seems like the best bet right now.

Back to the original post which no one has seemed to touch, assume that I never ever want to use these points for my travel, or anyone else's travel, what's the best option for redemptions?

Should I expect some bonuses for GC redemption at some point, perhaps around Christmas? What have they done in the past? I've looked through old threads where it says AMEX runs promos that lets you cash out for 1 point per 1 cent worth of a traveler's cheque... back in 2011. Given that you only get 0.5 cents per point in a Traveler's Cheque in 2014, I'd say a 3 year period could result in a 50% devaluation of points for non-travel use.

So I want to burn them within the next few months, and I'm willing to wait for some kind of transfer promo bonus or something if anyone thinks that may happen based on historical patterns.