Best Use Of Fidelity World Points?
 

Title says most of it. I just registered the card and looked at the rewards website. The principal reward mode seems to be $75 cash into your brokerage account for each $5k you spend, but they also offer travel rewards. Skimming the airline reward options, it looks like they are basically pricing it by finding the retail fare and charging you 100 miles for every dollar of retail (AMEX has a similar "buy any ticket" feature, and I rarely find it attractive).

Should I just take the cash, or are any of the non-cash alternatives even more attractive/gameable?

take the cash, find your own ticket

75/5000 = 1.5%. How many Worldpoints per dollar would you earn?

A few weeks ago, I had a really bad Worldpoints experience. About 6 weeks in advance, I booked a hotel online at roughly the 1 cent/point value. I received an E-mail confirmation, but when I made calls to the hotel, they had no record of my reservation, even the morning of my check-in. After quite a bit of hassle, I finally spoke with a Worldpoint travel agent who made phone calls to the hotel and rectified the situation. What would have happened if I had not been proactive?

To make matters worse, I did not receive any of my normal elite benefits nor points for the hotel stay. Maybe that's the norm with hotels, but when redeeming points for a flight with a different credit card, I have received mileage as if it was purchased with cash.

Goodbye Fidelity Visa.

take the cash, buy your ticket