Hi.

So for the past 9 years I've been banking with BB&T. About 3 years ago I got a BB&T credit card. I have 50,000 points accumulated on it. Turns out, the BB&T credit card rewards program is basically terrible. I'm going to switch to something else immediately, but in the meantime, I would like to get the best value I can out of the points I have.

I believe the BB&T rewards program is a bit different from most others. 25,000 points buys a Visa gift card (basically cash) with a value of $250. So, 50,000 points can be redeemed for the equivalent of $500. I can also purchase airfare. 50,000 points = $625 in airfare, BUT I need to book through the BB&T system (as far as I know), which does not include all flights by any means. I also need to pay a $50 surcharge to use their system, if I'm not mistaken. Given that I can search on Kayak and generally find a flight that is ~5% cheaper than the non-inclusive list of flights in the BB&T system, booking airfare through BB&T comes out to be about equal to booking airfare through a Visa gift card on a normal travel site. No other point redemptions that I've seen are worthwhile (they have gift cards to Hyatt and stuff, but I could just book with cash).

Is there any better use of this card than taking $500 or booking a flight using their normal system? I would like to go to California at any time over the next 6 months, and I'd like to go to Europe sometime between April to October. (Flying from ATL)

Thanks.

Is the $50 fee per ticket or per reservation? Will there be 2 people on the reservation?

Might be best to just take the cash and run.

It is $50 per use. So, if I had like 400,000 points I could order 7 different tickets to the same place and pay only the $50 fee.