Joining E-Rewards - Easy Invite
 

I'm sure this may have already been discussed (but searching E-Rewards is amazingly unhelpful on a site dedicated to rewards! Haha)

I had not received an invite to e-rewards but really wanted to maximize my earning potential, so I began looking around.

I know it's invite only, so I was mainly just trying to figure out what I can do to trigger that invite. Instead, I found this:

https://www.flyingblue.com/earn-mile...e-rewards.html

I probably will never Fly Blue, but for an easy invite into E-Rewards it was worth signing up and using the link provided. IHG is one of the partners you can earn with through a Flying Blue invite.

Bear in mind that the minimum redemption is $30 of E-rewards credit for 1000 (elite qualifying) points, which takes a while to rack up.

True. These survey type deals always take forever, just like e-miles. But every little bit helps, right? You can do them on your phone, so if you're sitting in the waiting room at the docs office, or on lunch break and still have time before you have to return, it's definitely better than just sitting around twiddling your thumbs.

Also if you use the Flying Blue link, you can only credit the $ into your Flying Blue account. So if you don't have any miles there, then there is no need to waste your time.

The big e-Rewards thread is in the S.P.A.M. folder:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/s-p-m...er-thread.html

There are usually a few open spots in assorted program. While there are no guarantees of what rewards you'll be able to redeem for, the usual rule of thumb is that if you sign up under an airline program, you'll be locked out of redeeming for all other airline program redemption options but can redeem for the full slate of hotel, rental car, and misc. rewards available in your country. Same with hotel- sign up under a hotel, and that's your sole hotel program while you can have many airline redemption options.

To get the whole spectrum of redemption options, you have to have kind of lucked into either getting an invite from Ticketmaster (someone mentioned that in the main e-Rewards thread) or have the program you got your invitation from leave e-Rewards altogether (a bunch of us who were there on a Delta invitation)

Also note that while the mobile app can be quite good for getting surveys, the reward list shown on the app can be less than what you get on the web site. Example- IIRC, BA Avios are missing for me on the app but showing as available on the web site.

How long it takes to earn enough for rewards depends on if your profile fits who they want to answer. I'm on track to earn 12k in IHG Rewards points this year from e-rewards.

Not true. While you can't redeem them with another airline if you join through Flying Blue, you can certainly redeem them with IHG and a variety of other partners.
I'm not too worried about airline miles, because I usually fly delta and have so many miles built up there through years of using a skymiles debit card (previously offered through SunTrust bank, but no longer) that I'm not too worried about the airline miles.

Gotcha. Thanks for the link.

Good information to have, I'll keep that in mind when it comes time to redeem.

Really? That's even better than expected. Hopefully my profile will match up in a way that allows maximum earning capability.

I thought the points aren't Elite Qualifying?!

Per the e-Rewards terms & conditions for IHG redemption:

And I can confirm they have posted as such since the creation of Elite Tier points. (Though I haven't had a redemption post since July 1, so can't confirm 100% they still are.) They've been somehow grouped as 'Partner Points' that are qualifying instead of assorted other ways to get non-qualifying points outside of stays.

The other known e-Rewards redemption that gets you elite qualifying points is Club Accor, for what it's worth.