sgideons

I thought this information would be interesting to people who have the US Bank FlexPerks travel card, since I was not able to find it anywhere on the forums or blogs. US Bank's partnership with Plastic Jungle allows you to redeem gift cards for FlexPoints. For Delta Amex cardholders who are Skymile rich and FlexPoint poor, you can redeem your Skymiles for gift cards (check Plastic Jungle first to see the % rate), then redeem the gift cards for FlexPoints by signing into the Promotion Center at:

https://flexperkspromos.usbank.com/index.cfm/main/login

The conversion rate is at the maximum value of FlexPoints for travel, $0.02. So a 13000 Skymile, $100 Saks 5th Avenue gift card can be redeemed for 4050 FlexPoints (at the moment).

Obviously not a great rate since you can't always find flights right at or just below the FlexPoint cutoffs, so the points aren't necessarily worth $0.02. The value is if you are within a few thousand FlexPoints of the NEXT redemption level, since you only have to wait two days for the FlexPoints to post, instead of statement closing, or if you know you won't spend enough to get you to the next redemption level.

Remember that since FlexPoints trips earn miles, if you book on Delta you potentially earn back some of the miles you spent on the gift card .

Anyway, just wanted to get this info out there, since I spent a long time googling before deciding that nobody had written up this aspect of the FlexPoints program.

My next experiment will be what kinds of donations count for triple FlexPoints, since I can't find that info anywhere either! Not a terribly popular program, apparently, but I'm sure there are ways to maximize it!

HansGolden

So if you wring maximum value from FlexPoints at 2 cpm, you're valuing your SkyMiles at 0.6 cpm. SkyPesos aren't worth much, but they're worth more than that.

Blue Skye

i just wrote to them via secure email about this. they used to have a list of "approved" charities but they no longer keep track. they are leaving up to the charity to correctly "charge" your credit card to reflect charity status. i may attempt this at some point but i don't like the gamble of not showing up as a charity transaction but as another type of transaction. YMMV

mia

FlexPoints are discussed in the Credit Card Programs forum, primarily in this thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credi...er-thread.html

sgideons

@mia That thread doesn't have any information about the subject of this thread. Actually, after reading through that thread in its entirety, I would say it doesn't have any information at all (lots of debate about chips and pins, though!). This post was intended to give people specific, useful information.

@Blue Skye I made a bunch of $10 donations to different charities, since I support the charities anyway it doesn't make any difference to me whether I get 1x or 3x, but I'll update when my statement closes to identify which of them charged through as charity for the purposes of FlexPerks.

@HansGolden The Plastic Jungle deal is definitely not worth it most of the time, but like I say, there are situations where people could use it to bump up to the next FlexPoints tier, since the Skymiles->FlexPoints turnaround is only about a week.