MileagePlus Gift Card Exchange - turning old gift cards into MP miles
 

https://secure.unitedmileageplus.com...gcWelcome.html

http://ir.unitedcontinentalholdings....481&highlight=
$25 minimum on cards. Any guesses to the conversion rate? I'm going to say $0.03 to the mile...

ugh ..

MileagePlus Gift Card Exchange
 

Just saw this advertised on the United (and EWR Terminal C) Facebook pages:

https://secure.unitedmileageplus.com...gcWelcome.html

As long as you have more than $25 on a gift card to different merchants, you can get miles for the remaining balance.

Haven't tried any of my cards to see how many miles I can get, but I am guessing the CPM won't be good.

The $25 minimum makes this offer almost useless. One of my main objections to gift cards is how difficult they are to use as the balance gets low. Often if you don't have enough on the card to cover the whole purchase, the merchant can't do the transaction. Or you have to know exactly what the balance is to tell the cashier, who can then enter it manually. What a pain.

I was excited to see this offer for RDM's, but looks like with the $25 minimum they have protected the gift card industry quite well.

Given it's all being routed via Plastic Jungle, the $25 minimum is no surprise.

Probably just not worth the time to do the conversion for $3.29 gift cards and the like. I doubt that the minimum is to protect the gift card industry, because I don't know why UA would care about protecting the gift card industry. (If UA really cared about "the industry" and wanted to ensure breakage, they would not offer this program at all.)

It looks like the $25 minimum is set by Plastic Jungle, UA's partner that accepts the gift cards for exchange, not by UA.

As far as taking time or resources to convert $3.29 gift cards (which I have a number of myself, LOL), since the process is entirely automated, what difference should it make whether there is $25 or $2.50 on the card? I can understand them not awarding fractional miles, but they could easily round down to the next integer.

I didn't really mean protect the gift card industry per se, but more along the lines of keeping unused balances in the hands of the gift card issuers. My guess would be that the gift card issuers are paying United a fee for this "service".. or do you guys think it's the other way around? Someone is making money off this somewhere, otherwise it wouldn't be happening in the first place.

I just tried using a $25 LL Bean Gift Card for this. I was offered 670 miles. About 3.7 CPM isn't bad, but not worth it in my opinion.

I don't think they are returning the value to the gift card issuers (the gift card issuers probably would not pay anything for the unused value, if they thought that the alternative was breakage). Instead, PlasticJungle sells the gift cards to other consumers (and earns a margin between the more deeply discounted buy price and the less deeply discounted sell price).

So a gift card for $3.29 for example, requires PlasticJungle to take delivery of the gift card (usually mailed in, except for some that can be entered in electronically as e-certs), and then market and ship the gift card to another buyer. So for such a small denomination of gift card (which is also harder to resell), the sale income may not be worth the transaction costs.

I may be misunderstanding how this works, but it says prominently on the splash screen displayed at the start of this process, and in the FAQs, that you are not required to mail in the cards. So what's the loss in not accepting gift cards with less than $25?

The fact that somehow Plastic Jungle needs to resell the cards and they've probably found that it's difficult to make a profit on a card for $3.92.

Keep in mind all of their infrastructure costs and the fact that they have to resell a card with a value of $3.92 on it... so they would probably only want to pay you the equivalent of $2 for it, or 50 miles. At some point, it doesn't make sense to support.

Excuse me, we said $3.29, not $3.92. So, 36 miles? :p

Awesome valuation for that $0.63, that's like 1.75cpm :D

Why do you think retailers love gift cards? How often are you going to spend exactly $25, or exactly $50, or whatever it is. And most people don't like leaving extra money there. So the retailer gets the incremental purchase value.

Unlike you, however, I have never had a problem using a gift card to purchase an item where the gc only covers part of the value. Usually, it is swiped as the payment, then the amount left on the gc gets taken off the balance, then you just pay the rest in cash, with CC, etc. In fact, I can't recall a single time where anything different has occured.

Discrepancy #1.

In the FAQ Best Buy is listed, but when you click on the Retailer List it is not there. It also isn't in the drop down to start the process. Probably not worth it anyways.

Also, OT, but for those of you who are talking about losing small amounts on gift cards, check your state laws. For instance, in CA, if your gift card has less than $10 in value on it, the retailer is required by law to provide the balance back in cash if you ask. Some places, like Home Depot, just give it back to you automatically when the balance drops below $10 (at least at the self checkout lines)