How do I exchange frequent flyer miles for merchandise?

November 25, 2007 8:17 AM

I have lots of frequent flyer miles on American Airlines. There is a website (points.com) that allows you to exchange miles for gift certificates at stores like Amazon.com. Is there a catch? An annual limit? Any success stories?
posted by jorlando to Shopping (5 answers total)

The catch is that you get far less value than you would if you used them for airline tickets or upgrades. For example, 25,000 AA miles will get you $106 at Amazon, or air transportation to two different cities in the 48 U.S./Alaska/Canada. That's worth a lot more than $106.
posted by grouse at 8:22 AM on November 25, 2007 [2 favorites]

Yeah, the exchange rate sucks. It's a good site to create activity if your miles are in danger of expiring.

It's also good to trade some miles that you'll not be able to use-- I have 7,000 or so IcelandAir Saga points from a trip that I took, but I will almost certainly never get enough points to get anything worthwhile from IcelandAir and it doesn't have any useful affiliates. I can take a huge loss and get like 2,200 aadvantage miles for them, and it might be worth it. Or it might be worth it to get a gift certificate with it.

But I can't see that it's ever good to use points.com to get gift certificates (or indeed for any transactions) at the cost of miles that you'll actually use.
posted by Mayor Curley at 8:49 AM on November 25, 2007 [1 favorite]

The only thing that points.com is useful for is tracking all of your point balances in one place. Exchanging your points (except in scenarios like Mayor Curley's) is never worth it.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 9:00 AM on November 25, 2007 [1 favorite]

If you need to bump activity so your miles won't expire, getting 100 miles for a quick survey at Opinion Place is a good way to do this.
posted by grouse at 9:04 AM on November 25, 2007 [2 favorites]

If you planned to use said merchandise as Christmas gifts, you could alternatively just gift miles tto a charity on behalf of your friends and family, or just give them the gift of miles.
posted by arnicae at 4:17 PM on November 25, 2007