Contents
The Offer
- American Express is offering discounts off the typical price to redeem Membership Rewards for gift cards.
The following brands will get you roughly 1.07 cents per point value on the sale:
- Apple
- Nordstrom
- Lululemon
- Regal
The following brands will get you 1.25 cents per point value on the sale (20% discount):
- Gap
- Athleta
- Fanatics
- Bath & Body Works
- Saks
- Ruth’s (Darden)
Airbnb and Target are also on sale, but those will still end up less than 1 cent-per-point after the discount.
Our Verdict
People looking to cash out Membership Rewards points might find these interesting.
Hat tip to reader avsterbone
Appears to be targeted. I don’t see the discount on my account. haha I thought it
Hm what’s the best best approach to cash out without travel? These gift cards are pretty meh. Charles Schwab platinum then cash out at 1.1?
Amex points are hard to cash out for more than $0.01 per point. Occasionally you see discounts on gift cards, such as the promo above (which I was not targeted for). One of the better options I saw earlier this year was converting points to JetBlue miles, which I would have done if I didn’t already have a lot of JetBlue miles.
You can create a dummy booking on Amex Travel using points. You then have to cancel the reservation before 24 hours and you’ll get the MR back as statement credit at $0.01 per point. According to Amex terms, this method is perfectly fine. I’ve done it before to cash out 300,000 MR points.
Very interesting DP. I assume you donot go wild on this or risk problems. I dont think I have heard this before. This applies to any airline booking? I thought the tix were non refundable. Or do you pick a refundable fare for this?
I don’t believe that runs any risk as Amex themselves makes it a point that if you cancel a booking made with points, you’ll get the MR as statement credit. You have to make the reservation on the Amex Travel portal/site, not with the airline. Make sure that the reservation says 100% refundable before 24 hours. From there, you can immediately cancel the reservation and the statement credit should appear after a few days.
So weird I don’t see those at 1 cpp. Instead I have crate & barrel, Williams Sonoma, bath & body works, and home Depot. Home Depot is tempting at 1 cpp
For those who have merchant gift cards as an option, which card do you have?
I have the really old Blue from AMEX. I USED to have the option for merchant gift cards, but now all I have is just AMEX prepaid gift cards.
Amex Everyday
Even if you don’t travel and do 1:1, only GAP worth it since it matches the 20% off GCs that every week some retailers do.
Appears to be targeted. I don’t see the discount on my account.
I got thi on my account. Ill use some for Ruth Chris merely because I have alot of excess points. I use most points for travel.
Are these Ruth’s Chris gift cards confirmed good at all Darden restaurants? I recall the Red Lobster spinoff being a massive cluster as far as gift cards were concerned.
Not seeing the discount, may be targeted?
Yes, targeted — I have it on my Everyday card, but family member doesn’t have it on theirs.
Family member has a much higher MR pts balance so they usually don’t get most discounted GC promos that I’ll get on mine.
Don’t care for any of the offers:
$100 Apple is 9412pts (normally 11765pts)
$100 Target is 11429pts (normally 14286pts)
I’ll update that its targeted