topic Re: Help Me Spend My PRG MR Points in Credit Cards

Help Me Spend My PRG MR Points

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 00:30:42 GMT

In December, I will be cancelling my PRG. However, I'd like to use up about 75K MR points and my $100 airline travel credit (I won't be travelling in time) before then.

What should I do? Giftcards? Merchandise? How?

Thanks!

Re: Help Me Spend My PRG MR Points

CreditCuriosity — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 00:37:46 GMT

Google would be your friend on this. Google best way to use Amex MR or something similiar and obviously you will see best values transferring to airlines to worse values then pick your poison. This has been asked many times on this forum and is near impossible to answer for you as we aren't you and you aren't traveling anytime soon.

Might want to consider getting the NO AF ED card to hold the MR's until a point at your time you might be able to use the MR's for something that is worth more than crud. Just my opinion

Re: Help Me Spend My PRG MR Points

K-in-Boston — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 00:47:00 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
In December, I will be cancelling my PRG. However, I'd like to use up about 75K MR points and my $100 airline travel credit (I won't be travelling in time) before then.

What should I do? Giftcards? Merchandise? How?

Thanks!

Amex should allow people to sell their MR points! LOL

So you could get $750 max on gift cards, and less with many of the options. Merchandise would ALWAYS be a horrible value. If it were me, I'd convert them to Starwood points, then transfer those to Marriott. You could get really good value (my last Marriott booking was about 2.53 cents per point, or 7.6 cents in Starwood currency) depending on when and where you stay:

http://www.marriott.com/rewards/pointsGridPopUp.mi?awardType=Standard

Alternately, you could transfer the points to Delta and buy a $100 Delta gift card. 75,000 Skymiles and a $100 gift card should result in an absolutely free roundtrip Main Cabin ticket to Europe with points remaining.

I'm sure others will chime in with good ideas as well.

Re: Help Me Spend My PRG MR Points

MrDisco99 — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 00:45:17 GMT

Get a no-fee EveryDay card to hold the points or transfer the points to Delta SkyMiles or the airline program you're most likely to use. MR points have crap value otherwise.

Most of this is still relevant:

https://thepointsguy.com/2016/07/redeeming-american-express-membership-rewards-maximum-value/

Re: Help Me Spend My PRG MR Points

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 00:54:01 GMT

Please don't cash them in or get gc's unless doing mattress run w marriott.

Like above said, get an Everyday card from AX to preserve the points. You can use the $100 Travel credit to buy an AA Gift Card which you can use towards a flight any time. At one point I cashed in about $2,200 of them to buy the wife and I tickets to Hawaii (No worries about avaibility, woohoo.) so they are pretty valuable if you accumulate enough of them.

Re: Help Me Spend My PRG MR Points

UpperNwGuy — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 00:58:24 GMT

Transfer all your MR points to Delta miles, and you can decide later on how you will redeem the miles.

Re: Help Me Spend My PRG MR Points

bourgogne — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 00:59:41 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
In December, I will be cancelling my PRG. However, I'd like to use up about 75K MR points and my $100 airline travel credit (I won't be travelling in time) before then.

What should I do? Giftcards? Merchandise? How?

Thanks!

that is too many pts to just toss out imo. pc your bce to an ed or app or it or get a business blue if you dont want the tradeline to report. or adopt me and gift them to me

Re: Help Me Spend My PRG MR Points

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 01:07:53 GMT

@UpperNwGuy wrote:
Transfer all your MR points to Delta miles, and you can decide later on how you will redeem the miles.

Skypesos...

Unless the OP lives at a Delta hub, that suggestion is pretty hamhanded. And while one is occasionally able to get good value of these, locking oneself into a carrier specific point currency when other (FREE) options abound is just not good business sense. What I wouldn't give to turn my AA miles into SPG or even MR...

Re: Help Me Spend My PRG MR Points

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 01:09:22 GMT

@bourgogne wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
In December, I will be cancelling my PRG. However, I'd like to use up about 75K MR points and my $100 airline travel credit (I won't be travelling in time) before then.

What should I do? Giftcards? Merchandise? How?

Thanks!
that is too many pts to just toss out imo. pc your bce to an ed or app or it or get a business blue if you dont want the tradeline to report. or adopt me and gift them to me

You can't PC the BCE card to the ED card. Amex ony allows changes to a card in the same rewards program so you cant turn a cash back earning card to an MR earning card and vice versa.

Re: Help Me Spend My PRG MR Points

simplynoir — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 01:13:55 GMT

I'm all for stashing them in an ED card if you don't like what you find for offers. This is assuming you don't just wanna be done with it altogether.

Re: Help Me Spend My PRG MR Points

bourgogne — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 01:25:30 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@bourgogne wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
In December, I will be cancelling my PRG. However, I'd like to use up about 75K MR points and my $100 airline travel credit (I won't be travelling in time) before then.

What should I do? Giftcards? Merchandise? How?

Thanks!
that is too many pts to just toss out imo. pc your bce to an ed or app or it or get a business blue if you dont want the tradeline to report. or adopt me and gift them to me
You can't PC the BCE card to the ED card. Amex ony allows changes to a card in the same rewards program so you cant turn a cash back earning card to an MR earning card and vice versa.

I know, I just got hired to test how sharp the mods are. as expected you passed and the reason again I failed the mod exam. I didnt know that about amex, thought all revolvers were the same. thanks

EDIT, sorry, that came off passive aggressive, just tired from waking up at 4a, ah getting old is fun. really, thank you for your knowledge and what you do for the community

Re: Help Me Spend My PRG MR Points

wasCB14 — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 01:23:45 GMT

IIRC, OP mostly flies United out of SFO. I recall being puzzled as to why OP didn't get a Platinum with a home CL.

Aeroplan (Star Alliance) is an option for codeshares, maybe?

Delta flies to my main airports (LAX and JFK) and a few other cities from there, but otherwise there's not much Delta activity at SFO. That said, 5k SkyMiles each way between LAX and SFO can be good at times, especially with no close-in award fee.

OP, assuming I'm right that you use SFO...do you ever use SJC or OAK?

Re: Help Me Spend My PRG MR Points

MrDisco99 — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 01:46:06 GMT

You can get flights on United metal using points on StarAlliance partners like Aeroplan, Singapore, or ANA.

Re: Help Me Spend My PRG MR Points

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 01:49:58 GMT

@UpperNwGuy wrote:
Transfer all your MR points to Delta miles, and you can decide later on how you will redeem the miles.

I think Delta Miles aren't the best. Low value limited availablity, don't fly that many places.

I would probably do a gift card to somewhere like Lowes or Pottery Barn over that. Someone else mentioned transfering to Starwood. Well you only get a 1/3rd of a starwood point per Amex point once again I think gift card is a better option. I am not a fan of MR points as Delta and British Airways points kind of suck. I only got 1.1 cents value out of my MR points and that is only because British Airways had a 40 percent bonus deal on points and I used it for hotel booking.

I did end up transfering my last 2k points to Starwood as I needed a place to put them. I wont complain too much as for the PRG I got 750 dollars out of value out of 2k spend but I dont think the cards are worth after getting the bonus.

Re: Help Me Spend My PRG MR Points

K-in-Boston — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 02:21:44 GMT

They key with Starwood (for me, anyway) is to convert those again to Marriott. 3:1 then back to 1:3. Certainly the Delta SkyMiles are a YMMV thing but I’d personally rather get significantly more value for travel than a gift card. Pretty much any way they get transferred will have more value, and many of the gift cards are more like 0.7 cpp these days.

Re: Help Me Spend My PRG MR Points

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 21:57:59 GMT

Thanks!

1. I fly out of SFO, OAK and SJC.
2. I have a Delta mileage free account. Can I transfer the MR points there and let them sit? OR do I have to have a Amex Delta SkyMiles card?
3. Regarding the $100 travel credit, should I just buy a giftcard to AA or something?

Re: Help Me Spend My PRG MR Points

wasCB14 — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 22:05:01 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Thanks!

1. I fly out of SFO, OAK and SJC.
2. I have a Delta mileage free account. Can I transfer the MR points there and let them sit? OR do I have to have a Amex Delta SkyMiles card?
3. Regarding the $100 travel credit, should I just buy a giftcard to AA or something?

You can transfer MRs to Delta and just let them sit. They don't expire, but can and do lose value.

I'm about to PM you a link to FT with info about the credit and AA gift cards.

Re: Help Me Spend My PRG MR Points

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 22:30:17 GMT

Just purchased a $100 virtual AA gift card (not a physical one).

Re: Help Me Spend My PRG MR Points

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 15:07:12 GMT

@K-in-Boston wrote:
They key with Starwood (for me, anyway) is to convert those again to Marriott. 3:1 then back to 1:3. Certainly the Delta SkyMiles are a YMMV thing but I’d personally rather get significantly more value for travel than a gift card. Pretty much any way they get transferred will have more value, and many of the gift cards are more like 0.7 cpp these days.

A lot of them are 1 to 1. I don't fly Delta but the Points Guy values Delta at 1.2 cents a point. As he generally grossly overvalues point value I am not sure you would even get 1:1 to one with them. I have 4 major airports within 80 miles of me and none of them has more than a couple of Delta flight routes. So I really don't know much about them. My closest airport is a huge Southwest Hub and they make sure wherever Delta flies they have more flights than them for cheaper price. For example they have flights at the exact same time to Atlanta as Delta. And some in between. So Delta points are pretty much worthless to me. British Airway miles I would say are worth much less than a cent a piece. Booking hotels through Amex will give you .7 cent a piece. Airfare a cent a piece. Then they have a bunch of airlines I have never heard of to transfer to.

Re: Help Me Spend My PRG MR Points

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 23:04:37 GMT

The problem for me as well is Delta doesn't have a huge presence here either.