Best rewards redemption value if you don't travel?

[dlister70]

I haven't flown since 2000, and I haven't paid for a hotel room in about as long.  So although I know that rewards cards are generally more generous for hotels and airfare, I just don't think that I'll be getting the value out of that.

I have a Discover It card which lets me buy $25 gift cards with $20 of cash back.  However, the AMEX BCP only has $25 gift cards for $25, so no extra bonus there.  My PNC Cash Rewards doesn't even seem to have the option to do anything other than statement credit or deposit to my checking account.

I'm curious as to what other cash back or points based cards will let you get more than "face value" of the reward like the Discover card rewards site does.  I had planned on sticking with just cash back cards and using it as statement credit, but if a points based card can get gift cards to places that I'm going to go to anyway and get a better deal on them, then that would be a better reward for me.

Does any other card do deals on gift cards like Discover does?  Or maybe have another rewards structure like buying merchandise with your cash back but the redemption value is better ($400 cashback gets you a $500 TV)?  AMEX also has a shopping site, but it seemed like you could buy the stuff locally for cheaper than what their redemption value was on the site.

[wasCB14]

Don't bother with Chase gift cards. Only a few cards are discounted, and the discounts are small.

That said, as a semi-frequent traveler, I'm very happy with their rewards.

[SBR249]

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@dlister70 wrote:

Does any other card do deals on gift cards like Discover does?  Or maybe have another rewards structure like buying merchandise with your cash back but the redemption value is better ($400 cashback gets you a $500 TV)?  AMEX also has a shopping site, but it seemed like you could buy the stuff locally for cheaper than what their redemption value was on the site.

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AmEx often runs offers and deals that are very good. For instance, right now on Amazon (search for amex offers threads on this forum), they have a $30 off when you buy at least $60 worth of stuff sold by Amazon (no third party sellers) as long as you pay for it with at least 1 MR point (1¢). Earlier this year they ran an identical $25 off purchase of $50 deal which I used. So effectively that's 50% off as long as you redeem one MR which is very good. 

On the offers section of their account page, there are usually tons of offers for specific merchants which offer discounts of 10-30% for purchases on AmEx cards and they do something similar if you are on twitter. So while they aren't strictly discounts on redemption, AmEx cards do offer a lot of value. 

Otherwise, nothing comes to mind save for the cards where a redemption bonus is baked into the program like Barclays CashForward, etc. 

[Anonymous]

BofA is a bonus 10% to redeem into a checking/savings account with them. The Disco 20% off gift cards are the best cash/cash equiv value I've seen anywhere.