Ever have this problem: You’re carrying points in a rewards program that you’ve decided isn’t a “keeper,” but you don’t have enough points to cash out?
Or how about this one: You really want to cash out of a rewards program but you’re just a few points short…and you sure wish you could just transfer your points from another program so you’d have enough? Maybe you’d even be willing to BUY the few points you’re short to cash out?
What about, you have airline miles that you don’t use or need and you’d like to give them to someone else? Or maybe you’d just like to get those airline miles into a program that you DO use a lot?
What if you just don’t LIKE the redemption options at your point level?
Or maybe you’re just having difficulty tracking how many points you have in each program?
Points.com can help. It helped me.
I had $14 sitting in my account at BabyMint. It’s a nice program, don’t get me wrong, but it isn’t for me. Cashout was $25 and I didn’t want to have to spend that much more at the program when there were others I preferred. So, I popped on over to Points.com to see what my options were. Turns out I could cash out my $14 worth of BabyMint earnings for $12 of Amazon credit. Obviously Points.com gets to keep $2 of my money, which is their angle, but for me it was a great deal. The exchange went through pretty quickly, too (not sure because it was over a weekend, but definitely within a few days).
I could have chosen instead to transfer in some points from my PhoneHog account, my Greenpoints account, or my e-Rewards account in order to reach the $25 cashout.
You should know that you will lose a little in point/dollar value when using Points.com. That’s where their profit comes from. I don’t think it’s an unreasonable amount. Also, not all rewards programs participate in Points.com, and of those that do, some don’t participate in the points swap facet of it, and only airline mileage programs will allow you to gift or buy extra points.
It is a really cool resource for those who use airline mileage programs, or those other rewards programs that participate. Some non-airline rewards programs that participate include BabyMint, e-Rewards, Goldpoints, Greenpoints, KidsFutures, NestEggz, and PhoneHog. (Sorry, none of the big players like MyPoints, Ebates, or uPromise.)
It’s a free program — no cost to join it or use it (though you can pay for upgraded customer service if you use it a lot and have a lot of questions). They even give you some points to get you started! Join here: http://www.Points.com
{ 42 comments… read them below or add one }
I think the exchange rates on Points.com are appalling. I was looking to convert my US Airways miles to Delta Skymiles and the exchange would give me 632 Skymiles for my 16000 USAir miles(yes a few hundred for 16K) . I really hope the public isn’t fooled by this horrible website.
I agree with Ed. I was appalled to find that 12,000 AAdvantage miles would translate into about a $25 gift certificate.
Yet another sad miles story, I tried to “SWAP” 40 thousand miles from one airlines to another and was offered just over 1 thousand miles… yes, folks a ~40 to 1 exchange rate… too steep for me.
Just to reconfirm the above comments…points.come sucks big time. I even spent $250 on extra points that I could not use literally 5 mins after purchasing and couldn’t get a refund. As far as I’m concerned, points.com is unethical and shame on the airlines for using them (I’m referring to you USAIR!).
AA does not let you swap accounts with less than 25000 miles. what a sham!
Points.com newly announce “GPX” this offering and the pricing on it is brutally expensive to the consumer-
I ran the GPX calculator on a trade where the consumer is trading out of AA into Frontier
sell 5000 AA to buy 3000 Frontier.
this is about the right ratio as
25000 for a restricted ticket on AA
15000 for a restricted ticket on Frontier
divide both by 5 and you get
5000 to 3000
this is a flat trade in value and they want an addition $80 to merely facilitate the trade. They use to do this for $10 on the old exchange.
The troubling part is that you could buy 3000 miles at somewhere close to $0.03 (three cents) a mile or $90. Why would someone give up their American Miles when for $10 more they can have the 3000 Frontier miles and still keep their 5000 American miles.
What a scam.
i was just in the middle of signing up for points.com, but felt a little off about the whole thing. did a google search for reviews and found this. glad i did. i will not continue with my sign up.
Was about to sign up and saw this. Only have 3000 delta miles that are about to expire so not a huge loss.
I too was in progress to sign-up for points.com. However, after reading the user agreement, I became a little skeptical of the value in doing so. I did a search on Google (sorry Yahoo, but you should have sold to M’soft) and found this site. The examples above were even more one sided than I expected. There is no real value in moving miles between awards programs, I’ll look into buying the difference versus swapping. As for signing up at point.com, that web page expired and I won’t pursue signing up at this point in time.
Yeah, me four. About to sign up also but I thought it odd that I can not find the exchange rates on thier site, so I searched them on google and found these reviews.
There’s got to be something better to use my miles on than a scam like this.
So, is there a better competitor to points.com? I really like the idea of points.com but I’m glad I read these postings on swap rate.
Beaware of points.com. This is another internet fraud business. Its been two months since I initiated a swap and still it is in Pending Swap In status. Several attempts to contact them resulted in nothing but usual excuses – server is down, attempting to resolve, thanks for your patience etc etc…
DO NOT JOIN THIS
Two and half years later and am having your same experience. They are probably a fraudulent operation just redeeming enough to keep below the legal radar. Like a Ponzi scheme.
I will be changing the account passwords that I gave them so that they can’t rip me off further.
No don’t use points.com. They had a user favourable deal on their page and when I(as well as friends) tried to make a transaction, they didn’t follow their user agreement which says all transactions are final. Instead they left it in limbo and told us it was a technical error and refused to do anything. They also act as 3rd party for various points programs and they even froze my accounts there to prevent me from taking advantage of some favourable rates until they fixed their system. Then they told me that I should talk to the actual store/company which those points were based out of. When I did, they said they had to contact the party that does their points, which is points.com.
And oh by the way, we can’t even talk to their people because you have to be part of their paying gold membership to get a phone contact number. Yeah, tell your friends, points.com is not a fraud but they are pretty borderline
Thanks so much to everyone who provided comments here about points.com. I was having a hard time finding the swap prices (one old article says $5 per transaction) and had only seen minimal info about the conversion loss. It is great to hear first-hand from users about their experiences. I will definitely skip this so-called service.
I saw all the comments and was hesitant to sign up. I used an old trash email account and logged in as a basic user. Thank you all for telling me not to give account information!
I have Delta SkyMiles that I want to swap for AAdvantage miles. In looking at the their Exchange page. I found that I could not as a basic member exchange SkyMiles (either to or from). However, if I joined their Points.com Gold Membership I could arrange a swap.
To swap 30,000 SkyMiles points, I would have to pay $300 to receive 15,000 AAdvantage points. This of course is after I pay $4.95 for a month or $49.95 for a year membership.
I don’t know what exactly qualifies as usury (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury) in today’s market and in the US, but 50% exchange rate AND a 1% fee is pretty damn close to criminal.
Closed my points.com account today, I DITTO all said here.
After being unable to manage my own personal accounts and continually having the website corrupt my profile with old information (they say they cannot delete anything for “security” and audit purposes – NOTE they are incorporated and run out of socialist Ontario, Canada), I grew frustrated beyond recourse with rep who called me after doing chat and said that I was going to quit and go to a competitor. She said why would I do that? I said the following:
1) Once I added info, I had to call THEM to update it – old accounts I no longer had (Starbucks card worn out, I destroyed & xferred balances to new cards)….and the OLD stuff kept coming bacf from the dead like a George Romero film! That, I could not MY OWN information on a clumsy and cumbersome account profile.
2) Exchange rates have become HORRIBLE for non-Gold members….
3) NOT going pay for GPX or Gold membership to get better rates……
4) Going to find a competitor, or deal with each two programs separately for any future exchange I need to make.
Sayonara, ExPloits.com…..
Amazing string of warnings here. I was suspicious to begin with — from many past experiences regarding airline mileage programs over the last three decades. I got an e-mail from Continental OnePass with a link to sign up to points.com. Since there was “no financial obligation” or credit card requirement to sign up, I saw little danger in continuing. After I completed the required fields, I had another step to get 100 miles as a sign up bonus “in (my) favorite program” — but it just so happens that OnePass is far from my “favorite program” and I tried to find a way to change it to one that I prefer. No way to do it. Then I checked the table on the right side of the screen that let’s the member see what he can get for his points, and it said that you can’t exchange points from OnePass AT ALL. Then I tried to get a phone number to call and see if we could change this to a different account, and learned that I can’t even CALL them without signing up as a “GOLD MEMBER” (ala Austin Powers?). Then I saw what it would cost for this phone privilege, and smelled a rat. So I Googled, and here I am. Now, I better cancel this dog before it defecates on my carpet. Thanks to all the posters.
Continental sent me an email advertising this site and it sure sounded great until I did a search and found these comments. My ‘bulls***’ alert went off as I was reading the email and how great the service sounded. I’m glad I didn’t tell any of my friends to check out this site.
Thank you guys for making me change my mind about signing up with points.com; I received the advertising from Aeroplan and almost went for it, until I did a little research online. Internet is a great way to stop these shaisters for making a killing.
It depends on what companies you are using as to whether this is a good deal. I signed up awhile back because of a bonus that Aeroplan was offering, I also signed up my Esso Extra card. I was short 1000 Aeroplan points for a flight and had many Esso points. I don’t need 60 car washes so I swapped Esso points for Aeroplan and had no problems, Esso and Aeroplan work together elsewhere so the swap cost one extra point of Esso for each Aeroplan, at the gas station it is 3 dollars for 1 Aeroplan and 1 for 1 for Esso extra and the swap cost me 4 Esso points for 1 Aeroplan. For me the system worked I have a booked ticket and I didn’t have to pay any swap fees. I also got rid of pints that I wasn’t using for anything. Research the cards you want to transfer and it might be worthwhile, it seem like most US airlines might not be a great deal but the two groups I used were fine.
I have an awful experience with this company. I wanted to see how I can manage my miles and saw on asia miles that you can earn miles through this website. So, i clicked around to see what it’s about. I personally thought that since an airline company endorse it, it must be legit. I found a ’12500 miles for $100 starbucks card’ and i clicked on it. Probably because of my mindset, I read it as ‘get 12500 miles by getting a $50 Starbucks card’ when it is ‘get a $50 starbucks card for 12500 miles’. So it was never really clear that I was getting the latter, until it was too late and the transaction was final. I spoke to their customer service, who had transfered the miles back into asia miles after hours of complaining that they were not clear. Though it shows up as a cancelle swap, it has been a month and the miles were never credited and i never got anything out of losing 12500 miles. i called asia miles and they said its a points.com problem. i tried to contact points.com but they are closed on the weekend. i hope to get this resolved because this is a huge nuisance. i hope this website closes.
I joined the site mainly for redeeming my asia miles for Amazon gift cards. Seems the exchange rate for this is pretty good…starting at 2,353 asia miles for a $10 Amazon claim code…and seems they now have a 15,000 miles transaction limit…so I could redeem 14,824 asia miles for $63. Not bad at all, considering ever 2 years I fly from SFO to HK roundtrip is already ~14,000 – 15,000 asia miles. I just redeemed a $20 Amazon yesterday…and they say it will pend for 3-4 days. So I will update once it finishes pending…
A better way to use AA points is for hotels. Got a room at a Hilton in Las Vegas for 8800 AA points.
I traded miles for magazines. Guess what, airline miles gone and no magazines. Tried to work the issue with both points.com and Frontier. “It’s the other companies problem!”
My advice is stay away, you will feel ripped off.
Good thing this is here.
It was a handy way to see all my points in the same place and it does sounds like a great idea.
Has anyone found a decent alternative?
I will be disabling my account shortly- no plan to do swaps with them.
The transfer rate is atrocious.
From Amex I get 1-1 for Aeroplan.
Points.com wants 2-1 for the same deal. 50% commission is more than I’m willing to part with.
Business opportunity for some smart person here.
Susan
Points.com is the worst rewards exchange program I have ever tried to use. Besides the extremely low exchange rate they are impossible to use. They don’t answer email questions., refer you to their website for answers that aren’t there and if you call they hang up on you midst greeting. Points.com should be banned. They are not in business.
I saw almost 100,000 of my airline points dissappear in two transactions that occurred 6 months ago without my kowledge or notification, The source of the transaction? Points.com, redeemed by someone for gift certificates. I NEVER redeem my points for anything but air miles, so I know it was not me.
Trying to contact Points.com was next to worthless, the sent me back to the airline. I don’t even remember joining points.com in the first place, but must have? I’ll be closing the account, and hope those reading this will consider what can happen BEFORE joining. For legal reasons I cannot advise people to STAY AWAY, but you can make your own intellligent, informed decision based on this and the other messages posted here.
After chatting online and by phone with points.com last week, and being told the airline would resolve my issue, tonight my login will not work on their site, and neither does the “forgot password” link. I wonder if they have closed my account because of my inquiry??
Should I be wrong about the above, I will apologize and post a future message accordingly.
Wow, glad I found this thread. I just found out about points.com through a special offer at swagbucks.com – which is a cool legit site btw.
I watched the demo videos and thought this is really cool, what a great idea etc etc. I started thinking of how I could consolidate my petro/esso points into shoppers optimum points!
Obviously points.com is a rip off, but the concept is cool. Obviously they can make money short term by ripping people off, but this concept has long term potential by giving consumers good value on exchanges. Especially, when consolidating points into one account where point value increases when you redeem more points at once.
Definitely a market for this, does anybody know if there are any competitors that are actually legit?
Try http://www.webflyer.com/programs/mileage_converter/ to find alternatives to points.com for transferring miles between rewards programs.
Hey thanks shane but that link did not work for me ;(
Sorry Michelle M not sure why the like doesn’t work for you, did you try going to the main webpage webflyer.com. Only other option I can think of is to use milewise.com it can provide step by step instructions to convert miles to redeem for flights, it also promise it will automate the process in the future.
I recently had to transfer 2000 points from my wife’s Alaska airlines account to my Alaska airlines account. I had sufficient miles,myself, but they had not been posted yet. I was charged over $53.00 cdn for this simple transfer. It broke down like this — transfer fee $25.00 usd — $10.00 usd for each 1000 points transferred — tax usd — exchange. Keep in mind, that if you transfer 1000 points ($10.00 fee) or 30,000 points ($300.00 fee) it is still simply JUST ONE TRANSACTION. I have had several replies from ALASKA airlines customer service department re this outrageous charge and they said ” The transfer points program is powered by POINTS.com. There is a fee to maintain the program…….while it may seem like a 30 second transaction online, there is much more to it, and allowing multiple people ( my wife & I ? ) to transfer miles between accounts, defeats the intent of the frequent flyer program.” It is time for ALL consumers to let the airlines they deal with, know what they think about being RIPPED OFF on these transfers. Some people must pay these charges without saying/doing anything. Stand up and be counted, because I can’t stand to see anyone submit to this RIP OFF! A quote from the movie ‘Network’ seems appropriate ” I.m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore”
I would like to point out this points.com is such a bullshit website. I would not recammend this at all. First off, I called to complain that I had not recieved any of my gift cards in the mail after a month. There based in Canada so when you call your getting charged double min on your phone for starters. The lady on the phone tells me that I should of got an e-mail, which I never did. They go through giftcertificates.com for the gift cards they offer. On points.com, they advertise a $25 gift certificate to Hyatt, that’s the one I wanted to redeem, easy right? Since points.com contracts with giftcertificates.com I had to go on that website to redeem my $25. On there website the Hyatt gift card was $50 to redeem. So I was mislead. I called points.com to complain but to no avail. They did absolutly nothing to compensate me. Its not that they could put the points back on my card because I had already paid it off and cancelled it and redeemed the points. It was false advertising.
If you want to redeem your credit card points, go somewhere else. Don’t use this service
Points.com is the partner with American Airlines for purchasing additional mileage and their advertised purchase price does not match check out price (no explanation). For example, I attempted to purchase 12,000 miles at $330 but checkout was $384.75. Additionally, purchased miles take 72 hours to post (really? the USPO is faster) AND the bonus miles take longer to receive (perhaps they’re waiting for me to forget?). I had hoped to talk with points.com direct but when I called their “customer service” number, received message that they are open from 10 am until 4 pm. How’s that for service? Recommendation: Don’t use points.com for anything.
Agreed, I was foolish to sign up for points.com through US Airways for bonus dividend miles and when trying to redeem something else for those miles come to find what I spent $225 on was worth a $5 amazon gift card. Ridiculous. DON’T USE THIS SITE!!
Great idea but damaged by too greedy to scare people out. I changed pin/password and removed all programs right away as with all the information there, it is too easy to steal other people’s miles/points if someone has access to Points.com’s internal system.
I should say: IT IS NEXT TO SCAM AND LEAVE IT AWAY!!
Thank you all for your comments, It saved me a lot. Thanks again
Thank you all for your comments, It saved me a lot. I am not signing for points.com Thanks again
I did sign up for points.com and keep getting emails from them. I have not actually done anything with them and wil now cancel my “membership”.
I signed up for points.com because I got an email from Speedy Rewards telling me that they would double my balance if I were to trade points out of other programs into Speedy Rewards. It sounded wonderful so signed up, only to find out that every single participating program that I am a member of only allows you to track your balance. Plus, the exchange rates are ridiculous. I would have to pay more money than I would if I just earned the points that I wanted to get. I dont know if I would call points.com a scam because I have been scammed before and this isnt it. I would say that it isnt all that they make it out to be
The problem with points.com is the redemption rates are truly terrible. When you transfer you end up loosing so many points it’s not worth it.