Points.com is a way for consumers to buy, trade and redeem their credit card points or airline miles. They originally launched in 2002 to help consumers track their reward points and in 2012 they team up with paypal to allow consumers to redeem their points for paypal credit and other gift cards as well as trade points between programs. Read our detailed review below to see if points.com is a SCAM or really worth signing up for.
Redeem Points
I have some extra KLM points from flights between Europe & South America that I’d like to exchange for a gift card. So I headed over to the “give & redeem” section at the time of writing they had about 96 redeem partners that were offering mostly gift cards. The selection seems to be good with major brands like Amazon, Best Buy, BP, Dominos, Macys, Redbox, Sears, Shell, Subway & Walmart available.
I’m always buying from Amazon so I decided to try for an Amazon gift card, all you need to do is just click on Amazon and then it’ll bring you to the following screen:
Then you just choose the program you want to use your miles from, the amount of the gift card you want and click calculate. Then it tells you the amount needed and you can proceed to check out from there.
When I went to “choose program” to select Flying Blue KLM AirFrance it wasn’t in the list and that’s when I realized that only certain partners have opted to be part of the redeem program.
I didn’t have any other points that I wanted to redeem, but I was interested to see how much a $10 Amazon Gift Card would cost. The first couple of programs were also not compatible with the Amazon GC, but the ones that were cost the following amount:
- Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan: 2,942 points
- China Rewards: 6,942 points
- Icelandair Saga Club: 2,615 points
- MeliaRewards: 2,315 points
- S&H Greenpoints: 10,696 points
As you can see out of the 23 rewards programs available in the “give & redeem” section, only 5 can be converted to an amazon gift card. I usually look for at least 1¢ per point, which none of these even came close to (MeliaRewards was closest with 0.432¢ per point, S&H Greenpoints was worst with 0.093¢ per point which is the worst redemption rate I’ve ever seen).
I tried a few more gift cards and whilst some of them had slightly better redemption rates, none of them got close to 1¢ per point. Points.com launch partner, paypal is even worse with fewer companies participating and worse redemption rates (China rewards is 7,094 points for $10 credit).
This made points.com a massive failure when looking to redeem points for gift cards.Â
I decided to see what trading points looked like, maybe I could trade my KLM points to a better reward program, or a program I already have points with.
Trade Points
To trade points you first need to click trade, exchange, buy. Then select if you want to get into a program (e.g get more of those points and less of a program) or out of a program (e.g get less of those points and more of another). I again went to select Flying Blue KLM/Air France and I see the option isn’t there.
At this point I am thoroughly annoyed and have given up any possibility of finding a way to do something useful with my flying blue points on points.com, but want to see what the exchange rates are like for future programs (especially with cards offering big sign up bonuses).
I decide to select “move out of program”, American Airlines AAdvantage and 10,000 miles. At first glance most of the offers are terrible (e.g 1,000 IHG miles for 3,000 AAdvantage miles or 1,000 miles for 5,000 miles) and that’s because points.com has decided to list the offers in the chronological order (oldest first) meaning that all of the offers that are junk slowly float to the top, whilst the better offers (which people actually accept because they aren’t total ripoffs) are nearer the bottom. The better offers still weren’t great, but 10,000 IHG miles for 6,000 AAdvantage is much better than that offered at the top.
Trade Fee
The main problem with trading is that not only do you trade points, you also have to pay a trade fee. The minimum trade fee appears to be $50 which larger trades sometimes costing $150.
As you can see, there is a 100USD fee for this trade. That means for 10,000 IHG points I am paying 6,000 AAdvantage miles and 100USD (which is 1¢ per point). Because of the high fees, this part of points.com is fairly pointless.
Exchange Points
Exchanging points is much like trading points, except that the exchange rates are fixed and you don’t pay a trade fee. The exchange rates are pretty bad, at best you’re usually paying 2.5 points per 1 point. If you’re wanting to exchange between some of the lesser programs to the better programs you’ll be paying as much as 50 points per 1 point.
Because of the massive difference, the exchange feature is also fairly useless.
Buy Points
Under trade, exchange, buy there is an option to buy points in the right hand sidebar. You can just select the company you want to purchase from. Unfortunately all this done is open a new window that redirects you to the reward program’s official website where you can purchase points.
Our Verdict
Because of the high trade fees and poor exchange rates, points.com is almost entirely pointless. They also don’t have a lot of points/miles programs which means using it as a place to consolidate and view your points is also pretty useless.
Points.com has partnerships with the companies who are participating, so you shouldn’t be violating their Terms of Service if you do participate but we’d still check with your reward company before signing up and using it.
Have you used points.com before? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.Â