Update 12/22/20: limited number of $5 Walmart cards available for 5,000 miles. Seems to be targeted so not available to everybody
There’s a new app called ‘Miles‘ which tracks your movements and gives you points for every mile you go. It runs entirely in the background without the need to open it or do anything. It’s currently only available for iOS and is coming soon to Android.
- .1 miles for each air mile
- 1 mile for each car mile
- 2 miles for each carpool or ride-share mile
- 3 miles for each mass transit mile
- 5 miles for each biking mile
- 10 miles for each walking mile
Points can be redeemed for prizes to get discounts at select vendors. Some sample prizes:
- $5 Vudu credit + free movies – costs 1,200 miles
- New Wag! customers can get 2 free walks and a free lockbox – costs 1,200 miles
- 7-day free trial with Coursera – costs 500 miles
- 20% off your Rhone purchase – costs 600 miles
- New Silvercar customers: book an Audi for 1 day or more and get a extra day free – costs 1,200 miles
Our Verdict
At launch, they allowed points to be redeemed for gift cards to places like Amazon. That made the app useful for someone willing to give up their privacy. Now that they just have these various discount offers, I doubt it’s worth anyone’s time/privacy.
Most of the offers look like the regular recycled first-time-customer offers you see on various platforms, not something special to the Miles app. There is a $5 Vudu credit for 1,200 miles, so that might be useful to some. Other than that, if anyone notices something good, let us know.
Post history:
- [Update 1/17/20: They sent out an email blast that “tomorrow at 3 pm PT” (I think that means Friday 1/17/20 at 3 pm PT) they’ll be releasing an Amazon gift card redemption option with limited quantity. If you have Miles points racked up, you’ll want to keep an eye out since the other redemptions aren’t usually that good.]
Miles is a big scam
Scam please avoid this app.
I referred more than 8 friends and they’re already made theirs first trip. I supposed to get $50 Amazon gift card back as the promotion. But when i email them and ask about the Amazon gift card , they said they can not verify and i will not receive gift card. This is totally screwed up. I wish i can attach all the pictures here. SCAM SCAM SCAM.
I, P2 and P3 all have this app and get $1-$2 Amazon gift cards from this app every now and then. They are rare, but do come about. I do enter promo codes every now and then for extra miles, and the $1 Amazon I just saw was for 4,000 miles that I redeemed. You won’t get much out of this app, but you don’t have to do much other than enter promo codes and check for gift cards to redeem occasionally.
Really the only useful reward for me is the Vudu $5 which pops up every other month or so. Other than that its a pretty much dead app since they made the rewards worse about 4 weeks after launch.
This company is a nightmare lol. Also had a data breach earlier IIRC. no thanks
Wow, track your every move for a year for a potential $5 Walmart gift card. I know we all love a good deal, but this is a gigantic invasion of privacy for close to nothing.
Three ideas for you:
1. Buy a cheap burner, attach it to Fido’s collar and let him roam. 10x miles. NSA knows exactly where Fido is at all times.
2. If you commute by public transport, buy 2 cheap burners, hide one onboard and swap out daily to charge. Miles 24/7.
3. Work a deal with the Fedex guy and split the $5 Walmart GCs.
Does anyone know which deal network this company is using?
I’m building an app and one part of it allows users to redeem points for offers. Based on the comments here, people clearly don’t like this deal network. Any recommendation for good deal networks is also appreciated. TIA.
Deleted.
I have used this app for almost a year. All the rewards except the gift cards are almost useless. They are new customer, partial discount etc..
And the gift cards are never there. They have them very rarely and only like 100 or so.
And one time I was very lucky to grab a walmart gc only to see zero balance.
So gained nothing giving up privacy. Very highly YMMV
I’d like to know there business model? I mean it’s not new in this day and age for extremely unprofitable companies with ludicrous business models to exist but i’m skeptical none the less.
As the company knows your location, they can send targeted ads/offers based on your current location, location history, etc.
Let’s say a user visits Starbucks on a regular schedule, the company can send you targeted offers for a newly opened coffee shop to incentivize you to try it. If you use the offer at the new coffee shop, the company gets paid by the coffee shop.
Yeah signed up, figured out how they are doing it. 95% of the stuff you can redeem miles for is extremely useless the other 5% are relatively useless…
Geolocation data targeting for advertising. You agree to let them sell geo info to brands in return for ‘rewards’. Then the brands have an idea where users are and how they travel. For example, a company like AutoZone could buy data of users who frequently are tracked as driving and are in a certain zip code near their stores and target them to send relevant ads for auto services, or Under Armour would buy a data set of users who run/bike in an area near a store and log over 5 miles a day, then target them with an for a sale on a relevant running/biking athletic-ware happening in that store that the user is often near.
Most major companies already do this on a global level, and the info helps them advertise the right people for products. it would be confusing if I got an ad for In N Out burger on the east coast as much as someone on the West coast saw an ad for Wawa. There are plenty of digital marketing agencies that specialize in geolocation as well, though I doubt this app/business can hold a candle to the big boys (unless they’re already owned by one). The difference is this one is willing to reimburse their users with rewards (even if they’re weak) for agreeing to be tracked. Google just takes it, even if you turn it off: https://cnet.co/38xmAJP