Recap: Disney Vacation Planning Changes, Negative Meijer Change & More

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  • I can confirm that Meijer no longer allows using their gift cards to buy 3rd party gift cards. Tried it earlier today and the self-checkout gave an error message.

    • MasterCard and presumably Visa gift cards are included in this, as I tried yesterday with the current $10 off $150+ MCGC promotion going and could only apply a small amount toward additional groceries I was purchasing. *sigh* So much for extending eBay discounts on Meijer gift cards (which has since dropped from $6 off to $5 off).

      • Gas- good call!! I'm sitting on $500 and find their prices to be atrocious on many things. I wonder what compelled them to do this now...

        • Unfortunately I am sitting on $900 but the bright side is I will have groceries and gas that don't go on my credit card for awhile.

  • I must be missing something in regards to signing up for The Economist, to receive Avios for essentially 1.35-1.5¢ per point. The pricing is $365 for 3 years, to receive 22,200 Avios. 365/22200 = 1.64¢ per point, not 1.5 and definitely not 1.35? The 2yr option is similar, 1.66¢ per point.

    Choosing 1 year for $152 at 10,200 equates to 1.49¢ per point, which is the best deal however it's still not 1.35¢.

    If I'm missing something obvious please let me know.

    • It looks like that cents-per-point range was actually pence-per-point (British prices) - see https://www.headforpoints.com/2017/09/02/13200-avios-economist-subscription/ (from last year but prices and points were the same).

      US valuation range on this offer is $0.0144 to $0.0181 per point.

      Digital+Print
      1yr: $190 / 13200 = $0.0144
      2yr: $355 / 19200 = $0.0174
      3yr: $455 / 25200 = $0.0181

      Print-Only or Digital-Only
      1yr: $152 / 10200 = $0.0149
      2yr: $270 / 16200 = $0.0167
      3yr: $365 / 22200 = $0.0164

      (Really odd arrangement of values... that's not how buying in bulk is supposed to work, lol.)

      Of course it's better if you've been subscribing to the Economist already; then your effective cost per point would only be based on the price difference between subscribing at these prices vs subscribing on a cheaper promotion without points.

      • The Economist doesn't know how buying in bulk works... that's really sad. How does no one there say something? No way in hell I'm going to give them any business if they're that inept about something like this.

      • Thanks Ann - I didn't consider pence which might make sense. A lot of places seem to value Avios as low as 0.7c value, so I'm not sure this is a great deal unless, as you've mentioned, you already subscribe.

        • The blog post linked by Doc appears to be US-centric and specifically says "cents", and copied the 1.35-1.5 cents range from another US-based blog they link to at the end of the post. Ultimately some blogger somewhere along this telephone-game chain must have gotten that valuation from a British blogger and didn't do the math to double-check it, and nobody afterward did either. ;-)