Credit card point redemption?

[Crankin]

We have bought several major things with our credit card points. We do the same thing as Veronica, get a gift card for the store where we want to purchase something. When we moved 3 years ago, we furnished our family room with points, used at Crate and Barrel.
If we have nothing major to buy, we will buy a Home Depot gift card, since we always need to go there...

[PamNY]

I use points for rental cars and airline tickets. With my card, both of those are a better value than using them for cash.

Pam

[Flybye]

We did not have experience with using our CC for airline tickets and had no idea of how to proceed so we called the company. They were able to answer all kinds of questions. We ended up purchasing plane tickets to Kauai on Expedia - pretty reasonably - with points they ended up being free........
You might call you CC company and ask them things like:
How does my purchasing merchandise instead of cashing points benefit you?
What is the most beneficial thing to do with my points from a cardholder perspective?
Good luck! Have fun with the $$ in whatever form you take it.

[GLC1968]

We also redeem our points for gift cards at places we regularly shop (usually Gap since we both like their underwear ). We actually used a bunch of points to buy christmas gifts a couple of years ago when cash was tight. And in our case, getting the cash costs us more points than the gift cards, so it's the logical choice.

Just this weekend, we decided to drop that points program and go with one that pays $$ to the principle on our mortgage instead.

[Tuckervill]

I just go out on the rewards website and go shopping. If I don't find any merchandise I like or can get with my points, I let them ride. I emptied the account at Christmas time. The stuff you can buy (Ipods, etc.) are similar to what you could buy at Sam's Club or Costco. Sets of knives, an espresso machine. In the meantime, I just forget they're there and it's like my birthday when I remember them!

Karen

[laura*]

Thanks for the answers.

Gift cards don't seem to be an option with my card's program. I again looked through the merchandise options and didn't find anything I wanted.* I don't expect to be able to make use of any of the travel related benies anytime soon. So I opted for cash in the form of a check. The check will go into my little mad money (former eBay buying) checking account.

I'm a bit sad because I doubt I'll ever again be able to accumulate enough points (before they start expiring) to get an airline ticket award.

* There was a DVD set for the equivalent of $82, but Amazon has it for $30.

[sgtiger]

We redeemed out points a couple of months ago for a wonderful new camera. Our old one has issues, but I didn't want to spend the cash if I didn't absolutely have to. I got a better camera than what I would've gotten had the old camera finally died and I had to spend cash.