With a bit of extra time on my hands these days I’ve been taking some time to clean up my inbox of old irrelevant emails. Last month I sat for several hours and deleted something to the effect of 10,000+ emails. Crazy.
Every so often a random email peaks my interest. Like a year ago, United Airlines sent me an email threatening to purge me of all my frequent flyer miles because I had not been active for six months. In other words spend some cash on a United flight, cash in your miles, or you lose ‘em bitch. I mean, really. Would it have hurt them to just leave my miles alone? Damn.
So, I searched around their site for ways to spend some miles dreading that my only option would be a year subscription to The Wall Street Journal for fifty thousand miles. Instead, I found that I could cash a few miles in for restaurant.com certificates – about two thousand miles for a $100 bucks worth – or food stamps for the bourgeois, as one friend put it. Hey, whatever works.
I scored a $50 gift certificate to the posh sushi restaurant, Neo, on the upper West Side and $25 gift certificates to Cercle Rouge (fantastic French food). The restaurants take the certificates in stride. No snub attitudes from waiters or whispers at the table besides you (hey, it’s New York, you never know what you gonna get).
Fast forward to today. I’m cleaning out my inbox and I happen upon another email from United Airlines. I decide to skim it before deleting it and it says something to the effect “Use your miles for gift certificates. Limited time only.” What’s that all about? I go to their site and sure enough, I can redeem my stale old miles for Gap, Old Navy, Macy’s, Saks, Barnes & Noble and I-Tunes gift certificates amongst several other well known stores.
Four thousand miles gets you a $25 gift certificate and seven thousand miles gets you a $50 gift certificate. Not too bad for miles I won’t use considering I tend to fly with Delta more than any other airline. So I grab myself a $50 gift certificate to Gap. Especially since I have a 20% off Gap coupon that’s good till the end of January 2010.
CLICK HERE FOR YOUR 20% OFF GAP COUPON!
Now I’m really curious. If United is doing it, I wonder what Delta is doing (of whom I sit on thousands of miles). It turns out Delta is doing the same. Of course the Delta offer is a bit more expensive and they don’t offer the certificates at the lower denomination of four thousand miles. But for eight thousand miles you can get a $50 gift certificate for more dining, retail, spa and health offers. Along with the gift certificates you can now book car rentals and hotel rooms with your miles and buy seemingly thousands of single items from laptops, washing machines and a plethora of luxury items if you are really balling in terms of unused miles.
So there you have it – resourceful recession concessions. You never know what you might stumble upon once you start sifting through your bag of tricks. I haven’t checked to see if all the airlines are doing the gift certificate thing, but it always seems that Delta whoops it up the best. Like a smart girl though, I’ll hold onto to my Delta miles till the going gets really tough and I need a quick pick me up. It’s never wise to spend all your ducks in one place.
Say What?!