When Should You Absolutely Use Points.com?
Keep your orphan or unused accounts alive
Points.com is primarily pitched as a points wallet of sorts (you used to also be able to trade points on the site, but no longer), and they also serve as a provider for processing points purchasing with a number of airlines (e.g., Virgin Atlantic). You can also redeem points for gift cards at various redemption rates (generally under $0.01/point). You may elect to do none of those things, but keep Points.com in mind when it comes to this extremely valuable use case: orphan loyalty accounts.
What are orphan loyalty accounts? Think about that one flight you took on Virgin America where you forgot to add your Emirates or Singapore frequent flyer number when booking, so now you have 2,124 Elevate points — nowhere near enough to book a ticket. Or that Hawaiian Airlines account where you transferred American Express points in order to get an award flight (that you haven’t taken in 16 months…), and you’re bumping up against the expiration date. Those are orphan loyalty accounts.
Screenshot of the exchange page – note that the exchanges are free.
This is where Points.com comes in! In the case of the Virgin America Elevate points above, 2,000 points is worth 1,700 AsiaMiles, which is 1,700 miles closer to a Cathay First Class award ticket. Best of all, it’s free! Other eligible programs can be seen in a screenshot below.
And in the case of Hawaiian? Simply trading points from one airline/hotel/car program to another is all the activity required to reset your rolling expiration date. And just like that you’ve managed to hang onto those miles for another year, so go take that trip to Hawaii! Especially if you can get into their new first class seats, but I digress…
These are the current active Points.com exchange partners.
Another potential use case is to top up an account to get you that extra few miles for an award ticket. Since transfers are free on Points.com, it’s certainly a better option than buying miles or transferring between like accounts, which can sometimes impose hefty transfer minimums and transfer fees upwards of $100/transfer.
So while it may not be part of your daily or weekly points game, Points.com is a great option to have in your back pocket when these needs arise, and trust me they do!
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