On Tuesday at around 4PM PST, one of the craziest redemptions CAME BACK – cashing out Hilton points for .5c on Amazon. I missed out a few weeks ago because I was an hour late and the Amazon/Hilton link was broken and the deal was eventually pulled. I have NO IDEA why Hilton brought it back (I don’t see Amazon footing ANY of the bill.) So let’s go through the lessons learned about the deal:
- Make sure you follow Doctor of Credit on Twitter. Not only that, but you should turn NOTIFICATIONS ON so that when he posts something, you’ll get alerted ASAP. Don’t have Twitter or don’t want your phone blowing up a dozen times a day? Then get in a private group so that someone else alerts you.
- I was shocked the deal lasted ~3 hours this time. I was more surprised the Hilton/Amazon link wasn’t broke again. If you hadn’t linked it last time and it broke again this time, then you would have missed out. Thus, the lesson learned is that you should always link things when they become available. Yes, that means you should have your Citi TYP, AMEX MR, etc linked to your Amazon accounts and any other account. Have a British Air account, but haven’t linked it to your MR account? Well, maybe you should link it now in case there is a ridiculous promo one day and you need to act fast!
- Manage multiple Hilton accounts and haven’t pooled them yet? Maybe it’s time you pooled them soon since transfers aren’t instant.
- If you didn’t do the deal because you have plans to book Bora Bora or the Maldives, then fine. That makes sense, but if you have say 400K HH points that you haven’t redeemed in over a year, then you DEFINITELY should have cashed out. Almost every heavy hitter I know cashed out; the largest cashout I saw was 1 million HH points. I had about 500K HH points that have been collecting dust; every time I’ve tried to make a redemption, it’s been about .3c or .4c. Plus, you have to factor the points you would have earned if you paid cash. In almost all of those searches, I decided to pick a different hotel chain or book on Hotels.com using a GC. I mean how many times are you going to the Maldives? Yes, I realize you can find some redemptions during big events that will get you a great rate, but could you have used Marriott points instead? And how often are you going to these events? If you need points to top up again, go MS your way at grocery stores at 6X on the Aspire!
The main lesson learned here is you need to find a way to get alerted to these deals FAST! I don’t see this coming back, but if it does, you need to be locked and loaded.