The 30K Starwoods pajama points trick Revealed

Introduction

In hopes of buying Kaskade tickets a while back, I said that if anyone could buy some for me, I’d tell them how to “pajama” points 30K of Starwoods points every month.  Apparently this little reward perked the level 2 forums and chatrooms as well as generated a number of emails.  I figure I’d reveal it now since it’s as dead as AGC.

 

Connecting the dots

For the people who couldn’t get the tickets but emailed me anyway, I gave them a hint – start at giftcards.com and connect the dots.  Bits and pieces of the trick were already publicized on all the blogs, but the dots weren’t fully connected – you had to connect them yourself to understand how to get the SPG points.  That’s usually how it is in this game.  You may know a thing or two, but you haven’t pieced everything together.  So let’s go through all the steps.

 

Step 1 – Buy VGC at giftcards.com

Easy.  Buy $500 of VGC at giftcards.com USING YOUR SPG CARD.  Some people assumed they only took Visa/MC, but they took AMEX cards just fine.  So you’d pay $504.95 + shipping for your first order.

Step 2 – Use free shipping codes (at the time)

Shipping back then was $2.95 per card.  Use a free shipping code to wipe out the shipping fees, so you’d pay $504.95 for a $500 card.

Step 3 – Earn 1% loyalty G-Rewards points

So while you’d pay $504.95 for the 1st card, you’d earn $5 to use on the next order.  That means your 2nd order would be $504.95 – $5 = $499.95 or so.  And your 3rd order wouold be the same $499.95 or so.  This means you were paying $499.95 for a $500 VGC and earning ~500 SPG points per card.  This is essentially $0 cost.

Step 4 – Liquidation

Now some people will say, “Well you’ll still have to unload at WMT or Target, so it’s not pajama points.”  Well, the final dot you had to connect and if you used your gift card matrix,  you’ll have learned that you can pay Citi on the phone with these cards.  Oh and since these had names on it, I could use them easily at stores that require names on debit cards.

 

Not technically completing the circle

I told this to maybe a dozen people, and only 1 person complained that this wasn’t fully completing the circle since you’d have to have spend on your Citi card.  Technically, he’s correct, but everyone in the MS game knows it’s hard to make a full circle with AMEX (you can with Visa/MC cards.)  And the reason why I said it was ‘up to 30K per month’ because the max per order you wanted to buy was $1,500; after that required a different shipping method that you could not use the free shipping code.  Later on, I ramped up by creating an account for my wife, so I was able to do $3K a day.  Over the span of 2 months, I ran through $87,500 worth of these gift cards.  Mid-way through, I decided to switch to a 3% card instead of SPG since I value 3% more than SPG.  Looking back, I should have added my wife sooner, but I can’t really complain too much.

 

Conclusion

Imagine myself wincing each time a blogger would post a free shipping code or mentioning the 1% loyalty reward.  I’m not sure if the collective group of MS’ers killed it or if giftcards.com realized they were losing money in this proposition.  Like I said, since giftcards.com raised the price to $6.95 per card and no longer having free shipping codes, it’s basically dead like AGC.  If it comes back, you know what to do.