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Update 11/15/20: Transfers from Citi to Shop Your Way no longer have 20% bonus. Point transfers from Citi are no longer recommended.
Be still my heart: there may actually be a reason to convert Citi ThankYou points to Sears Shop Your Way points. Strange, but true. As Stephen points out at GC Galore, you can now redeem Sears points for third party gift cards in fixed denominations, which might make it worth considering a transfer from Citi if you’re looking to cash out points.
The Deal
- Redeem Sears Shop Your Way points for fixed-value gift cards here
- As a reminder, Citi ThankYou points transfer to Sears Shop Your Way at a rate of 1 Thank You point to 12 Sears Shop Your Way points
Quick Thoughts
The key here is that Sears Shop Your Way points have historically been pretty worthless. Just last week a friend asked me what our value for Shop Your Way points is and I said that 1 SWY point = 100 Italian Lira (for those unfamiliar, Lira no longer exist).
But I stand corrected. This ability to redeem Shop Your Way points for third party gift cards at a value of $0.001 per point means that you can get a decent value out of your ThankYou points for third party gift cards. As a reminder, ThankYou points transfer to Shop Your Way at a value of 1:12.
For example:
- 20,834 Thank You points = 250,008 Shop Your Way points
- 250,000 Shop Your Way points = $250 Southwest Airlines gift card
- ~1.2c per ThankYou point
Those who want to go a step further can convert the Southwest Gift Card to Rapid Rewards points by using it to create travel funds that are eligible for conversion.
- $250 Southwest Airlines travel funds can be converted to 19,531 Rapid Rewards points
Those following at home know that if your Citi Premier card was open before April 10, 2020, it may be possible to book Southwest flights at a value of 1.25c each (Southwest flights definitely won’t show up at ThankYou.com; I’m not sure whether or not you can book them over the phone with Citi as Greg showed cheap flights can be booked with the right Chase agent). If you can book Southwest flights over the phone with Citi, it wouldn’t make much sense to convert ThankYou points to Shop Your Way as it adds exra steps.
On the other hand, this certainly could be a decent enough deal if you’re looking to cash out Thank You points for other third party gift cards. To be clear, I wouldn’t be particularly excited about getting 1.2c in gift cards for ThankYou points, but on the other hand if you’re looking to cancel a card rather than downgrade and you thus need to use the points or lose them, this could be a better cash out method.
As you can see in the screen shot at the top, the gift card redemption appears to be through Raise.com, but given that these are fixed denominations, it appears to be redemptions for first-hand gift cards rather than resale gift cards. It is possible that this feature has been around for a while, but I haven’t earned or redeemed Shop Your Way points in quite some time. Either way, this is an interesting if not amazing deal. If you happen to have a lot of Shop Your Way points, gift cards could certainly be a more appealing redemption if you don’t have a use for more merchandise from Sears.
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And it now looks like eBay GCs have also been pulled from the SYW Raise site. I could have sworn they were there yesterday, 10/27 but maybe they were pulled a few days ago along with Southwest GCs.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Walmart GCs will be the next to be pulled within a couple of days. I hope I’m wrong, but it seems like they’re getting rid of all the valuable GCs unfortunately.
Looks like Southwest GCs are no longer available on the Shop Your Way portal. That’s a bummer because I’ve 99% decided to bail out of Citi TY points and was going to convert a chunk to SW GCs.
Thanks for pointing that out.
Luckily, there’s an easy workaround. Redeem for Walmart gift cards and then use those gift cards to buy Southwest or Delta gift cards from Walmart.comApparently the Walmart trick no longer works. I’ll test it out just in case.
OK, just tested and it appears that the Walmart process still works (at least for Southwest gift cards). So, back to my earlier statement…
Luckily, there’s an easy workaround. Redeem for Walmart gift cards and then use those gift cards to buy Southwest or Delta gift cards from Walmart.com
[…] week we reported that Shop Your Way points can be redeemed for gift cards. And the world yawned. But in my mind, this is a really big deal. This development increases […]
[…] Your Way points without ever making any purchases with Sears or Kmart. Recently we learned that it’s possible to redeem Shop Your Way points for merchant gift cards. And I explained why that’s big news for anyone with Citi ThankYou […]
[…] Shop Your Way points are…worth something? Transfer Citi->Sears->Gift Cards by FM. Basically 1.2¢ per point in the form of gift cards. […]
Also worth mentioning that you can just redeem TY points for gift cards and statement credits and checks at thankyou.com directly. A penny per point on the stuff I cashed out on if you have the prestige card. 1cpp redemption on $100 checks from my prestige account and 1cpp redemption on $10 statement credits. 1cpp redemption on gift cards with the premier card.
Right. What makes this notable is that it’s 1.2cpp.
Totally agree. I think in regards to anyone looking to empty out a few points it’s worth them knowing that they can simply cash them out thru citi if they don’t want to do the triple transfer to get them to raise.com.
How do you cash out TY through Citi Premier at 1cpp? Thanks!
Not all gift cards are 1cpp, but a bunch of them are. If you go to thankyou.com and login, then go to redeem page if you’re not taken there. Then up at the top left it says Gift Cards. Select “all brands” in the drop down menu and then look for brands that you’d be fine cashing out at 1cpp, and click and see if it’s that or if it’s lower value. App store & Itunes and Home Depot are 2500 pts for $25, for instance. Kohls is 1,000 for $10. Just look around there and hopefully you’ll find something you like. Also check the statement credits tab and make sure there isn’t a 1cpp redemption option there on your account, because that’s even better than a gift card!
Nick,
You write “redeem Shop Your Way points for third party gift cards at a value of $0.01 per point”, but your example shows “250,000 Shop Your Way points = $250 Southwest Airlines gift card” which is a value of $0.001 per point. I assume the latter value is in fact the correct one?
Yes, you are correct. I’ve added that important zero!