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Southwest Airlines is offering a targeted 40% discount on the purchase of Rapid Rewards points. While purchasing point still wouldn’t make sense under ordinary circumstances, it makes for a great stack with today’s offer for Southwest credit cardholders to earn 50x on up to $100 in Southwest purchases. If targeted, you can effectively get 10,950 Rapid Rewards points for $99 — a price of just 0.9c per point, which is a great deal.
The Deal
- Southwest has a targeted offer for 40-45% off when buying Rapid Rewards points. This deal could stack very nicely with today’s offer for 50x points for cardholders
Key Terms
- Offer valid 6/1 to 6/13/21 at 11:59:59pm CT.
- 40% discount on points purchases of 3,000 to 14,000 points
- 45% discount on purchases of 15,000 points or more
Quick Thoughts
The 40% discount here is targeted (and it actually goes up to 45% when buying more points). Reader Tyler reported this promo in the comments of Stephen’s post about today’s 50x offer and sent me the screen shots. The targeted offer here is good for 40% off when purchasing 3,000 or more points. The best deal for a maximizer is buying 6,000 points for $99.
That’s because 6,000 points comes down to $99 with the discount, which will earn 4,950 points for a Southwest credit card holder for a total of 10,950 points for $99. Given that points are more flexible than cash or gift cards, I’d be happy to invest in this option over a gift card (and certainly so if I ultimately wanted to book an award flight). Southwest points are worth around 1.4c per point toward Wanna Get Away fares, so you’ll ultimately get more than $150 in value out of the points. As I said, I like having Southwest points since a cancellation puts the points right back in your account to have and hold and use as you wish rather than a credit that expires in a year or is tied to a specific passenger.
My first reaction here was that the buy points page says it is “Powered by Points.com” and as such I thought that the purchase might be processed by Points.com rather than Southwest and not qualify for 50x. However, the terms of the 50x offer state (bold is mine for emphasis):
- During the one-day promotional period of 6/11/2021 from 12:00:00 AM ET – 11:59 PM E.T. you will qualify and earn a total of 50 points for each $1 spent with any Rapid Rewards Credit Card, on up to $100.00 in total purchases, made directly with Southwest Airlines, including flight, inflight, Southwest gift card, Rapid Rewards Points Center, and on Southwest Vacations packages (“Qualifying Purchases”).
We believe that means that buying points here would trigger the promotion. I don’t know for sure whether or not the points purchase would also trigger the $75 annual Southwest credit on the Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority card. My wife is going to upgrade her Premier card to the Priority Card today to try to stack the $75 credit with the 50x offer despite the fact that I’m not sure the credit will work on Day 1 (should have upgraded sooner!).
Again, if you’re able to buy points at a discount, it could be a great use of the 50x promo. If you are targeted, I think you’ll see the discount when logged in to your Southwest account and trying to buy points.
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But if you buy 6,000 points for $99, that’s $0.0165 per point; I think the accepted value is currently $0.012? So your $99 will get you ~$72 of travel on Southwest.
Why not buy a $100 Southwest gift card, which is worth $100 of travel on Southwest? You’ll get the same 50x bonus.
Yeah I bought the $100 gift card and by doing so will also get 5k points which are valued at roughly $80….so a total of $180 in flight value for $100.
Yes, made no sense, just get the $100 gift card and $80 of free points.
First, you’d be buying 6,000 points and getting 4,950 more points — so 10,950 total points for $99 (0.9c per point).
As to why not buy the gift card, I highly prefer the flexibility of points. Once I book a flight with a gift card, if I cancel I am locked into using the flight credit within a year of booking and only for the person originally named on the ticket. Then I also need to keep track of the gift card and/or flight credit (Southwest now makes that easier than before, but not nearly as easy as points that go right back into your account). And I also need to make sure that any flight I book isn’t entirely covered by the gift card balance or I’ll lose credit card protections. It’s not that I’d never buy a gift card — I do sometimes — but at 0.9cpp, I’d definitely come out ahead on the points without any headache at all. If I cancel a flight booked with points, the points go right back into my account and can be used any time to book travel for anyone.
I’m not saying that a gift card is a bad deal, just that I’d be happy with the flexibility of points if I were targeted for this deal. I wasn’t targeted and instead bought flights around dates when we expect to travel in the hopes that Southwest continues to extend its free change policy so that we can adjust dates when plans firm up. That certainly isn’t any more ideal than a gift card purchase. If I had no travel plans and wasn’t targeted for this, a gift card would probably have made the most sense.
This is reminiscent of the “does Companion Pass make your points 2x as valuable?” riddle (answer: No if measuring in $$s, Yes if measuring in flights).
You get the 4,950 bonus points from the 50x offer in either scenario, so it shouldn’t be considered in the decision.
Option A: you get 6,000 points, worth ~ $72 (at $0.012 cpp). Option B: you get a $100 gift card, worth $100, plus you’ll earn ~1,000 more points when you spend it on a flight, so call it ~ $110 total value.
You are totally right that points are easier to deal with. However you’re reducing your “buying power” by 35% ($72/$110 – 1).
We can agree that absent this “either/or,” we’d buy Southwest points at $0.009 cpp all day long.
Anyway, irrelevant debate because it’s small potatoes and the deal is over anyway, but isn’t that what this site is all about?? 🙂
Correction: $100 airfare will earn ~ 500 points on WN.
It should also stack with 5x everything up to $1500, if you haven’t used it too. Or 6 points on Southwest spend, if you were targeted for that offer.
Delete 🙂
better late than never on the stacking.. but I lost out.