Verizon's Smart Rewards program

Dakota

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:doh: What a stupid program but yet addictive.

Basically, you earn points for being a wireless customer which our family has earned over 100K points. You can use these points to bid on gift cards. Some auctions never seem to end (extended play) so I avoid those and just do the "points only" ones.

Every so often, I sign in and try to win something. I have failed, my husband has failed, and my boys have failed many times.... until tonight... I won a $25 gift cert. to Red Robin. :diva:

I bet many with Verizon wireless didn't even know about this so now I will turn you into a junkie as well. You are very welcome. :cheers:
 

RoseRed

American Beauty
PREMO Member
I received an email today telling me that I have 42k+ points. I have never tried to use them. Should I even bother?
 

Dakota

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I received an email today telling me that I have 42k+ points. I have never tried to use them. Should I even bother?

If you are real bored.... :lol:

They have various gift cards but *I* find them hard to win.... but maybe you click faster than me. :shrug:

Restaurant.com gift cards have the least amount of bidders but you would have to check and see if you even go to any of the restaurants that will let you use them.
 
I don't bother with the auctions. As you suggest Dakota, it seems like they could take a lot of time (not to mention points) to win.

But I do sometimes use my points to order gift cards from stores that I know I'll be shopping at anyway - e.g., Staples. The deals aren't great - you're really only getting a 9 or 10 percent discount (depending on whether they mail you the card and charge postage or just send it to you digitally) - but for me it's, in a sense, free money. I can, e.g., use 1000 points to buy a $100 gift card for $90. Then whenever I buy something from that store I'm, in effect, getting a 10% discount (on top of whatever other discounts I might get).

Like I said, I only get gift cards for places I know I'll be spending money at sooner or later anyway. I don't buy the gift cards to use the small discount as an excuse to buy stuff I wouldn't otherwise buy. Back before the holidays I bought several hundred dollars worth of Staples cards, which I then used to buy stuff I wanted on Black Friday - so I got even better deals than I would have otherwise.

I've got so many rewards points (as I suspect most Verizon customers would if they activated the program) that I could buy as many discounted gift cards as I could use without putting much of a dent in my points.

I haven't tried to time the daily deals so that I'm logged in when I'd need to be to get in on them. But some of them seem like they'd be worth the effort. Those aren't auctions, but the supply of each deal is limited. That's the only other way I'd bother using the program.
 

lovinmaryland

Well-Known Member
I have
Points:141,640


But I have no clue wth to do w/ them. So you bid on stuff? why cant you just redeem them for something? :confused:
 

Dakota

~~~~~~~
I have
Points:141,640


But I have no clue wth to do w/ them. So you bid on stuff? why cant you just redeem them for something? :confused:

BECAUSE the program kinda/sorta sucks....

What Tilted brought up is a good idea... you can cash in 500/1000 points to get gift cards at $5 dollars off a $50 card or $10 off a $100 card. They also have points plus USD and the other part is bidding on gift cards, winning them with your points and cashing them in that way.

You can also use those points for discounts at hotels, etc.

It is better than nothing for sure. :shrug:
 
I have
Points:141,640


But I have no clue wth to do w/ them. So you bid on stuff? why cant you just redeem them for something? :confused:

Because, in theory, those 141,640 points are worth $1,416.40; but they don't want you to be able to get that much value out of them. That is to say, they don't want this rewards program to cost them that much (or near that much). So they don't want you to be able to just redeem them at that exchange rate (i.e. 100 points for $1 worth of stuff). With auctions, since the points are basically free to use - if you don't use them they aren't of any value, the bids (in points) can go pretty high. What do people have to lose? They aren't actually spending money. A $25 item might go for 60,000 points instead of 2,500 points.

And for the non-auction stuff, stuff that has a set price, you typically can't use all points to buy it. For example, a pair of sunglasses that normally costs $200 might be offered for $100 and 10,000 points. The 10,000 points is paying the other $100. If you want those sunglasses in particular and you can't find them discounted elsewhere - then great, you've saved yourself some money. But it isn't really worth buying them just because they're cheaper now. And from Verizon's perspective, those sunglasses aren't costing them $200 - they probably aren't losing any money on the deal.

Then you have the gift cards. For most of them you can buy down the face value of the gift card by 10%. So, a $100 gift card costs you $90 (and postage if it's being mailed to you) and 1,000 points. They offer gifts cards from quite a few stores and restaurants, and once you've bought the gift card it's pretty much as good as cash. So that part of the program might make sense if they offer gift cards from stores you shop at or restaurants you eat at anyway. (Oh, and Verizon probably isn't being charged $100 for that gift card, they likely have a deal so that it doesn't end up costing them much, if anything.)
 
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Is this something you have to enroll in, or by being a Verizon customer are you already enrolled?

You have to enroll, but if you already have an online account with Verizon all you really have to do is sign in and agree to participate. You don't have to create an additional account. And you'll likely already have a lot of points in your account if you've been a Verizon customer for a while.
 

lovinmaryland

Well-Known Member
Is this something you have to enroll in, or by being a Verizon customer are you already enrolled?
I just signed in one day and it asked me if I wanted to participate. I had like 125k points at that time. Honestly I've never really messed with it because it seemed like one of those things you had to sit there all day to win. But when I logged in yesterday it said I had like 200k points so I was like I'm sure I can just wear someone down that its just too many points for them...and thats pretty much what happened :lmao:
If you don't mind, how many points did it cost you?

When I started it said 10 seconds left and it was at 55k points...when I finally won (roughly 10 minutes later) I got it for 80k points. Not sure if thats good or not but hey I've got a $50 GC for nothing really :yay:
 
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