e-Rewards will offer you 250 American Airlines miles for joining.
250 AAdvantage bonus miles are only available to newly enrolled members of e-Rewards in the United States and Canada. Members must complete their first survey within three months of enrolling in order to qualify for the bonus. Please allow four to six weeks for miles to post to your AAdvantage account.
I have a long-standing account, that wasn’t joined through one of their partners. And that means I can redeem the points I earn for taking surveys with any of their partners.
And this offer is for new members only, of course.
My impression was that if you joined through a partner like American you would only be able to redeem points for American miles. That isn’t actually true, I signed up for an e-Rewards account with a new email address to see what would happen and you’re able to redeem only for American miles amongst their airline partners. You give up Aeromexico, Flying Blue, Airtran, Alaska, Delta, Emirates, Etihad, Frontier, Hawaiian, Iberia, JetBlue, Southwest, Spirit, United, US Airways, Virgin America, and Virgin Atlantic.
You do still keep Restaurant.com, Choice Privileges, Club Carlson, Express, Gamestop, Golfsmith, Hertz, Hilton, La Quinta, Macy’s, Priority Club, Ticketmaster, Omaha Steaks, and Zales.
I put away the offer thinking that I wouldn’t write about it, why give up all of those options for 250 American miles? But i realize some people will never use e-Rewards for something else. And it’s probably worth explaining why I think the offer is generally not worth the restrictions. So I decided to write about it this morning.
In the interim I see that Just Another Points Traveler has posted this as well.
Years ago the surveys at e-Rewards were shorter, and the payouts greater. I find I have to do a lot more work to earn points through them than I used to. All at a time when I am less willing to spend a lot of time for little reward. I might have to spend a couple of hours on surveys spread out over time in order to have enough points to redeem for 500 airline miles.
With a lot of time on my hands that would be ok I suppose, but I don’t have a ton of time. The one and only thing I use e-Rewards for is to transfer to airlines when there are promotions for doing so. The most prominent and famous one is the US Airways Grand Slam which I hope will return for 2012, in which transferring points from e-Rewards (and from e-miles) count as a partner transaction for big bonuses.
Joining via American, or any one partner, limits transfer options and thus the aility to take advantage of the one thing that e-Rewards is most useful for, in other words it reduces leverage opportunities and thus reduces my incentive to participate in e-Rewards at all.
But if you’re ot going to take more than one survey, you can sign up via American and take a single survey within 3 months to earn 250 miles. It takes a bit of time to sign up since they want lots of information about you and you have to confirm your e-mail signup as well. But it’s 250 miles without cash outlay, so useful to some.
Update: New Girl in the Air pulls together signup bonuses for e-Rewards with a variety of programs:
- 250 Alaska Airlines miles
- 250 American Airlines miles
- 250 Delta Airlines miles
- 350 JetBlue points
- 0.5 AirTran credits when you complete 2 surveys within 3 months of joining (transferable to Southwest credits)
I agree completely with the discussion above. One other point to note. When they give you a survey, they say it’s worth $X.XX in their currency. What they fail to tell you is that their currency is, for any purpose but Grand Slam, worth nowhere near 1 cent per point – more like .3 cents. I actually didn’t know it was legal to use the $ sign with an invented currency that is not worth $1.00. On the other hand, the surveys don’t take as long as they estimate. The frustrating ones are where you go through screen after screen before finally getting the message you don’t qualify, and you get a consolation 25 cents in their currency, worth about 9 cents really. Do it for the signup bonus or for Grand Slam only, but not worth it otherwise.
Is this 250 miles or 250 miles x infinity? 🙂
They should diswualify you within a reasonable time. On 3 separate surveys I protested and was granted the full credit. Erewards surveys can be done instead of angry birds and often on mobile devices. It is possible to have multiple accounts. Mypoints also does surveys which IMO are a ripoff they ask the survey questions in the qualification period. After 3to 5 minutes I was disqualified every time. I ONLY use it to click thru for 5 to 15 points to see website. That takes no time at all.
How do you sign up for a generic account that is not tied to a specific airline?