La Quinta Returns has a new feature that lets you use your points to buy pretty much anything at retail. And they’ll give you points for signing up for the feature, which amounts to free money.

The program is called Redeem Away! and you need to link a Visa credit card to take advantage of it.

• Sign up for La Quinta Returns if you don’t already have an account.

• Link your Visa credit card (not debit card) and mobile phone number at the Redeem Away website.

If you sign up before the end of the year, they’ll give you 1,500 bonus points. (And I suppose the limits of leveraging this offer are the number of mobile phone accounts you have – hah.)

Receive 1,500 Bonus Points when you enroll in Redeem Away! Member must reply “BONUS” to the Welcome SMS message verifying mobile number in order to complete the process for getting 1,500 bonus points. 1,500 Bonus points is a one-time, per-member bonus that is received only when you complete enrollment process and reply “BONUS” upon receipt of the welcome SMS message. Member must respond within 12 hours to receive bonus offer. Bonus offer is valid for enrollees through 12/31/16. ***Member must respond within 12 hours to SMS message in order to redeem points for the qualifying purchase. Statement credit will be applied in around 10 days. *1,500 bonus points equates to the approximate value of a cup of coffee at most locations

Here’s a video describing how it works:

La Quinta is promoting this aggressively, and offered me more free points to try it out, an offer that I declined as a matter of policy.

There’s other free La Quinta points out there as well. For a long time you could get 300 points each quarter free. And you can get 100 free points for downloading their app.

They describe 1500 points as enough for ‘a cup of coffee’ and they told me that 15,150 points is worth $50 value. Pushing farther, the calculation is 303 points per dollar, or 1/3 of a cent per point. So 1600 points should be worth $5.28.

We’re a long way from the story of how the chain got its name (as relayed in Southwest Airlines founding President Lamar Muse’s autobiography, Southwest Passage).

…to furnish his inns [founder Sam Barshop] had gone to the Furniture Mart in Dallas and found that Mexican-style furniture was the least expensive. To match the furnishings, his inns had to have a Mexican-sounding name, and he came up with La Quinta, just because it sounded cute…