Several booth attendants at the Silverton say they HAVE HEARD that the exchange rate for old points for gift cards will be reduced by 50% on October 17, meaning instead of 1000 points per dollar of gift card it will take 2000 points. They will all expire in December of this year, but if you keep them more than another week, the value of your points will be cut in half --- at least for some uses. Nobody knows for sure whether all of the gift cards will be affected or not. As of tonight they are out of Southwest Airlines cards. I'm accepting this rumor as accurate and will be selling all of my points this week --- probably on Bass Pro Shop cards. It's possible this rumor will turn out to be false. I can't accurately assess the odds on this. I would prefer to cash my points for SWA gift cards or Starbucks gift cards, but those are limited to $500 per month, and I've already collected my October allotment. Spending the rest of my points this week at 1-for-1 on lesser gift cards is a better deal than spending my points for the better gift cards at a 2-for-1 rate in another week. I suspect many people will want clarification on this. So do I! But at this moment better information is not readily available, even from Silverton Rewards supervisors. And it wouldn't surprise me that they will run out of several types of cards as many of us cash in whatever balances we have. So cashing your points on Monday is definitely a smarter play than planning on cashing them next Sunday. Bob
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
