Update 8/16/19: Just a quick reminder that this program will end in September. They’ve just added a few more gift card brands as redemption options, so check those out if you still have a stack of points to use. Be sure to check all gift cards though as Office Depot is listed as a new brand for 10% off, but they already had them available at 12% off.
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AARP has announced that its Rewards For Good program is changing later this year and will be rebranded as AARP Rewards. As part of this change, all your existing points will vanish in September 2019 as they’ve chosen not to carry those over into the new program.
I have close to 75,000 Rewards For Good points which have been sitting there for the last couple of years as it’s been hard to find good uses for them. They’ve helped save me money on activities though as there’s a Local Deals section which is powered by Entertainment.com. We’ve gotten discounts on tubing on the Chippewa River in Wisconsin, a scenic narrated cruise on Lake Champlain in Vermont and more. Local Deals seem to be exactly the same deals you find in Entertainment books, only you don’t have to buy a book to get a coupon. Instead, you just redeem some of your Rewards For Good points and you can save at local restaurants, museums, activities, etc.
The reason I’m mentioning this here on GC Galore is because you could also redeem Rewards For Good points for savings on a wide selection of gift cards. In most cases you’d only save 10%, so it was only worthwhile for personal use rather than reselling. That wasn’t bad though considering it was easy to rack up points by answering quizzes, even if you got every single answer wrong. They’ve also offered 20% discounts on select gift cards in the past, so that offered some good savings.
AARP will still allow you to earn Rewards For Good points until July 25, 2019 and you’ll have the opportunity to redeem them until the end of September. They’ve also claimed that:
We’re stocking up the Rewards for Good catalog with hundreds of new rewards and prizes so you’ll have plenty to choose from before the program ends.
How useful any of those are remains to be seen.
The disappointing aspect of this is the fact that after September, all points will be lost. They’ve stated that existing Rewards For Good members will start with a bonus in their new AARP Rewards account, so I don’t understand why they couldn’t convert points from one to the other instead of or in addition to that bonus. It might be that they’re trying to make AARP Rewards actually rewarding, so didn’t want people racking up huge sums of points right now by completing quizzes, only for them to redeem them in a few months time for expensive rewards.
How good AARP Rewards will be remains to be seen, but be sure to spend your existing Rewards For Good points in the next few months if you can find something worthwhile to spend them on.
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