If you have an AARP account and have registered for AARP Rewards, you’ll be earning AARP Rewards points. There’s all kinds of ways you can earn the points; logging in on the website, watching short informational videos, answering quizzes, and much more.
Without much – if any – effort, you’ll likely rack up thousands of AARP Rewards points and you might inevitably wonder what to do with them. One option is to redeem them for gift cards; AARP Rewards will often charge something like 15,000 points for a $5 or $10 gift card, but that’s extremely poor value.
In fact, I’ve only found one option that’s worth redeeming your points for – Local Deals. You can find them here (you might be prompted to log in to your account to see them)
AARP Rewards will show available deals near you, although you might need to input your zip code. It seems like it’s usually pretty accurate as to the location it picks up for you, but I think it might do that based on your IP addressor something like that, so it’s not necessarily always showing the zip code where you live.
AARP Rewards Local Deals are powered by Entertainment.com which is also the company that produces those Entertainment Books you might’ve seen in grocery stores and I think offers are pretty much the same, if not identical.
Offers therefore vary based on your location, but oftentimes you’ll see BOGO coupons for local attractions, coupons giving 25% off your bill at a local restaurant, discounted oil changes, discounts at clothing retailers, etc. The redemption requirements are typically very low – 500 points or thereabouts. That can often save you $10 or more which is excellent value considering AARP Rewards wants 15,000 points for a gift card worth less than that most of the time.
I wrote a separate post over on Frequent Miler about AARP benefits you might not know about, so that’s worth checking out too if you’re interested in knowing how to maximize your AARP membership. And don’t forget – you don’t have to be 55+ to join AARP – you can be any age. It’s often possible to pay only $9 per year for a membership (when subscribing for a five year term) and it doesn’t take much effort to get value in excess of that even if all you’re doing is buying discounted gift cards. You can click through from a shopping portal before subscribing, plus there’s often a Chase Offer giving $8 back on a subscription.
I tried to redeem a %25 off from a local restaurant. Had the ticket showing but the restaurant didn’t accept it. They even talked to manager but they said they don’t know what these coupons are. Saying only the name of the restaurant is written but not even logo or anything else.
I have had the same experience. I tried to redeem a BOGO for a local attraction and was told by both staff and a manager that they didn’t know what these coupons were and would not accept them.