Expiring Wyndham Reward Points?

Wyndham Rewards Program allows you to redeem for free night at any of their hotels, homes and condo worldwide for just 15,000 points with their "Go Free Reward". This enables you to get a great redemption value when you redeem your free night at high end Wyndham Hotel or Resort, but what if you are looking for low to mid tier redemption? Wyndham does allow you to use 3,000 points + Cash for redemption using their "Go Fast Reward". The bad news is that not all hotels have "Go Fast Reward" available. You can also top up your account by purchasing up to maximum of 10,000 points per year at the rate of $13 per 1,000 points.

The bad news is that Wyndham Reward Points expire after 18 months unless you have any earning, redeeming or transfer activity. You can easily get pass this by either donating as low as 50 Wyndham Reward Points, or by earning points doing survey with their partner "Opinion Rewards Panel". Although you can get past this they have another layer of hard point expiration where the points expire 4 years after they are earn regardless of your activity with Wyndham Rewards.

So, what happens when your points are reaching the 4 year hard expiration limit? One of the option which use to exist earlier was to redeem Wyndham Reward points for magazines but that option is no longer available with Wyndham Rewards. The other option is to redeem for gift card, but the gift card redemption starts at 7,500 points for $25 in value (Except the Restaurant.com gift card which you can get for 2,200 points and a worst value to begin with).

Here is the good news though. Wyndham Hotels acquired La Quinta brand of hotels in 2018 and they allow 1:1 transfer of points between Wyndham Rewards and La Quinta Rewards. Although you can transfer in the increments of 1,000 points with a maximum of 24,000 points in single transaction, this transfer allows to move out the points which have 4 years hard expiration with Wyndham Rewards.

La Quinta Returns allows you to use these points for hotel redemption with reward night starting at just 6,000 points only or you can redeem them for magazine subscription starting at just 300 points. Alternatively one of the best option would be to transfer these points back to Wyndham Rewards and they should get new expiration date! Do note that Wyndham Rewards is known to be notorious for changing the terms overnight and might take away or devalue this option at any time. 

So, hopefully the above technique (while it lasts) will allow you to get past the 4 year hard expiration limit that Wyndham Rewards has on its points.

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