e-Rewards Increases Redemption Limits

This week I received a notice from e-Rewards Opinion Panel that they are revising the terms of their redemption. I happen to be signed up for e-Rewards through U.S. Airways Dividend Miles.

The e-Rewards program, for those of you not aware, is a free opinion panel that you get invited to join via your frequent flyer accounts. If you look through your frequent flyer website, you typically will find an option to join.

e-Rewards than pays you to take surveys on various topics that you can choose. Payouts can be anywhere from $0.25 up to as high as $12, depending on the length of the survey. Then you have the option on how to redeem the money in the account. For example, in my account I have tons of options including redeeming for miles in various alliances, hotel reward points, and even magazine subscriptions and various other shopping rewards. I currently have over $100 sitting in my account that I am waiting for the right offer to come along to redeem my rewards (i.e. the U.S. Airways Grand Slam promotion typically from Sept-November of each year).

Here is the info from the email I received outlining the program changes to e-Reward’s redemption policy.

We are proud to announce that starting April 29th, you can redeem your e-Rewards Currency for Dividend Miles once EVERY 30 DAYS, allowing you to collect Dividend Miles faster!

Previous Dividend Miles Redemption Limit: Redeem once per calendar quarter
NEW Dividend Miles Redemption Limit: Redeem once every 30 days!

What does this mean? Well for the average user of e-Rewards, probably not much. Depending on the preferences you sign up under, you may not receive that many surveys to accumulate enough rewards. Just to give a real world example, I last deposited 500 miles ($25) into my account in Feb. 2010. So it has taken me over a year to accumulate another $100 in credits (redeemable for 2,000 Dividend Miles). Keep in mind I do not do every survey sent to me, and most of them I never qualify for so I only receive the minimum credit ($0.25).

So while it is nice e-Rewards has revised their redemption policy to allow for more frequent redemptions, I doubt it will factor much into to many people’s decisions.