Discover Miles Card: Rewards / Travel Credit Redemption Info

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone.

Well, looks like I’ve squeezed all the free money out of another credit card offer. This time it is the Miles Card by Discover. It used to have a good 12-month no-fee 0% balance transfer offer, but has recently added a balance transfer fee. However, it does offer 0% on purchases for 6 months.

In addition, this card still offers a sign-up bonus of 12,000 Miles. You get 1,000 Miles each month you make a purchase for 12 months. A mindless way to get the points is to sign the card up for automatic billing of your cell phone bill (or similar bill).

Discover Miles Redemption Options

However, the Miles you earn with this card are not affiliated with any airline. So what’s one of these special Miles worth? The wording is very vague, and not until you already have the card do you get the details. So here they are…

The most efficient way to redeem is for travel credit. You can redeem 10,000 Miles for a $100 cash credit towards any travel purchase (airfare, hotel, car rental, cruise) from any vendor or website. Now that I’ve actually done the redemption with my Hotwire purchase, I am happy to report that it was hassle-free.

You simply charge the purchase to your card, and request the credit online. The system automatically checks that you have a travel purchase, and approves the request. In a few business days the $100 shows up in your account:

Other redemption options
The alternatives are not that great. If you travel at all, I would wait and go with the travel credit.

  • Gift cards. 7,000 Miles gets you $50 gift card at stores such as Macy’s, Gap, or Shell gas stations. You can also redeem 4,000 miles for a $25 gift card.
  • Cash. 5,000 Miles gets you $25 deposited into your bank account.

Double Miles & Other Promos
For most purchases, you get 1 Mile per dollar spent. The default feature of the card is that you get 2 Miles per dollar on the first $3,000 in travel and restaurant purchases each year. There is also a rotating category each month. For example, you get double miles on up to $500 in purchases at gas stations throughout June and July.

Even with the double miles here and there, this is not a top rewards card. However, you can still extract $100+ out of it with no annual fee, plus you get 0% interest for 6 months.

Here are additional credit cards with sign-up bonuses of $100 or more.

My Money Blog has partnered with CardRatings and may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. MyMoneyBlog.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and has not been provided nor approved by any of the companies mentioned.

MyMoneyBlog.com is also a member of the Amazon Associate Program, and if you click through to Amazon and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support.


User Generated Content Disclosure: Comments and/or responses are not provided or commissioned by any advertiser. Comments and/or responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any advertiser. It is not any advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.

Comments

  1. Discover no longer approves the credit card apps if you already have another discover card. I tried, they rejected saying “Mortgage balance too high compared to Mortgage credit limit”. I called them to try to make sense of it(My score is 750+) and they said they declined because I already have a discover card.

  2. On a side note, I just got a letter from Chase saying that I won’t be getting 5% cash back on my gasoline purchases anymore. SUCKS!! That was the only thing I was using that card for and for places that didn’t take Discover 🙁 I wonder if calling and talking to a rep about cancelling the card might help??

  3. MM Thanks for the information! I was thinking of taking advantage of the Balance transfer, now I won’t bother applying.

  4. I have not received a no fee 0% balance transfer credit card offer in the mail for a very long time.I used to get one a day(or so it seemed) a few years back. For a couple of years I had $35,000 on three cards these helped me payoff my mortgage.I made thousands of dollars off of those deals.I wonder if the credit card companies will ever bring them back?That was literally free money.

  5. I’m very happy with my discover rewards — it’s not the same as this one, it gives 5% back on gas and 1% on everything else. I really like the card though – particularly because the rewards seem to be very consistent. If I buy stuff, I always get the rewards. I rack up each 20 bucks pretty quickly and these days I’m tending to take a gift card that like gives you $50 for $40.

    Even though I have the upromise card, which I use very heavily, sometimes the rewards don’t seem to add up to what I’m actually spending every month — like some stuff seems to be excluded, or I don’t get the reward percentage that I’m expecting. Discover seems to be very consistent and understandable, so I’m happier with their program.

  6. I’ve had a Discover Miles card for about 3 years and have literally used it 2 times. The first purchase was to be eligible for sign-up points (worth a $75 gift card). The second was about 18 months later to get $5 for showing any activity on my account. I bought something worth $3 to get $5. I don’t play the “save the miles” game and redeem rewards for something tangible as soon as possible.

    The trouble with Discover, for all their cards, is that they’ve created too many gimmicks and limitations on the rewards. Discover was my primary card until about 5 years ago when they complicated the rewards rules to limit their payouts. Citi is far, far more generous. For example, their miles card (Premier Pass) gives you a percentage back on percentages as well as points for each mile traveled by air. Of course Citi is now being bailed out by the government, so who knows how long that will last.

    I do NOT recommend Discover Miles for anything other than the sign up bonus.

  7. the only thing which is working for me is a cash back- but even this just a drop in the sea

  8. BrunswickCash says

    So, is it just this Discover card you don’t like, all Discover cards?

    I’ve had the Miles card for a few months now after converting from the Discover More.

    Does anyone have any thoughts about good travel rewards cards?

Leave a Reply to Tommy Cancel reply

*