Southwest 50% reward bonus for transferring

[MarBee]

hello!
I'm sort of new to this, so I was hoping someone with more knowledge and experience could help me.
I got an email from SW stating they were offering a 50% reward bonus for transfers and gifts.
My husband currently has about 18,000 miles, and I have about 30,000.
Would it pay for me to transfer my miles to him or his miles to me?

 

[Maggie'sMom]

There is a fee to transfer points and the fee is usually more than the value of the points you gain through the promotion. I looked into it a while ago and realized it didn't make sense so now I just automatically delete those emails.

 

[MarBee]

Thank you! I figured it was too good to be true, and I knew someone here would know

 

[kristenrice]

It can be a good value to buy/transfer points, but you have to look at it from a different perspective. For example, I wanted to book my family of 4 on points (one-way) but only had enough for 3. I was short about 5,000 points. I opted to pay the $137.50 for the 5000 points even though the flight itself was $100. The reason I did this is because when you book on points, you can CANCEL your flight and get all of the points back without any restrictions. You can also CHANGE your flight if a lower fare comes out (not likely when it was at $100 already) and get the points back. Since we only fly about once a year, getting a credit for a price drop on a flight paid with cash is useless to us. For me, it *can* be a better value overall to buy extra points. I see it as a cheap way to "upgrade" to a fully-refundable fare.

Our current flight is now $147 which is 8900 points. With the current incentive of a 60% bonus, it would cost $165 to buy 9,600 points. So, that means that you could pay an extra $18 and make your flight completely refundable. To me, that is a GREAT deal....so it's not always a bad value to buy points to pay for a flight.