Over the weekend Verizon emailed me about their new rewards program, Verizon Smart Rewards, and I finally got a chance to look over it.

At first it seemed like many other rewards programs offering Groupon-like discounts on a variety of products and coupons.

Then I started digging into the travel section and was pleasantly surprised. For hotels they give you cash & points options. They preset the number of points that can be applied, and you pay the difference from the rack rate. What appealed to me about this is your Verizon points are worth a penny a point when applied to hotel bookings.

And just to make sure the rack rate they were quoting was in fact accurate, I double checked the hotel website. 🙂

There are similar values on Car Rentals and Gift Cards — get a $100 gift card for $90 + 1,000 Verizon Smart Rewards.

I’m surprised, but this is going to be a great option for me when I don’t have or don’t want to waste hotel points at pricey properties, or when staying at a place where I have no status.

The Sheraton wouldn’t be a good option for me because I’d prefer to use 7,000 Starwood points and get stay credit towards elite status, BUT there are many trips when a Marriott is my only option and I don’t have enough Marriott points (or it’s a bad redemption value) and won’t stay often enough to earn status.

There’s no shopping portal you can go through to earn extra points, but you will earn 10 points per $1 on your monthly statement and get a 5,000 point bonus for signing up by November 1 and another 500 points for opting into Verizon Select.

There’s also some more time intensive options for increasing your balance:

Since there is no cost to sign up, this is one of those reward programs I think all Verizon customers should register for. Not something to invest a lot of time in, but definitely a good back up plan when you can’t find a good hotel deal through your usual channels.

Since my cable and phone bill are combined, I’ll be interested to see if I earn rewards points for the FIOS spend or just the Verizon wireless portion.

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