These are my favourite:

1) Shoppers: i shop like Tracy — only on 20x points days

I wait to buy the things i need/want only on bonus days where i can maximize the points i get for all my purchases. Then i wait until they have their extra/bonus $25 or $50 redemption days to use up my accumulated points.

If i spend $200 x 10 points x 20 bonus = 40.000 points
You can redeem 40,000 points for $75 + $25 bonus = $100 free stuff!
That’s $0.50 free for every $1.00 you spend =)

2) Scene card — Slamjam makes a good point about the movies but it only works out if you only buy movie tickets b/c they give 5x points on movie related purchases…not everyday purchases.

3) Airmiles: even if you only get 1 airmile for every $20 spent:
$500 = 25 airmiles
25 airmiles = buy one movie ticket & get one free ($10 — $12 value)
For every $100 you spend = $2.00 — $2.40

But if you wait for the deals…ie/ shop at Metro on their bonus airmiles days, you could rack up multiples of 25 airmiles just from buying everyday grocery items.
This means lots of Buy One Get One Free Movie Passes.

4) HBC rewards can be converted to Esso points.
Esso points are great for:
Car washes 599 esso points (saves me lots of money)
Select drinks inside Esso(coke, pepsi, water, etc)- overpriced but if you need a cold, refreshing beverage when you are on the road.…when it’s free…it’s perfect!

Happy shopping =)

also their calculation was correct,
the figure of the value per point was calculated by dividing the $ value by the no. of points.

e.g. for shopper, it was $25/15000 = 0.001666666666
which is 0.17c

FYI, i personally used esso, I did went through the same calculation myself, and I find esso + rbc point worked best for me.

Aeroplan cards usually run $120 a year (visa or amex)

For simplicity sake I’ll assume someone has one and spends 85K
Assume that same person redeems a business class ticket at the end of the year with the 85K points.
The total value: ~$2300
or close to a 3% return
– $3000 airline ticket for $700 (taxes and fees + credit card fee).

If you want even more value assume the person has a card for 2 years, spends 50K a year, then redeems a round the world airline ticket in first class
$120 * 2 years
The total value would exceed $10K
That is about a 10% return, of course this could be even better depending on where you fly

While AirMiles cards often do poorly in a straight comparison there corporate product tie — ins can create outstanding value. For example, until July 2 at Safeway it is possible to get more than $100 worth of AirMiles for every $100 spent on Coca-Cola products. This is certainly more than the $0.67 quoted in the article.

http://forum.smartcanucks.ca/23424-safeways-sweet-airmiles-deals-canada/

Anyways — this is a friends analysis.
Shoppers is 10points for every dollar spent. And you need 15,000 points to receive $25 if you don’t factor in multipliers. You need to spend $1,500 dollars to get $25 back.

For the Scene point card — Assume its $10 a movie ticket. You need to spend $100 to receive 1000 points…which is equivalent to one redemption ($10). So to receive $25 equivalent, you only need to spend $250 dollars, compared to $1500 dollars at shoppers.