One message you see on these boards from time to time is the idea that “the only good point is a used point”, and it’s pretty solid advice.
When you hold a hoard of unredeemed points, you are essentially an unsecured creditor. Actually you’re below that, since the points can be unilaterally devalued at any time.
They can also be made more difficult to actually redeem for anything remotely useful. It’s pretty rare to get an international flight redemption that is exactly what you want, especially when there’s multiple travellers or a popular route/season.
One thing that I suspect will change after all this, is a lot of people will get off the bandwagon of chasing status and points with airlines, hotel chains etc.
This was partly the reason I was asking about Qantas. Having seen Amex do the devaluation - albeit we got time /warning, it still puts into spotlight now with Virgin, and the airline industry that you can be left with a small window gap to redeem (amongst all the others rushing for the exit) your points if things change overnight. In my case I was forced to move amex points before the devaluation and in doing so it went into Virgin. And now lo' and behold the virgin fiasco means these are now being burnt on gift cards. Obviously when I first racked up points on Amex i tried my hardest to build points balances for these flight redemptions, and just never got around to it.
It makes you think twice I guess of whether hoarding alot of points is worth the risk of having the gameplay changed around you. We did get one Qantas One world award flights in Feb-March, cut short by Covid, but it required us being flexible enough to plan a holiday in Scandinavia around the award flights. Keeping in mind it was winter and most here said not to go , it would be miserable etc. - so I presume demand from other flyers was low. Winter scandinavia was fine for us as the sights are different then (would be nice to be warm, but seeing the same sights, but alas you can't see a winter scenery without the cold!)
I can imagine finding award flights to anywhere remotely popular i.e. italy, europe, America etc. would be extremely difficult, as even our Scandinavian one required moving the odd day or two forward or backwards to find an award flight - and these weren't even popular routes. The worst part is these cabins were quite often with spare seats (maybe as Feb-march kicked in some cancelled due to covid, but I don't think many were worried in Mid feb when we left, it kicked in around March) and so I found that award seats are really the bottom of the rung i.e. if the partners dont release it, then you can't fly that route. We would find many seats on a partner's route but none of which were award seats or available.
So it makes me wonder with paying all the annual fees, which I could do a fee free credit card, am I really getting 'value' out of trying to accumulate 200,300,400k points? We aren't even hitting the points big, whereas some of you here have million and millions of points. I don't know how you do it haha - but an enviable job, i presume through points and promos and that no one actually earns these points solely through everyday points on purchases?
I guess i a $300 card gets me 120k points I can argue that's still 6 x $100 gift cards, but may need to review paying annual fees just to get points going forward.