Tim Winship recommends Restaurant.com dining certificates as a good way to cash in your United Airlines Mileage Plus account. I respectfully disagree.

Redeem 1,000 Mileage Plus miles for a $25 dining certificate through Restaurant.com to squeeze a solid 2.5¢ in value from every mile. Or get 5¢ per mile by cashing in 2,000 miles for four $25 certificates.

Why would I object to these rates? After all, I’ve said before that anything over 1.7 cents/mile is solid value.

The problem: Tim is ignoring the actual market price of Restaurant.com gift certificates, and focusing on their face value.

No one pays face value for these certs, so you shouldn’t use that price as a reference point.

Restaurant.com’s standard deal lets you buy $25 certificates for $10. Often it’s less, as little as $5 if you have a promo code (they have them regularly). Even taking the higher price of $10 for a certificate, 1000 miles gets you 1 cent per dollar. If you’re using a promo code, that rate only goes down.

In fact, while we’re at it, here’s a promo code: take 50% Off with code 73515, through December 10, 2006.

Using 1000 miles for something worth only $5 isn’t good value. Unless of course you’ve got so many miles you don’t know what to do with them.

Related:

- Restaurant.com – $25 gift certificates for $10 or less (affiliate)
- The value of frequent flyer miles