Microsoft Rewards users are again angry with the program's latest change
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Key notes
- Microsoft Rewards users report that the points value for gift card redemptions have increased by as much as 33%
- Many users have taken to social media to complain about the issue
- The increase is apparently taking effect worldwide and not just in the United States
Microsoft has made yet another change to the Microsoft Rewards program, and people aren’t happy. As noted on Reddit and even on X, longtime users of the program are seeing that the points cost of redeeming gift cards are now much more expensive, with the cost of some items going up by as much as 33%.
Over here in the United States, we noticed that the cost of redeeming a Microsoft or Xbox gift card has significantly increased, even with the usual Level 2 discount that should cut the points needed for redemption. A $50 Microsoft gift card has gone from 46,000 points to 47,500. A $100 Microsoft gift card, meanwhile, has gone from 91,000 points to 95,000 points.
In other countries, some people have noticed that third-party gift cards for retailers like Amazon have also gone up, with a £5 gift card going from 7,600 points up to 8,125. We haven’t noticed that here, however. Interestingly, some people in other countries like Spain have found that the points needed to redeem gift cards have gone down, so some more positive changes were also made.
Microsoft quietly made these changes and hasn’t appeared to document them anywhere or provided a reason for why. It’s not too surprising, though, as the program is essentially “free money” where you get rewarded for using your favorite Microsoft products like Bing, Xbox, and even the Microsoft Start app. Towards the end of last year, Microsoft made changes to the program by taking away points initiatives on Xbox adding cool-down periods, and even announcing that the Xbox Rewards app would be killed off. The company mentioned that it “evaluates every change for consistency and fairness, tuning the methods and frequency through which our members can earn points,” when it was asked about those changes.
Some of those changes have since been reversed, but today’s discovery is a little rough for those who might have saved up a pile of precious points, only to find that it is now much more expensive to spend them. Just ask the Redditor who appeared to have been the one to discover these changes who said ” I am getting more and more annoyed by these “exciting changes and news to the program.”
