Update (9/14 11:30AM EST): Wow, that was fast. Marriott pulled Fandango from its portal. This is still worth a read though, in case you ever see 100x in the future.

Via Frequent Miler, the Marriott shopping portal appears to be offering 100 points/dollar spent at Fandango. Frequent Miler outlines the general value of such a deal (75% ‘off’ your movie tickets), but as the title of this post suggests, I’d like to take a different bent.

Before I go on, note that the terms don’t explicitly exclude gift cards, but they don’t explicitly include them either, so YMMV and only take on what risk you’re comfortable with:

Must successfully complete an online purchase of a movie ticket and display the ticket confirmation page to get reward.

Anyway, here’s the play:

  1. Buy $2700 in Fandango gift cards
  2. Resell for 88% on Cardpool or 86.5% on ABC Gift Cards. For the sake of math, we’ll go with the worse payout, 86.5%, and assume that in our calculations.
  3. Pray the portal tracks and pays out.
  4. Redeem 270,000 Marriott points for a Flight and Hotel package. Get 120,000 Southwest companion-pass qualifying points. Note you should do this transfer after January 1 so you get two years out of it, although if you’re worried about clawbacks do it right away.

Net costs (assuming 86.5% payout, 2% cash back card):

$2700 * (1-.865-.02) = 2700 * .115 = $310.50

Not bad, eh? And did I mention you’d have a week at a Marriott hotel?

I’ll repeat, though. Please be careful.

Happy hacking!!