Set up a free PhoneHog account.

PhoneHog lets you earn free domestic and international long distance phone calls by clicking on advertising emails and taking advantage of marketing offers. Okay, probably worth it on its own.

These points can be exchanged for frequent flyer miles in several programs via Points.com. The ratios are generally poor.

However, it looks like there’s a strange glitch in the Points.com conversion ratios.

1000 Goldpoints transfers to 385 PhoneHog points. 385 PhoneHog points transfer to 4620 Goldpoints.

In theory you could transfer Goldpoints in and out of PhoneHog for an unlimited amount of Goldpoints. There are two kinks: First, if your Goldpoints account was started via Radisson Hotels then you can’t tranfer points using Points.com. Second, Points.com could well catch onto these ratios at any time and stop the lucrative transfers.

If you have a dormant Goldpoints account through Radisson you could always start a new account and update your email address for 500 points. Then a transfer to PhoneHog for 192 and back to Goldpoints for 2306 points and you’re off.

So a bit of deep background: what’s the difference between a Goldpoints account started through Goldpoints.com and one started through Radisson? Transfers to frequent flyer programs are the main difference. In the former case, Goldpoints transfer at 10:1 and in the latter case at 8:1 — plus Radisson members have a larger number of frequent flyer programs to choose from. It’s a bit confusing, but that’s what happens when the same program attempts to operate as a loyalty mechanism for a hotel chain, a restaurant (TGI Friday’s), and other activities — with different expectations from members of each.

In any case, I’ve just opened my PhoneHog account because it’s free and the points may be useful whether I do the shuffle or not.

Update 10/12/04: The deal is dead. As a commenter notes and I just confirmed, Points.com has changed the transfer ratio of Goldpoints to Phonehog points to 50:1.