So you shouldn’t turn your gift cards into miles. But is there anything miles-related that you can do with unwanted Christmas gifts?

Hotel booking site Rocketmiles, which rebates airline miles in the program of your choice for the reservations you make, is offering 1000 miles for your unwanted Christmas Gifts.

Only… it’s not a straightforward exchange of gifts for miles, you get bonus miles with your next hotel booking. And the bonus is limited to the first 200 people who send in their gifts.

Here are the key terms:

• Participants MUST include their Rocketmiles user name (email address).
  
• Limited to the first 200 participants. Limit one bonus per person.
  
• Item must be unopened and non-perishable.
  
• Items must be properly packaged and shipped to Rocket Travel, Inc. 560 W. Washington Blvd. Chicago IL 60661 and received by January 31st, 2014.
  
• Bonus miles or points will be awarded to the user on their next booking. Bonus cannot be applied to previous bookings.
  
• User must stay before December 31, 2014 to qualify for the bonus.
  
• All clothes and other useful items received will be donated to local charity.

Limiting this to the first 200 people (how do you know whether Rocketmiles has reached the cap before paying for shipping — which mitigates the value of the 1000 miles you’ll receive — and linking this to a future reservation clearly reduces how lucrative the offer is. Still, it’s clever enough.

I can only imagine the ‘white elephant’ gifts that the Rocketmiles team will receive!

Still, anyone itemizing their charitable deductions would probably be better off giving away unwanted gifts to charity themselves and using the tax savings to buy miles (paired with a strong bonus offer, natch).

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