Good afternoon everyone, I hope you had a great weekend.  One of my travel hacking / miles and points goals this year is to simplify my life and use less card-linked / reward apps that track all my purchases.  I have “used” Drop for several years.  And by “used” I mean I created an account, linked all my cards to it, and waited for the rewards to roll in.  Over the years, I seem to earn less and less points with Drop and now my points are barely trickling into my account.  Drop introduced Drop Premium which gives you 1,000 points per month just for being a member and claiming the points.  I’m convinced this is a tactic used by Drop to keep members active.  If you want to redeem your Drop points for a gift card, you need to have a minimum of 25,000 points.  I believe it used to be 10,000 points for a $10 gift card, but Drop got rid of that redemption option (to increase orphaned points in the accounts and reduce gift card expenses).

Long story short, I was about 7,000 points short of my 25,000 point goal to redeem my points for a $25 gift card.  Conveniently, Drop introduced a Top-Up feature where you can buy points.  I decided to buy 7,000 points for $9 in order to redeem my 25,000 points for a $25 gift card.  That seemed like a decent deal to me.  I will show you some of the roadblocks I went through and how I closed my Drop account at the end of this post.

I didn’t take screenshots before I bought the points, but this is what my account looked like after I used the Top-Up feature.  I have had that 20,000 point referral bonus sitting there for months, so I doubt those points will ever come (this might be another tactic Drop uses to keep members around).  In the Points History section, you can see I bought 7,000 points on May 7 and received 1,000 points each month I opened the app and claimed the points.  It looks like I forgot to open the app between January 10 and April 6 since I didn’t get any points during that period.

If you are a few thousand points short of a redemption, you can click the Buy Points tab and buy whatever point packages you need to reach 25,000 points.  Please don’t buy 25,000 points for $30.28 and redeem those points for a $25 gift card,

Here are some of the $25 gift card options available for 25,000 points.  The most useful to my is Uber Eats which can be used for Uber rides and Uber Eats purchases.  I like to stack it with the $10 monthly Uber credit from the American Express Gold Card.

Unfortunately, when I clicked on the Uber Eats gift card option, it said that I needed to contact Drop customer service.  I’m not sure why, but this is probably another tactic used by Drop to reduce the number of gift cards they issue.  As I mentioned above, I bought 7,000 points on May 7 and reached out to Drop on May 7.  No response.  I followed up with Drop on May 11 asking for help.

On May 16, which is 9 days after my initial contact, Drop finally responded and said my account “needed a refresh” (whatever that means).

I didn’t wait to find out, so I went back to the Drop app, went to the rewards section, scrolled down to the $25 Uber Eats gift card and selected that reward.

Success, I just redeemed 25,000 points for a $25 Uber Eats gift card :)

I also received a confirmation email from Drop regarding my $25 Uber Eats gift card.

I then went to the Uber Eats app and loaded the $25 gift card to my account.  Success!

With only a few hundred points left in my Drop account, I made the decision to close my account, unlink all my cards, and delete my account information.  Since I live in California, I filled out the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) page on Drop to complete that request.  Here is the response I received.  Is it me or does Drop use more emojis in their emails than the typical teenager?

Anyway, I’m sure this process will take a few days, but I’m glad I was able to redeem my Drop points for a $25 Uber Eats gift card and officially close my Drop account.  One less app tracking my purchases.  If you have any questions about the Top-Up feature, how to redeem your Drop points for a gift card, or how to close your account, please leave a comment below.  Have a great day everyone!