redeemed points

Are you looking in the correct email that you signed up your AARP account with.  have you looked in your spam folder?

Were the points actually subtracted from your account? I tried to use points for a gift card last year, but never got an email and when I checked my account, the points weren't subtracted. This was when the website was having issues, so I contacted customer service, and all they said was that there was no indication that I got the gift card, so I was out of luck (just because it said I got in when I clicked on the "redeem" button, that didn't count). And when the website started working again, the gift card was sold out, so I couldn't try again to get it.