Aeroplan Changes

[drag n' fly]

From Jan. 1 onwards, Aeroplan will start date-stamping Aeroplan miles with a stamp of 7 years from the month the mile is accumulated. Miles that aren't redeemed will be automatically deducted from members' balances on a monthly basis.

The average time between a member earning an Aeroplan Mile and redeeming it is about two-and-a-half years, the company said.

As well, Aeroplan will change its mileage expiry policy to make members use the program once in a consecutive 12-month period. This means that, from July 1 onwards, a member must have used the program once in the prior year to avoid expiry of miles in the account.

Effective today, members whose accounts expire may re-instate those miles for $30 plus 1 cent per restored mile. Any Aeroplan member whose account has previously expired can use this reinstatement option.





This is why I cashed all my Aeroplan miles in for gift cards because the rule already is if you dont use them 36 months from the date of the last transaction you lose them all. We were saving up our Aeroplan miles to go to Greece and were only 30,000 away but discovered we were going to lose them in 6 weeeks if we did not cash them in.

 

[Yzma and Kronk]

At least they are date stamping them for 7 years.

We just lost 4 round trips on Air Tran because they have a one year policy, and never did advise us. They recently decided to start expiring points, which was a surprise to us since they never did this to our account in the past. It was in the "mice-type" rules that we were supposed to be aware of!

And of course, it's on their web-site.....now.

Nasty letter was sent, but no reply.

Thanks for the really valuable information drag 'n!

 

[mbb]

Yes, thank you!

 

[mickeywho?]

To stop your account from expiring - if you add points less than once-per-year - make sure you sign up for aeroplan with bell canada. You need to go to the bell website to do this and you get 1 mile per $1 spent. It would take years for this to add up to much but it keeps your account active!

 

[Yzma and Kronk]

To stop your account from expiring - if you add points less than once-per-year - make sure you sign up for aeroplan with bell canada. You need to go to the bell website to do this and you get 1 mile per $1 spent. It would take years for this to add up to much but it keeps your account active!

Thanks mickeywho? - I'm over there right now!

 

[damo]

None of those things will affect our account. Sounds fine with me!

 

[pxlbarrel]

You can also keep your account active by buying gas at Esso.

You just swipe your Aeroplan card instead of the Esso Rewards card. No signing up needed. Do that once a year and you should be fine.

I haven't redeemed any aeroplan points for years now. The points I have right now are from 1999 and onwards. At least I'll have another 7 years from now to accumulate for that one big trip.

 

[mickeywho?]

How do you know how old your points are. If they are going to expire I'd rather just exchange them for gift cards.

 

[pxlbarrel]

The points you have now will be date stamped in Jan...so you'll have 7 years to use them. As for how you'll know which points are what, I'm going to assume they'll have a way of telling when you look at your aeroplan account. We'll have to wait until they actually inform the Aeroplan members as opposed to just learning it from the press.

 

[pxlbarrel]

This is why I cashed all my Aeroplan miles in for gift cards because the rule already is if you dont use them 36 months from the date of the last transaction you lose them all. We were saving up our Aeroplan miles to go to Greece and were only 30,000 away but discovered we were going to lose them in 6 weeeks if we did not cash them in.

Couldn't you have just gone and filled up with Esso or any other Aeroplan partners to get a couple of points put onto the card? I believe that should have kept them from killing your points. My dad hasn't flown on Air Canada since 1999 and he hasn't redeemed his points either...but sometime, in these past years, he bought something from Futureshop that gave him 100 points or something. That prevented the cancellation of the points. My mom, however, had an inactive account and when we went to take a look at her points last month, they were all gone. She had enough for a short haul flight too.

We're all flying to Vegas in December on Air Canada so my dad is going to use her card in an Esso pump every now and then to make sure it keeps those points this time.

 

[drag n' fly]

Couldn't you have just gone and filled up with Esso or any other Aeroplan partners to get a couple of points put onto the card? I believe that should have kept them from killing your points. My dad hasn't flown on Air Canada since 1999 and he hasn't redeemed his points either...but sometime, in these past years, he bought something from Futureshop that gave him 100 points or something. That prevented the cancellation of the points. My mom, however, had an inactive account and when we went to take a look at her points last month, they were all gone. She had enough for a short haul flight too.

We're all flying to Vegas in December on Air Canada so my dad is going to use her card in an Esso pump every now and then to make sure it keeps those points this time.

The reason we cashed them in was because we simply didn't want to deal with Aeroplan anymore ..period. I was tired of trying to get flights and the flights we got were really crummy and Air Canada had gone into bankruptcy and their was a lot of uncertainty at that time if Aeroplan was going to fold and we might lose our points. We decided to cancel our Aeroplan credit card and move our credit card and awards to another card as we did not want the risk or hassle of dealing with Aeroplan anymore. Even in hindsight with Aeroplan still on its feet we still made the right decision. Our new rewards program is points converted to cash value and has no restrictions. Aeroplans best interests are their own and not their customers which was essentially the downfall into bankruptcy of Air Canada in the first place..they have to remain competitive if they want to keep their head above water.

 

[sparkles_grrl]

That's why the TD Travel Rewards card is the best.