Diners Club Club Rewards - Canadians: 1 CR point = $0.017 for travel

Just got my statement today and I see on the back that there will be changes to the "Tailored Travel Program". I don't know if this replaces the current airfare reward chart, or if it is in addition to it. I'm going to assume it does in the examples below.

"Cardmembers will be able to book any type of travel, from their choice of ariline, hotel, car rental, cruise or travel package at the rate of 100 Club Rewards points = $1.70. In addition, when cardmembers redeem for an airline ticket, you can also book to/from any airport, as well as obtain First Class fares, Business/Executive Class fares, one-ways, stop-overs and multi-leg flights all at the same redemption rate...yet still enjoy no black-out restrictions and no worries about their points expiring!"

Despite Diner's uncertainty about who it/they/we are addressing, this is an interesting change. Now that short-haul $200 fare will only cost 11,765 points instead of the flat 15,000. However, I can see this being a devluation for ticket prices approaching the upper bound of Diner's reward schedule.

For example, take an economy TATL fare. Under the old system, any fare under $1,350 used to cost 65,000 points, and 100 points for every dollar of fare price over $1,350.

Under the new system, a TATL costs 100 points per $1.70 of fare. Using this ratio, tickets are now cheaper (in points) if the fare is less than $1,105 or if the fare is greater than $1,700. (For the calculations, please see Appendix 12.c)

I'm sure DC has done some statistical analysis and determined that 99.5% of all TATL economy tickets cost between $1,105 and $1,700.

I'm also curious if you can pay taxes/fees/surchages with points at the new rate.

All in all, I think I'm happy with this change, simply because I know I'm getting 1.7% cashback on my card (less $99) - and so I can say with quite some certainty that my DC isn't worth keeping!:D

We like this change as well since from a non-airline travel reward perspective, under their old scheme, the points were worth $0.01 each and are now worth $0.017 each. This is enough of a change to consolidate our mastercard spending on Diners Club after we exhaust the double spg reward points on our MBNA SPG mastercard.

Cheers
jaysue

...I can say with quite some certainty that my DC isn't worth keeping!:D

We like this change as well... This is enough of a change to consolidate our mastercard spending on Diners Club

What we have here is a failure to communicate?

hehehe

I was comparing my DC to the Amex Gold 2% Cashback card.

Tier structure of Amex:
0.50% for [0;2,500)
1.00% for [2,500;5,000)
2.00% for [5,000;inf)

Given that there is no annual fee with the Amex, and there is a $99 fee with the DC, for all spending amounts, the Amex is more profitable. Even for transfers to proprietary FFPs, DC costs 2.125 cpm, which think is towards the high end.

On the other hand, there is the value of insurances that come with the card, as well as acceptability of MC. It's a personal decision for everyone, but going solely by the value of "rewards", the DC seems like a poor value.

Interesting comments and certainly food for thought. What I do like about the DC change was the clear transparency of 1.7% rewards versus a point chart that may or may not work for me when I need it. However transparency may equal less value in this case.

Cheers
jaysue

Transparency was one of the things I liked about Diners originally (and I still have to give them points [pun intended] for the clear 1.7%).

One of the reasons I signed up originally is that all gift cards cost represent exactly 1% cashback ($100 GC = 10,000 pts, $50 GC = 5,000 pts). This was a beef of mine with Aeroplan where gift cards with the same face value had different point costs.

I've had a Diners since 2001, when it was still Aeroplan.

I recently redeemed 30000 points for a ticket that cost $794, so that was 2.6 cents per point. (it was an arbitrary Y ticket which I later changed anyway, just wanted to get the full $800 value for my points), so this is serious devaluation in that respect.

I guess 1.7% cash back is not a bad deal when looked from that perspective
The car insurance is great, but other cards offer it too.

I think this will be definetly my last year as a DC customer, I ll miss Priority Pass, which was very helpful on a couple of long-delay situations. I also like the DC lounge in Amsterdam, and used several others over the years.

ok this is officially the end of DC for me at the end of this year

The flexibility of Club Rewards Tailored Travel also means you can cover the entire cost of your travel or just a portion... it's your choice. Any applicable taxes, service charges and booking fees can also be paid for with points.

The following booking fees are the responsibility of the Cardmember and must be paid for with either points or your Diners Club card:

Booking Fees:

Air tickets $70 per person

Cruises $95 per person

Travel packages $95 per person

Car rentals $25 per rental

Hotels $25 per hotel booking




$70 to use my points on an air ticket!!! Thats complete BS :mad:

Update:

I called today to redeem my points for an upcoming flight, and lo and behold, no booking fee was charged. I asked about it, and was told that the charge applied if I were to book travel using them as a regular travel agent. However, since I was redeeming DC points, the $70 air travel booking fee did not apply. Happy happy day! (though maybe not quite happy enough to make me stay with DC)