Asking Aeroplan's definition from the agents about the "March 1" deadline was quite appropriate; their definition was obviously different from your (and mine - which believe it or not was equivalent to your) definition. Conveying their responses (right or wrong) on their forum (esp when 2 agents 24 hrs apart stated the same thing) is quite appropriate.

Quoting the agents was correct. Whether the agents were correct or not is another matter. However, I can only report on what they said. It is always better to be safe, rather than sorry - so booking before midnight GMT does not hurt anybody - even if they are wrong. If they were right, then risking booking during the last 5 hrs (of Feb 28) in the Eastern time zone or the last 8 hrs in the Pacific time zone would be at the customer's peril.

However, I challenge you to tell all of us how you would have corroborated from Aeroplan as to their (not your) definition of March 1 (rather than presuming the common sense definition of March 1 was what Aeroplan was using)? An obvious definition of a Mar 1 deadline (per local time zone), was not obvious to these 2 (and perhaps most other) Aeroplan agents.

I would be interested if you can explain to me why you waited to post your response after those 2 posted their experiences which ran contrary to my statements; if you are such an authority on Aeroplan, and felt that the definition of Aeroplan's deadline was so obvious and common sense, and if you were so sure about the supposed (from your perspective) lack of accuracy and veracity about my statements, why did you not rebut my statements immediately?

PS-I would be interested in finding out from the FT audience if the exact same deadline - ie midnight local time rather than midnight Greenwich time, applied to both online and telephone Aeroplan award bookings.