Originally Posted by
yscleo
Yes, AM is not a very good program. But it's a different program. This summer there was the promotion where you get the BMO gold master card with fee waived and 1000 bonus miles. Free is good.
There are many stores where you can shop and collect AM. It's free to join, so when buying at LCBO, Goodyear, Metro, Rexall, etc., I make sure I collect those AM. (Don't gas up at Shell anymore, being gassing up at Costco and then Esso)
So AM is a crappy program, but it's free. Collect the points, and get the free stuff once a while. Plus, I can try to redeem points for Westjet flights, if AE does not have flights available. I might just be doing that soon, because AE flights are not available for me to redeem for YYC-YYZ in late Nov.
Yeah, I do admit that no fee would have been good for the 1000 points. But the 1000 points still wouldn't have gotten me anywhere...
What you suggest is what I've been doing (free program to collect free stuff every once in a while). I guess I just want to stick it to them because they've made a moderately decent merchandise-reward program a crappy program recently - and that is really a bad thing to do to loyal collectors.