Originally Posted by
canopus27
Do we know if Plumbers advice will actually work?
It would strike me as a very odd loophole; you can't get a refund within 22 days of travel, but you can change to a different flight that then does give you that right. The way you deal with purchased tickets is not the same, I know ... but there, you can change a date but you must fly within one year of the original date - you can't keep slipping a date by six months at a time, for example. Do we know if anyone has tried Plumber's trick, and had it work?
Yes, it works fine.
However, the OP has already cancelled the award ticket, so in order to get the miles and hopefully also the taxes and scamcharges back, s/he needs to book a new ticket for a date more than 22 days from now using the value of the prior ticket and then in a second step cancel the new ticket. It's likely that Aeroplan will charge the rebooking fee and the cancellation fee for the new ticket. You can't avoid them completely but by rebooking the award to a day further out saves you at least one cancellation fee.