Speculating a bit here, but consider the possibility that the systems aren’t integrated at all. Given the overhead associated with manually handling transfers individually, it’s far more efficient to batch them. Your transfer request would sit in a queue, and on a periodic basis someone at Diners sends a file over to somebody at Aeroplan. Maybe it even sits in a queue waiting for periodic processing on that end too. Manual processing (or at least manually-initiated bulk processing) of the debits and credits to each program’s accounts, and also the financial accounting associated with the transfers would need to occur. To automate this is not a trivial effort and requires a hefty investment between two large enterprises, each with their own large and complex IT infrastructure. Until companies see it as a priority to invest in automation - which happens either as a strategic move (not likely here) or because manual processing has become so burdensome that there is good enough ROI, the investment doesn’t happen.
30 days seems a little extreme, but it’s certainly conceivable that such a process (between queue time and processing time) would take a while. There may not be enough transfer activity that it merits an IT investment in integrating the systems, or more frequent manual processing, but the expedite fee allows your transfer to get handled off-cycle.
Last edited by javabytes; Nov 17, 2019 at 4:22 am