Originally Posted by CanadaDH

My wife let her points expire about 5 or 6 years ago (she didn't have very many, about 8k as I recall from a flight to Europe, and she never collected them actively) and we found that Home Hardware was very cooperative at backdating points retroactively to reinstate expired points. Just had to find a receipt that didn't have any points credited and it was relatively easy.

Originally Posted by Ancien Maestro

Does backdating points work to restore Aeroplan points without incurring the 1 cent per mile fee with Aeroplan? It would be a miracle solution if it worked and the 1 year gap would have to be audited throughout the entire account history from the backdate by Aeroplan

Originally Posted by NotJustDreaming

There was no fee at all to add those missing miles which then delayed the one year inactivity cutoff. $0 cost for us to get back to status quo.

Though it may be a six month window for missing merchant points, not a one year period.

When I spoke with the AE rep about how to proceed he suggested I look for any boarding passes in the six months prior to DH letting the points expire. He further said that the request 'to AE' to get those points credited had to be within six months following the points expiring. I had just a few days window to find that boarding pass, which in any event didn't exist.

He also said that this wouldnt work for merchants, just airlines. I extrapolated that six month requirement to any partner. It doesn't make sense that a merchant couldn't correct an ommission/error. Maybe it just means that AE won't make an effort to correct but the merchant can. It seems that companies have a specific section of employees whose job it is to credit missing points. One woman I spoke with said she could put in a request to submit missing points as far back as I had a receipt. She didn't think it would be a problem with AE either. The Esso rep though explained that even though she will submit it, it may not be accepted by AE.

Originally Posted by CanadaDH

It didn't cost us anything either. We were only about 2 months past the expiration, so perhaps the relatively short time lapse worked in our favour. But Aeroplan simply said that if you can get a merchant to credit missing points back to before the expiry, then they would reinstate them. That's when we went digging for receipts. Fortunately, because of a home-based business at the time, we were saving just about every receipt we had anyway.

There's no reason why Aeroplan shouldn't restore the points when a merchant backdates a transaction, since there are many merchants who are famous (or infamous?) for being extremely slow to post points in the normal course. Many don't even post until you chase them (Hertz, etc.). Some will even backdate reversals of points, as some people learned during the recent star challenge and certain e-store partners!

Originally Posted by Ancien Maestro

The key is to have a merchant backdate.. A merchant can correct miles but use the current date. The merchant would have to knowledgeable and savvy enough to know how to backdate the points.

Originally Posted by DaveTO

The parrot has returned!

Thanks for repeating exactly what CanadaDH said.

Originally Posted by dom44

A few weeks later I checked my account online and the miles had been credited to my account and I figured my account was going to be in good standing for another year.

Originally Posted by dom44

.. sent them a copy of a Luftansa flight (I bought with cash) and presented the ticket number to them showing them that those flight miles would have been credited to account causing my account to be active.
Their customer representative simple ignored the evidence I presented

Originally Posted by beep88

Do you have proof? screen print?



"As of December 16, 2013, all members will be required to process their retroactive flight credit requests online, go to Aeroplan.com/mileagecredit to access the enhanced self-service "Request Mileage Credit" form.

If you have sent documentation to the Aeroplan Contact Centre regarding a missing flight credit on or after December 16, 2013, kindly note that Aeroplan will not process the request."

Not all Lufthansa flights earn Aeroplan miles:

https://www3.aeroplan.com/earn_miles...fthansaAirways

Originally Posted by dom44

I can pull up my credit card records and show them that I made a purchase at Esso, but my credit card statement does not prove to them that I presented an aeroplan card.

Any suggestions on what I can do to get my miles back or take action against aeroplan?

Originally Posted by NotJustDreaming

Well, they weren't technically MY points... But either way now I don't have to get divorced!

A little background:

I've redeemed travel rewards through Visa Infinite before but I'm new to strategically collecting rewards and only just signed up for credit cards based on the bonus.

Around the time I was figuring out the value of travel hacking, my husband let over 240,000 Aeroplan points expire. Yes, very painful. It was all earned through flights for work. No credit card spend. Certainly no strategy. When he was top tier he didn't even bother using the free upgrade certificates he received and only occassionally used the lounge. No idea of the perks. I didn't pay much attention to it because I didnt get to travel much by non charter air.

His rationale was they were all about to expire under the seven year rule anyway. He thought there was no point in doing a simple purchase as he wasn't going to bother with Aeroplan anymore.

I'm juggling activation dates and spend requirement to accumulate 90k through credit card bonuses and doing my spend patiently watching my balance slowly creep up. He wipes out 240k! Sigh....

I find out when I tell him 'good news, aeroplan is waiving the seven year expiry'. He's got balls because he told me right away!

Anyway, after asking him repeatedly to call Aeroplan and explain his stupidity, err, misguided ways, I finally did it myself. Not much they could do.

The $.01 per mile charge is still in effect to reinstate them. Plus the $30 fee. Plus tax!

At the same time I was looking through all our receipts for the last year prior to the points expiring ... I'm the family CFO and I have a habit of taping them in my agenda if there is a remote possibility of returning the purchased item. I even found some gas receipts from Esso.

I called every Aeroplan partner that we had a receipt for. Not as large a task as it sounds because we don't do much shopping in general. The lady at Esso scoffed in disgust. On call back a guy told me he'd put in a request to have the points added. Some companies were much more helpful than others.

I pretty much gave up. But to my surprise, some points were recently credited for purchases several months ago. Yay! We got the points back and now I have to learn how to strategically spend them.

Was it worth the two hours I spent on the phone with those few companies? Absolutely! Was it worth the angst every time I thought of the waste? No way.

Some of you said at the beginning of this thread that you don't have sympathy for people this happens to. But not everyone follows it as closely as you do. Until just recently I didn't even consider logging in to my account let alone his. But now I know what we can do with them.

I've resolved not to think of all the spending we've done over the years without a rewards strategy. And at least I can get over my frustration with DH for letting these points expire in the first place. He knew I was thinking of Fiji...

I guess most of the people who let points expire have small balances which can easily be recovered with a credit card bonus.

Sorry for the long post. I can't be brief for some reason.

Hello by the way!

Originally Posted by getliquid

any ideas anyone?