sunny_sc

A few members of my family have tens of thousands of Aeroplan points that are bumping up against the 7 year expiration on Dec 31, 2013. They aren't able to travel this year so a straightforward redemption for award tickets is out.

Is there anything they can do with them other than redeeming for gift certificates?

YQLflyer

One option could be convert them to another program (that doesn't have expiration dates). This was discussed in a thread earlier this year:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-c...0-9-ratio.html


I actually used the advice on the above thread to move all of my family's (5 of us) Aeroplan points to my RBC Rewards (Avion) account. In total, I moved almost 190,000 Aeroplan points and received about 135,000 Avion points.

Not a great conversion but I basically took points that I could NEVER find flights for and am two thirds of the way to a redemption for 5 tickets to Maui. So even though the conversion was around 1:.7, I was able to capture about $3000 of ticket value from nothing.

If I flew American or British Airways, I could probably do even better.

Just for clarification, this isn't an Air Canada sucks rant. I enjoy flying Air Canada but I don't fly that often and therefore have no status; therefore booking on Aeroplan just feels hopeless. I've had much better luck converting points and booking on other airlines or just booking on Avion's web portal and then getting a bunch of Aeroplan points on the purchased tickets. Based on my success of converting stuff back to Avion, I can actually reduce the cost of a flight to Maui from 45,000 Avion points to about 40K and change. Not a lot but certainly not going to turn it down.

bhp

I think you can still redeem points by Dec 31 2013 and travel for next year in 2014. That's what we're planning to do.

canolakid

why stress yourself looking for flights that nobody can use- go with something fun- a computer; a canoe- something fun. i find redeeming for gift cards just switches the stress from the AE to 'how do I spend this gift card".

j_the_p

Do you like toast? :P

FlyerJF

I actually converted all of my aeroplan points into Amex gift cards in Nov 2011 during the half-points giftcard sale, I figure I can use the gift cards for travel later if I need it. Unfortunately, I havent seen a gift card sale since. At full price (67,500 points for $500 Amex cards or 6,500 points for $50 Sobeys - about $.0077 a point), not a great deal but if the points are expiring, at least the cards never expire (in Alberta anyway). At half price, if it ever happens again, gift cards are great.

jerry305

You mentioned it's family. They could consider buying flights for some one else in the family. Anybody getting married? Any big anniversaries coming up?

24karat

All you have to do is fill up at Esso once and it will reset the clock. No need to let the points expire.

JJonahJ

You missed the point. OP is referring to the miles which have a 7-year shelf life. No amount of Esso gas is going to extend the life of these aging Aeroplans.

arcticbull

Transfer them to US Airways via points.com at a 1:0.75 ratio if you have a Canadian address on your points.com account or 1:0.84 if you have a US address on file with points.com -- and redeem without YQ!

mendy7511

There are companies that will buy your miles from you for a pretty good price (compared to toasters at least).
One company offered me $300 for 25,000 miles.
Basically they book a ticket from your account in J or F and sell them for much less than full price.
It is probably against the T&C, but if they are going to expire anyway, why not?

jerry305

Getting caught will eliminate all your Aeroplan points, not just the ones about to expire. So it'll depend on how many points you've saved up over the last 7 years, vs. the points about to expire.

airbus320

Why not ? Because they will close your account.

mendy7511

If I had tens of thousand points about to expire (like OP), I would rather get some money they see them expire or buy a few toasters.

FWIW, I asked once of these companies and they said they have never seen an account closed after someone sold their points.
I did it for someone in my family and there where no issues.