Symmetre

Yup, the cash reserve is a regulatory requirement under federal law.

mapleg

Jagboi

I could get more miles filling my car at Esso than from a YYC-YYZ flight.

I'd argue that it's a much better use of money to buy the lowest price Y airfare that gets you where you're going and invent the cash, than to buy expensive Y airfares that give more miles for the possibility of redemption later.

5mm

mapleg

jasdou

mapleg

yyznomad

The article mentions that the person says he "likely" few a million miles (not "over")... so since he doesn't really know, it could be much less than a million (or way over).
But really, who cares if he flew 1.00001 million or 850K? At which "point" does one become an expert or knowledgeable in these things? 735.2923945848754938459444833302K?

And yes, "caveat emptor", so to speak.

Also, just because he had 370,000 miles that he had planned to use at retirement, doesn't mean he didn't use any of it over the past "35 years" that he was a member. This was never clarified in the article.

expert7700

2yrs back, I found myself in the YYZ Signature Suite surrounded by million milers. I talked to a (retirement age) father and middle age son. Singapore and India, paid J, every few weeks. They both had over a million Aeroplan miles but had never redeemed any. I did my good dead for the year and showed them FT and the mini RTW threads. The fact that they had never expired seemed to be dumb luck rather than any planning.

I think a ton of people don't book their own flights (during work careers) and a ton of people don't check their email spam filter.

The law on gift cards / points cited upthread seems to (barely) allowing expiration of points.... That needs changed to stipulate that multiple reminder methods need to be employed. Date of mailing a physical letter or post card, and email send logs should be sufficient.

//oh what fun that would be to query a list of accounts that are due to expire and gift tens of thousands of them each 1 mile. Of course, this would totally wreck accounting forecasts for wiping poings off the books.

mellon

Aeroplan and AIr Canada don't care, they realize everyone thinks the program sucks and AC will rebrand it in another 2 years.

FlyerTalker70

Out of curiosity, would Ontario Rule 47 apply to the case here? I know that AC would argue that mile expiry is based solely on account activity but would be curious whether the threat of testing that theory in court would make AC do the right thing for the passenger in question.

It is somewhat surprising that just 12 months of inactivity is all it takes to wipe off an érrorPlan account. Most other carriers have 18 month or 24 month rules, with DL being quite generous in having no expiry policy for their pesos. As a Canadian who lives abroad and credits miles solely to UA, I can certainly appreciate the difficulty in keeping Aeroplan accounts active. I believe my TD Aeroplan credit card account prevents such a thing from occurring (is that correct?) In any event, finding reward flights without scam charges and/or transferring miles over to érrorPlan from my AE Gold accounts is a bit of a rarity for me (I'm lucky if I can do one of those things in a given year).

Safe Travels,

James

farwest101

Aeroplan did do the right thing. The canceled his expired points as they should have been. Almost all programs have some sort of expiration - whether it's 12, 18, 24, 36 months is immaterial. AP is decent in that any activity will extend them, unlike some carriers where once the time is up, they are gone.

Had the guy used awardWallet or similar program (or even a sticky on his.desktop puter), he could have easily kept his account current. And he still can get them back by paying 1c pt...

tcook052

Folks, I wouldn't have thought it necessary but apparently some posters require a reminder that off topic political & economic posts are not permitted so please stick to the topic at hand and leave the political banter for the OMNI P/R (Politics and Religion) forum.

tcook052
AC forum mod.

diburning

Remember, Aeroplan is a business. Although it has since been repurchased by Air Canada, it's still operating as a separate company with the rules of the previous owner(s) in place. Hilton isn't an airline, but their points expire after 12 months of inactivity. Singapore Krisflyer has a hard 3 year rule (meaning that miles have a shelf life of 3 years after earning them, regardless of activity, with no opportunity to roll them over for later use unless a fee is paid to extend the expiration by 6 months, and can only be done once)

My questions are:

1. Does Aeroplan hide the expiration date/policy or make it hard to find, or use really small font? (like Hilton)

2. Does Aeroplan have verbiage in the rules similar to US carrier programs, with language similar to "miles are property of <airline/company> and do not belong to the member, and are allocated for their use with the permission of the <airline/company> and may be terminated at any time?"

Not reading the rules is not the same as being misled.

pitz

Well my research has turned up nothing. The only discussion of regulation of such programs, aside from that implied by normal contract law that I could find was:

link:

In the 6 page discussion of regulation of programs (pages 56-62), I fail to see any requirement of a statutory 'cash reserve'. So all I can conclude based on such is that the desire to 'expire' points is driven by the desire to reduce, in the accounting sense, the liability. But what good is that if the company also ends up destroying goodwill? The "Ontario Man" who lose his 370k Aeroplan points probably will never patronize Air Canada or an Aeroplan participant again for the rest of his life, as a really stupid 'policy' basically robbed him of $7400 or so at the customary 2 cents/point.



Does Krisflyer sell points in their program to other businesses for distribution to customers? Can you get a Krisflyer credit card? Or is it exclusively a FFP?