Ontario man loses 370,000 Aeroplan miles saved for retirement
 

Looks like CTV is jumping on the CBC train

https://beta.ctvnews.ca/local/toront...1_4416256.html

From the link
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I find it difficult to have sympathy for him. How can somebody who has flown over a million miles with Air Canada, who was actively saving miles in the program for retirement use, not know about the rule to have account activity each year.

I am sure he did know, forgot, called AE, they told him no. He wanted an exception, they told him no. He went to the media hoping for an exception, they said no.

I would say many people just add there FFN in the reservation (or had the corporate TA do that) and yet have zero understanding of how the programs works. I used to work with people like that. At times they wondered why they were getting a new shiny card (top status) and what it could for them. One well travelled manager did not know that he could get domestic lounge access (QF) with a QF gold/plat card.

I don't understand the article describing "French booked a trip earlier this year, but when he checked his Aeroplan account, the miles were gone. He had missed the company’s deadline to use the miles by two weeks."

How did he book a trip before using the miles? Don't you have to have miles in order to book? It's not something you do after the fact.
And if he had booked a different trip earlier this year, then his miles should not have expired due to recent activity.
I'm confused...:confused:

He probably did not book the air portion of the trip and was going to use his Aeroplan points to do so.
Paying $3,700 to reclaim those points is still a good deal because he can get 2 roundtrip business class tickets to Asia at 150,000 points each which will cost well over $10,000 to buy, that is assuming that he can find seats.

article reminded me I have been meaning to login and check 10yroldsuperelite's Aeroplan expiration.

Edit: Phew. Still good for......a while.

1yr expiration is for amateurs. :)

Hard-expiring the points after 1 year, especially large accounts, is illogical. AP got paid for the points, and they presumably got to invest the funds. A modest re-instatement fee, sure, charge $100, but to charge thousands of dollars to have an account reinstated is just abusive, IMHO. The amount of negative goodwill created by cancelling points just doesn't make cancelling points 'worth' it.

Having said that, there's probably an Aeroplan partner out there who would be willing to push through a retroactively dated transaction.

I have no sympathy for him too but he may have some recourse. The story is from CTV Toronto so assuming he is in Ontario there are protections from expiring points. It would depend whether AC closed his account entirely or just wiped out the points.

https://www.ontario.ca/page/reward-points#section-2

Maybe it would be better if the expiration were at 18 or 24 months. But, it is not. It is 12 months. None of us can account for why this particular individual let the deadline pass and why he ignored what AE says would have been two warnings. But, he apparently did. The result seems fair as does the recovery method which still gets the consumer tickets at what seems to be a decent price, if not more than he had planned.

AP really doesn't have a choice in the matter. They have to deny an exception otherwise every single person who has lost points in the past will be seeking the same consideration.

On a couple of occasions I've helped informed infrequent travelers of the rule and helped them keep their AP points. I suggest an AP credit card. It's not bad for a reward card and always ensures you keep your points providing you use it once a year.

There go Bell Media's execs free upgrades!

Typically yes. My wife received this one on November 27th with a 60 day warning....


https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...d55d54e9a3.jpg

All my Aeroplan miles expired at the end of February because of the upcoming devaluation, I only transfer AMEX for immediate redeeming.

All 20 of them. There were at least 4 warning emails from what I remember.

if this guy gets his miles back, I want my sizeable stash back too!

I did this with United miles. I had been a CO platinum and then GS for many years, had 400k miles. Switched to AC/AE and then came back 14 months later to book a YYZ-EWR united flight with points and, poof, they were all gone.

That really really sucked. UA redemptions on short haul were easy and saver points made them super cheap back then.

Outstanding miles represent an enormous cost to all loyalty programs. They're considered currency, so program operators are legally required to maintain sizable cash reserves against them. The more miles in circulation, the higher the reserve they need. In the case of Aeroplan, that's likely billions of dollars locked up in reserve funds.

No question Aeroplan is hoping to *poof* as many of these outstanding miles as possible to lower the reserve requirement, especially with AC's new FF program coming down the pipe. As the date draws near I almost wonder if they will begin offering incentives for people to redeem. Depending on their cash situation, it could be possible, I suppose. Had AC and the banks not bought Aeroplan, I think it would have been a virtual certainty.

It's not any more abusive than a store credit with an expiry date or an unused airline ticket with an expiry date.

We're looking at this one instance of someone who lost 370,000. Meanwhile, how many millions of members does Aeroplan need to consider? If 370 other members had 1,000 miles each expire, that's the same value of "lost" miles as Mr. French... you can see how the size of the user base affects the financials which forces the introduction of these kinds of expiry clauses.

+1

Although it probably doesn't apply to anyone here, should someone be looking for a free method to avoid AP point expiry you can earn them by participating in on-line polls from Leger Opinion. Sign up, specify AP points as your reward and make sure you redeem your points every few months. They don't offer that many points for survey participation but it is free and doesn't take much of your time.

https://www.legeropinion.com/en/

(Disclaimer: I am not associated with Leger in any fashion.)

FFP's in general, do their pricing making assumptions about the miles/points left on the table. There is a cost to everything and thus, if one wants a longer redemption period, something else has to give.

They can't expire based on the date you EARNED them, but that's not the same as expiring based on account activity.

Well, the article only mentions that the person "likely" flew a million with AC... over decades of flying with them, this could mean being a 25K on average for all those years... so maybe he's still a FOTSG after all that. :p

EK has a 3 yr expiry limit which seems to be based on earn dates, and is independent of activity. Right now, I have over 100K with them and my profile shows that 86K will expire on a specific date, even though the additional miles were earned much more recently. But they're pretty good about sending reminders. I think I'd rather have the AC system where I can keep the miles as long as have some minimal activity.

Didn't for me and I lost the few that were left in my account.

"legally"? I'm not a lawyer, but this is the first I've heard of any such 'requirement'. Sure, they have to report such points as a liability when they do their financials, and lenders/investors may view such liability (even though theoretically de-valuable on demand) as being negative for the potential return on their investment in debt or equity securities issued, but I'm not aware of any legislation that requires holding cash reserves against an unsecured liability that effectively can be cancelled at will.

These points have basically, to many Canadians, become currency, a savings plan. They no longer have much of any relationship with loyalty to a specific organization. And businesses have mostly cracked down on any ability for their staff to game the system, fares, etc., for such programs to even be effective in influencing travel decisions as a subtle form of (otherwise prohibited) bribery.

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

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.

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.

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.

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