robsaw

While AC and the banks SHOULD be able to jointly determine and control at the application stage exactly who is and who is not eligible for a New Card Bonus/Welcome Bonus and not actually award such bonuses in violation of the Aeroplan/Bank T's&C's, it is perfectly clear this is targeted at churners and other gamers of the system and those people know exactly what they are doing (and hoping they'll get away with it).

Smiley90

Churning, for the most part, never was against any T&C's. Most "once in a lifetime" language was introduced fairly recently. That's on the banks and aeroplan, not on users. I'm not aware of instances of applicants faking personal information to get SUBs.

yulscs

Miramichi airport.

RangerNS

Ask gcmap. And then refer to this study: https://themanatee.net/shocking-stud...-any-language/

Adam Smith

It doesn't define the different types - sophisticated FTers know what they are, but they're not defined - and no, you're not reading the same section. Section 11 on prohibited activity prohibits "applying for multiple credit cards across different product types [...] across multiple financial institutions". So you might think you're allowed to earn one new card bonus per type, e.g. a TD personal VIP and a CIBC business card, based on S10, but S11 says it's prohibited to even apply for those different cards. It's very poorly drafted, because it's Aeroplan T&Cs.

Stranger

Said "campus" not airport... :-)

mrclutch31

I agree those two sections are conflicting.
If I remember correctly, that statement in Section 11 was already there. I think as a catch-all clause to handle abusers.
Now that they added Section 10 and specified the maximum one bonus rule there, I actually feel safer applying for a different card type compared to before. If you only have 1 personal card and apply for another business card, I really don't think they would go after you and now you can refer to Section 10 terms if there is an issue with their compliance team. Before, it was even more vague.

sports1

I think it's purposely vague, either because AC wants the leeway to enforce arbitrary rules, or because they themselves haven't exactly figured out to what extent they want to limit churners.

I am quite certain that neither CIBC nor TD care much about gamers. However, Aimia (before they sold the program to AC) definitely cared very much about those gaming the system. As a result, TD and CIBC are forced to care.

I'm guessing beyond the most egregious ways you could "abuse the system" (e.g. reapp every time there's a new SUB/WB and immediately cancelling once the bonus posts), most of the churning noise is just that - noise. Has an impact on TD/CIBC's bottom line, but not enough for them to do anything major (until someone complains, *cough* AC).

The last shutdown (from earlier this year) had many DPs suggesting those being targeted were all ones that gamed SUB/WBs with TD.

My tinfoil hat guess is that the main driver for this T&C update (based on the timing) was to address the open secret of family sharing abuse/fraud, and to explicitly forbid any automation interaction with the Aeroplan program. Not surprisingly, both of these were major pain points that Mark Nasr brought up in the Points Miles and Bling Zoom call Sept 2023. Though there's a good point to be made that the T&C doesn't apply to those who aren't Aeroplan members, so I'm not sure how that gives AC any grounds to stop those scraping AC's reward inventory (as shown by the lawsuit against seats.aero, they clearly don't need an updated T&C to try to do that).

I'm guessing the additional language RE: churning is just that; something they were always intending to make more specific (though still absolutely and hilariously vague, come on AC: do better), and is fairly free to throw in if you're going to send legal a doc to review anyways.

hoipolloi

Churning Aeroplan welcome bonuses is for beginner level travel hackers. Advanced folks earn mostly from manufactured spending or churning credit cards that earn another points currency but can transfer/convert into Aeroplan or other airline/hotel program reward currency.

yowcat

So I have a second account that TD created for me years ago when I applied for the Aeroplan card. The agent didn't correctly enter my Aeroplan number and I guess they created me a new account. (It's funny as every so often they gift it 25K.

I don't want to run afoul of the new rules here. I see there is a Merge account functionality on the website. Does anybody know which account you request it from to ensure which Aeroplan number stays active? Don't want to learn a new one after a few decades. I assume you log into the one you want to KEEP and click on Merge and give it the one you want to get rid of?

Smiley90

I'd argue that manufactured spend is nothing like getting a non-AC branded credit card. The latter explicitly has "points transfer to AP" as a stated, both-parties-approved benefit. The former is as close to getting your account audited and closed as possible and, while possible, not something most everyday folks are going to do. Don't lump the 2 together. The MS folks are likely doing more to hurt the system than those of us getting credit card bonuses.​​​​​

Adam Smith

That's not at all correct. As I've said before, I'm not privy to the fine details of Aeroplan's agreements with the issuers, but I can guarantee that churning hurts both AC and the issuers.

Sign-up bonuses are essentially a marketing expense to entice new customers. That, plus the cost of on-boarding a new customer (identity check, printing and mailing the card, etc) represent a substantial upfront investment that takes time to pay back through ongoing interchange revenue and interest.

I'm going to make up some round numbers to illustrate, but let's say the SUB and other costs are $450, and customers are expected to generate $400 in annual margin. A customer who churns the card after 3 months and only $100 of operating profit has created a net loss of $350. If the issuer and AC split the profits 60/40, the issuer has lost $210 and AC has lost $140.

That's not good for either of them.

You've got it backwards there. As explained above, churners hurt both AC and the CC issuers.

MS, on fhe other hand, involves spending real and usually substantial amounts of money on credit cards, and turning that spending in to something cash-like to repay the CC bill at little to no net cost.

If someone overpays their utility bill by $10K and gets a refund via cheque, that doesn't hurt the CC issuer or AC in any way, because they get to keep their swipe fees. The one that gets hurt in that scenario is the merchant, which has to eat the interchange and other costs of accepting that CC payment - let's just say it's 2%, so they're out $200 (plus whatever their costs are to handle the refund) for zero benefit.

Bartolo

Interesting discussion.

Any other speculation or knowledge of AE program changes for 2024?

sports1

It definitely hurts both AC and the issuers, but generally speaking gaming doesn't make enough of an impact for TD to do much proactively about it. Yes, they'll stop the most egregious of churners, and they are forced to respond when Aimia (now AC) stir about it (given it's a partnership), but unlike AMEX they aren't necessarily going after every churner to make a statement.

However, like you I don't have the finer details.

You'd figure TD would be equally as concerned with churning with their other products (FCT VI, CBVI) but they're relatively churn-friendly - there hasn't been a scenario (that I know of) like with the AP shutdowns earlier this year with their other products.

Regardless though, I see AC going after a multipronged approach with their "recent" fraud/IT/whatever they want to frame it as: 1. Stop points from being generated easily, 2. make ticket brokers jobs harder (family sharing and "no automation").

Regarding MS... that feels much more of an AML concern, less of churning.

bambinomartino

Might be the wrong place to ask but I wanted to inquire about booking a flight and subsequently joining Aeroplan. I have a family member who just booked Europe to New Zealand on TK, which would yield a non-trivial 10,000 Aeroplan points.

Obviously if it is an Air Canada flight, they would know when it was booked, and I believe you cannot retroactively sign up and then earn points for that flight. Does the same apply when the flight is booked on a partner airline? Would creating an Aeroplan account on the same day (5 hours later) be a solution?

Thank you!

Edit: or perhaps I had that wrong. Booking then enrolling then taking the flight is perhaps okay?