FlyerTalker683455

I am increasingly convinced that obscure rule management is part if Ac business strategy. It goes for fare buckets, upgrade waitlists, points expiration, code share status mile eligibility, booking rules, surcharges... Obscurity let's them make the rules without having to play by them.

Stranger

Not sure why people would care about expiry of points that are more or less worthless in the first place?

FlyerTalker683455

They are worth a good 8-12 cents per point on intl first class flights.

Stranger

Drean on.

Did you look at the latest devaluation?

Additionally, you should take into account the hugely restricted nature of awards, especially in F. And, valuation of DF awards is by and large of no meaning to th mom and pop types collecting Aeroplan miles. So please stop misleading them.

FlyerTalker683455

Okay, but I book family vacations in f class 8-10 months ahead and have successfully converted my aeroplan miles into 10 cent per mile tickets for many years now. I looked up my flights on expedia for the summer and was quoted ofer 42000$ for four tickets costing me 440000 points. I never waste points on economy flights unless I have to go on a shorthaul to NYC last minute, in which case they are also worth 8 cents per point.

If people collect juice cartons and think they will ever fly anywhere then it's not me but aeroplan misleading them.

KathrynInCanada

Allvest: I, too, booked flights in F and am looking forward to the experience this summer. But had I gone to pay real money for the trip, there's no way I would have spent the $24,000 for the flights. So the real value to me was comparing to business class fares (which I do pay cash for.) I still got about 8 cents per mile which is a lot better than a lot of the rewards I've taken (especially the last minute to NYC on a holiday weekend that cost 80,000 instead of 15,000.)

For me, getting rid of the points before expiry was my number one goal (between us we had a million and spent 90% of them over 2 years of flying, one year of booking since my dh was SE so we had access to priority rewards.)

Our original plan of flying all over the world in our retirement went out the window when the expiry issue came. But we did move up our retirement date so we could use up our points on two trips of a lifetime. When we earned those points we expected 4 - 6 trips of a lifetime out of them but two is better than nothing.

Now that I'm free of my AP points and there's no point in continuing to collect them since I'll never manage to get the 120,000 to 200,000 I'd need for two J-class tickets somewhere interesting, I'm looking forward to being free to use whatever airline I wish now. My cruise line includes air on a lot of cruises so that's one 'affordable' way of flying, along with Porter (lounge plus nice seats) and buying 3 seats for the two of us on long flights (we aren't overly tall so should be able to manage since we'll be saving thousands.)

Funny how AP's policy changes have actually driven me away from AC.

Stranger

The way you value your rewards is pure wishful thinking.

You need to take their heavily restricted nature into account. Example: two weeks ago you could buy a round trip FRA-YYC for CAD2480 all in. With restrictions comparable to a reward. Just like a reward, you had to jump at it or it would be gone. So, fair example. In this instance, 85 k points translate into CAD 1996 when you take out the "surcharges." However on these revenue tickets, you would collect around 11.7 k miles. So, value of the miles: 1996/(85000+11700). About 2.06 cents/mile.

(This is one of those which where not so badly devalued BTW. So now, my miles are worth around 1.96 cents/mile.)

Other example: YYC-YVR. I can buy a Latitude pass for CAD 6840+ 5% GST. Upgraded based upon availability 48 hours ahead. Actually much more flexible than a reward, but with castrated IKK as an SE I usually still can get awards, so let's forget that. On YYC-YYZ I get 3340 miles. Co-pay is around CAD 200 (can't check because Aeroplan gives me an error as usual). Before the latest enhancement, I would value the miles at (2 times 684 times 1.05-co-pay)/(40000+3340)=2.85. Now, 2.32.

So, with SE status, i used to value my miles at around 2 -2.5 cents/mile. Now it's roughly 20% less.

Without status, Ib would say it used to be around 1-1.2 cents/mile. Now 20% less.

FlyerTalker683455

Yea I make those calculations too. Makes perfect sense. However, I use f awards for my kids and book t+ under my name, then swap seats. I get status miles and a nice seat!

As well one of my main reasons to maintain SE status is to make sure i can use the ap miles. Without status they are indeed nearly worthless. I accumulate well over 600000 miles per year and I am kind of hooked on taking my family on what would otherwise be unaffordable trips

FlyerTalker683455

Never thought about the issue of saving up points for retirement. You are right, that is a real theft of points and loyalty. If it were me, I would deliberately avoid AC. I guess aeroplan would cancel points even on lifetime status members unless they made it a benefit not to. I don't understand that they would do it for silver and gold members in the first place. Aeroplan is now a money making machine and promote distrust more than loyalty. Congrats to greedy corporate types who take the love out of customer relationship management.

Andrew! Here is one for you. Can you ask Ac and ap management to figure out a way to make us feel appreciated again? Even as an SE I feel lower than a number. I can't imagine how an average customer feels

KathrynInCanada

Won't deliberately avoid AC because I'm looking for the best value. Until March 1, 2011 we have status and lounges are important to me (hence my comment about switching to Porter.) But we are making no attempt to keep our status, as we did in 2010 (putting off award travel and buying revenue tickets on long hauls so we could have status in 2011.)

The flight we booked in F was originally going to be a latitude ticket upgraded to J. But when the new upgrade system came into play, we could no longer buy the tickets in December for summer travel and upgrade on purchase (using a cert number published here.) Since we would have to wait until March 1 to buy and upgrade the ticket, we decided to use up our points and since there were no J rewards in Jan for the summer, we ended up going with a *A F reward instead.

Obviously, we lucked out - had we gone with our original plan, there would have been a 300K+ points in my account and no upcoming travel anticipated because I'm hoping for a grandchild in 2012 so can't book any retirement travel until we have an idea of which months we'll be be focused on that. So those points would have been devalued after July this year.

I have two Canadian flights planned for 2011 so will probably use AC and upgrade using our credits but will only do that if AC is competitive on price and schedule. After March 1, 2012, I'll be going with whoever is most competitive and convenient.

We'll save our remaining points (80K for me, 60K for my husband) for emergency seats. We've had good luck in the past making it to family when we had to, mainly because our family is located near well-served cities and not tourist destinations where the reward seats are gone when they are loaded into the system. Last minute rewards when you have to travel are actually good value since, quite often, T and even T+ seats are expensive at the last minute.

We'll no longer strive to accumulate frequent flyer points in any program. I switched from Aerogold to a cash back card years ago in order to use the cash for the surcharges.

So all these changes have had the effect of cutting both my AP accumulation and my AC travel. A confluence of life events that contributed to this situation and make me a-typical; no marketing dept. would have planned for customers like me but, regardless, the changes to AP were what finally severed my loyalty to AP and AC.

Rugburn

The Air Canada Website has inserted an

ACCOUNT EXPIRY STATUS

12-month expiry date: February 01, 2013

and the

Seven year mileage redemption REQUEST MILEAGE STATUS

From the Home Screen go to YOUR ACCOUNT...Log in
ACCOUNT EXPIRY STATUS 1/4 way down the page...

when you click on REQUEST MILEAGE STATUS it opens up a small window with your email address

you can edit email address or just click on the SEND REQUEST

think it take 4 days to hear back from Aeroplan

thanks

KyRoamer

I don't fly AC but have 200,001 miles stuck there. The one year rule not the seven was scarey for me.

I planned an overseas trip, transferred AMEX points to get the tickets, hurt my back and had to cancel and redeposit the points. Almost a year passed and I did not know what to do.

Then on the Aeroplan site I saw shopping crediting 1 point per dollar. Located Abe's book store, bought a used $1 book ($3.99 shipping) and for $5 bought me another year. That's were my one mile came from.

Anyhow, I figure out how to fly FC to a US domestic location if I cannot use the miles for international travel within two or three years. Meanwhile, I guess I will buy a book each year from Abe's. BTW Abe's has a great selection of used books. Mine was in very good to excellent condition and arrived in about a week.

jerry305

You can also by an ebook from Kobo to earn 1 Aeroplan mile. $1 or $2 or so, but no shipping costs.

TallestHotelInJapan

Is Aeroplan like most US programs: One transaction every year prevents the miles from expiring?

FlyerTalker683455

Yes

of course they do finally expire after 7 years regardless of annual activity (see Ken's note next)