Aeroplan Points Expiry - How to Determine Expiry Date
 

Hi,

I have about 700,000 Aeroplan points that have been accumulating for several years. I plan to use some this year but I will still be left with several hundred thousand points. How does one determine the expiry date of the points? Do they expire 7 years from the actual date they were posted to the Aeroplan account or 7 years after the calender year they were earned?

How do you determine what you have coming up for expiry?

Thanks,

grover

With 700,000 points, you should have a closer read of the terms and conditions:

http://www.aeroplan.com/terms_and_conditions.do

Specifically:

19. Mileage in an account expires 7 years (84 months) after the date of accumulation. Mileage accumulated in an account prior to January 1, 2007 is deemed to have an accumulation date of December 31, 2006 (regardless of the actual mileage accumulation date). Mileage may expire without further notice.

I am not sure what "reminders" they have for you for how much falls off the table when, but it is presumably a problem closer to 2013.

I see a nightmare coming for Aeroplan members and a cash grab for Aeroplan (they get to keep the cash they received for issuing points and don't have to pay for seats).

That is true, but there already has been a "cash grab" for AP for those who did not "know" or remember the one-year non-activity expiry rule... so you should probably keep that one-year rule in mind as well.

My wife got caught on that one. Had 60,000 points. we got married (changed CC to mine), had a baby and didn't travel for over a year. She lost her points.

These loyalty programs used to be great. But now, it seems the loyalty program wants to have it's cake and eat it to. ther is little transparency to the card holder (I can't even see when my points are expiring) and a simple email notice would have avoided my wife's loss. By the program wants the loss. I agree with others here - these programs will eventually crash and burn. Instead of creating loyalty, people wil start running away form them (sorry for the rant).

I would hope that by 2011 AE will have been able to upgrade its account information to provide what all US programs do with their expiring miles: "Miles expiring at the end of 2013: XX,XXX". This will alert us to any miles that have not been used by then, but I expect that most people redeem enough miles every couple of years to not have many left even by a year ahead of the 7-year deadline. Remember, miles used come from the oldest miles earned.

We're going to have to hope for this, as when I asked them to tell me when my miles were earned they did not have any way to tell me other than going back through old statements.

Rather than waiting on them to screw this up, I've started downloading my transactions from the AE website and keeping a tracking spreadsheet so I'll have my own record. However, right now my miles currently have a life of about 2 years, so shouldn't be an issue.

Ditto! I started keeping track on an excel spreadsheet.

I think I need to start a spreadsheet too! How are you downloading the data? A cut & paste line by line, or is there a way to easily get it into CSV or some useful format?
TIA.

Nothing that fancy. You can cut and paste an entire page of transactions into Excel if you do a paste special text it will put into the columns of your spreadsheet. I usually have to mess around with the date, but everything else works well.

Highlight what you want to copy hit Ctrl C, click on the first box in the new excel spreadsheet, hit Ctrl V.

At the beginning of the year, I note the miles in my account. I then calculate how many miles I used during the year and how many I accumulated, and I know how many will expire in 7 years. Each year is a new tab on the spreadsheet.

Comedy, this is exactly what I do! :)

Although, in my template, I have also added an estimated point redemption value and miles classification columns to have a subtotal of where the miles come from: ie. BIS, airline bonus, credit card, hotel, car rental, etc...just for the sake of curiosity. :)

When I look back, I see a mass (massive for me anyway) of redemptions for myself and family totaling 335,000...nearly clearing out my account over the 12 month period right after the 1/7 year expiry announcement.

The good news is that nowadays you can see when your miles expire in your Aeroplan online account. It clearly tells you this under Personal Information and even in the overview.

What you might not know is that you can reinstate miles when the expiry date lapses. According to the Aeroplan help page:

"Expired miles are eligible for reinstatement up to 7 years following the last accumulation or redemption transaction in the account, whichever is later. You may reinstate a portion or all of your expired miles for an administrative fee of C$30 plus C$0.01 per mile reinstated (plus any applicable taxes). Reinstated miles will be available for redemption for 7 years from the date of reinstatement as long as you remain active in the program."

Seeing that it adds up to $100 per 10,000 miles, it's probably a good idea to use up your Aeroplan points prior to the expiry date.

I see when my account expires (1 year from now) but not when my miles expire.

I don't think that's the case.

One can find how many miles expire by 2013 by calling AE. They gave me my number a couple weeks ago.