Amex MR points transfer bonuses (Canada)
 

Are there ever bonuses on transferring MR points?

I see that in the past there have been some 30% - 50% bonuses when transferring to Avios. It appears that there are sometimes smaller bonuses when transferring to AP. Is it likely that there will be a transfer bonus to one of these programs in the next say 6 months?

Are there any other programs that ever have transfer bonuses?

It seems that US members have much greater options when it comes to their MR points.

thanks

Yes - there were bonuses, and hopefully WILL be sometime in 2013. Nobody knows
I took advantage of the 50% Avios and 20-25% Aeroplan

Aeroplan transfer bonus history
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-c...r-bonuses.html

Yes, US is better on almost everything vs. Canada

contentious.

I'm still waiting for the transfer bonuses to show up, too. Let's hope that the 50% Avios transfer comes back, that'd put me into a whole new award category (y)!

I'm waiting for the transfer bonus as well. I saved tons of MR points so far.

Is transferring to BA with the 50% bonus considered the best value for MR? Or are there some other possibly better options that we can wait for?

IIRC, AP had a transfer bonus at year-end 2010 and 2011 for a number of partners that included MR. It's not a wonderful bonus, for example, in 2011 it topped out at 25K bonus for transferring 100K.

In 2012 they had the same year-end promotion but it did not include MR.

I think there might have been another transfer bonus in 2012 that included only Canadian Amex MR points; i.e. from a card issued in Canada.

Based on history, I would not expect a transfer bonus for USA MR points at least until November - if at all.

Pretty sure that Amex will have a transfer bonus in May-June, the question is whether the Amex exclusion is going to become a staple of the T&Cs.

My guess is AP does not like Amex transferors because there are a lot of Amex account holders with a serious lot of MRs and a lot are travel savvy and know how best to exploit the AP system. Just a skeptic's guess.

Be carefull with transfers to AP. Last year I wanted to transfer 200k from MR and phoned to see if total would earn the reward. They said yes but to be sure make two 100 k transfers. Total bonus was 25 k instead of 50k. When I enquired I was told that regardless of amount transferred bonus maxes out at 25 k. Lesson learned

if you have an amex platinum card, you earn 1.25 MR per CAD spent. If you get a 50% bonus transfer to BA, that comes out to 1.875 avios per CAD. personally, i consider that pretty good.

always, always, always read the T&C yourself. never, ever, ever trust a phone agent.

I'm pretty new to MR. Do they email you when there is a bonus? Or does it pop up somewhere on the transfer page?

If it was an AMEX Transfer promo, it will show up on the AMEX MR page. But if it was a promo of the destination program (i.e. AEROPLAN Convert Promo), it will show up on the destination program web site.

i don't remember if they email you or not. i think so but i'm not 100% sure.

it's always mentioned here in this forum and i subscribe to a couple RSS feeds of travel/points bloggers. one in particular is frequentflyerbonuses.com

Great! Thanks Ben and alc. I'll make sure to subscribe to the RSS