If I were you, I'd first look for a 'live' person from points.com to talk to. Try 'live chat' or email them (click on the link from their web page below):

http://questions.points.com/home

The email could be sent out due to a system error. If it is not, then there must be a reason for them to do so -- find out that reason and attack it. This is business, do not let your personal emotion controls you. Think positive and good luck.

Anyone see a sign up bonus lately for points.com?

aeroplan to us dm
 

I'm planning to transfer 84000 aeroplan miles to us dm. Looking to see if anyone here has a recent experience in doing this transfer. How long does it take?

it's always been 3-5 days for me although it can take longer.

Points.com Questions
 

Hi!

I decided to use LH's M&M as my main FF program. I was wondering if it's legal to use points.com to transfer my points from Aeroplan and BA to LH's Miles and More?

If yes, and if there's a fee for the transfer (which I guess there would be), can I pay it by the points that I'm transferring instead of $?

If they are all partners then its possible, but you'd almost certainly lose a ton in the transfer. You would have to pay cash for the points transfer, you can't pay for the transfer with points. Overall, it's typically a bad value proposition to use POints.com for transfers.


BTW, this doesn't belong in MR discussions. Alerted mods to move to Info Desk .

Oh sorry, didn't know.

Thanks for the answer though, I appreciate it! :)

LH isn't showing up as a participant for me, even if all you want to do is show current balances in your loyalty wallet. (I'm in the USA, might be different elsewhere)

For the programs that do fully participate, there is a 'trade' option which has fees associated with it, and an 'exchange' option which has no fees. And yeah, both of those are hugely bad deals, and are only really worth it if you're wanting to get some value out of a largely unused program where you don't have enough points to get anything out of it in its native form.

Points.com exceise tax question?
 

Hello, not sure where to post this inquiry?

Not sure how many Canadians are on FlyerTalk, but has anyone bought points from points.com

I was about to buy some points and noticed there's additional charges on top and its for Canadian residents.

Miles are purchased from Points.com Inc. for a cost of $27.50 per 1,000 miles, plus a 7.5% Federal Excise Tax*, and GST/HST for Canadian residents.

Does anyone know the background or why there is 7.5% federal tax hike when buying points?

Points.com handles mileage purchase, transfer, and gifting for several airlines. If you were charged excise tax this suggests that you purchased miles for a USA-based carrier, such as AA, AS, DL or UA, is that correct?

When you buy an airline ticket from a US based carrier the excise tax is included in the price, and normally not itemized. Assessing the tax at the time the miles are sold is the way the carriers have devised to collect the tax on award tickets.

Alaska Airline points. Yes, was about to buy 80,000 + 3200 (bonus) for $2200 and with this Federal tax at 7.5% and GST/HST (1.13%) i'm looking at addition $800 on top..

total seems to be just under $3000 a.i? tax itself seems to be allot.

Also I'm Canadian, so currency exchange rate sucks too at this point...

Something is wrong with the arithmetic. $2200 x .075 is $165. $2200 x .0113 is $24.86. Isn't the GST/HST rate more like 13%? $2200 x 0.13 would be $286. Either way I don't see how they would get to $800, even if they collect tax on the bonus miles.

7.5% tax is charged on all purchases, to my knowledge. To avoid the GST/HST, try to get an American debit visa/mc (which come with most bank accounts) and "move" your address to the US. Or find an American friend!

Aeroplan referred me to points.com
 

I just logged into my aeroplan account because my miles are due to expire (I live in the UK and haven't used Aeroplan for a while). They recommend a partner called points.com as a central points/miles manager. Has anyone used this, and is it useful if you have a lot of hotel and airline loyalty accounts?

Points.com is legit. I think they provide management services directly to many of the loyalty programs.

Points.com also provides transfer of points from one program to another, but the transfers can be highly unfavorable. For example, If you can trade 1000 MyAir miles for 500 GreatHotels points, and 500 GreatHotels points for 250 FreeAir, Points.com will offer to transfer 1000 MyAir to get 250 FreeAir. There can also be transfer fees. It's usually only a good option if you need a very small number of points to top off an award.

However...

One good way to extend your points is to go to the Aeroplan shopping portal and buy something. Like a song on iTunes. All you need to keep your miles alive is one point added or deducted. So if you buy a $1 song on iTunes and you are logged into the Aeroplan shopping portal (I forget its name), you'll get one point, and your miles will stay alive another year.