I've had the Priority Club no exchanges message for about two weeks now as well. Hopefully they fix it before I hit the mandatory cash out point for Best Buy Rewards Zone from that program's daily poll because I was planning on that exchange being there.

Just checked this morning and the error message for Priority Club is gone from points.com. Now it seems you just can't exchange at all.

My mom cannot seem to register her AA account. The error message is always along the lines of 'we cannot communicate with AA at this time' . Anyone have this problem?

Isn't it because of the error exchange rate with amtrak?

Priority Club seems to be back as an exchange option. It just let me move my Best Buy points over there. (still roughly 2 BB points to 1 PC point rate.)

Perfect! I see it, and just emptied out my VX account (finally!)

I've had the same problem. I e-mailed them and received a response that I needed to call in and provide them with information. It was too much effort and sounded a little too shady for the marginal benefit I sometimes receive from points.com.

My points.com account no longer shows US Airways as a transfer option in the "transfer, exchange & buy" section -- before jumping to conclusions, is anyone else having the same issue? If so, this might be the end of the Aeroplan --> US Airways transfer option.

Yes, my account has the same issue.

They say US Airways no longer being an option is a bug and it'll be fixed shortly... of course they've been saying this for two weeks now so we'll see.

I would say the whole program is a bug:D

I would agree. It has been a bug in its new and old form and I have been saying this on here since 2003.

Got an e-mail today saying you could now do surveys on points.com via e-rewards sibling company peanut labs and get points/miles in return.

Participating companies right now- Alaska, AA, Frontier, Hawaii, Icelandair, Avianca Life Miles, Priority Club, Best Buy Rewards Zone, US Airways, Virgin America

US Airways still hasn't been fixed... so much for a bug...

US & UA not available for swapping on Points.com
 

Lat night, I logged into Points.com just as a quickie way to check my balances and noticed the trade/exchange options were greyed out for both UA & US. These options are still available for AA so I would encourage anyone who has orphaned points (Best Buy, Frontier or ??) in programs they don't use to swap them to AA. No one knows how long they will be an option.

There is a screenshot of what I am talking about on my blog.

us is removed permanently, no idea about ua

US & UA not available for swapping on Points.com
 

AFAIK, pre and post merger, UA never allowed you to swap out of the program. Not sure about into MP, though.

trading miles
 

is there a place to trade like delta skymiles for united miles?

points.com Points Select Dumped Us
 

My company, an online merchant, has been a customer of points.com's Points Select loyalty program since last July. These kinds of programs don't just take off on their own. They take customer development, advertising, programming, man hours.... in other words, money!

Today we received a "Dear John" email from them with no explanation with regard to the reason. They are simply dumping us as of September 1st or when our balance reaches zero, whichever comes first.

We have been trying to get the new banners for weeks, as they have added new program participants which we desperately wanted to promote. One reply claiming they were working on getting them for us, but no banners. Now we have spent all this time and money developing this program in more ways than I can describe here, and BAM. Adios!

FYI, this program isn't cheap. At a cost of $0.0425/mile or point, it is not something any of us would ever purchase for ourselves. It's also on autopilot for them. We do all the work, going to their website to enter customer email addresses, names and number of points to award, at which point the customer receives an auto-generated email with their claim code.

Having read nothing positive about points.com on these threads, I was thinking that we had found the one good thing they had to offer. Now we are just screwed. More time undoing all the things we have spent time doing for the last year, and hoping we don't miss anything. Possibly losing customers that we have invested our time and money to develop.

We are angry, stunned and financially damaged as a result of this inexplicable action. What arrogance to just boot a good, paying customer who isn't simply low maintenance, but virtually NO maintenance for them. As I said, it's all self service.

I'm hoping to find others who have had experience with these people and can possibly shed some light on what, if any measures we could take to convince them to continue to take our money. If there were any kind of competition to their service, we would simply laugh and switch, but they were exactly what we had looked for for years.

Anyone have any experience and/or hope to share, please?

Right now, we are just sitting around :mad:

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.

Here's the link to the Aeroplan e-store: https://www4.aeroplan.com/estore/

I use it for both account tracking-nice to have a list of all account numbers in one place so I don't have to hunt down the numbers for less-used accounts when I do need to mess with them- and also as a way of extracting some value from programs I'm very unlikely to use again or ever use, figuring a lousy exchange rate and getting something I will use is better than just letting the points expire.

That's all really great info, thanks. It sounds like it might be useful as a way of understanding what's feasible, but not always as the agent for doing it. And for keeping all the info in a central place instead of the spreadsheet I'm currently maintaining on one computer.

Thanks for the itunes idea - I was looking at the options but it's been a busy day and I'd given up.

IIRC some airlines do not sell miles directly, but through points.com

it may have started small originally, but has become huge (the biggest?)

I found good value in exchanging a few thousand Saga Club (Icelandair) points for Esso Extra points. I'll use the latter for car washes, which is better value than the sandwiches I could have bought with my Saga Club points onboard an Icelandair flight.