Your wife can transfer her points to your AP/BA accounts.

Unfortunately what the CS rep says doesn't matter. It may work, it may not, it's too soon to know for sure. Although business cards are still OK so I suggest you look into that. I don't understand why they don't have an AP Biz card though :mad:

A) where are you flying out of? even YVR-MIA isn't 700.- ...

B) Compare mileage costs for flights from your destination to Miami and see what program is cheapest and where you can most easily accumulate miles... but I don't think this thread is the right one for that. Try in the information corner under the "what FFP should I join" thread?

not knowing your home airport, but knowing the short timeline before new year's (at least in the points world)...i'd guess it's going to be very tough to a) accumulate the points in time and b) find seats for four people, especially for new year's travel.

If you just want to save money and lock in some seats...sign up for travel cash back card and you can save a few hundred. cap one aspire, bmo world elite travel, scotia amex gold...they each offer a few hundred of savings.

+1

What can one do with MBNA Rewards points? :confused:

Can't find the info with a simple Google search.

Those tickets are probably gone. Maybe you might find 1 but it will involve a wicked connection.

Quickest route is to "buy" Aeroplan miles with Plat cards. The Amex Aeroplan card, $499 for 50,000, the TD Inf. Privilege, $399 for 50,000. Then the Amex gold for free 25,000. You'll have to spend a minimum of $2500 right away (minimum spend for the bonus).

You will have then spent $800 already. By the the the time the miles are posted it's now 90 days. Even if you do get a ticket or 2, it's in Y with long connections,add the taxes and fees to the $800 already spent and you'll be wondering why you went this route. Not to mention you still need 2 more tickets. And probably won't be on the same flight.

Beyond redeeming for flights and hotel rooms, MBNA is known for its cash-back rewards, and a main feauture of this program is the ability to redeem points for straight cash-back (5000 points= $50).
Source: https://www.ratehub.ca/credit-cards/...rd-point-value

CRA says that rewards that are paid out as cash back is taxable income.
I always go for a statement credit where possible.

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/bsnss/tp.../menu-eng.html

CPhil,

I'm with the others on this. Christmas break awards this late will be unavailable or super inconvenient.

There is the West Jet World Elite RBC MasterCard. It has an annual fee though ($99):

$250 West Jet dollars welcome bonus

Annual $99 round trip companion fare (plus taxes, fees and other charges) anywhere in Canada or the continental U.S. (excludes Hawaii and Puerto Rico)

1st checked bag free for the primary card holder

So between you and your wife and accounting for the annual fee, you can knock $300 off the airfare for two people and pay $99 plus taxes etc for two other tickets.

You can collect Advantage (American Airlines) points on West Jet flights.

I considered the cards for an upcoming trip to Florida over Christmas as well. We're a family of five and months ago I found round trip direct flights on West Jet for the dates we wanted for $497 all in or roughly $2,500 for the five of us. Factoring in the West Jet welcome dollars, the $338 base fare, companion fees and annual fees, the value of two West Jet credit cards for my itinerary came in at just under $800. Not tremendous savings but it would have brought the five tickets down to $1,720.

I thought of that one too...but when how long does it take for the 2-4-1 voucher to become available?

How does redeeming for flights and hotel rooms work?

Is cashback in the form of a cheque or statement credit?

Thanks

Damn...
 

Thanx for the reality/fact check guys. You guys crushed my hopes so much I think I'll be hitch hiking to FL!

Anyone have room for a family of 4?

Seriously, how possible would it be to just drive as far south as possible and catch a plane ride out? BOS? ALB? JFK? IAD??? With points or low fare?

Any options welcomed!

FYI my airport is YUL

if you'd booked them earlier, this would've been a no-brainer

AA direct flight YUL-MIA is 10000 BA Avios. at this point, the only points redemption for this I can think of are AAnytime rewards, but those go for 45k for a ONEWAY at the moment. Huge waste. At this point, looking for a cheap fare from SOMEWHERE and hoping to get a lucky few non-connected seats will be your best bet. just scour google flights, good luck.

updated to add the $60 GCR rebate in the wiki for MBNA Alaska Airlines card.

Good question. I just 'considered' the card but did not get it in the end. I'll ask a colleague and get back to you.

I don't know what your exact dates are, but if you aim on coming back jan 2/3 those are the worse dates for flying back and really jack up the price of the flights.

You can find reasonable fares from plattsburgh with allegiant or spirit coming back during the week after, like the 5-6-7 of jan.

Also, don't limit yourself in flying into MIA, look at FLL or even PBI which is a bit farther north than miami, but can be cheaper.

The above link is not referring to individuals. I called the CRA and they said it's irrelevant and neither are taxable income. It's possible the rep was wrong I guess.

Airmiles
 

What are best uses of dream miles? I have some miles and thinking of using it next year. Flights from yyz-yyt is 1700 mile or 2200 mile +$150 tax. Is this good value?

I cashed out, sort of, with BMO Investment voucher ($100 or $500)
I think it'll end Oct 1, so hurry

AIR MILES - Reward Product Details
https://www.airmiles.ca/arrow/Reward...uestid=1463727

Thanks. How long did it take to get the certificates? The site says 4- 5 weeks. Did BMO staff familiar with it. I don't have any accounts or investments with BMO and I have to open one to deposit this. May be I can open a mutual funds or GIC for a year.

Is that true for amex in Canada? I guess it is too early for anyone to know about TD churnability

Since July 1st, yes

TD CHURN http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-c...-card-206.html

Amex, yes, personally. But I did get a 2nd BizGold using a holding company of mine, just waiting on the 40k and got 15K self referral. Just Cancelled my 1st BIzGold- will reapply dec/jan. got the 2nd gold early August. Got back from a July vacation to find out the bad news:eek:. So I thought why not go for a 2nd gold?

Will also try this with the CIBC biz card, my new one should be here any day. I do have a 3rd #'d company....just don't want to push my luck.:p:p

I will find out soon about the personal SPG bonus. have a biz one currently and had a personal one several years ago. Wonder how far back the one bonus per card etc etc.... Goes

So I got the TD Aeroplan Privilege card. 25k sign-up, 25k more after spending $1000. The extra 25k pushes the cost per AP to 0.8c, which is acceptable. Any other perks I get with the card are a bonus. $50 off at shop.ca + 3000 more Aeroplan could be useful.

I was pre-approved for this card, so figured why not?

$200,000 Annual household requirement seems a little steep.

Is the AF waived first year on this card?

Nope, at least not for me. I came across some reports. Tried to get it waived or reduced, but no dice despite my extensive banking relationship with TD (pretty much all of my banking products). Kind of stupid, they'll waive the $120 on the Infinite if you have the all-inclusive chequing account, but won't reduce the $399 AF by at least $120 if you upgrade the card.

Oh well, it's 0.8c per point, which is fine by me. At the usual 25k sign-up bonus there is no appeal to this card.

I guess they figure if you're ball in' hard enough to qualify for it, you should have no trouble ponying up the 4 bills. ;)

I guess.

I consider the $400 an investment a) in the initial points and b) leverage I can use for a future card and/or retention offer. For example, I'll eventually convert to the Infinite version then wait for them to try and upsell me.

Milesbuzz: Canada
 

is the $200,000 household income a hard point has anyone tried reducing this number?

I kid, I kid. Yeah, it's not a bad deal for $400, and I hadn't even considered the leverage angle you mentioned.

Maybe wishful thinking on my part...but as the saying goes "the best customer is the one you already have" so hopefully they view it that way any make it interesting for me to stay. Amex has been pretty good to me.

BMO fiasco
 

Just finally straightened out my BMO points . Great deal with the $300 signup BUT try and redeem. OMG. To book a cruise ,you must call in ( and be told there is a 20 minute wait....maybe call back? nice.) .And for this I was told a $30 fee per person . And that was even though BMO could NOT do the booking. Just for trying ,I guess. So they dropped the ball on transferring the cruise from Royal Caribbean and left me a message saying "....another time you'll be able to use your points.....on a future booking". Excuse me? So after much talk on social media someone with POWER called and fixed the problem and informed me there was NOT ever supposed to be a $30 booking fee for cruises.ESPECIALLY if the booking was not completed. I had 3 employees tell me that I must pay the fee prior to this. Good luck.

I'd like to share my experience with impact of new credit card signup on credit score.

I had ~800 with Equifax. Applied for Capital One IHG and then MBNA Alaska next day. Both generated hard pulls, but my Equifax score only went down 2 points. So far so good.

Now when first statements generated and both cards reported to Equifax as new accounts, my score plummeted to ~750, which is one category down (from excellent to very good), even though my average age of accounts did not significantly change, and utilization ratio actually improved. It may now take several months or maybe a year for my credit score to recover.

So churners beware.

"New line of credit" has a negative impact on your score and that should be widely known. Should take 3-6 months for it to count as "established" to recover, AFAIK.

Did anyone actually receive their 3000 Aeroplan miles from shop.ca with their TD Infinite card?

not yet.

I'm just gonna assume it's how promos usually work - we'll get it like a month after the promo is over........ so, never!

To be fair it did say you will receive them 30 days after the order ships...not "within" 30 days

RBC Business Avion. IIRC the bonus is usually 15k. Right now the offer is 20k. Also, something I hadn't noticed is that if you hold either the Plat Avion or infinite Avion, the annual fee on the business card drops to $50. So a 0.25c/Avion (or AA or Avios...pre any transfer bonus).

Not sure how tough they are on "business" definitions but I do have a business account at TD so could use that. I'll give it a shot and report back.

Hmm I wonder if they could be convinced allow a product switch from a personal to a business card... Probably not. It's too bad they only have 1 good biz card because I would be willing to dive in if I could switch back and forth like with the personal cards. I guess if I go in for this one I'll just switch to useless card just so I can switch back to this card over and over.

Would also like to know how strict they are with the business