Miles/Points that Do and Don't Expire
 

I thought it would be nice to have a post where we could keep track of all the various miles, rewards, and points programs and when/if their miles/points expire (and if so, how quickly) - I'm sure we all have many, many rewards memberships, and sometimes these things are hard to keep track of. I'll start off, and feel free to add (I can always edit the post to make additions). I'd especially appreciate additions for other airlines, as I'm very loyal to Delta (due to a ridiculous number of unfortunate experiences on literally every other airline)

Non-Expiring Points/Miles
-Skymiles

Expiring (+ activity that "resets" expiration date)
-Starwood Starpoints (1 year, resettable by staying at a property)
-Marriott (1 year?)
-Amtrak Guest Rewards (3(?), resettable by any activity)
-Wyndham Rewards (18 months resettable by any activity; 4 years "hard" expiration)
-AA (18 months, resettable by any activity)
-UA (18 months, resettable by any activity)
-LAN (3 years "hard" expiration)

You need to be more specific about expiring. In some cases, it's just expiring with no activity, in other cases it's "hard expiration" which activity can't defer.

For an extreme example of that WyndhamRewards has two types of expiration: 18 months resettable by any activity, but 4 years "hard expiration" that can't be avoided.

Choice Privileges has only "hard" expiration, 2.00 to 2.99 years after you earn the points (on Dec 30 of two years from when you earn them). (Choice says "Dec 31", but they do it early in the morning of Dec 31, so it's much safer to think of it as "Dec 30"! :eek:)

Amtrak Guest Rewards (AGR) is changing soon. But up to now, it hasn't been reset by non-paid-Amtrak-travel activity. So people transferred points in, planning to use them for something, and found they expired almost immediately! Up to now, the only way to avoid Amtrak expiration as a rare Amtrak passenger has been to have the AGR credit card (from Chase up to now, but it may move to a different bank soon).

So a chart that simply says how long the expiration is will be misleading, IMHO. It needs an explanation of what (if anything) resets which (if there are multiple kinds) of expiration.

In airlines, an example of this complication is LAN: LAN kms expire three years after you earn them, not resettable by most activity, but all your kms reset for another three years if you take a paid LAN flight that earns LAN kms.

AA is 18 months resettable by any activity.
UA is 18 months resettable by any activity.

Btw, please note that "activity" in the context of expiration always means earning or redeeming in that program. One person over in the AA/US forum who had lifetime miles at US and then never flew US for years assumed that logging into their account occasionally counted as "activity", for the purpose of maintaining their account, but it didn't, and right before US Dividend Miles merged into AA AAdvantage miles, that person's US account was purged for inactivity, along with their lifetime miles.

Heh. I actually literally *just* got the e-mail from Amtrak about changes in their guest rewards program - the shift towards revenue based miles and all that. Their miles still expire, though now they count activity as "earning and redeeming miles" but that's really particularly helpful in my opinion.

I agree that any kind of chart/post like this would need to be detailed about the kind of activity that prevents or doesn't prevent expiration; that's why I'm hoping others post and contribute, as I tend to stick very loyally to a few select programs and know their rules, but am unfamiliar with the rules of those programs with which I stay once every couple of years.

Thanks for your contribution - I'm editing the above post to add what you said.

Starwood - I know dining at a participating Starwood restaurant over a certain dollar amount ($10? without tax or tip) keeps your account alive, but it appears that the T&C's now say any redemption or earnings activity keeps an account alive.

Perhaps someone else will come up with a with a better candidate, but I nominate Frontier Airlines for most absurd expiration requirement (6 months). This apparently will occur even though the airline can't program its own website to give a customer the correct expiration date (it typically shows an expiration date 6 months from the current date no matter when your last activity occurred).

I'm starting to see the value of getting a credit card for most hotel brands - spending counts as "activity" no matter how miniscule and that way your miles never expire. That's why I'm planning on getting one of the Hilton cards (the one without the fee) so that my Hilton points never expire. I also checked out Starwood's dining program, but there's about four qualifying restaurants in the entire city of Philadelphia, so unfortunately that option is probably out (I have their credit card at the moment, but that probably won't last forever).

Frontier Airlines - I have actually never heard of them (possibly for good reason - that sounds like a ridiculous requirement).

Just to be clear, Starwood doesn't have the standard iDine program that many airlines have. You just need to eat at one of their on-property restaurants and make sure that the restaurant will let you charge your dining costs to a room at the hotel. If those criteria are met and you spend enough (I think it's $10 w/o tax or tip), then you can have the restaurant or the front desk submit the activity to Starwood for points. I'm not familiar with all of the Starwood properties in Philadelphia, but I would think there are more than 4 properties that have qualifying restaurants, so you may have more options than you think.

But wouldn't you have to be staying at the hotel to charge the dining costs to a room? (Sorry for the confusion - if you're staying at the hotel anyway that'd already count as activity). I just found out that Starwood has a dining program to begin with, and I admit, it's confusing. As to Starwood properties in Philly, I just checked and there's 9 in the city itself, and not all have restaurants (Philly is a weird city)

No, the point is that you can earn Starpoints from spending in *some* Starwood hotel restaurants even if you're not staying there. The rule about whether you could do a room charge at that restaurant or not is a way to distinguish restaurants that are part of the hotel and those that operate out of space leased from the hotel. In at least some jurisdictions, not that purchases of alcohol would not count for the $10 or earn any points.

SQ redeemable miles have a hard expiration date, IIRC three years after they were earned/credited to the account.

Somewhat OT, but several years ago BestBuy had a frequent buyer program with points expiring at the end of the calendar year in which they were earned. I haven't purchased anything there since then, so I don't know whether there's still a program with the same rules.

This is the type of thing that would work best as a wikipost, so all info can be seen in one place.

I've taken the liberty to create the wiki, and copied in the data from the 1st post, with a mild reformat, corrected the data for marriott, added reset data for SPG, and added BA avios

Thanks very much! I started the thread to be helpful to as many people as possible, so making this a wiki is a great way to do so. :) Since I"m new to the forum I'm not sure: am I/anyone allowed to edit the wiki, or is that just for moderators?

Ah, ok, makes sense. And BestBuy still does have that frequent buyer program and yes, their points expire - thank you for reminding me! I have it and I totally forgot about it and i probably have some points there that will expire soon.

You need to have been a member for 90 days AND have a post count of 90+.

I didn't realise you didn't have edit rights when I thought about the wiki.

That's okay; 90 days isn't that long and I"m sure by that time I'll have more than 90 posts. In the meantime, I hope others will edit the wiki - I posted all I knew to it, so contributions by others who have been around longer will probably be more helpful anyway.

Not quite; it's resettable with a paid LAN flight, though not with other activity. (Btw, I don't know whether a LAN partner flight credited to LAN would count, or whether it actually has to be a LAN flight number credit to LAN.)

I updated the wiki to clarify that.

Added Etihad and IHG to the Wiki

Also if we want to add some other rewards programs to the list, My Coke Rewards has points expire in 3 months...not sure about Bing Rewards, Swagbucks, etc..

I don't think we do. That would just overwhelm the list IMHO, because there are actually way more non-hotel/non-airline programs than there are hotel/airline programs, it's just that many of them are small. Oodles of retail stores and restaurant chains (including small local chains) have such programs.

It's going to be a big enough list once many more airline and hotel programs are filled in (one goal would be to at least have all the dozens of airlines to which you can transfer from "flexible" point programs such as Amex Membership Rewards and City Thank You points and Chase Ultimate Rewards and Diners Club Club Rewards. (And btw, those credit card points programs generally have a simple policy: no expiration as long as you hold at least one card in that credit card points program, but immediate loss of all points if you cancel the last card you have in that credit card points program.)

Added Club Carlson, Hilton and Virgin Atlantic.

Added Best Western, Choice Privileges, and Alaska airlines to the wiki.

FYI - Jet Blue points and Southwest points do not expire

FYI, you're wrong about half of that. Southwest points do expire without earning activity! (Ie, even redemption activity doesn't reset expiration.)

See here:
*Points will remain active as long as you have at least one qualifying earning activity every 24 months. Qualifying earning activities include: 1) completed travel on Southwest® qualifying flights, 2) points earned by transacting with any current Rapid Rewards® Partner, 3) points earned through everyday purchases using Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards® Credit Cards and through points transferred from Diners Club®, and 4) points purchased for personal account use. Member should allow four to six weeks or such time as is otherwise specified for points to post from qualifying activity. Points gifted or transferred to another Member only keep the recipient’s point balance active. The last activity date will be the latter of the last qualifying earn activity or date of Award expiration.

(I don't claim to completely understand that last sentence, but since Standard Awards are going away in another month or so, you can presumably remove the last 5 words effectively.)

Added Lufthansa and Hyatt

For airlines better to differentiate between hard expiry (e.g. EK 3 years fixed) and soft expiry, where if eligible activity there is no expiry.

http://www.hotels-and-travel.de/ffp/

The wiki already does that, but I just reformatted it to put "hard" always in red, to make it harder to miss (pardon the pun).

MrsCP hasn't stayed in a Hyatt in over 2 years, and her points are still active. Does the "starting 1/1/14" mean that they will only start closing accounts 1/1/16? If so, such a note may be useful.

Hyatt didn't use to enforce expiration. Starting in 1/1/14 they do.

I have had no activity in way way more than that, over 5 years, and they recently sent me an email that if I didn't have activity in the coming months, my account would closed (I forget on which exact date).

But the point is the Hyatt expiration is now 2 years. That doesn't mean they have to expire points after 2 years, just that they can. In any program, if you find you've not activity for longer than the expiration time listed here, don't assume that you're some exception that can go on that way forever, assume instead that have some undocumented limited grace period, but since you don't what this, assume that you may be facing expiration the very next day, and try to get some activity happening ASAP.

If you want to delve deeper into whether it's safe to wait until 1/1/16, or whether your wife should create some activity tonight, that would be more suited for the Hyatt forum that this thread. This thread is intended as a summary, not a deep examination of the complexities of each program's policies (and changes in such policies). Most importantly, it presumably takes Hyatt experts to answer your question, but there are way more Hyatt experts in the Hyatt forum than likely to visit this thread in MilesBuzz! soon.

Will not be clear to newbies. Need to simply state with "hard" expiry miles/points have a fixed life (no exceptions). There are often threads in the forums with hard expiry by people surprised about this and asking how to extend or use before the miles/points are gone for ever. Hard expiry is good to these ffp's:- the liability is gone.

I did, and was suggesting the results may be applicable to the list here. Apologies if I offended you by suggesting such a crazy thing. Feel free to leave it as 2014 and force folks to search elsewhere for the answer.

I don't want to clutter the list with excessive detail. Take a look at the note I added (in small font to make it fit better) and see if you that's enough for this thread.

I did something similar (the best I could tersely) also for Amtrak. I'm not even clear on what the expiration for Amtrak Guest Rewards was before now for those who were neither elite nor had the Chase AGR credit card (which Chase is dropping at the end of this month). People would transfer points into AGR, then find that within days those transferred points had already expired! :eek: It's only clear and simple at AGR going forward.

Take a look at the rephrasing I did in the wiki (the explanation of "hard" is now in bold), and see if you think it's clear enough now for newbies.

OK. Is better now

The new format for hard expiry works better.

Added Emirates, which has a wierd 3 years plus birth month rule.

Added Singapore Krisflyer and South African Voyager.

Added link to AA T & C.

Added Aeromexico, Air Canada, and Flying Blue (Air France/KLM).

Didn't take long for this to take on a life of its own, which is brilliant. By the time the OP gets to 90days/90 posts, there might not be anything left for him to add.

I enlarged the fonts of the non-expiring and expiry headings to make things a bit clearer.

Yeah, I"m really happy the way this took off! Thanks to everyone for their contributions.

Added Alitalia, Asia Miles (Cathay), and El Al.

I also just checked Marriott's page and it seems to say that points earned via social media, i.e. tweeting and stuff, don't count as "earning" towards keeping your miles from expiring. We might want to put it in the wiki, as that's technically earning activity (you do get more miles/points) but not activity that can prolong the life of your miles. I'm not sure if other hotels also do social media promotions (I've only seen marriott do them) or what their rules would be, but maybe for some hotels/airlines we should put in some details about what exactly counts as "earning"?