peter1962

Story here
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/onta...vote-1.3873455
is specific to AirMiles, however could this extend to Aeroplan, and the plethora of other loyalty schemes? Since it's a Provincial law how could it affect out of Province/Country entities that have customer Agreements bound by laws of other jurisdictions?

Low Roller

If it passes, it will apply to all points in Ontario, including Aeroplan. See the previous discussion here: Liberal MPP's bill to stop expiry of rewards points passes 2nd reading

mahasamatman

My guess is that it would only apply to people with Ontario addresses, or Ontario-based companies.

GrayAnderson

That sounds about right, though as indicated in the article, having two sets of rules could become a real nightmare (e.g. how do you deal with someone who moves into or out of Ontario?) while banning Ontario residents from participating in an FFP could become its own problem from various standpoints, mostly political (such as slot/gate allocation at provincially/municipally-owned airports). Of course, the question is also whether you see a domino effect with some other provinces.

TBH while banning point expiry is not a bad idea IMHO, Airmiles seems to have screwed up pretty badly with constructively denying redemptions, and addressing that in some way at law would probably get just as much, if not more, done in the grand scheme of things, particularly in a massive expiration round such as this.

:D!

Not convinced that governments should be getting into this sort of stuff.

sdsearch

There's something analogous in that gift cards of certain kinds in California (I presume those bought in California or sent to Calfornia addresses?) are not supposed to expire even though the same gift cards in other states (within the USA) might expire. You can see that in the print on some gift cards.

So there is precedent for expiration rules being different in one place than another for the same product.

pinniped

Philosophically, I do believe the government has an obligation to protect citizens from unethical business practices. Expiring gift cards - or gift cards with fees - should be outright illegal. Miles are a gray area...it gets into the whole "are miles an asset owned by the flier?" question that is often asked with respect to taxes, ownership, program changes, net worth, divorce, death, and other topics.

In practice, as an FTer who plays this game well and directly benefits when other people fail to use their miles optimally (or at all), I accept that mileage expiry works in my favor. In general, I believe it has worked to my advantage for 20+ years that miles are not an asset. I believe this is true for anyone who likes to redeem miles for long-haul J/F where the airlines are (usually) careful to firewall off the paid seats for corporate purchasers.

That said, I can totally see why someone not sharing our "expert user" perspective would want to argue that miles are a currency, a coupon, a promise, an asset, or something else owned by the flier.

margarita girl

There is already legislation against gift card expiry in Ontario as well. ^

pinniped

Air Miles has backed off on their expiry plan.

I just got a "breaking news" alert on my phone from the Globe & Mail. Apparently this is the top international story out of Canada today. This pleases me given how sh*tty most U.S. news is these days. @:-)

sdsearch

And now there's a separate thread on that:

kevindavis338

Same here. If they do, the Airlines and hotels could just end it all together.

Grog

I'm very convinced that they should. These are arguably shadow currencies in various shadow banking systems.

I'm not sure the world would be any worse for it.

Status levels make sense, but points/miles as a currency basically amounts to kickbacks.

100,000miler

Bravo Ontario but you are far too late to the party. I lost over 600,000 aeroplan miles and recently over 7, 000 Air Miles in order to comply with their rules , both of which were changed at the last minute. That left me and others holding nothing.

I played by the rules and in both cases got screwed. This is a very sad scenario where one loses key assets which were legitimately earned.

I am one very unhappy camper!

eajusa

Good for Ontario. Be nice to see this elsewhere.