Air Miles Rewards Program
 

I have an AirMiles card, you guys know the blue and white card - usually at 20$/pt.

So 7k miles will expire dec 31. I have no clue what to do with them. Should I redeem for gaz vouchers? Food? Or use it on a trip???

(Yeah that's 140000$ spent since the 90's on groceries)

Or does anyone know another trick to extend the miles???

Thanks

Oops! I corrected the mistake. It's 7k

Seven million points?

Redeem them wherever you get the best personal value. Only you know your own situation and what makes sense for you.

Well,

I was more like looking to extend the expiration date.

But if that's not the case, I guess I can get a whole lot of vouchers or just purchase airfare tickets sometime next year.

Well, whatever heads up I can get from fellow FTers will help!

Air Miles isn't actually that great value for travelling compared to Aeroplan.

You may be better off getting gift cards and vouchers instead; there are some deals that give you a higher value for your miles just go browse which ones they are. I think Cineplex has some offers. Generally you get $0.10 per mile value so that's about $700 in gift cards except options like Cineplex or GAP which I think would get you around $800 in value.

Notice how their flights are broken up to high season and low season as well compared to Aeroplan being a flat rate regardless of when you travel?

With the new expiration policy, I don't believe there's any way to do that.

There's no way to extend the expiration date.
The options are very limited. Go ahead and search "gift card".

See also this thread...
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...l#post26992586

Updates... it is Air miles are not getting any better. For a brief moment (back in Aug IIRC), there was a $25 AC gift card but seems to be either all gone or blocked from Blue members.

* there was a rumor, because of the lawsuit, AM has 'improved' the site by making 'available rewards' based on membership level. In the past, people were able to use 'hidden' (hardcoded) URL to redeem items which are not normally 'visible' if you login properly. My guess is now AM 'corrected' that issue.

I have over 13k (yes! after all these years, but before I started collecting AP) need to cash out. Eventually I am OK (but wouldn't say I am happy) to spend most of it on 2 flights and hotel bookings (which is still PITA. also the YSYL rule applies, that was my bad)

Now I only left with a few hundred miles... Let see if they offer a grin of rice in their dream reward catalog, should have enough for one or two... :rolleyes:

For what it's worth I like Air Miles. Collecting is pretty effortless since I do a fair bit of shopping at Safeway/Sobeys/Rexall, and I can churn the Amex/BMO cards for more points on top of that. I know some people with pricey prescriptions and they run up a ton of AMs that way.

Nice thing about AM is that flight selection for North America is often much better than for non-status Aeroplan users. For example, using AE to Hawaii is a struggle in finding flights that don't involve overnight in YVR, connection at SFO/LAX, etc... by contrast, Air Miles gets me there the most efficient way.

I am so done with Air Miles. I have been saving for a long time, in order to accumulate enough miles to fly to Asia to visit our son and his family. With the new expiration rules, I am losing miles faster than I can accumulate them. Nothing in the rewards section appeals to me. I don't want to blow the expiring miles on a fancy cappuccino maker or some other gadget, and I don't see any options for gift cards, so I have used a bunch up for a three week car rental in Florida.

I am cancelling my long-held Amex Air Miles card, and going with the Gold FYF offer.

If you live in Ontario, the provincial government introduced a bill 2 days ago to keep points from expiring. It hasn't passed yet, but you may want to wait awhile before cashing out. Here's the link: http://www.ontla.on.ca/web/bills/bil...t=&BillID=4254

That's a Private Member's Bill.
I think that means it was introduced by one backbench MPP, not by the government.
What's the likelihood it's going to pass?

Oops...I didn't notice that it was a private member's bill. So, it's not too likely to pass although it was introduced by a member of the governing party instead of the opposition. Still, since there is no other way to extend points expiry, it may be worth holding off on cashing out for awhile just in case it does go through.

It's too late for me anyway. :mad: I have already booked the car. I have heard rumblings of a class action suit against Air Miles, but seriously doubt if it will get off the ground.

I hope it doesn't. The only winners in any class action suit are the lawyers.

I gotta say, I've used Air Miles to book several domestic flights in the past year. On every one of the flight bookings I've attempted, I've used Air Miles, and the resulting value has been at least 10 cents each time (same as Cash Miles),
and in some cases, way way more than 10 cents.

AM rewards
 

I love the way people talk about rewards u can get with AM. I'm Dream, collecting slowly for 20 years and I have 7k pts.
Now there's really nothing I want to get, since the change in 2011, Dream is essentially for trips (which the amount of points has drastically gone up in the past year). Not even GCs are available.
They really did put the squeeze on us.
Case in point, I agree I'm acting like a spoiled kid that feels entitled, especially at cut off time, but I haven't been able to do much either since the dream and cash went into effect.
I'm just trying to find a solution, but the pickings seem to be very slim...

Use the miles to book a trip to somewhere, maybe in Cdn., that's usually costs a bundle. Take a look at the redemption chart. I booked a trip to one of the smaller cities/towns in B.C. The cost for a ticket would have been over a $1000.

vouchers?
 

here is an idea...
would there be anyway to purchase tickets with my AM and then get it credited for future use?

Didn't AA do that in the past?

Is Air Miles just totally ignoring the needs of customers right now?

I tried to get a refund of my points online because I had to cancel travel due to COVID-19, but they didn't give me the option. Only option they gave me was for a $10.00 refund of the service fees lol.

I will have to call in at T-5 days from my stay to try and get my points back then hopefully!

Surprised no posts yet about the current situation with Airmiles and the announced purchase of the company by BMO. Rob Carrick has an article in G & M today about the situation. He recommends divesting points asap. Curious as to what others think.

I went and burned call my cash miles asap. Unfortunately i have a good chunk of dream miles as well that I don't really have any use for. Could buy the Cineplex vouchers but those aren't a great deal anymore. Might be best off to just use them for a hotel booking.

The night they announced bankruptcy I burned all my cash miles at shell filling up on gas.

Then the rest of the dream miles the next day.

Airmiles is a shadow of it's former self from 5 years ago. I hope BMO is able to revive but only time will tell.

How did you burn dream miles? I want to get rid of mine but there's really no good value other than maybe hotels. Looked into the movie passes but even though aren't great value anymore... Hopefully through BMOs takeover they get rid of the segmentation and I can use the dream miles for free groceries

Burned my Airmiles
 

I don't like AIRMILES much but during just before COVID and after I accumulated lots at sobeys and metro and subsequently burned a bunch on hotels. 7000 for two night suite redemption in old quebec. 9000 for four nights at Ti Kaye resort St. Lucia in May 2022 (amazing resort!), and 6000 for 2 nights at the hilton in Barcelona in Oct 2022. Burned 2500 on the weekend at hilton in Montreal the night they announced bankruptcy. I had a good run the last couple years. Too bad its over. This program a shadow of its former self.

i've used them on AC, WS, DL and AA over the years, but more often than not I use them for car rentals.

you get around 10c per AM in value no matter what you book...

Why did everyone burn off their Air Miles so quickly? I kept mine and am still accumulating some slowly. I like to use them for North American trips so I can save my Aeroplan points for overseas flights, although I think one more spring break family vacation to the US and my stash will be depleted!

Rewards flights availability apps
 

Has anyone used an app for tracking, reporting, and setting alerts for rewards flights availability? An example is SeatSpy or FlightConnections. I'm wondering what your experience was. If you used one or more, did you find them useful?

Our household has received a great deal of value from the Air MIles programme over the past ten years. We are 100% Dream collectors and have used the programme to fly to places as far afield as Korea, Hong Kong, India, Georgia (Tbilisi), and even Ireland.

What's disappointing, though, is that flight availability seems to have been cut back significantly since the BMO takeover. Two years ago we booked a round trip to London with Air Miles and then made a separate booking, also with Air Miles, for a side trip to Switzerland. We were able to book tickets between Heathrow and Zurich on British Airways.

Now it seems that intra-European flights can no longer be booked through Air Miles, even though the programme has a wide array of European airline partners, including BA. Iberia, Air France, KLM, Lufthansa and others. We were trying to book a side trip to Greece on an upcoming European trip and the programme seemingly no longer allows this.