Aeroplan Expiry Tips

August 29, 2018

Don’t Let your Miles Expire

I hate mileage expiration rules. If someone had a sizeable balance and they involuntarily found out they had expired, I would argue it is one of the most negative effects to loyalty. It just feels wrong like a giftcard with an expiration date.

Even for travel-savvy people like us who have multiple accounts across multiple programs and tons of activity, sometimes you are hit with the expiration warning.

Jayce has talked about AwardWallet which aggregates all your award balances, log in information and expiration dates on one screen. Programs usually send you a warning if your miles are expiring but AwardWallet also sends you an email 90, 60, 30, and 7 days before expiration.

Your entire Aeroplan balance will expire if you have no activity in your account for 12 consecutive months (1 year).

Easy Ways to Earn Aeroplan Miles

As we preach the need for flexible points currency, you may not have a co-branded Aeroplan credit card to earn points every month. If that is you, make sure you do one of the following once every 12 months.

Purchase or lease of a new Toyota (jk, but you could test drive a Toyota for Aeroplan miles)
Credit Star Alliance flight to Aeroplan
Transfer American Express Membership Rewards to Aeroplan (minimum 1,000 miles)
Donate miles (minimum 1,000 miles)
Use the Aeroplan eStore
Earn miles with Costco.ca purchases

If my miles are near expiration, I prefer the options that transact instantaneously to confirm the extension of my miles and ease my worries. My preferred options for Aeroplan are to either transfer American Express Membership Rewards points (if I am short for an award, example <24,000) or to donate Aeroplan miles (if I am over for an award, example >26,000), both of which transact instantly.

If you are looking for a very simple way to extend your expiry, simply make a purchase through the Aeroplan eStore. Every dollar spent earns 1 Aeroplan Mile and there are many, many retailers that you most likely already use, like Amazon.

If you are looking for a $1 item on Amazon, I would suggest you use the website Shopfiller.com and choose $1 for Amazon.ca.

Reinstating Expired Aeroplan Miles

Fortunately, I have never had any Aeroplan miles expire as I redeem them fairly often. While you can reinstate your miles, Aeroplan charges 1¢ per mile, so it can be extremely expensive. I have never heard any good stories about Aeroplan having leniency with miles reinstatement without a fee, so I wouldn’t hold my breath about getting around the fee.

Before calling Aeroplan, you may be able to Request Missing Miles from previous travel in order to reinstate your miles. For example, if your miles expired on August 1, 2018, and you had a hotel stay or a car rental between February 1, 2018 and August 1, 2018, you might be in luck.

You can Request Missing Miles from six months past with the following partners:

Rental Cars:

Avis
Budget
Payless Car Rental

Hotels:

Accor Hotels
Best Western International
Carlson Hotels
Choice Hotels International
Coast Hotels & Resorts
Delta Hotels & Resorts
Fairmont Hotels & Resorts
Gouverneur Hotels
Hilton Worldwide
Intercontinental Hotels Group
Langham Hotels
Marriott Hotels & Resorts
Pan Pacific Hotels Canada & USA
Shangri-La
Starwood Preferred Guest
Wyndham Worldwide

Pay Attention

Aeroplan will send you warnings via email that your miles are about to expire so make sure you have opted into email communications and that you aren’t auto-deleting emails from Aeroplan. As you only have to have account activity once a year, there really shouldn’t be any reason to have your miles expire. If you earn a single point, your expiry is extended by a further year.

Conclusion

With so many ways to earn Aeroplan miles, there should be no reason you should have your miles expire. If for some reason your miles have expired, hopefully, our suggestion for retroactive miles crediting through a car rental or hotel bookings gives you a second chance to get your miles back before being forced to pay 1¢ per mile to Aeroplan.

A Review of the JW Marriott Parq Hotel (Vancouver)

Brian

August 27, 2018

I was in Vancouver last week for a couple of quick meetings so I took the opportunity to check out one of the newest JW Marriott’s in the world, the Parq Vancouver. This particular JW only opened its doors to the public in September of 2017 so I was looking forward to that new hotel smell.

The Location

The Parq Vancouver has a sister hotel next door called The Douglas, which is an Autograph Collection hotel. It shares many of the same design cues as the Parq but feels more like a boutique hotel than a Marriott. Sandwiched in between the two hotels is a small casino, which is a fun, if not expensive, convenience.

The hotel is located in the Yaletown section of Vancouver at 39 Smithe Street, right next door to BC Place. While not as centrally located as some other hotels in Vancouver, I wouldn’t say that it’s out of the way so don’t let that dissuade you from staying. I will say that without Uber or other rideshare services in Vancouver, it can be a bit of challenge, especially if the smoke from the BC forest fires make downtown Vancouver feel like Beijing.

The Hotel

The hotel is absolutely stunning. It is very indicative of the modern and beautiful design of other JW Marriott’s and certainly exudes luxury. I could go on and on but I think pictures might do it more justice.

The Check-In

Usually, I don’t really care much about the check-in process as it’s your standard, hand over the credit card and driver’s license, get your keys, “thanks for being a valued member”, blah blah blah, so these things don’t really stick out in my mind at all.

The Parq was different. I was checked in by a young man named Paul and it was hands down, the most thorough check-in possible. He hit all the high notes and gave me a bit of history about the hotel and recommended a couple of restaurants in the area – he even walked me to the elevator to make sure I got to the right floor. There was nothing that special about the information but the friendliness, genuineness, and absolute joy he had for his job was very apparent.

We were off to a great start.

The Room

As a Platinum member, I always ask for a suite upgrade. Marriott is supposed to offer these things to you but I find that by preemptively asking, you tend to have better luck in securing those sometimes elusive suites. Paul hooked me up with a beautiful suite with a nice, if not a smokey view of the harbour. The room was gigantic and beautiful in almost every way except one – there was no desk to set up my laptop. I’m not sure if it was just my suite or not but to me, this was a major miss. but one I got over pretty quickly as the rest of my stay was fantastic.

The Lounge

If you are a Platinum or Platinum Elite member (as of August 18, 2018), you have access to lounges and the JW Marriott’s are by far the nicest lounges of all the Marriott brands I have tried, and I have tried a LOT.

The lounge at the Parq Vancouver did not disappoint. You could tell that the hotel was new as there were very few people in the lounge (that will change) so there was a lot of one on one service, which was nice.

If I’m being honest, the food was just okay. Nothing as spectacular as what you see in Asia and the Middle East but not bad at all. One of highlights was the freshly squeezed and bottled juices, they were so refreshing and delicious. I managed to check out the lounge both in the afternoon and in the morning for breakfast. In the afternoon, you got some snacks and sweets. The one thing I love about JWs is that they don’t skimp, as demonstrated by the full-sized Mars bars for snacks. Sure it’s a bit odd that they were out of their wrappers but who am I to judge?

Breakfast was your standard fare of eggs, bacon and sausages but the fruit, cheese and cold cuts were a nice add on.

After consuming about 15,000 calories, I decided to check out the gym and pool area of the hotel and again, they did not disappoint.

The Fitness Area

First off, the area is gargantuan – simply HUGE. Stationary bikes, treadmills, ellipticals, a full set of circuit training machines and all the free weights one would need. I’m not sure about the exact floor space in square feet but it felt very, very large. The equipment is, of course, all new so it felt like I was in before the grand opening of a Gold’s Gym or something.

The JW Parq Vancouver does not have a pool, which is a shame, but it does have a whirlpool. I found it odd that it was placed outside, given that this is Canada and we have this thing called winter 🙂

Overall Impressions

The JW Marriott Parq Vancouver is a big win in my books. The service was excellent, the hotel beautiful, the suites well appointed and the lounge spot on. I had a few knitpicky things that I disliked, like the lack of a desk in the room and the somewhat basic food in the lounge but these were minor gripes and not something that would ever hold me back from staying here again. If you have a chance, I would highly recommend that you give the Parq a try before more people find out about it and make it a hectic hotel.

Air Canada Consortium Officially Purchases Aeroplan

Brian

August 21, 2018

As I had predicted on July 25th, the consortium led by Air Canada, CIBC, TD and Visa have officially purchased Aeroplan and its associated liability of Aeroplan points.

The deal was originally tabled for $250MM along with the Aeroplan liability and has since been increased to $450MM, as was demanded by Aeroplan’s Jeremy Rabe and the investors of Aeroplan.

While we will never know the severity of Air Canada’s inability to stand up their own loyalty program, one can readily assume that capitulating to AIMIA’s demand of $450MM surely indicates AC’s desperation.

It sure will be interesting to see American Express’ reaction to this as they have been left out in the cold.

More to come.

Our Take On the Marriott Travel Package Mapping

Brian

August 20, 2018

For the past few months, Marriott has been very hush-hush when it comes to how they would handle existing Marriott Travel Package Hotel Certificates. The most common package that most people purchased was the 7-Night Stay Certificate good for a Category 1-5 Hotel + 120,000 Airline Miles/Points.

There were also many people that purchased higher category certificates, hoping they would guess right on how these certificates would transfer over. That strategy was always a bit of gamble because the old Marriott program had 14 different levels (Category 1-9 and Tiers 1-5) with the new program only having 8 Categories (no Tiers in the new program). With Marriott being very tight-lipped about how these certificates would transfer over, many took the plunge and hoped for the best.

On Saturday, Marriott revealed the new mapping.

Pitchforks and Class Action Lawsuits

When people heard about how these categories mapped, there was a small but very vocal and very angry crowd of people that were up in arms about the fact that they purchased higher category certificates for no reason. The real losers in the whole thing were people that purchased Category 6, Category 8 and Tier 1-3 Certificates. The reason is that certificates in lower categories mapped to the same thing, meaning they paid more for certificates for no good reason.

I have been monitoring FlyerTalk forums, and other Social Media outlets and the general consensus is that Marriott deserved to be drawn and quartered. There were countless “internet tough” individuals that rage quit Marriott and tried to get others to join their class action lawsuit. It was as if their world crumbled around them and they wanted to take down Marriott with them. I didn’t quite feel as outraged, mostly because I only had Category 1-5 certificates that I fully expected would map to Category 1-4.

One particularly interesting sob story was of a couple that purchased 27 – yes 27 Category 6 Travel Packages!!!

They did so under the expectation that they could use the certificates for a Category 5 hotel but as you can see, the mapping shows that those certificates would only be good for Category 1-4. The circumstances were a bit suspect in my opinion but nonetheless, their story was but one of hundreds that felt wronged by Marriott.

Marriott’s Response

Earlier today, Marriott reached out and provided an escape hatch to those that purchased a Category 6, Category 8, or a Tier 1-3 certificate. They have offered an opportunity to those affected with a roll-back to a lower category certificate which would include a 30,000 point refund.

So if you purchased an old Category 6 certificate, you could be rolled back to the old Category 1-5 certificate which would now be good for a Category 1-4 hotel and you would receive a 30,000 Marriott point refund.

If you wish to take advantage of this rollback and refund, simply go to the Marriott Contact Us Page and under the Pick a Topic drop-down, choose Packages and Deals.

The Good and the Bad

The good news is that those that felt wronged will receive a refund for the overage they paid. The bad news is that you can only roll back to a lower certificate, so if you purchased a Category 6 certificate, hoping it would be good for a Category 5 hotel, you would only be able to roll back to a Category 1-4 certificate and get a 30,000 point refund.

Marriott has made it clear that in the new program, you are not able to upgrade/downgrade your certificate to a different category so you better be sure what hotel you want to stay at. With the old program, you could buy up to a higher category hotel and receive a refund if you wanted to downgrade. Unfortunately, this is no longer possible.

A Full Refund

If you are completely disenfranchised by this whole thing, Marriott will allow you to refund the “land” (read: hotel) portion of this Travel Package. The points you would receive is listed in the chart at the top but the basic math is that you would receive 45,000 points for a basic 7-Night, Category 1-4 certificate and every category up from there would be the 45,000 points plus the additional points it would have required to upgrade.

Conclusion

Many people are upset that Marriott failed to disclose what it would be doing with these Travel Package and while I can understand the sentiment, I also understand Marriott’s point of view in all of this. Had they disclosed the information beforehand, there would have been a run on Travel Package, which could have potentially devalue the certificates. Much like inflation, if there are too many certificates out there, there is the potential that you could run out of availability to use these certificates, thereby devaluing the certificate.

I give credit to Marriott for seeing the damage that this could have caused some members and with coming up with a solution to alleviate some of the pain. Hopefully, it will be smoother sailing from here on out.

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