A few days ago, Air Canada and Air Transat announced that they are in exclusive negotiations for Air Canada to buyout Air Transat.
I’m somewhat torn by this announcement. So I’ll share my pros and cons regarding this deal.
It is no secret that Air Miles has been quite unpopular lately, due to their continued devaluation of reward redemptions and no increase in earning ratios (neither with its credit cards cobranded cards, nor with its partners). That being said, they do have a valuable partnership with LCBO, Ontario’s liquor store. One devaluation that has no occurred (I’m assuming “yet”) is the cash miles options, where you can redeem 95 Air Miles for $10 towards your next LCBO purchase. They now made it easier to redeem the $10 voucher with its new eVoucher option.
Keep in mind that we also have an going Top Cash Back Credit Cards page which consists of permanent and temporary offers, while this post focuses on temporary offers only. I have broken down the temporary offers into two categories. But first, let’s continue with our newest theme of adding a featured card.Key HighlightsI know I have been mentioning the featured card in my last few posts. But I realize that sometimes, it is too difficult to just talk about one card when there is a long list. So I am going to try something different on this post. I am going to mention key highlights for this month’s list.
Airline alliances have really revolutionised frequent flyer programs. Having codeshare partners has really increased the value of many loyalty programs by giving us to ability to redeem miles with one airline to use on partner airlines.For today’s post, many affiliate airlines have been discontinued, so I thought this post was due for an update. I also added the connecting partners mentioned by one of our readers from last time.
No real changes from last month’s list. Most offers are expiring in June or October of this year.Featured CardSince there are no real changes this month, the featured card will remain the same, the TD First Class Travel Visa Infinite Card with its 80,000 sign up bonus and first year fee waived offer.
I have been debating how often I should update this post. I decided on 6 months, and it has been the latest trend anyway. There has been several changes (though mostly in the bottom half of the rankings) to the industry in that period of time to warrant an update anyway. Most significantly, it was time to include Brim Financial and Cuets.Every time I write up an update, I generally try to have a theme throughout the post. This time around, I am going to emphasis more on the gap between the rankings.Below are my personal rankings of each company, along with a commentary and a list of some of my top credit card picks for each financial institution.
UPDATE [April 30, 2019 8:15pm EST]- Please note that some information has been updated in the responses below from when it was posted earlier today [April 30, 2019 9:20am EST]. Today we have the pleasure of interviewing Blair Cameron, President of AIR MILES who is going to share some exciting news about airmilesshops.ca, its partnership with redtag.ca and other titbits. Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions Mr. Cameron. Q1: Please tell us about yourself.Hello, I am Blair Cameron, President of the AIR MILES Reward Program, Canada’s most recognized loyalty Program.
For this month’s list, you’ll notice many promotions that ended in February that are off this list. There are times when promotions get extended, but other times not. This goes to show that if you do see a promotion that you like to go for it, and not necessarily risk waiting for a better offer.As March comes to an end, this was the first full month where we started a new trend of featuring a top credit card on our monthly lists. See the other two monthly lists on how we highlighted the featured card:Top Cash Back Credit C
Every year, when I write about my wish lists, you may notice that I include retention bonuses as one of them. Sure enough, Canada has starting picking up in this segment of the industry. With the introduction of the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite Business Card, I thought it was time for me to write a post up on this topic. Basically, churning has been frowned upon. However, a compromise to this is to offer incentives for big spenders. The bonus rewards that we would receive, should in theory, reduce the amount of churning that happens. Ideally the spending bonus would cover the need to churn to generate more bonus points.
We are well into 2019 now and most of the 2018 offers expired by the end of March. Going forward, we are looking at new offers. The reason I mention this is because there tends to be a theme each other. For example, high sign up bonuses (2013, 2017), strong cash back (2018), etc. So I am trying to figure out what the theme is. For now, it seems like we are still riding the momentum of a strong 2018 cash back year.