Air Miles (Bank of Montreal)

Seriously Air Miles? They decided to take a page out of Aeroplan’s book. Remember when Aeroplan introduced a 7 year hard expiry on its points? Basically, your miles would have expired 7 years from the day they were deposited, regardless of activity. But just before the expiry was about to kick in, they backed out. The same thing is happening now with Air Miles, they were going to introduce a hard expiry of 5 years after miles were deposited, to be effective on December 31, 2016.

One thing that I haven’t done is talk about what are the top reward redemption to choose from, assuming they are available, *cough cough. But let’s assume that the award is available. Below is a list of what I think are the top reward redemptions.

According to a report by CBC News, it looks like Air Miles decided to change up their reward options. Air Miles has been accused of hiding reward options for certain members. Apparently, Air Miles finally admitted that they previously gave members access to different rewards based on their individual personal preferences. Whatever that means??

A class action lawsuit has been filed against Air Miles. CBC wrote up an article on the matter. But here is a quick summary.

The claim is against LoyaltyOne (owner of Air Miles) to “remedy harm caused by the Air Miles program to its users.” The main points are:

This Air Miles expiry policy coming into effect on December 31, 2016 is really damaging their reputation. Basically, effective December 31, 2016, Air Miles reward miles that are more than 5 years old will begin to expire on a quarterly basis (March 31, June 30, September 30 and December 31). The program started back in 1992, and if people haven’t redeemed since then, they are probably panicking to redeem them now.

CBC has been on a tear this month of July, writing one article after another about the Air Miles program: … I am probably missing some article links. Anyway, I thought I’d share some thoughts about this matter, as it seems that according to CBC, lots of people are frustrated with Air Miles.