Reasons to Buy or Gift Aeroplan Points (80% Bonus offer)

Aeroplan gives its members the ability to purchase points on a regular basis. Sometimes, they have a bonus offer when making this purchase. Let’s discuss the offer first and then I will share some of my thoughts on purchasing or gifting.

Promotion highlight

From March 13 to 29, 2023, Aeroplan is running a Buy/Gift points promo, with a choice of bonus or discount offer. The choices work as follows:

• Receive up to 80% bonus when buying or gifting Aeroplan points
• Receive up to 45% off when buying or gifting Aeroplan points

A minimum of 4,000 points must be purchased.

Note for U.S. cardholders: transactions made with U.S. based cards with a U.S. billing address are not subject to sales tax.

Which is worth more (bonus or discount)?

The answer, as usual is, it depends on how much you are buying.

Bonus offer:

• Buy between 4,000 to 29,000 points, receive a 45% bonus, which equals 2.41 cents per point
• Buy between 30,000 to 55,000 points, receive a 65% bonus, which equals 2.12 cents per point
• Buy more than 60,000+ points, receive a 80% bonus, which equals 1.94 cents per point

Discount offer:

• Buy between 4,000 to 29,000 points, receive a 30% discount, which equals 2.45 cents per point
• Buy between 30,000 to 55,000 points, receive a 40% discount, which equals 2.1 cents per point
• Buy more than 60,000+ points, receive a 45% discount, which equals 1.93 cents per point

Note that there is no option to purchase between 55,000 and 60,000 points.

Also note, for this promotion, members can buy or gift up to 500,000 Aeroplan points per transaction. The 1 million points remains as the buy point annual limit and 500,000 points remains the annual limit to gift points.

Thoughts on purchasing

Purchasing points is a great way to boost one’s account for a couple of reasons. There are times when we need to keep on account active, and if there really is absolutely no way to keep an account active, then making a minimal purchase will count as an activity to reset the expiry limit for another 18 months.

Alternatively, purchasing points is useful to top up an account for a specific reward option. There are times when we are just “shy” of a few points, the quickest way to top up an account is to purchase points.

Personally, these are the main two reasons I would purchase points. Otherwise, if a member is purchasing for the sake of it, then best to do the calculations on whether it is worth it.

The formula would be the calculate the cost of the points, and compare it to the actual cost of the cash flight. But one would need a cash flight to compare it with. But with dynamic reward pricing, it would be tougher to make the points purchase worth it nowadays as the margins are much closer.

Thoughts on gifting

The second option is to gift points. How often are we shopping around to find the best gift for a family or friend? Why not make it simple and just buy some points for them? Even better when making the purchase at a discount or with an added bonus. For example, if you were planning to gift them $50 in cash, you can purchase $50 worth of points instead, and then they should be able to extract more than $50 value when redeeming the points for a flight.