Have you been scrambling to try and use up those Air Miles before the end of December? Well you can stop. Air Miles announced that it has cancelled its expiry policy which was scheduled to begin in the new year.
Under the expiration policy, all unused miles which were earned prior to 2012 would have become worthless in 2017. Miles earned after 2012 would expire after five years. Now that the expiry policy is cancelled you can continue to hoard your miles without worrying about losing them.
But you still may want to consider redeeming your miles earlier than you might have planned. It is estimated that cancelling its expiry policy will cost Air Miles up to $250 million US. Air Miles plans to "adjust" its reward offerings to compensate for its loss. While it is unknown exactly how this adjustment will impact the rewards, I would bet my miles that lesser value rewards will cost more miles in the future and that the reward options won't be as enticing.
Nevertheless, my friend is pretty upset that she cashed in her miles for a "crappy" toaster in anticipation of the expiration that won't take place. And she is not alone. Many people are upset that they redeemed for something they didn't want or need.
This is one time my procrastination paid off. My small amount of Air Miles remains untouched. I am still waiting for that child-free European vacation to take place in oh 2087.
Just cut the card up, no longer need this reward card,
The rewards are crap, so I don't go out of my way to collect them anymore. I used to buy those movie passes and would be able to bit about 10 of them right now if they hadn't gotten rid of them.
I cashed mine in to fly to Hawaii in April so still not regretting that!
We redeem multiple flights a year with them. But we also use the air miles credit card too so that helps rack them up. I don't know of any reward programs that you can quickly accumulate points...otherwise they wouldn't be in business!
And really, you aren't going to be able to please everyone all the time. People bitched when they expired, people bitched when they reversed that...people are going to bitch #firstworldproblems
I am thrilled because I've been saving forever to go and see my daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren!
It's good that they reversed it, but I feel bad for people who have been saving for a long time for a big trip or something, who ended up cashing in their miles on other stuff (that they maybe really didn't even want) because they were told that they were going to expire.
Makes me wonder if this was actually done on purpose.