Air Miles

[4X4]

I hear they're going to start letting 5 year old miles expire. I've got about 4000 miles that took me 7 years to collect, so I want to cash out, and frisbee the card into the chest of the next shop employee that asks for it. Well, maybe I don't need to be that dramatic. Maybe I want to know why I'm so terrible at collecting Air Miles. My sister went to NYC on her Air Miles a little while ago, but I apparently have about enough to buy a crappy pair of headphones. That's about the extent of things that I'm interested in, that's available with these miles. The site takes minutes to load pages, and in each category, there are about 15 things. Many of which require cash as well as miles. What a crappy rewards program. A laptop for 1100 Miles plus $1100? WTF?

I screwed around with the travel portion. I can probably fly to Vegas. But I can also probably fly to Vegas for about $300. Did I really carry this stupid card around for 7 years to save $300? Don't get me wrong, $300 is $300, but god damn, I thought I'd have a little more to show for it.

What are people's thoughts on Air Miles? Am I just doing it wrong or is it a waste of time? Don't suppose anyone wants to give me cash for my useless (to me) Air Miles? Should I keep collecting, or should I get the crappy cordless headphones as an xmas gift for someone, and then donate the card to a cokehead?

[btimbit]

Airmiles has sure gone downhill in the last few years. I cashed mine out not long ago on a new set of pots and pans and haven't really collected much since.

I used to rake in the airmiles when I had a airmiles Amex card, but now that I'm just collecting them normally again it takes forever to get any, so I've given up. Their website sucks anyway, has for years

[Hockeyguy15]

Can't you get an autographed Carey Price jersey for like 3,500?

I find we get a lot of miles on the spend $100 get 100 miles and events like that at Safeway/Sobeys and the liquor store.

We got our baby monitor, dewalt drill and impact driver, knife set, a le cruset pan, a breville food processor. It's not worth going out of your way to get them but if you're going to Safeway anyway you might as well get the miles.

[calf]

I am going through the exact same thing and you are 100% right.

I want to see what I can get with my points. I had to click to each category and sub category, change the view, and wait 30 seconds to find out each time that there is nothing worth spending time to even order? Just let me see a full list of things ffs!

[Resolute 14]

Air Miles has really turned to crap.

However, I find them useful for covering lower level travel costs. I've paid for numerous rental cars over the past few years. It adds up.

That said, it is one of the programs I would not be sad to see axed in favour of lower transaction fees.

[calgarygeologist]

It has really become a useless program. We redeemed our Airmiles about 5 years ago for a cruise and it was a pretty decent value.

In that 5 years I managed to collect another 1400 or something and this summer I redeemed 700 or 800 for Stamps tickets for the family. It seemed like the best value and one of the few things that was actually useful for us. The remaining miles I'll use for Calgary Zoo passes. My mom has almost 4000 and she is looking for options as well. She'll probably get a bunch of zoo passes as well and some passes for the West Edmonton Mall water park to take my kids. Everything else is overpriced garbage.

[You Need a Thneed]

Going forward, change your preference to cash miles. I picked up 400 Airmiles in one $150 transaction at Safeway last month. 400 Airmiles is worth about $43.

We just used our leftover dream miles to get a Kitchenaid stand mixer. It just came available, we had been waiting for something that we wanted to come available for a while.

[Amethyst]

You need to do a lot of shopping at the stores that have them. I buy groceries at Safeway and I will often buy things like toilet paper when they have a "buy 2, get a bunch of air miles" deals. Also, if you get miles at more places, you can move up to gold so you get better deals. If you only use the card at one or two places that accepts it, it's a lot harder to accumulate points.

I used to redeem them for CDs back in the day. Most recently, I used them for a trip to Barbados and this past spring break to pay for my rental car in Hawaii.

If you want to use them for travel, there is a big difference in how many miles are needed for low season and high season, although I am strictly a high season traveller and I've been able to get trips.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by 4X4

I screwed around with the travel portion. I can probably fly to Vegas. But I can also probably fly to Vegas for about $300. Did I really carry this stupid card around for 7 years to save $300? Don't get me wrong, $300 is $300, but god damn, I thought I'd have a little more to show for it.

It's even worse than that because you still have to pay the taxes which are about $150.

[photon]

Agree that things have gone downhill, especially their selection of rewards. Used to be able to get consoles, decent TVs, decent telescopes, Apple laptops and other cool stuff.

I have 7700 I'll spend before they expire too. I'm thinking either the beverage fridge or the Dyson heating fan.

Agree with You Need a Thneed, changing to cash rewards after this.

[calgarygeologist]

I need to dump my old school Air Miles MasterCard. It is a card I got in University and I barely use it now and it is the only reason I get Air Miles periodically. I need a good cash back MasterCard or something.

[Jason14h]

Other then the Safeway spend $100 get 100 miles coupons its basically impossible to get miles!

[Language]

What I find incredibly annoying with Air Miles is how their travel search is set up for Dream Miles.

I know with Aeroplan, I can set the dates to a flexible date search, where it will give me dates around my preferred travel day where flights are available. With Air Miles, you can only search for a particular day. Super annoying because even if you have some flexibility, it's a huge pain to see what's available. Unless I'm missing something and there is a way to search with flexible dates on Air Miles...

[Huntingwhale]

I'm very annoyed at how the miles are set to expire. After reading this thread I switched my miles going forward to the cash rewards. But still, after saving miles for the last couple years to save for something big, only to find out that some will expire after 5 years...that f'ing stupid.

And their website is absolute garbage.

[troutman]

I get loads of Airmiles at Safeway and Shell.

Every month or two you get a flyer from Airmiles with coupons for extra points.

Sometimes at Safeway I get 200 - 300 - 400 points in one visit. There is usually one day a week where you get 100 points for spending over the minimum amount. Usually the products with extra points are sale items.

[Tron_fdc]

I gave mine to my wife and she ordered up a bunch of gift cards.

She likes to shop, it made her happy, I didn't care, win-win.

[Swayze11]

Originally Posted by Tron_fdc

I gave mine to my wife and she ordered up a bunch of gift cards.

She likes to shop, it made her happy, I didn't care, win-win.

Where do you order stuff? I find the website extremely confusing (might be the point).

[Tron_fdc]

Originally Posted by Swayze11

Where do you order stuff? I find the website extremely confusing (might be the point).

I have no idea. That was the caveat, she had to figure out how it all worked.

[Huntingwhale]

Originally Posted by troutman

I get loads of Airmiles at Safeway and Shell.

Every month or two you get a flyer from Airmiles with coupons for extra points.

Sometimes at Safeway I get 200 - 300 - 400 points in one visit. There is usually one day a week where you get 100 points for spending over the minimum amount. Usually the products with extra points are sale items.

Safeway is actually pretty good to get Air Miles if you shop around for their promo deals. And with Sobey's doing the big price reduction on a ton of items, I've noticed they are giving out way more Airmiles on certain items.

For a while they were doing 2 jugs of milk gives you 40-50 airmiles. I am also signed up for Airmiles Opinion Research surveys and I sometimes get 2-3 surveys per day. They vary from 1 - 20 airmiles for each survey done. These days I'm on pace for about 150-250 airmiles per month. Pretty decent overall.

Which again makes me more mad that points will start to expire

[You Need a Thneed]

I haven't seen gift cards available since they introduced cash miles. That used to be how I spent most of my dream miles.