Travel Hacking: your points and miles have an expiration date

To the point A member of the facebook group "Travel for free (or almost...!) with your points & miles - milesopedia" had the unpleasant surprise of having nearly 60,000 Aeroplan miles withdrawn due to expiry because of theabsence of transactions on her account for 1 year.

60,000 miles is, for example, one round trip to Europe in economy class, or more than two round trips anywhere in North America. In short, a dead loss for this reader.

Monitor your loyalty programs

There is a very simple and free tool to monitor your loyalty programs: AwardWallet.

With this tool (available as a website and mobile app), you’ll have a portfolio dedicated to your various loyalty programs, gathering all the important information:

Membership numbers
Passwords
Points & miles balances
Membership levels
Expiration dates of your points & miles
Weekly/monthly reminders on developments (Plus version)

Expiration rules for major loyalty programs

I’ll take the example of 3 major current programs. If you would like to know more about another program, please feel free to write a comment on this article or ask a question in the facebook group “Travel free (or almost free…!) with your points & miles – milesopedia”.

Aeroplan

Aeroplan has a simple rule: all your miles are lost if there is no activity in your account for 12 consecutive months.

AIR MILES

AIR MILES has reversed its policy of expiring miles… that no longer expire.

SCENE

If your SCENE account has not been active for 2 years, it will be permanently closed and you will lose your accumulated points.

How to prevent your points & miles from expiring

There are many ways to extend the expiration date of your points & miles. I’ll use Aeroplan as an example.

A credit card affiliated with the loyalty program

If you use a credit card affiliated with your loyalty program: no problem with Aeroplan. The points & miles you earn from your purchases help extend the life of your account.

Using your Rewards Card

But you can also extend the life of your loyalty program by using the card at an affiliated store.

For example, with Aeroplan, you could make a purchase through the netBoutique to extend the life of your miles, like on Amazon.

Please note that it can take up to 8 weeks for miles to be awarded… but this is retroactive!

Traveling on a Star Alliance airline

Finally, still on Aeroplan, you can also extend your account by flying on a Star Alliance airline. However, it must be a paid flight and not made with your miles. However, using your miles will extend the life of the account.

Bottom Line

There are many opportunities to extend the life of your points & miles and prevent them from expiring.

But there is one rule that every good mileage hunter should know:“earn &burn“.

You are never safe from a devaluation of your loyalty program or, as in the case of my reader, from forgetting and therefore losing your points & miles! So my advice: use them quickly!