Redemption Stories The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: Air Miles Summary

For our second edition of Redemption Stories: The Good The Bad and The Ugly I asked for our readers to tell us their stories of redeeming Air Miles Reward Miles. Well much to my surprise the responses were very minimal compared to the first edition on Aeroplan. This could mean one of two things, either most people are happy with Air Miles (usually we only hear complaints and not praise) or it is indicative of the type of visitors Rewards Canada receives, that is, we get more frequent travellers who utilize frequent flyer programs like Aeroplan than we do frequent shoppers who utilize programs like Air Miles.

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Three quarters of the whopping four responses were good stories while one from Twitter was just plain ugly! There were no bad responses.

I would love to hear more comments and stories from Air Milesmembers,
feel free to do so at the bottom of this post and finally I want to
thank everyone who contributed their stories, without you this post
would not be possible! Be sure to watch for the next Redemption Stories
request later this month.

THE GOOD

via the Rewards Canada Blog

I have had two good experiences for redeeming Air Miles Rewards Miles
for flights. The first was for a last minute flight to attend a funeral.
As usual flights were quite expensive to buy only 2 days out but I
logged onto Air Miles and was able to find flights to redeem miles for,
the rate was slightly higher than the base redemption level but not
exorbitant. This redemption saved me a good deal of money. The second
redemption I had to call in as I was short about 300 miles for 4 tickets
and you can only buy Air Miles to top off for a redemption via the
phone. I didn’t have to wait too long for an agent and she was great,
the additional Air Miles Reward miles purchase went without a hitch as
did the actually flight booking. My only concern was that since I could
not book online I would incur a higher booking fee and the agent said
that she would refund the difference as she understood that the only
reason I called in the booking was because I needed to top of my account
otherwise I would have booked online (hey Air Miles maybe you should
look into the option to allow people to buy miles online during the
booking process!)


via email

We have booked 5 return flights to Edmonton from Victoria or vice versus for our family in the last 60 days.

On line system works fine although we have to keep putting the same personal data in repeatedly.

I tried to book a couple of these flight with Aeroplan and they did not have anything available. This seems weird to me as I then went to Air Miles and I got two return flights via Air Canada for the exact same dates.

Observation: It would appear that Aeroplan is not buying enough seats for their members. Or perhaps there are more Aeroplan members flying to Edmonton than for AirMiles members


via email

I
just used Airmiles to book a trip for the time period I had been trying
to book for months (with Aeroplan). I had the pick of any flights I wanted. The
opposite experience to Aeroplan. My only problem now is the glut of
Aeroplan points I have. The ratios for gift cards, etc. are not nearly
as good for classic flights. What a bummer.


THE BAD

There were no bad responses!


THE UGLY

via Twitter

Actually, I’ve NEVER redeemed..because I hear the process is dreadful.