The AIR MILES card linked offers for Save-On-Foods and affiliated grocery stores in Western Canada have now been revealed – you can earn 100 bonus miles when you spend $100 or more at these stores. We first brought you the news of this development last week and as today marks the day that AIR MILES can no longer be earned at Western Canadian Sobeys and Safeway stores the loyalty program has brought in this measure for collectors to continue earning more miles on their groceries. The offer provided
Save-On-Foods (and affiliated brands) are a Western Canadian grocery chain and while this isn’t a direct partnership as Save-On-Foods is not becoming an actual AIR MILES partner, it does help fill the void of losing Sobeys, Safeway and other stores.
Card Linked Offers
What is compelling about this announcement is that is a card linked offer. If you are unfamiliar with AIR MILES card linked offers, they are avenues for you to earn extra miles at stores that aren’t AIR MILES partners and you earn those miles by simply linking any Canadian Mastercard! It’s not just limited to AIR MILES Mastercards and you don’t even have to show your AIR MILES card. Have a WestJet RBC World Elite Mastercard or an HSBC World Elite® Mastercard®? You can link them and earn whatever bonus AIR MILES may be offering when you use that linked card for your purchase.
The 100 mile bonus
The bonus offer that is available is 100 bonus AIR MILES Reward Miles when you spend $100 or more at their stores. This offer launched today and available until November 16, 2022. The only limit to the bonus is that it can be only be earned once per day (I assume per retailer) however there is no limit to the number of times you can earn the bonus over the course of the promotional period.
To earn the bonus simply link your Canadian issued Mastercard credit card to your AIR MILES account at airmilescardlink.ca and then use that card for your purchase.
Here are the stores you can earn the bonus at:
- Save-On-Foods
- Buy-Low-Foods
- Quality Foods
- Choices Markets
- Urban Fare
- Nesters Market
- PriceSmart Foods
- Nature’s Fare Markets
- Bulkley Valley Wholesale
On top of this, when you are at Save-On-Foods you will still earn your More Rewards points on your purchase and you’ll earn whatever points, miles, dollars that your Mastercard earns. Effectively a triple dip not including any bonuses.
Considerations
There a couple things to consider here with this news.
First if you don’t have a Mastercard then you cannot earn AIR MILES for your shopping at these stores.
Second you’ll want to do the math to see if it is worth it to use a Mastercard for the purchase instead of a card like the king of grocery store earning – the American Express Cobalt Card and it’s 5x points. The 100 bonus AIR MILES is worth around $10.50, so you can use that as a starting point for your calculations. We do have a true 5x points Mastercard that you can use with this offer however and that’s the MBNA Rewards World Elite® Mastercard®. That card can earn up to 5.5 points per dollar thanks to its birthday bonus plus you’ll earn your More Rewards points and the 100 bonus AIR MILES card linked offer. That’s some pretty big earning available with this card!
Also recall, that BMO just added general grocery store accelerators to their AIR MILES Mastercards so those will be earning more miles at Save-On in addition to your More Rewards points and card linked miles.
Wrapping it up
This card linked bonus offer is good news for AIR MILES members out west. The program needed to step up to the plate and do something after losing so many partners over the past few months and years. And while this may not be a direct partnership between Save-On and AIR MILES, at least this can be seen as a stop gap measure to appease members who aren’t keen on what the Scene+ program provides and want to keep earning AIR MILES on their grocery purchases.