air miles gold and onyx -- a quick review

recently, air miles came out with a new top tier above their current gold level.

air miles gold
requirements:

• 1,000 air miles earned throughout the calendar year. they no longer stipulate a 5-partner minimum

benefit:

air miles onyx
requirement

• 6,000 air miles earned throughout the calendar year

benefits:

the analysis of the benefits:
priority call centre: 
i remember being a gold member for many years in row, and i never really made use of the priority call center. i can't imagine the priority call center would be any more helpful now than it was back then.

the merchandise:
this is certainly not the best choice for rewards. i took a quick look at what was available:

• a garmin nuvi 2557 LMT north american edition gps system can be purchased at amazon.ca for $189.95, or $212.744 after tax. or, you could redeem 2300 air miles. this would give each air mile a value of 9.25 cents.
• an electrolux access T8 bagless canister vacuum can be purchased at bestbuy.ca for $249.99, or $279.99 after tax. or, you could redeem 2400 air miles. this would give each air mile a value of 11.67 cents.
• a nikon coolpix s6800 digital camera can be purchased at bestbuy.ca for $199.99, or $223.99 after tax. or, you could redeem 2050 air miles as a gold member (regularly 2450 as a regular member). this would give each air mile a value of 10.93 cents
• there are currently no onyx specials that are specifically for onyx members

i can't imagine the "special order" rewards to be of a better value than what they currently offer.

flights:
these are typically the best value, even for non-elite members. for economy flights, these are usually better than aeroplan as availability is often much better. for a dummy booking between vancouver and calgary next month shows this:

air miles

same flights on westjet

for the same flight, you can spend 1500 air miles to save $223.65. this makes each air mile worth 14.91 cents. (of note, they recently increased their redemption rates -- it used to only cost 1200 air miles during the high season).

currently, for air miles gold and onyx members, you can save 30% and 40%, respectively on air canada and westjet flights on certain routes between september 9, 2014 and december 14, 2014. vancouver to calgary is one of those routes. if you were a gold or onyx member, you'd only need to spend 1050 or 900 airmiles, respectively. this makes each air mile worth 21.3 cents and 24.85 cents, respectively.

these sales used to be available to regular members in the past too, but it looks like it's only reserved for gold and onyx members now.

overall:
if you're willing to use your air miles only for flights, then the jump leap to gold may be worth it. it may not, however, be worth it to jump for onyx as the incremental value achieved over gold is too small given the huge leap in qualification requirements from regular gold status.

25 free air miles with sobey's

in june 2013, sobey's, an aeroplan partner, acquired safeway, an air miles partner. back in june, sobey's and aeroplan announced that for its non-ontario stores, their partnership would end on september 11, 2014.

what i didn't see at the time was that sobey's would now be partnering with air miles, a partnership that safeway has had for quite some time now. and until september 11, 2014, you can get 25 free air miles by simply linking your sobey's account with air miles account.

sobey's hasn't been a major part of my life in british columbia -- they don't really have a good presence here in vancouver (i don't know if you can earn points at IGA, which is owned by sobey's). but, i did have a card hanging around from when i lived in calgary. and so now, i'm going to find myself with 25 free air miles.

as a side note, you get 1 club sobey's point for every dollar spent, and 14 club sobey's points is equal to 1 air mile. this is a better proposition than safeway's $20 spend for 1 air mile.

links from the web: what hotels have to offer, vancouver airport efficiency, loosing hotel bibles, air france and ebola

1) view from the wing summarizes some interesting points on a publicly available document that details what holiday in express hotels must offer. back in december, he did the same for best western hotels.

2) vancouver airport is canada's most efficient airport according to the ATRS global airport benchmarking report. while it sounds nice, it doesn't actually mean much for the consumer. it simply compares output (number of aircraft movements and passengers, non-flight revenues) to the input (number of full time employees and outsourced services. in reality, it is more a measure of cost efficiency rather than efficiencies for the traveler. in america, atlanta and oklahoma rank top in airports with more and less than 15 million passengers, respectively.

3) guests staying in travelodges in the uk will no longer have access to free bibles. "the company decided that having a Christian book in rooms did not reflect the country's 'multicultural society.'" i just remembered those bibles as one of the only books you were allowed to (and encouraged to) steal.

4) air france flight crews have petitioned against flights to ebola-stricken african countries. one of the things the airline says is that they screen the temperature of all passengers. and while that is fine, i wonder how effective this is when the incubation period, according to the ever so trustworthy wikipedia, averages 8-10 days. then again, i'm not really an infectious disease or community medicine specialist. 

expedia foils my hawaii best price guarantee

one of my favorite travel tricks was to use the expedia best price guarantee. if you find an identical room (with identical conditions) offered on another american website in american dollars, they will refund the difference and give you a $50 travel credit. furthermore, you can use that $50 dollar travel credit on a room that you know in advance will qualify for the best price guarantee, and apply for the best price guarantee based on the pre-travel credit price. in effect, you've saved $50 off the price of your hotel night and will receive another $50 credit. on top of this, the purchases still qualified for the 4.8% rebate that bigcrumbs offered.

over the years, i've done this at least 23 times in the last three years, based on the number of used best rate guarantee coupons are in my account. the number is probably higher because sometimes, when they can't issue you a new coupon, they just re-activate an old coupon so that you can use it again.

what i've normally done ...
my typical hotel that i stay at is the waikiki sand villa hotel. it normally prices out to be $102.57 all in on the website, but typically hits $123.08 all in. so under normal circumstances, i would be able to use a best price guarantee coupon on the expedia price of $123, then get an additional $21 refunded from expedia, and then receive another $50 best price guarantee for some time in the future.

but this is how they've changed things ...
it's all about the wording, sadly. when you book on the expedia site, this is what it says:

when you book on the hotel website, this is what they say: 

in this case, expedia now takes the same room booking and guarantees a 4th or 5th floor. for the same price, you could get a smoking room on the 2nd or 3rd floor, which suggests to me that the 2nd and 3rd floor are smoking floors, but i don't actually know that for sure.

anyway, i only noticed this change after i had submitted my best price guarantee claim, and only after it was rejected:

Your itinerary shows the room description as "Located on the 4th to 5th floor in the main tower with views of Diamond Head volcano, mountains, or city" while "www.sandvillahotel.com" is showing "Rooms are located on the 2nd - 5th floors, excluding corner units". The price is reasonable to be higher for a room located on the higher floor and ahs views of Diamond Head volcano, mountains, or city. Due to this, we are declining your Best Price Guarantee claim.

what do i do now?
i guess all good things must come to an end. it looks like for the rest of my hawaii adventures in the future, i'll have to use up the remaining best price guarantee coupons that i have and then switch to other hotel websites.

• great canadian rebates offers a 4.0% rebate on hotels booked through expedia.ca
• expedia.ca charges in canadian funds, meaning fewer currency conversion charges
• great canadian rebates also offers a 4.5% rebate on hotels booked through hotels.com (which uses canadian currency)
• hotels.com offers its own 10% rebate program via hotelrewards, which is stackable with great canadian rebates 

thanks for the fun ride, though!

store credit cards aren't always bad ...

sometimes, i spend a lot of time in my head justifying the cards that i have. normally, my pattern is as such:

• i keep all of my gas/dining/grocery/entertainment expenses on my scotiabank gold american express card for the 4% cash back return. 
• i keep all of my non-amex purchases, or non-gas/dining/grocery/entertainment expenses on my MBNA card for the 2% cash back return. (no longer available)
• i keep all of my foreign transactions on my sears financial mastercard for the 1% back in sears purchases and 0% foreign exchange fees.

given the decline of sears and all of the store closures, and how hard it was to redeem points without physical stores, i was contemplating switching to the amazon.ca rewards visa also offered by chase. like the sears card, it also has no foreign exchange fees, offers 1% cash back, and 2% cash back on amazon.ca purchases.

but there's something to be said about store credit cards and how helpful they can be. i was walking through sears today (it's right beside my work). it's one of the numerous stores closing down. everything was outlet pricing in an attempt to clear out the store. and on top of that, there was an additional 10% off if you were a sears card holder.

sears certainly isn't the only one to give a discount when using their credit card in store.

• target's red card gives you back 5% on target purchases when it's linked to any debit card.
• hbc financial's mastercard gives you bonus points for purchases, but it's not uncommon to have 10% savings especially for hbc card holders
• note: typically $1 spent on the card = 2 point, and 40 points = 1 air mile if you choose to redeem for airmiles, 2,000 points = $10 hbc gift cards. this works out to about a 1% return
• macy's credit card in america offers star rewards. the more you spend per year at macy's, the more you spend, the more mailings and 25% off vouchers you get per year. however, it feels like every weekend i'm there, they have an additional 10% off for macy's credit card holders.
• in seattle, they readily allow canadians to apply, most likely because of all of the traffic from vancouver. this works best if you make a purchase, get the discount, and before even leaving the till, pay off the credit card with american cash.
• banana republic, the gap, nordstrom's and many more all have similar cards but are not open to canadians.

so this is all to say that sometimes, focusing on that 4% return from amex is not the best deal. sometimes, paying via debit or store credit is worth thinking about too. in the end, if you can save 10% off in store on top of other discounts, that surely outweighs the 2-4% return you get from your regular credit cards. and i have yet to find any mileage based reward card that would offer a 10% return on spendings.

sears financial gets to stay in my wallet just a little while longer. at least until the store that's right beside my workplace closes its doors for good.

links from the web -- US News' rankings of hotel and airline programs, airmiles onyx, united app changes, american frequent flyer non-changes

1) gary from view from the wing breaks analyzes the results of the US News' rankings of hotel and airline points programs. i agreed that they are flawed, and he takes a look at the actual score breakdown. for both, it seems like the majority of the points go directly to domestic travel, how large the domestic network is, and how big their presence is in various american cities. it says little about upgrades and bonus perks, amenities, the ability to earn top tier, etc. i think it's important to look at the finer details of how they come up with these rankings. some people buy into these rankings, and i'd hate for people to be misled.

2) airmiles announces a new level in their earnings program as reported on flyertalk. the official website from airmiles is here. to reach this new level, one requires 6,000 airmiles a year. i find it hard to even get myself excited about reaching airmiles gold. when i was airmiles gold, i didn't really take advantage of the 40-50% off reward miles for flights because they were only between odd destinations (prince george to regina, for example), or were only valid for times in the very near future (e.g., how often does one begin to plan a trip to europe 3-4 weeks before actual expected departure date?). i'll probably do a more thorough review in a bit.

3) despite delta and united transitioning to a revenue based frequent flyer program, american airlines has noted that it will not make that transition yet. they still have to merge their programs first, which is expected to start sometime in 2015.

4) united is set to start allowing passengers to check in and scan their travel documents using their mobile app. i've downloaded the latest update but haven't had time to try this out. as someone who definitely flies internationally on united, this is something that would help me to avoid the kiosks at airports.

multiple aeroplan bonuses -- summer 2014 edition

aeroplan has multiple bonuses right now, all of which started early july. all of these require you to enter your aeroplan number to register. these are only for redeemable miles, not for status miles. these are valid only on new bookings. i've ranked the current promos (in my opinion) and listed them below.

1) 2,000 - 5,000 bonus miles per international round trip. register by august 26, 2014, and travel until october 31, 2014. these are valid for any round trip between the following city pairs:

these are only valid on non-stop air canada operated flights (i.e., no codeshares). tango flights are eligible, which makes up for the loss of redeemable miles now that most flights have tango fares and pricing. however, if you're trying to maximize the number of status miles because you're struggling to maintain status, you're probably either booking code shares on non-air canada metal or crediting miles towards other frequent flyer programs. in these cases, this promo will not be helpful.

2) double redeemable miles for select domestic round trips (or two one-way trips). register by august 29, 2014 and fly by october 31, 2014. there are many city pairs listed, but here is a small sampling:

note that these aren't generally large distances covered and the double miles are specifically for geographical area covered. so double miles on a trip from victoria to vancouver would yield a very generous bonus of 125 miles round trip assuming a tango fare. still, something is better than nothing.

3) 2,500 bonus miles to switzerland. register by september 12, and fly between august 1, 2014 and april 30, 2015

4) up to 30,000 bonus miles to london, england. register and book by august 24, 2014 and fly by september 30, 2014. in economy class (tango fares are eligible), you will receive 7,500 points per round trip.

united's new safety video

i fly a lot of united airlines flights despite being a canadian because i know i will get 100% status miles with them. so whenever i board, i am always confronted with their safety video. the old video is located here. one of the things that used to irritate me so much was the two asian flight attendants in the video, one at the beginning and one at the end, who would bow when doing their greeting. it felt like it was playing into a stereotype, and it also suggested that the air crew provided an certain level of deference which has certainly not been my experience on united.

united recently aired a new safety video located here. there's a wiki about it here. it's new, it's different, and it at least tries to make the standard safety video interesting. that's a change i like!