The following article is an update to our original Maximize
Your Miles article I published on Rewards Canada way back on May
30, 2005 and then re-released as a 2011 version here. I thought it best to bring it up to date although the basic
premise has not changed.
Many years ago it was published that on average Canadians belong to over 9 loyalty programs and many
of them according to past surveys admit they are not using the programs
to their full potential. I would have to say that in 2021 Canadians are participating in many more loyalty programs and that average has gone up but what hasn't changed for many Canadians is not making the most of those programs. As with most things in life that require a
decision, research is warranted to make the most of your loyalty program.
That being said, if you want that free flight to Hawaii sooner or want
your reward program balance to grow faster you can follow these eight
steps to maximizing the way you earn miles and rewards.
Focus on a few programs but you can join many
It is always best to focus on only a couple of programs (1 Airline,
1 Hotel, 1 Shopping, etc) to put your miles and points into but sometimes you may
be shopping somewhere or renting a car that your primary programs don't
partner with. In that case it can be worthwhile to find a program that
does, since joining most loyalty programs is free it does not hurt to
join them. In the end you may end up with some programs that have orphaned
miles or points that you never use but on the other hand you may end
up collecting more then you originally thought in that particular program
so that you can redeem for a reward sometime in the future. If you do
plan on using certain programs only occasionally, check out the rules
of the program to see if points expire. Some programs don't have expiry
dates so you can just leave the points in the program while other programs
do have inactivity rules and expiry dates. Expiry dates tend to be 1 to 3 years after your
last action (earning or redemption) so keep track of your points and
if you want to keep them ensure that you have activity in your account.
In some cases it may be worthwhile to transfer those orphaned miles/points
out of the program into your main program. A good example is if you
have a low hotel program balance that would not be enough for a stay
but enough to transfer to your airline program to increase the latter
programs balance.
Look for and take advantage of bonus offers
Use bonus mile and point offers to your advantage, they are an easy way to work
your way up to that reward you want to redeem for. This is what sites
like Rewards Canada and Frequent Flyer Bonuses were initially started
for, listing bonus offers in one site. But don't just read RewardsCanada.ca and FrequentFlyerBonuses.com,
read the emails the programs send you, don't delete them, you'll never
know when a valuable offer could be hidden somewhere in the email.
Search out offers, if you have to stay overnight in Regina and the Best
Western and the Holiday Inn both have the same rates, find out if one
of them is offering a bonus mile or point opportunity and stay there.
Do your research, your travel agent or online booking engine won't do
it for you, in fact most are unaware of the hundreds of bonus offers
that are out there. That's where our bonus offers section comes in handy!
Register for every promotion even if you think you may not use it.
Many of the bonus offers require registration and while you may not
think you can take advantage of the bonus offer, register anyway. Who
knows when your employer may send you to Phoenix for a meeting and you
don't remember or realize that the airline you're flying on was offering
double miles on all flights to or from Phoenix. By registering for an
offer when you first see it, you're making sure you don't miss out on
any bonus opportunities.
Pay for everything with your mileage/point earning credit card
This is by far the easiest way to rack up miles outside of actual flights
with the airlines or stays with hotels. Put everything that you buy
on your credit cards right down to the chocolate bar from the corner
store. Every mile and point counts no matter where or how you earn it. If you
have a card that earns 1.5 or 2 times the points/miles at gas, grocery,
and drug stores make sure you use it there. Plus if you want to earn
higher mileage from your card for shopping you can buy gift cards
for your favourite stores and restaurants at the grocery store or drug
store to earn your 1.5x or 2x or even 5x multiplier. Be warned however, if you
run a balance and pay interest on your credit cards, those miles you
earn will never be worth the money you lose in paying the interest.
If this is your case get a low interest credit card, and lucky for you
some low interest cards now carry rewards.
Carry different credit cards
Some bonus offers or other offers like free gift cards (see Cash
in on other rewards below) require that you only use a specific credit
card like a Visa catd. So if it is economically viable for you to do so,
carry a Visa card, a Mastercard and an American Express. Think it may
be expensive? Well there are quite a few no fee credit cards that earn
points. Of course you
don't even have to get a rewards card for your additional card, you
could go for cash back rebates or merchandise but since this is an article
on miles and points, why wouldn't you? Another method of earning more miles or
points with credit cards is called churning. This entails applying for
a card, receiving the sign up bonus and then cancelling the card followed
by reapplying for the card sometime down the road to receive the bonus
again. The time period varies by card issuer so check with them first
(or research it online) plus watch your credit scores, too many applications
in a short period of time can have a negative effect on your credit
rating not to mention trying to reach the minimum spend requirement on multiple cards at once can be a daunting task.
Double, Triple, Quadruple Dip
Double dipping is the term coined for earning miles twice in one purchase
or transaction. This basically involves your rewards credit
card being used for a purchase where you also earn miles or points in the same
program as the credit card. Buying gas at Esso? Using your PC Optimum credit card along with your regular PC Optimum loyalty card ensures
you are double dipping.
Triple dipping takes the double dip one step farther and that's when there is a bonus being offered for certain purchases. For example if you take the Esso purchase from above and there happens to be a 1,000 PC Optimum point bonus for buying gas at Esso that bonus would be the third dip. Put in other words the first dip is the base points earned from your PC Optimum loyalty card, the second dip are the points earned from the PC Optimum credit card and the third dip is the bonus points offer.
Quadruple dipping gets a little tougher but usually involves shopping online via an online shopping portal that offers miles, points or cash back. For example if you want to buy something from Chapters Indigo online you could do it via the Air Canada Aeroplan eStore when they are offering a bonus. The first dip would be the base points you earn from the eStore, the second dip would be the points earned on your credit card for the actual purchase, the third dip would be the bonus points (for example they often run 5x, 7x or 10x points offers on the eStore) and the fourth dip would be earniing your Plum Rewards points from the purchase as well. Technically speaking if Plum Rewards was running a bonus offer as well you would be able to complete a quintiple dip!
Double, Triple, Quadruple dipping does not have to involve the same program.
You can always use a credit card that earns in one program while collecting
the actual miles from another program for your flights, hotels, shopping
or anything else you can earn miles on.
Upgrade your flights
Take steps to fly in business or first class by buying the ticket outright
(the expensive way unless there is a really low or mistake fare) or
by making sure that you meet criteria to get upgraded (this works more
for those who are status members in their respective programs) to ensure
that you earn the 25 to 200% class of service bonus associated with
the upper classes of flying. This is an easy way to build up those mileage
balances and your qualification for status
Cash in on other rewards
Sometimes reward programs offer bonus or rewards other then miles. Some
airlines have had promotions whereby you take three flights and you'll
get one free. Same goes for hotels, many hotels have promotions that
offer up free nights after a certain amount of stays. Hotels also like
to offer gift cards for future travel after certain stays. In many cases
you have to be a member of the respective company's reward program so
this goes back to the beginning where you may just have to join the
program to take advantage of the offer.
Keep track of your miles and points
If you don’t keep track of your miles and/or points, you stand to miss
out on potential rewards and even worse you can lose all the miles and
points you earned thanks to programs inactivity or expiry rules. It
can be extremely time consuming to keep track of all the programs you
participate in but thankfully there are ways to make it easier. There
are handful of websites out there that will help you keep track of your
balances (and some also track your expiry dates) and most of them do
it for free. Examples are sites like Awardwallet.com a which are both free
although Award Wallet does offer a paid upgrade version. Don’t like
handing out your membership numbers and password/PIN codes to these
sites? Then it can be as simple as creating a spreadsheet to help track
your balances although you still have to manually check all your programs
or you can download a program like Miletracker which runs on your computer and not a third party server.
By following some or all of these steps you will see the balance in
your reward programs grow faster then you think. Then those reward flights,
nights or merchandise will be within arms reach and you won’t be waiting
years to get them.
Related: why my wife and I each got our own WestJet cards
When searching for flights on the days and the times we preferred, WestJet wanted just over $4800 at $1200 and change per person. That price could be brought down to around $2500 by using our companion vouchers and around 700 hundred WestJet dollars that my wife and I had held between our accounts.
American Express Travel on the other hand had the exact same flights (dates and times) for just over $4000 if I booked them one our Platinum Card from American Express. The reason for the price difference is that WestJet is one of the airlines that participates in the Platinum card’s international airline program. The partnership provides a discount on WestJet flights - even for economy class which is different than most of the other airlines that participate which only provide deals on premium class fares. When you book with Amex Travel you are provided with three options to pay for the flights. Entirely with cash, pay with points for travel or the Amex Fixed Points travel program or a combination of the three. For flights in North America that don’t fall into 40,000 points for a flight in North America with a maximum value of $700. Anything above the $700 has to be paid by your credit card or with the pay with points for travel option or a combo of the two.
Related: American Express Fixed Points travel program
Make a box here explaining pay with points
Having all this info in front of me, I choose to go with the option of booking the flights via Amex Travel since they were already around $600 cheaper and use the Fixed Points Travel Program. With that redemption opportunity I redeemed 160000 points to cover $2800 of the flights. This left only $1289 that had to be paid for with the credit card but then I also applied the annual platinum travel credit of $200 to end up only paying $1089 in total. $1089 is a lot better than the $2500+ we would have had to spend if we went with the companion vouchers and WestJet dollars route.
The 160000 points for $2800 works out to 1.75 cents per point which is the set standard for Amex’s Fixed Points travel program. This translates to a 1.75% return however, most of those points I redeemed were earned under 2-3x multipliers, which means the actual return was over 3.5% on our card spend. But we also have to take into account that the platinum card saved us $600 on the fares and then by using the $200 annual credit and you can just see the value growing even more! That $800 in savings paid for the $799 annual fee on the card alone. Then add in all the other benefits on the card - lounge access, hotel elite status, points earning and redemption options and the Platinum card shows its worth!
This redemptions allowed us to save our
WestJet RBC World Elite Mastercard companion passes for a future Premium Economy redemption that can give us even more value than what we would have seen if we went with option one above.
But the value in booking and redeeming points with American Express Travel doesn’t end with what I detailed above.
Earn points on the full purchase 2 points per dollar which at 1.75 cpm rate equates to a 3.5% return. Not just earn on the paid portion.
Earned full WestJet dollars earn as gold 5%
Base fare applied towards status and voucher levels
After booking called up WestJet and easily applied seat selection vouchers for being gold to these flights
On the flights we enjoyed our full WestJet gold elite benefits - lounge access, zone 1 boarding and priority luggage tags
Seat Selection Fees
Dreaded almost as much as baggage fees, although somewhat more avoidable if you simply choose to check in for your flight 24-48 hours beforehand as most airlines don't charge the fee at that time. However if you want to make sure you have the seats you desire, want to sit with your travel companions or maybe you want to upgrade at time of check in you'll have to pay the seat selection or upgrade fees. These are the cards that offer a travel credit that can be used to offset these fees:
Right now this card has a limited time offering of a $100 travel bonus that is issued as a statement credit. After you apply for and receive the card, you will be able to pay for any airline fees including seat selection or upgrades (at least $100 in one transaction) on the card and you should see the credit issued soon after. The purchase must be made within six of months of opening your account. This offer only applies to new approved applications that are submitted by February 28, 2019. Learn more about this card here.
The HSBC World Elite Mastercard offers a $100 annual travel enhancement credit that as they state can be used as follows: charge your select airline seat upgrades, baggage fees or airport lounge passes to your HSBC World Elite Mastercard, and then redeem your travel enhancement credit to cover these charges. This travel credit renews each year on your card anniversary date. Learn more about this card here.
This card offers up to $250 of credits towards additional fees that are levied by airlines and airports. It allows $50 of that $250 credit to be applied towards seat selection fees. Once you charge the fees to your card you need to submit a request to NBC and submit the supporting documents (seat selection fee receipt) to receive the credit. This is an annual benefit that renews on your card anniversary date. Learn more about this card here.
Talk to us!
Do you have any other tips for save on airline and airport fees? Do you use any of the cards listed above to save on these fees? Tell us in the comments section below or join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter!
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Seat Selection Fees
