Aeroplan: This is no way to run a customer loyalty program

OK. I’ve been a member of Aeroplan since the year the program was founded in the mid-eighties. And I’ve never strayed. CP Air flirted. Wardair came calling. Westjet entices. And Porter Air makes me an offer I can’t refuse.

AeroplanBut I do. I’ve always been faithful to Air Canada and Aeroplan.

And how is my faithfulness rewarded? Well, last Tuesday I posted about my disappointment at reading in the Globe and Mail that Aeroplan had changed the rules applying to the million miles that I had earned by being a faithful Air Canada customer. The miles I have earned over the past 20 years will now have an expiry date applied to them.

I’m one of those people who travels a lot for work. And I just don’t have the time to use my miles now. But I look forward to the trip in the future. And now Aeroplan has changed the rules RETROACTIVELY.

So, let’s add insult to injury. Did I mention that I read about the change IN THE NEWSPAPER? So, where was my personal message from Aeroplan? Well it arrived last night – one week after I read about the announcement IN THE NEWSPAPER!

Sheesh. Aeroplan, get an email campaign manager. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that you can notify all your members simultaneously.

But, heck. I guess I matter one heck of a lot less to you than the shareholders. And after all, you want to raise your share price. Service to members is just an afterthought.

And for those who are still with me, here is how Aeroplan opened their belated communication to me – one of their VALUED members:

Go to aeroplan.com

October 24, 2006 Dear Joseph,

Aeroplan recently announced changes to the program’s terms and conditions affecting mileage expiry. We have received calls and emails from our members asking for greater clarification of these changes. Aeroplan would like to take this opportunity to apologise for any confusion created, clarify these changes and explain what they mean to our members.

…

Best wishes,

Rupert Duchesne

Rupert Duchesne
President and CEO
Aeroplan

Well golly gee Rupert – (I hope that my million miles and twenty years of loyal travel entitle me to call you Rupert) – your apology is accepted. But holy shades of Edelman! You took a whole week to think it would be nice to communicate with your members directly?

Aeroplan, I’m disappointed in you. It seems that customer loyalty goes only one way…

UPDATE: The Aeroplan program  clearly arouses strong emotions in its detractors. I’ve continued to receive comments on this post for more than a year after I originally published it. Unfortunately, many of the comments use very strong language and make claims and allegations that I cannot verify. Others come from email addresses that I cannot verify. So, I have decided to close comments on this post.

  • Judy Gombita

    My “personalized” e-notice flew in at 6:40 p.m. last night. Was that before or after yours?

  • http://www.firestoker.com Jevon

    People on the major frequent flyer forums (flyertalk, canflyer) are pretty… ambivalent. Many of them are at the point with aeroplan now that they are complaining, but simply moving on. ie: switching to United Mileage Plus, etc.

    Aeroplan redemption levels and fees are also so high that it can be of little value to redeem a flight. Up to 250$ or more in fees is not hard to generate on a award flight.

  • http://3i.wildfirestrategy.com/ Tamera Kremer

    It’s funny, Aeroplan is making life more difficult for their members (and doing a lousy job communicating it), while Virgin Atlantic is allowing members to use their miles for a trip to outerspace… which one drives more loyalty I wonder?

  • http://www.propr.ca Joseph Thornley

    Hi Judy,
    My email notice from aeroplan arrived at 18:54. So, they clearly sent an email blast at that time.

  • Sean

    Agree with all these comments. I suspect the rule about having to use the account once a year will cause problems for some as well (e.g. retirees).

    Joe, re your point about Edelman. At least Richard Edelman had the guts to step forward for what can only be described as a virtual “pile-on” on his blog after owning up to his tardy response. He actually endeavored to reply to many of the comments as well. That’s a good move. Edelman appears to learn from its mistakes. Not sure the same can be said for Aeroplan.

  • Judy Gombita

    Agreed. Possibly sent out alphabetically, considering I received mine 14 minutes before you!

    It definitely wasn’t sent out based on the amount of points accumulated to date, as a big chunk of my Aeroplan miles were cleaned out this past spring for an out-of-country vacation. And was it ever hard to find “allowed” space on flights with decent connections for the return leg of the trip! Funnily enough, seats on the Star Alliance partner flights proved much more available than the Air Canada planes. Hopefully THAT aspect will improve.

  • http://stuart.blogware.com Stuart MacDonald

    They pooched this beyond all recognition, Joseph. What a shame and (truly) a PR nightmare. How could they not see this coming?

    What’s amazing is that, in all of this, the GOOD news – that now you can use your points (albeit more of them) for ALL Air Canada seats, and not just a few of them – barely got a mention.

    - Stuart

  • Joe Rancourt

    What Aeroplan forgot in this process is that loyalty is a two way street. Just because there are less suitors for your business doesn’t mean you put less effort into the relationship. You’d think in a service industry that this would not only be logical, but evident.

    In any relationship, the communication must be appropriate always taking in mind all scenarios of anticipated reaction. Should they have consulted a focus group or polled their clientele? Well if they even thought that was necessary (which obviously they did not), it would be a tremendous waste of money. You need only to examine basic human nature to understand the adverse affect of freely giving something only to take it away or impose restrictions that would inhibit your enjoyment of that gift.

    Aeroplan will pay more managing the fallout than they would have taking appropriate action. Maybe they should get Sony on the phone to find out how they dealt with their rogue DRM efforts.

    In the end, I’m more of an Airmiles guy than an Aeroplan collector and if Airmiles pulled the same stunt, they’d be sure that my voice would be heard in every forum possible.

    Loyalty programs hath no fury like a member scorned!

    Joe

  • Jason Stanley

    TD’s GM VISA has a similiar policy with it’s members. When you accumulate $1 credit towards a new GM vehicle, that $1 will expire in 5 years. So it’s a race to get as much $$ as you can in 5 years.

    This policy forced me to stop collecting GM credits, and eventually cancel my GM VISA. In my view, I earned these credits, and I’ll be darned if any milti-billion dollar company is going to take them away from me and still keep my business.

    I see the same thing happening here. These are MY MILES. I collected them on the understranding that they were good forever as long as I continued to collect every 3 years.

    And now they want to take them away from me. Well, I’ve got news for Mr. Duchesne. You aren’t the only kid on the block.

    I will continue to collect for now. But be assured I have my eyes open for another program that I can quickly jump to. Like Starwood’s SPG, Air Miles, and many others. I will not allow my miles to EVER expire. Not even 1.

    -Jason

  • Chris Vandersluis

    I too received this delightful communication. I’ve had over a million miles in this account and earned every one of them. I thought I’d share an excerpt from my letter back to Aeroplan.
    Chris

    I wish to comment on your recent communciations regarding the expiration of miles.

    I have been an Aeroplan member for many many years. I acknowledge your right to change the program and understand that miles that I choose to accumulate in the future with Aeroplan will expire when they do. However, I will have the choice to accumulate those miles in the future with the reward program of my choice. I accumulated hundreds of thousands of miles to date with the understanding that those miles that I had accumulated would not expire.

    I am of the opinion that to change our arrangement retroactively to miles I had accumulated under your plan with rules current at that time constitutes a breach by you of our agreement and ask that you reconsider this policy.

    I can tell you that when this same change was done at American Airlines (and other airlines) they decided to declare all miles accumulated to date as having no expiration date. (American Airlines AAdvantage miles do not expire)

    Should Aeroplan not reconsider its proposed changes in the miles already accumulated in the program, I fear I will have no alternative but to protect my investment with further action.

    I await your reply.

  • curiousx

    So much for the GOOD news about all seats being available for aeroplan points. If you want to book a round trip YOW-BGI today for February it will cost you 150,000 points in coach and (wait for it) 462,000 points in business class!

    Note that the rates shown on the redemption chart on the aeroplan website are 50,000 and 60,000 points respectively…but there are no seats available for those point levels.

    This is ridiculous.

  • Seema

    I hear you! I travel at least three times a year between Germany and Canada and when I needed my points – they were gone. OK, I got over that. It’s funny how waiting over 8 months for a non-response can make you lose hope of ever getting and answer. I’ve since had 5 other complaints, that went unanswered. The last straw was an e-mail from the customer service (LOL) department telling me 1/that they are unable to handle the complaint and 2/ that that complaint was resolved!!

  • Peter

    I cannot believe that the Aeroplan web support reps tell me that they cannot correct omissions in the data base ..ie. flights avilable on Air Canada at http://www.aircanada.ca, but missing on aeroplan.ca
    The rep told me that he had no idea of what department he could even call to get the problem rectified !!!!
    When I asked him where the CEO of Aeroplan was located, he replied “I think it’s Vancouver”
    …. How can such a poorly managed rewards program be so highly valued on the TSE ????????????

  • Casey Hansum, Calgary, Canada

    Aeroplan is frustration plus. For eaxample: to fly return from Calgary to Phoenix takes no less than 6 hours each way. Amerca West flies non stop in 3hours and 15 minutes. Have you tried flying Business Class to Europe? One way will be Business and the return, or vice versa will be economy. Air Canada gives you reasons not to fly with them instead of the other way around.

  • Casey Hansum, Calgary, Canada

    It is better to just pay than to use Areoplan. Aeroplan is an insult to the intelligence to anyone with an I.Q over 50. Should you wish to increase your blood pressure, heart rate and nervous system, then by all means use Areoplan. The web site alone makes a Rubics cube mere child’s play.

  • Disgruntled, Toronto

    Lack of customer service? I just got off the phone with a “supervisor” who simply said to me that she had explained the situation to me over 10 times (she only said it twice before she got flustered) and then hung up on ME! After being on the phone with Aeroplan for the last two hours (this is frequently the case when dealing with agents), and having them be insolent to their own customers, I am thinking of dropping them. My family and I have been loyal to AC and Aeroplan for the last 20 years and I think it’s about time that we switch to another rewards plan such as Adventura.

    Going to do a little venting…Aeroplan does not show all available flights and routes on their website, which therefore leads you to call and speak with an agent (cost= $30 if you book) to ensure that what you see online is the best available. So I did, as I always do and the agent told me to book online since she could not offer me anything different. The problem here is that I was booking an executive class ticket (although not confirmed, you have the chance of being upgraded), so we proceeded online. Unbeknownst to us, the flight does NOT have executive service AT ALL…so we basically paid 40,000 extra points for the shortest leg of the itinerary (1 hour) with no chance of an upgrade for the international portion….

    So I called Aeroplan, requesting that they either downgrade the ticket and refund the 40,000 extra points (they said that would cost $135/tix) or waive a $55 change fee to a more direct flight with the executive service even though the itinerary could not be confirmed for executive. I even offered to pay an agent fee of $30, but they refused to acknowledge any miscommunication or the fact that THEIR agent was infact the one to tell me to book online!

    More importantly, the thing that pisses me off about Aeroplan is that it all depends on the agent you speak with and the fact that I got one BI@#* of a supervisor who must have been having a pissy day has blocked any other supervisor from allowing some leaniency since the previous one said the issue was closed.

    So, CUSTOMER SERVICE? There is very little and it really depends on who you get. Booking flights? We booked well in advance and illogically, there are better options closer to the date of departure than there were then…CUSTOMER SERVICE? How is that a way to serve your customers?

    Well, Aeroplan needs to seriously reconsider how they treat their loyal customers because they may decide to look at other more amicable options!

  • A Comeau

    Air Canada Aeroplan
    Cancellation Fee amounts to 102% of ticket price!!

    Complaint Rating:
    In good faith, we made a reservation in June 2007 for two short haul Canada-US flights in Aug using 15,000 Aeroplan miles. Due to unforseen circumstances, our flights had to be cancelled two days later (well outside the 22 day no-cancellation window) since we could not travel at that time.

    The fee charged was $286.00 for recovering the Aeroplan points, or 102% of the original ticket price! When we called to enquire, the agent called this a “reasonable” handling fee.. I can imagine a 10 or even 20% charge, but certainly not in excess of 100%. Other US airlines charge $50, which may be more in line with true transaction costs.

    BEWARE – The cancellation policy was NOT displayed during the web booking session; Aeroplan has refused to refund even a portion of the charges. It would have been cheaper to buy a cash ticket and throw it away.

  • R Solomon

    AIR MILES STOLEN

    I have been a member of Aeroplan since the late 1980′s and only used the card when flying on Air Canada. My wife and I had 47K miles between us. Just booked a flight with Air Canada and when I went to use my Aeroplan card they explained that under their new polocy, I no longer had a member ship in the plan and had lost all my miles because I was inactive for one year. By their own cost base they have stolen over $600 from me. What a way to run a loyality program.
    Another friend just lost over 200K miles for the same reason.

    I will write to AC to see if they can do anything about this problem, but
    I assume they are in on the scam.

  • lila

    I too lost 13000 unused miles. The letter came late and was not explanatory. Try getting a flight on your aeroplan miles—-almost impossible.! There should be a joint class action against aeroplan.

  • Bryan Bent

    To whom it may concern,
    I have just spent the last hour on the phone with Areoplan trying to find out why my daughter is at the Toronto airport looking out the window at the flight she is supposed to be on. They have sold her fight to someone else because the fight from Winnipeg to Toronto was six minutes late landing. The explaination was that where her fight to Toronto was delayed by a whole six minutes they felt they had the right to sell her seat, which has been booked for over five months. To finalize this part of the story the flight that she is watching on the tarmac has been delayed for one hour. Does the right hand not know what the left hand is doing, not to mention the security problem which this situation may cause? If Air Canada does not know when all fights are coming and leaving at any given time I say they have a problem.

    To top this off the Air Canada personnel who handled this problem in the beginning was very rude. I am surprised that this this women has a job.

    While waiting for this answer from Aeroplan I stumbled across this web site and have found myself in all the above mentioned situations being a long time member. I am very seriously considering a new approach to my future traveling plans which does not include Aeroplan or Air Canada.

    This message comes from a very frustrated Aeroplan member who feels that being one of their customers is a very unsatisfying relationship.

    Regards,

    Bryan Bent

  • Sorrelle Golomb

    Extremely Frustrated!!!!!

    I just had an extremely long telephone conversation (mostly on hold) with manager “Sandy Employee # BN” where she told me is was fair to pay $165 for the privilege of using my Aeroplan miles on a 15k short haul flight. I cannot argue with gov’t taxes but they do not give you a breakdown of “combined fees”…you have to call and ask. So I did. $50 is a fuel charge. When I asked why a $30 + tx charge for booking with an agent she told me “they did not pull my credit card number out of a hat to charge me for this ticket”. I informed her the information was not available online, which I told the booking agent and he did inform me there would be a charge, I just did not realize it would be a robbery!..she told me I should have asked first, and I agree with her on this. I should never have imagined it was a real loyalty programme. In the end her advice to me was “if you are not happy I can cancel yourentire ticket at a fee”……for the record Delta’s cost (including all taxes) for using points on the exact same route is $45.00
    I’m not sure who reads these, if anyone from Aeroplan but if you do I strongly suggest you replace your front line customer service people with ones who actually have some respect and comprehension of what “customer service” and “loyalty” means!…..She was probably the rudest, most disrespectful agent/manager I have ever spoken to! The whole point of having points to use is that we HAVE PAID and EARNED the right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is not an opportunity for AEROPLAN to make you feel like they are doing you a favour!
    I am disgusted with the treatment I just received. Not just because I disagree with being charged an additional $30 just to book a ticket on the telephone with them, but because of the manner in which they treat their clients, like we are completely dispensable. Proof in her resolution by offering to cancel the use of MY POINTS, at a cost to me of course!