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!

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

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.

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.

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!