AirMiles still deceivng us | Your stories | Discussion forum

I was not going to write about this, but the story is so ridiculous that I had to get it off my chest.

AirMiles is currently offering a “MegaMiles” deal, at least here in Ontario, and I think elsewhwere. You can find it on their website. It runs throughout May – sort of.

I first heard about it in a grocery flyer from Foodland, which is a Sobey’s brand here.

So, I went to the internet to see the details.

There, I found that if you fulfilled the requirements on 5 offers from 5 sponsors during May, you would get a bonus of 1250 AirMiles. Not small change as these things go. It looked achievable without buying a bunch of stuff you don’t need, so we decided to give it a try.

The website listed all the sponsors and the deals. It said you could print out the coupons, but this proved more or less impossible as they would only print out with another page showing through under them, and all was faint. It was also next to impossible to record the details as most of that was in pop-ups where you could only capture a snippet at a time.

However, we could see that there was an offer from Foodland, from Sobey’s, and from Sobey’s Urban Fresh - 3 Sobey’s brands. Would each count as a sponsor? Who knows? There were also two different offers from LCBO, the provincial liquor store. Would they count for two? Not likely, but two different producers involved, so who knows who is the sponsor exactly?

However, as it was Sunday, there was nobody to phone or Chat with. So, off we went to the LCBO and bought both items, to be on the safe side, as they are returnable within 30 days. Nobody in the two LCBO stores that we visited had heard of the MegMiles deal. One rep recalled that someone had been in the preivous day looking for the same wine that we were looking for. The offer for the LCBO products says “while quantities last”, so good luck on that one! By the time most people find out about it, they will be out of stock.

Then we went to Sobey’s store and went to the Customer Service desk. The website had mentioned a “booklet” so we figured CS would have the booklet. Well, no, actually. She had never seen it and knew nothing about Megamiles deal except that a customer had brought one in the previous day and she had seen a Metro logo on it (Metro is another Airmiles grocery partner here, not related to Sobey’s.) She tried very hard to be helpful, and phoned two Sobey’s Urban Fresh stores to see if they had any booklets or knew anything. They didn’t. My main question was whether Sobey’s, Sobey’s Urban Fresh, and Foodland would each count as a sponsor. Nobody knew. Also, there was no reference whatsoever to the MegaMiles deal in the Sobey’s flyer!

This might not have been a problem except that the offer for Sobey’s and Sobeys Urban Fresh do not run the entire month. They were only good for May 5-7, so Sunday was the last day – according to the website.
I do get Air Miles email all the time, and there was also no reference to MegMiles there – until today – AFTER the two Sobey’s offers had expired. When the email finally did arrive, the two Sobey’s offers had been deleted.

But I’m skipping ahead…

To be on the safe side, we made the deals at both Sobey’s and Sobey’s Urban Fresh on Sunday, hoping both would count. They weren’t onerous. You just had to redeem 95 AirMiles, and you would get 25 back, from each place for doing so - a good deal under any circumstance.

The CS woman at Sobey’s, who tried her best to be helpful, suggested we go to Metro to see if we could get a booklet there since she had seen the Metro logo on the booklet that the other customer had shown her.

So, our next stop was Metro. However, the answer there was “no”, they were not participating in MegaMiles.

There is a Shell gas station next to the Metro, and I knew Shell was listed as a sponsor online, so we stopped there. Sure enough, they had the booklets that were not available at Sobey’s less than a mile away.

The booklets included all the necessary coupons and offers, some of which do not require a coupon. They also include an enormous amount of fine print, for which I required a magnifying glass. There too it was obvious that the Sobeys deals were only valid until May 7. There were also many other complicated conditions for the other sponsors.

One page of the booklet was devoted to slogans about MegaMiles plus half the page was full of logos from various sponsors. Most of these, including Metro (obviously this was what the Sobey’s CSR had seen) did not have corresponding coupons or offers either in the booklet or online. What were we to make of that, we wondered?

On Monday morning, I initiated Chat with Airmiles and asked all kinds of questions.

It turns out that Sobey’s and Sobey’s Urban Fresh and Foodland are all separate sponsors, so you could fulfill 3 of the 5 requirements there – if only you happened to know about it, which you likely would not, at least in the case of the first two, because there is no publicity whatsoever unless you happen to go to the AirMiles site over those 3 days or happen to go into a store such as Shell (and not just pay at the pumps) where they have the booklets or happen to read the Foodland flyer. Rexall/PhamaPlus is also a participating sponsor, and they too make no mention of this deal in their weekly flyer. I didn’t bother checking the others.

However, it is also true that only one of the two LCBO offers counts, so we made a return trip there to get rid of the unwanted vodka.

After I’d gotten all my questions answered, and felt reasonably confident, I hit the “Print” button on the Chat. It printed only part of the first page! Fortunately I had not deleted it, and was able to copy it in its entirety.
My final comments on Chat were to complain about all of the above. I was assured that this would be passed on to management and discussed in their team meetins etc. Right.

But, the question is, do I believe that this strategy of non-communication, virtually unreadable and conflicting fine print, and confusing communication was intentional? Well, yes, I do. Nobody has even attempted to excuse it.

And, when the email about the Megamiles finally arrived today, both the Sobey’s and Sobey’s Urban Fresh offers were missing, although they are still in the booklet. Clearly they knew these two offers had expired before they sent out the publicity. How could this not be deliberate?

So, there will be people out ther with the booklets who are unable to read the very fine print on the back or who don’t do so. The front of the Sobey’s coupons says May1-May 31, so why would you think there would be different dates on the back? They will redeem their Miles, thinking they are getting a bonus 25 miles back and that they are fulfilling the requirements for Megamiles, but they wont get a thing.

Yesterday we went to Rexall, it being Seniors day. We got the Seniors discounts, remembered to produce our coupons, and fulfilled the Megamiles requirements. We almost failed though as the cashier asked if we wanted to redeem AirMiles for the purchase! I'm quite sure that if we'd said "yes", the coupon and the Megamiles would have been voided as we were not technically spending the money.

This whole thing is a comedy of intentional errors, designed to make people think they can qualify for something which they cannot. If that is not true, then they are all grossly incompetent and should be fired.

What I don’t understand is why it is useful to AirMiles to make so many people angry with them – again. They haven’t recovered their reputation after the fiasco about expiry dates yet.

For over $130 equivalent, I was willing to wade through this, spurred on by incredulity as each new fiasco was revealed. I think we’ve met all the requirements, and I expect to get the 1250 AirMiles. But it will be my last effort. They still owe me from a Shell deal last summer which they have not made good on after a very nice person on the phone told me she would call me back the same day. That was quite a few weeks ago now.

The friendly clerk at LCBO volunteered that she would never participate in AirMiles again after they stole her Miles back a few years ago. That’s the message from someone who works for one of their sponsors!

One thing I am confident of is that AirMiles won't have to give out a lot of 1250 mile deals. Some people will forget about it, lose track of their receipts, and will assume they never actually qualified, but there will be enough publicity to make them think they will qualify. Others will believe they did qualify and will, if they pursue it long enough, find out they missed several aspects of fine print etc. They may complain, but will it matter? I doubt it.

I'm going to be sure to redeem theses soon, as the next thing will likely be a devaluation in Cash Rewards - unannounced, of course.

At best, someone may learn something from my research and not get caught up in a fruitless chase. Perhaps you will at least be amused.

It’s a distraction from the woes of HCG at least!