Rewards & Points

In Canada, there are many free systems to accrue points by purchasing a lot of shit. It defeats the purpose if you end up buying more in order to earn and cash out on points that don’t yet exist but I like to think that I have enough self-control to avoid this. I don’t, but I like to think I do. Below is a list of the points systems I have tried to use in exchange for “free” rewards. You have to spend money to earn fake money.

Air Miles:

If you’re planning on purchasing flights, food, or alcohol, regardless of their reward, it feels obvious that you might also try to benefit on earning points at the same time. While I struggle to understand how other people redeem Air Miles (I’ve never successfully redeemed points from their program so this might be my fault), I have many friends who insist it’s easy and that they’ve paid for flights this way. Some friends even have their credit cards set up to receive Air Miles for their spending. It feels like a job to me and if I have earned points with them for years and can’t even get a juicer to show for my work, then I don’t understand it and likely never will. 

Rating: 1/10

Usability: Low

What have I redeemed: Nothing

Marriott Bonvoy:

These points liken themselves to Air Miles in my difficulty in redeeming them. And they require way too high a balance to do anything worthwhile like earning free night stays, upgrading your room or getting credits toward food or spa treatments. I wouldn’t even know where to begin the process. It could be an online portal or it could be at a hotel check in desk. I’ve seen them work in action with friends who exclusively frequent the Marriott for travel accommodations but I mainly use this points system to get free wifi in my rooms which I feel I should be given anyway by spending money to stay there. If I can easily steal your lobby wifi then I shouldn’t have to sign up to your rewards program but here we are. 

Rating: 2/10

Usability: Low

What have I redeemed: Nothing. You get free wifi for being a member. 

Aeroplan:

This is a Canadian points system that rivals Air Miles for flights and accommodations rewards. I have never redeemed these points for flights or hotel upgrades. Because I haven’t earned or spent any points in over a year, I had 6 months before their expiry period of all points due to inactivity on your account for 18 months. I have a hard time with points expiry dates. I understand that it encourages you to use and earn more, but I don’t think they’re properly advertised or featured when you initially sign up for the program. Also these rules have changed over time. I know that Air Miles didn’t always have an expiration date but this was added after I first started earning miles. They sent out a warning email but, I don’t know, it seems sketchy. While I understand that points systems are governed by the businesses that own them, and while their value doesn’t extend to dollar amounts, I don’t think they should expire. Like gift cards which is another form of fake currency. 

Recently, I received an email from Aeroplan encouraging me to redeem and earn points from their new partnership with Starbucks. You could buy a gift card for a reduced number of points for a limited period. In order to avoid my points expiring on Aeroplan, I purchased a $20 gift card to Starbucks that after a few days of processing time, could be uploaded to my Starbucks app, which I also use for rewards. The convenience was shocking for me, helped in part because I had forgotten I had purchased it. They send you an email confirming your purchase detailing how many points you spent and how many you have left and then tell you to wait a few days before receiving the reward. I struggle with spending money at Starbucks, especially when coffee is very cheap and easy to make at home. So being able to redeem gift cards in exchange for booking flights that I would have to take regardless is a bonus I’m grateful for. 

From my understanding from my limited online research of Aeroplan points hackers, there are few viable flights where you can redeem a lower point amount for flight vouchers. I once saw a guy’s website whose entire job it was to advise you on how to use your points effectively (from telling you directly to calling the Aeroplan customer care line himself on your behalf) in exchange for a percentage of your points. It’s a genius strategy because the last thing I ever feel like doing is calling someone to ask them to help me redeem what I view as imaginary currency to buy a flight somewhere I want to go. 

One time, someone in Detroit bought a gift card to Best Buy using my Aeroplan points by hacking into my account. I found out right away because I got an email notification indicating I had made the purchase and sent it to a random address in Detroit. When I called their customer care line to cancel the transaction, they gave me a phone number to a legal team somewhere in New Jersey who promptly cancelled my purchase and reallocated the points to my account. It was an exciting couple of hours. I like to think that they still shipped out the card regardless so that the person could make purchases at Best Buy in the US. 

Rating: 6/10

Usability: Mid-level

What have I redeemed: One $20 Starbucks gift card. My friends who excel at this have redeemed a lot and insist it’s easy. I guess that person who hacked my account unsuccessfully redeemed that Best Buy gift card. 

Starbucks Rewards App

This is just an app you keep on your phone. You can use it to mobile order your drinks so you can skip the line in Starbucks. Since getting it, I haven’t waited in a Starbucks line unless I wanted to, which is enough to justify the whole system itself. It feels so elitist and unfair that I can walk into a busy Starbucks only to jump the line to where they’re all waiting for their drinks that they ordered from an actual person and to pick up my little oat milk latte. I also took advantage of this perk by making my friends at work pick up my order when they would go down for their own. It worked on so many levels. You could order as a group or by yourself and they always came out at the same time no matter when you did it. Like magic.

Earning points felt secondary to me but I started paying attention to days and specific promotions that would allow me to receive more points. I was ordering Starbucks when I didn’t even want it which is exactly how they get you. I’m not above being won over by points systems, clearly. This one did not help me. I’ve since reeled in my spending but their points also expire which is still some bullshit. I have 87 points as it stands and it takes 150 to get a free fancier drink of any size with any milk. Due to the pandemic, I’m not going out for coffee but when it’s safer, I will keep ordering via mobile order and will continue to earn and spend points. It amounts to about 1 free drink to every 10 purchased which checks out in my books. 

Rating: 7/10 (for convenience of ordering and earning points through the app)

Usability: Easy

What have I redeemed: maybe 3 free drinks

Optimity/Carrot Points

The Carrot points system started as an app that was funded by initiatives through the Governments of British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Northwest Territories and Ontario to encourage people to move and work out more. It calculated your steps daily, creating an average walking score that you were meant to beat for points. If you checked in at night, your phone would sync your steps to the app and determine whether you had beaten your daily average in exchange for a set number of points. The points could be redeemed for gift cards for gas and movie tickets. 

I used to love the Carrot points system. For a while, I was making sure that I would walk 10,000 steps a day to achieve my daily points from Carrot. I also used to do challenges with my friends where together we would be responsible for hitting above our average steps in a day for two weeks. It helped my activities level and kept me connected to friends I couldn’t see as often as I’d like. Knowing how many steps they needed to make their daily goals made me feel closer to them. But the system was flawed in that it required that you continually increase your steps for each challenge until your average grows to something over 15,000 steps a day. For me, this would amount to 2.5 hours of walking in the span of my 14 waking ones. It just wasn’t feasible unless I walked to and from work every day. Also the average would continue to climb so it would be impossible to keep beating your average without eventually running out of time and energy to do anything but walk. Your average would lower, you’d lose your daily walking challenge and then you’d try to not walk a lot or take your phone with you anywhere for two weeks in order to significantly decrease your walking average. It wasn’t a sustainable system. I, however, didn’t pay to go to a movie for two years using Carrot points to buy Cineplex gift cards for the value of a movie ticket.

While the expectations of continually increasing your walking for months wasn’t attractive to my friends and I, we still used the app daily to check in on our walking. It bonded us. I used to make fun of my friend at work who wouldn’t check in all day and had a walking score of 36 steps by 4 p.m. There was also a great deal of shaking our arms up and down to mimic the action of walking and in turn, tricking the app into thinking you had completed more steps than you had that day. I’m embarrassed to remember all the time at 11 p.m. I would sit up in bed swinging my arms so that I wouldn’t let down my friend who I was in a challenge with that week. The app encouraged cheating is what I’m saying. This comes out as a wash because I could still earn points but I wasn’t getting as much exercise out of it. Unless you count swinging your right arm in bed exercise, which I don’t think you should. 

Eventually, Carrot stopped offering the chance to earn points through the walking challenges and meeting your daily step goal. It turned into a more complicated system that required you do challenges that included actual workouts and running challenges. Not for me. Either way, they have since gone offline and rebranded as Optimity which I have still yet to download on my phone. I get their promotional emails but it seems none of my friends have started using it either. From my understanding, the requirements to earn points are like Carrot’s later ones which I wasn’t used to or wanting to do ever. While I lament the changes that have been made, I also appreciate the free movies gift cards I unlocked along the way. 

Rating: 7/10 (before, not now)

Usability: Easy

What have I redeemed: a free movie every 1–2 months for two years which is more than I need.

PC Plus/Optimum Points

Optimum points used to be a thing when you could earn points at Shoppers Drug Mart and redeem them in money off future purchases. It was easy to earn points because every time I walked in there, I’d leave having spent $100 on shampoo, sunscreen, and bug spray. Too easy. It was great because you’d earn so many points and there were special days when you could earn triple the points or your points were valued at triple their original worth. My smart friends would exclusively shop there on bonus days. I would use the points to reduce the costs on my deodorant and nail polish. 

Since Loblaws bought out Shoppers, we’ve been graced with PC/Optimum points where they can be earned and redeemed anywhere owned by the Weston family. This is huge for me because of how close I am to many of their grocery stores. Originally, I had a card that I would swipe and I never earned points there because you had to load up the weekly deals and then present your card to the cashier. I always forgot to load the offers but this is no longer an issue since I got the app on my phone. The offers are based on your past purchases so I find them just posting deals for food I’d be buying anyway. It’s a great way to see how often you buy onions or organic peanut butter. 

I use PC points all the time. I’m either earning them or spending them. The conversion works out to 10,000 points to each $10 and so on all the way up to $500. You can’t spend half amounts like 15,000 so you have to wait until the next $10 up in order to redeem but this can happen quickly if you’re strategic about what you buy. I know I said that I tried to not buy items purely for the points accumulation but I’m only human and it has become thrilling to me to review my receipts not as a reminder of what I bought but as an indicator of how many points I earned in that one shopping trip. I will wait until I’ve earned $20 worth of points before asking the cashier to reduce this amount from my next shopping trip. It’s easy and fun and makes shopping more bearable. I know some people who save up until they have $500 worth of points so that they can buy Xboxes or Playstations from Shoppers (which they sometimes sell on sale) but I’m fearful of hackers stealing all these points. They target bigger accounts with points totals that are over 500,000. 

Accumulating points is a slow process (1000–3000 points per trip where I spend between $50–100$ on groceries.) It amounts to literally $1-3$ off in the end but I get such a huge rush knowing that I’ve contributed to my pool. It’s a great system.

Rating: 10/10

Usability: High, I redeem these about once every two months on the every two months

What have I redeemed: Likely hundreds of dollars off the price of my groceries