SEE CORRECTION BELOW
A prevailing (and irritating) trend in loyalty programs is the shortening of your points’ lifespan. If your balance is stagnant, then you’re increasingly at risk of losing your account entirely.
For example, United and US Airways recently revised their rules to make points on stagnant accounts expire after 18 months. Delta does the same after 2 years. Air Canada is the worst, with activity required at least once every twelve months, and, in a slap in the face to loyal customers, expiring your points after 7 years, even if you’re an active account holder.
Sure, you can keep your balance alive by having any kind of activity — including redemption — on your account. Credit a withering account with a car rental, an online purchase through an airline mall, etc.
Even better: Fill out a silly survey and get some points to restart the clock, without parting with any of your money.
That’s just what you can do with Delta, breathing new life into your stale account: The “Insider Opinion” survey asks one single question (the questions rotate periodically) and rewards you with a quick and easy 250 points. CORRECTION: These points will NOT restart the clock on your Delta miles, after all. As Gary correctly caught and noted in comments, they are coded as a bonus, and thus don’t count toward expiration calculation. Mea culpa. Expiration rules are here.
Bonus:
InterContinental Hotels’ Priority Club (which includes the Holiday Inn hotels, too) doesn’t have an expiration date on their points (yet), but have a free-point survey anyway: it’s a fairly short (4 screens?) survey for 250 easy points: click here.
Got free surveys for other programs or alternate ways to restart your point clock? Post ‘em in comments.
Related:
- United cuts the lifespan of frequent flyer miles
- Air Canada joins race to the bottom on frequent flyer miles
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February 5th, 2007 at 5:21 am
Actually, that Delta survey won’t extend the expiration of your miles. Delta codes it as a “bonus” miles transaction and bonus miles don’t extend an account.
See, for instance:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=651909
February 5th, 2007 at 7:32 am
Thanks, Gary. You’re right, the term/conditions on the survey page explicitly refer to this as a ‘bonus,’ so I have corrected the post above. Thanks for the catch.
January 20th, 2008 at 10:54 am
The abouve two surveys have expoired
January 20th, 2008 at 10:55 am
The above two surveys have expired!