How to Stop Your Hotel Points and Airline Miles Expiring
After you have been here and there collecting points and air miles, it’s a shame not to use them. Although there are many folk taking advantage of reward programs to enjoy life and live better, plans can change making redeeming your rewards before they expire more difficult. If you are not ready to lose your points and air miles, here are a few ways to keep your account active.
Ways to Keep Your Reward Points Active
When you’re on a hotel or airline loyalty program, from the start it makes sense to become familiar with all the conditions but especially with their rewards expiration policy.
- In most cases, hotels and airlines close accounts and cancel points after 18 months of inactivity. Other programs are more flexible and keep inactive accounts open for as long as 36 months. Since there is such a wide variation in expiration times, it is better to check the conditions in the small print.
- Pick a good tracking program that keeps you informed on the state of your account and helps you manage it. All you have to do is register and the app will take care of everything including the expiration date.
- Stick to collecting points by using the same hotel chain or airline when you can. This keeps the account
- When it comes to keeping your hotel points and airline miles intact travel dates don’t matter. It’s the purchasing dates that’s important. If your points are about to expire. It’s worth buying a ticket for travel months ahead to keep the account active.
- Take a browse around the program’s shopping portal and use it. These days there’s a wide choice of products and you’ll earn more points. It doesn’t need to be a big purchase, even a small one is considered account activity and will keep your points intact.
- To protect your airline miles in particular, consider using an airline credit card. Each time you use the credit card the points expiration date resets. An airline card often comes with other benefits such as priority boarding or free checked luggage.
- Do you have several hotel points or airline miles but you don’t want to use them with the same provider? It is sometimes possible to transfer points from one loyalty program to partner programs. Transfers tend to be fast and are enough to restart your expiration clock.
- If you’ve collected a large number of points and you don’t want to use all of them, consider dining out at a restaurant in the rewards network. You’ll have to register for the program using your credit card and use the same card to pay for the meal.
- Sometimes, logging some account activity quickly is the only way to push expiration dates back. One way is to buy miles from the You are not guaranteed any good deals but it will reset the account’s expiration date.
- Another way to save points and miles is to make a donation of your rewards to a charitable cause. The donation will be considered a redemption making this is a feel-good way to keep your account active.
- If you don’t use an app to keep track of your account activity, you may never realize until the last-minute that your points are going to expire. But, understand that you shouldn’t just accept it as your fate to lose all your points, as asking the airline nicely to get your points back might still work. So, be sure to call their frequent-flier desk and see if they can come up with a solution to help you reinstate your account. Some airlines might be willing to reinstate your account for a one-time fee.
There are many businesses that offer customers rewards in exchange for their loyalty but it is up to the customer to use them. With so many programs to join, it’s easy to become complacent as you hand over your card at the point of purchase. For sure, there are many benefits exchanging points for the rewards but many consumers fail to take full advantage of them. It’s normal that part of the agreement you make with the program is that when you stop being a customer you are not entitled to the benefits. In the end, hotel points and air miles are as good as cash for the customer so it’s in the programs’ participating companies best interests to operate a use it or lose it policy.
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