If you read my last article about the use of reward miles to book international travel you will know that we have decided to redeem our Aeroplan miles for Air Canada gift cards, rather than booking flights using a combination of reward miles and cash. Free money … okay, you have paid for them when building up reward miles … but, they feel free at the time! Great stuff!
Our own original use of Air Canada gift cards was precipitated by the fact that the Love-goddess received a couple as retirement gifts. The use of these is greatly reducing the cost of our upcoming trip to Europe, and we will be very happy to use them to help fund our retirement travel costs on future trips.
As is abundantly obvious, I look upon airline gift cards favorably. But, like everything else they are not perfect. My quasi endorsement of airline gift cards comes with a number of caveats that you need to be mindful of if you are receiving them, or thinking about buying them for someone else.
Caveat #1 – Not All Airlines Offer Them
Your favourite airline may, or may not, make them available. Here are three examples. You will need to check yourself for any others you use regularly.
As you already know, Air Canada does. (https://beta.aircanada.com/ca/en/aco/home/book/air-canada-gift-cards.html) You can purchase cards, or eGift cards, at http://www.giftcard.aircanada.com/?Locale=en_CA, at Canada Post locations in Canada, or by redeeming Aeroplan Miles at aeroplan.com. Air Canada gift cards can be used to pay for flights anywhere they fly in the world.
WestJet does not offer gift cards at this time. This is spelled out in the payment option section of their website; “Unfortunately, we do not currently offer gift cards as a form of payment.” (https://www.westjet.com/en-ca/travel-info/payment/index). So, that is not an option.
Porter Air offers gift certificates (https://www.flyporter.com/flight/Gift-Certificates?culture=en-CA). They can be purchased by calling their Call Centre at 1-888-619-8622. They can only be used on North American flights where they fly, or through connecting routes offered by their airline partner, JetBlue.
Air Canada is the only airline whose gift cards I have used, so I will confine my remarks to them. Wherever possible in this article I will quote directly from information found on their website.
Caveat #2 – Make Sure You Understand the Terms and Conditions
It is very important that you fully understand the terms and conditions offered by the company you are purchasing from. You can read about Air Canada’s terms and conditions here (https://beta.aircanada.com/ca/en/aco/home/book/air-canada-gift-cards.html), and about Porter Air’s here (https://www.flyporter.com/flight/Gift-Certificates?culture=en-CA)
Caveat #3 – Redemption, the Most Important Term and/or Condition
Air Canada’s gift cards can only be used in very specific ways. You need to set aside your conventional thinking about how gift cards are used. For example, it’s not unusual to walk up to the counter at Starbucks, place your order and say; I’ve got a $1.23 left on this card, and $0.97 left on this card, and $1.05 left on this card, and I’ll give you the rest in cash. I know this from personal experience. They hate me at Starbucks. Air Canada’s cards do not work in this way.
When it comes to redeeming Air Canada gift cards when booking a flight, here is perhaps the most important information you need to know, as stated on their website: “Due to system limitations, we regret that a maximum of two (2) forms of payment is permitted on a single booking at time of purchase.”
What that means in practical terms it is that; you can use one gift card if it will cover the entire cost of the flight(s), one gift card and a charge card to cover the amount, or two gift cards as long as their value is equal to or exceeds the cost of the flight(s) you are booking. But, you cannot apply two or three gift cards to your booking, and then cover the rest of the cost with a charge card.
You may be thinking, I’d better get the balance from my two or three gift cards transferred onto a single card. Sadly, Air Canada will not allow you to do that. You cannot go anywhere to have the values of a few gift cards moved over onto a single gift card:
From the Frequently Asked Questions section of the Air Canada website – “It’s also important to know that you cannot consolidate the value of multiple gift cards onto a single one.” (my bolding) (http://www.aircanada.com/en/giftcard/faq.html#faq:8-*)
Each individual gift card must be used for a single booking. If you are purchasing two tickets for you and your spouse at the same time it still counts as one booking, so only one gift card can be used. Extremely annoying.
Caveat #4 – Know the Workaround
After reading the last caveat you’re probably thinking, sheeesh, we’ve received two lovely Air Canada gift cards recently, and we’re only going to be able to use one of them when we go online and book our flights to Paris? This is exactly how I felt when I tried to use two cards to pay for part of our flights to Dublin. Not to worry, there is a workaround … if there are two or more of you flying.
The workaround is to call the Air Canada reservations number (1-888-247-2262), and purchase your tickets over the phone, rather than booking online. When I called, the agent was very helpful; she told me that by booking our two flights separately for us she would be able to apply one gift card to each of our tickets. She was able to provide the same pricing offered online, and she was able to secure us seats together, which may or may not have happened if I had gone through the process of booking two separate flights online. Booking separate flights for two or more people online also gets you around the two forms of payment problem. Of course, there is no guarantee that you will get seated together, or the worse possible scenario, not even on the same flight.
Air Canada even makes note of the workaround in their Terms and Conditions:
“In the case of bookings for multiple passengers using multiple forms of payment (of which at least one is a Card or eGift card), it is recommended that separate bookings be made for each passenger using a Card or eGift card as a form of payment.” Very considerate on their part.
Caveat #5 – Be Aware of Other Non-Beneficial Terms and/or Conditions
Another good reason to read and understand the Terms and Conditions is to fully familiarize yourself with the many clauses that cover a whole lot of contingencies that might relate more specifically to your situation. The following ones spell out conditions for use that may have popped into your head.
1) “Cards and eGift cards are not redeemable for Air Canada Vacations packages or group travel.”
Gift cards can only be used for flights, not vacations or group travel.
2) “Cards and eGift cards cannot be resold; unlawful resale or attempted resale is grounds for seizure and cancellation of the Card or eGift card without compensation.”
No acquiring them with Aeroplan reward miles, and then selling them for cash on Kijiji.
3) “It’s also important to know that you cannot consolidate the value of multiple gift cards onto a single one.”
I already mentioned this, but it is very important and worth repeating. You can’t combine multiple cards into one.
Caveat #6 – Be Aware of the Beneficial Terms and/or Conditions
It’s not all one-sided. There are certain conditions that are favourable towards the user.
1) “Cards and eGift cards are fully transferable.”
You can re-gift them or let friends or family use them.
2) “If the price of the ticket is inferior to the value of the Card or eGift card, the remaining value of the Card or eGift card is retained until the stored value reaches a zero balance.”
As expected, if you only need to use part of the value of the gift card to pay for your flight the card retains the unused worth … bit of a no-brainer that one.
3) “Treat your Card like cash; Air Canada is not responsible for any stored value balance if the Card is lost, stolen, damaged or destroyed. If it is lost, stolen, damaged, destroyed or used without authorization, the value will not be refunded.”
They say there is no “refund” recourse if bad things happen to your card; i.e. stolen, lost, etc. BUT, they go on to say that you may be able to “replace” a card that has experienced misadventure:
“Replacement of lost, stolen, damaged or destroyed cards may occur only if the customer is able to provide proof of purchase. Proof of purchase must include the unique Card number which is located on the back of the card.
Once the request for replacement has been verified and deemed valid, the value that is stored on the lost, stolen, damaged or destroyed card at the time the replacement request is made will be reissued on a new replacement Card for a fee of 25$ and the original Gift Card will be deactivated.”
Final Thoughts and What I Would Like to See Changed
Will we continue to use them? Absolutely, in future we will be redeeming all of our Aeroplan reward miles for Air Canada gift cards, We are planning to spend our retirement time enjoying travel until we are unable to do it anymore, so they will get used. And, we would be happy to receive them as gifts.
Would we consider giving them as gifts? Sure, if someone we know is planning a trip, and would welcome a contribution to help lower their travel costs. I would make sure to explain to the recipient the redeeming procedure. And, I would also try to get others to go in on a single card purchase. This would allow us, and other friends, to provide them with a higher valued card. It would also prevent them from getting stuck with a bunch of lesser valued cards that would each have to be redeemed for individual flights (if others were thinking about giving the same).
The one thing I would love to see changed is for Air Canada to modify their redemption procedure. If you do much shopping online you will probably know that the value of many gift cards can be loaded into your account and accumulated. I would suspect that Air Canada’s gift card sales would take off … pun intended … if they allowed customers to accumulate the individual card values into an online account. At very least it, would be helpful if they simply allowed customer to use multiple gift cards to help pay for a single booking. Either of these options would probably do wonders for customer loyalty and retention.
