Canadians are addicted to loyalty programs and there are plenty of them ranging from AIR MILES to Club Z points (I haven’t stepped into a Zellers store in years, so I believe the latter is now defunct). The fact that Canadian Tire “money” is practically a parallel currency says something about our collective addiction. Personally, I am enrolled in AIR MILES, Aeroplan and PC Points loyalty programs.
Recently, I wanted to redeem my AIR MILES for an Apple iPod, so I visited the various loyalty program websites to figure out the actual dollar value of a point. The results are summarized in the following table.
| Loyalty Program | To Earn 1 Point | To redeem $10 (in Points) | Rewards Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aeroplan | $1.00 | 1,200 | 0.83% |
| AIR MILES | $20.00 | 74 | 0.68% |
| PC Points | 10¢ | 10,000 | 1.00% |
| Canadian Tire Money | $66.67 | 10 | 1.50% |
| Sears Club | $1.00 | 667 | 1.50% – 4.00% |
| Shoppers Optimum | 10¢ | 7000 | 1.40% – 2.00% |
| HBC Rewards | 2¢ | 9160 | 0.50% |
Aeroplan, AIR MILES and PC Points can be collected as rewards through various credit cards and rewards range from 0.68% (for AIR MILES no-fee credit cards) to 1% (for PC MasterCard). I am not aware of a no-fee credit card that can be used to collect Aeroplan miles, so the value of the rewards is less than 0.83%. 1.5% seems to be the standard reward for loyalty programs offered by assorted retail outlets, though Sears Rewards can be as high as 4%. Note that rewards on department store credit cards are typically lower than rewards for in-store purchases.
