Some people like me love royalty cards, point cards, gift cards and so on. One of the reward system I use to use often was Airmiles. They’ve been around for quite some time and since all 4 members of my family uses on under one account, the points tend to add up. And since the others don’t redeem, I get to redeem. Over the years, I’ve been able to get some pretty handy stuff.

• Oster 5-Speed Blender with Delighter Pitcher  (750 pts)
• Portable Vacuum Cleaner
• Facial Spa
• Oven Toaster
• Tall Summer Fan
• Lagostina^® 3-Piece Skillet Set 675 points
• Gift cards -  Banana Republic, Chapters, Gap, etc.

With the Banana Gift card, I went shopping at Banana Republic. They were having a mega sale, so the $100 sweater was down to $11, and the $11, I used with my gift card, so I pretty much got it for FREE! Wipppeeee~!

The sad thing is, over the years they slowly got rid of more and more products you could redeem. They used to have a whole range of products and gift cards. Instead, they’ve introduced a new method of redeeming which is to redeem $10 off your next purchase where Airmiles are accepted for 95 points. That’s still a pretty good deal. However, places where you can redeem the points as cash is super limited – like at RONA.

If you don’t want to redeem for cash, you can set your settings to collect into your ‘redeem for merchandise’ or to both methods. Airmiles is free, so there is absolutely no loss except you have to carry an extra card in your wallet. But after looking at the reward system recently, where I couldn’t really redeem any of the products unless I have thousands and thousands of points, I lost interest. From that day on, the card left the wallet for good.