Welcome to next Rewards Canada Clash!
If you listened to our podcast 
from June entitled Clash of the Credit Cards - you'll know that we've
changed our Showdown features to Clashes. The reason why is that lots of
sites and blogs are using Showdown now, some are using battle so we
wanted to continue to be unique so our comparisons are now Clashes!
Remember his bonus is earned over and above the Shop the Block offer as well
that awards 30 bonus miles if you spend $100 or more with one retailer
so keep that in mind as well!
You can find this offer and many more on our Black Friday / Cyber Monday / Holiday Deals page!
Air Canada's Cyber Monday sale started at Midnight ET this morning and actually offered 30% and 50% off promo codes for a limited amount of tickets but those are already sold out. The next discount level is 25% but that is limited to 2,000 bookings. Use code CYBER25 for the 25% off. At the time of posting this it was still available but they could sell out at anytime. After that using code CYBER20 will provide a 20% discount off base fares to anywhere Air Canada flies. The sale is only valid for today and is good for travel until June 30, 21.
You’ll also find this offer and many more on our Black Friday / Cyber Monday / Holiday Deals for 2020 page!
The Marriott Gift Card sale that we let you now about last week is finally here. For today and tomorrow you can receive a 15% discount when you buy. Note there is a limit of $5,000 per person/per credit card/per day. These means you could buy up to US$10,000 in total for gift cards, one $5K today and on $5K tomorrow. All gift cards purchased are valid for future travel globally this
winter and beyond as they don't have expiry dates.
The posting of Cyber Weekend deals continues today! The first we have for you is WestJet's Cyber Monday sale. Today only you can take an additional 20% off to anywhere there fly by using discount code A86LU83. The code is valid for Basic, Econo, Premium and Business. Excludes EconoFlex, PremiumFlex and BusinessFlex fare classes. Travel must be completed January 5 to June 27, 2021
Here's an example of the savings utilizing this code. Calgary to Maui in January:
 |
| With the 20% code applied |
 |
| Without the code |
You’ll also find this offer and many more on our Black Friday / Cyber Monday / Holiday Deals for 2020 page!
Booking period: Until Nov 30, 20
Stay period valid Nov 23, 20 – Sep 12, 21
You’ll also find this offer and many more on our Black Friday / Cyber Monday / Holiday Deals for 2020 page!
All images via Hotels.com
This offer that we mentioned yesterday is now live! Fairmont's Black Friday flash sale provides a 20% bonus on all gift cards
purchased between 2pm and 5pm EST. You can buy gift cards in $50
increments from $50 to $2,000 per card and you can buy up to 5 cards in
one transaction. Say you buy a $1,000 gift card you'll end up with
$1,200 to spend at Fairmont Hotels. And as Ben S. commented on our Black Friday post for 40% off Fairmont stays it's a perfect time to combine the two for awesome savings.
Earlier this month we ran an awesome contest to celebrate the launch of the new Aeroplan program and wanted to thank everyone who entered the contest as well as to Aeroplan for the prizes! A big congratulations go out to each of the 25,000 points winners and this time the contest was swept by Ontario!
Air Transat's Black Friday deal is here and they are offering flights for as little $93 each way. On top of the lower fares you can book select flights at the Eco Standard fare level and only pay for the lower Eco Budget rate. That includes Eco Standard perks valued at up to $220, such as:
Wow, AIR MILES out did themselves here! 😉 They have revealed the Air Miles Shops Black Friday offer and it's... wait for it.... 10x miles site wide! The same offer they've had for most of this week as their pre-Black Friday offer. Sorry just giving AM a hard time here!
An announcement came across the wire today that CIBC and More Rewards have now partnered up so that CIBC credit card and debit card holders can earn extra More Rewards points when shopping at Save-On-Foods, Urban Fare and PriceSmart Foods. The promotion is interesting in that if you have a CIBC credit or debit card and are a More Rewards member you don't have to do anything. You will automatically start earning 2x More Rewards points per dollar spent at any of those three grocery stores as long as you pay for the purchase with a CIBC issued card and give your More Rewards number.
Here are some more details from today's press release:
In addition to doubling the More Rewards points earned at the checkout or online, from November 26th, 2020 to February 28th, 2021, customers are automatically entered to win** one of four prizes of FREE Groceries for a Year when they use their More Rewards and CIBC credit or debit cards at one of the three participating grocers.
“We are thrilled to launch this exciting new partnership with CIBC which allows our customers to earn double the More Rewards points on their purchases with no requirement to link cards or register,” said Dan Howe, President, More Rewards. “We are committed to providing excellent value to our customers, and this partnership is a new, innovative, and simple way of doing just that.”
As one of Western Canada’s favourite loyalty programs, More Rewards has over 3.5 million members. Their extensive customer data will provide greater opportunities to offer significantly more personalized promotions to customers.
This new partnership provides CIBC with high marketing value through a unique 360-degree omni channel ecosystem which includes More Rewards digital platforms, Save-On-Foods store and digital assets, as well as Jim Pattison media assets. More Rewards is in the midst of a large digital transformation, and the new CIBC partnership will improve our capability to focus on high opportunity customers. With a new app in development serving up personalized offers, CIBC will be cross promoted with all of the More Rewards partners.
“The new partnership between CIBC and More Rewards is an exciting one as we see our shared values align to offer our customers increased value for their hard-earned money,” said Diane Ferri, Senior Vice-President of Card Products, CIBC. “By teaming up with More Rewards we are proud to offer Western Canadian families a new opportunity to enhance their grocery shopping experience.”
The double More Rewards points will be awarded over and above any points earned on the CIBC cards. So for example if you go spend $100 at Save-On Foods you'll earn 200 More Rewards Points (100 base + 100 bonus for using a CIBC card) and then 150 Aventura or Aeroplan points if you use a CIBC Infinite or Infinite Privilege card or 100 Aventura or Aeroplan points for the entry level cards.
Now part of me is thinking this may a test as well to see how well it is received and could very well lead to a new More Rewards credit card being launched with CIBC of course.
Fairmont Hotels are running the same promotion as their parent company (Accor Hotels) for Black Friday. When you book stays by November 30 you can enjoy a 40% discount and 2x ALL Accor Live Limitless points for stays at participating Fairmont Hotels & Resorts and Swissotel properties in North and Central America.
Accor Hotels have released their Black Friday offer for stays in Canada, the US, Turkey, Asia, and more. Simply book by November 30 to
receive a 40% discount and 2x ALL Accor Live Limitless Rewards points.
The offer is valid for stays from December 7, 20 to March 14, 21.
You’ll also find this offer and many more on our Black Friday / Cyber Monday / Holiday Deals for 2020 page!
Image via Accor
Just like many of the other airline and hotel programs, Radisson has also come out with Cyber Week buy points bonus. That bonus is 100% when you buy 5,000 or more points.
Offer details:
Earn up to 5,000 Bonus Privileges Points for stays of 2 or more nights at participating Choice Hotels Worldwide. Full details, online registration & booking (Registration is required) Until Dec 31, 20
Stay 2 nights earn 2,000 bonus points
Stay 3+ nights earn 5,000 bonus points
For residents of the U.S., Canada, Mexico, participating countries in Central America and the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, or Singapore only
TODAY IS THE LAST DAY FOR THIS OFFER AT 60%
The best ever bonus for buying Marriott Rewards points has returned The bonus is 60% when you buy 2,000 or more points in one transaction. Marriott has also increased the annual limit for buying points to 150,000 for the duration of the promotion.
Air Transat is making a big push for their Black Friday Cyber Monday sale although they haven't revealed the details just yet. They are asking people to sign up to receive notice on the deal. When you do you'll receive an exclusive promo code for the sale that starts in just over a day. If you want to help support Rewards Canada we do receive a small commission for each person that does subscribe to receive the code via Air Transat's Black Friday Cyber Monday page. (Thank you in advance to all of you who do!)
Image via Air Transat
WestJet's ultra low cost airline Swoop is offering all flights in Canada for under $100 each way as their Black Friday sale. This sale is good for bookings made until November 29 (or until it sells out?) for travel between December 9, 2020 and March 31, 2021. Flights outside of Canada run from $89 to $159 each way.
Here
are the Rewards Canada Top 5 7 Cash Back Credit Card Sign Up offers for
the month of November 2020! This is not a 'best' credit card
list like our Top Cash Back Credit Card rankings but instead a look at cards that have very good acquisition (welcome/sign up) offers. As always when choosing a card
you should always take other factors into account other than the
just sign
up bonus, but when some of these cards are first year free, they
can and
do pay off even when you grab them strictly for the sign up rewards.
This month we see six of the seven cards offering the first year free. Oh
and this month we had to go with 7 cards again instead of our usual 5 cards
due to the four of them all offering the same welcome bonus.
Here are our top 7 cash back credit card sign up offers for November (in order of value)
Looking to book Qatar Airways' flights out of Montreal? Use the promo code BLACKFRIDAY when you book by 02 December 2020 to receive an additional 10% off. The discount will only apply to the base fare, and will not apply to
carrier surcharges, taxes, or other fees.*
We see the return of IHG Rewards Club's buy points bonus offer for Black Friday. The promotion is the a 100% bonus when you purchase 5,000 or more points at a time and once again the annual purchase limit has been raised to 250,000 points before the bonus.
With Black Friday and Cyber Monday dominating the headlines there isn't much to report for loyalty program news etc. so our daily updates will I think for the most part just be bonus offers for the next week!
You can earn 20x the PC Optimum points when you shop online and spend $75 on beauty products with Shoppers Drug Mart. This offer runs until November 26. Find out more here.
Offer details:
50 Bonus AIR MILES Reward Miles when stay at participating IHG® Hotels and Resorts properties. Full details & online booking. Until Dec 28, 20
To earn miles and the bonus you must set your IHG Rewards account to earn AIR MILES.
Marriott is offering its largest Cyber sale ever which begins today Tuesday, November 24. Marriott Bonvoy™ Escapes seven-day sale is being offered for the first time at more than 5,000 hotels throughout the US, Canada, the Caribbean and Latin America. Marriott Bonvoy members will save 25% and non-members will save 20% on stay.
Marriott reached out to us to let know about some of their upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. They’ll have a sale starting tomorrow for actual hotel stays that will offer savings of up to 25% off and we’ll cover in a separate post. However we wanted to give you a heads up that they will once again be selling gift cards with a 15% discount. The sale takes place on November 30 and December 1 as follows:
A quick note about this upcoming week here on Rewards Canada - a lot
of our regularly scheduled and planned programming may be delayed as the
focus this week is on Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals! This means
some posts we had planned for the new Aeroplan program may not come out
until next week, coverage of the new Desjardins World Elite Cash Back card that many of you have let us know about will be next week and we may not even have a hotel bonus points summary post for
this month! It will really come down to how many offers we
come across to post and add to our deals page.
Get 10x the AIR MILES® Reward Miles on qualifying purchases from 00:00:01 a.m. ET on November 23 to 23:59:59 p.m. ET on November 26, 2020. Offer applies to the total base Miles collected on qualifying purchase amount, excluding shipping, duty and taxes. Base Offer may vary per store;
If you are looking to stay in downtown Edmonton for business or perhaps a staycation the this offer may just sway you to stay at the JW Marriott Edmonton ICE District. The hotel that was the hub for the NHL bubble in Edmonton and one of the newest higher end hotels in the city is offering up a nice bonus for all stays at this hotel as long as you are a Marriott Bonvoy member. I say all member as I had to reach to Marriott since the offer wasn't working from the promotion page. Here's what Marriott told me:
Best Western has brought back their stay twice get one free night
offer as their winter promotion. Members who complete two separate stays
in the U.S., Canada and Caribbean will receive a voucher for a future
free night stay. The promotion runs until Jan 31, 2021 and the voucher
itself must be used up by Mar 31, 21. Members can only earn one free
night voucher during the promotion.
Yesterday we brought you the details of two of Air Canada's multiple Black Friday promotions, the Aeroplan eStore bonus and the Buy Aeroplan points bonus. In the Aeroplan eStore post we mentioned another promotion that would be considered the umbrella of all of Air Canada's Black Friday deals and that is the bonus points offer for taking part in multiple Black Friday offers. In this post we take a closer look at the multiple offer bonus.
Funny things happen when you ask questions. Not that we forced this but the timing sure was perfectly coincidental! 😉 If you recall from last week we discussed Hawaii travel in one of our daily update posts thanks to our reader Peter K. At that time the rules were that Canadians would need to quarantine for 14 days upon arrival to Hawaii unless they flew through the U.S. where they could get approved testing within 72 hours of departure. Yet Air Canada and WestJet had flights to Hawaii already scheduled despite no news of a similar option for flights that go direct to Hawaii from Canada. We even reached out to Air Canada and WestJet with the question on how they were planning on conducting Hawaii flights and if they were working on anything behind the scenes. Both airlines told Rewards Canada that they were taking it day by day and that Canadian travellers would have to follow whatever rules Hawaii had in place. And then bam! All of sudden we get this news late yesterday afternoon that the Governor of Hawaii will allow for Canadian pre-testing to count towards their safe travel program.
Last year we created a new page on the main Rewards Canada site that covered Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals and it proved to be overwhelmingly popular. So you guessed it! It's back for 2020 ! You may have noticed a few days ago that the pop up on our site that highlights a feature on our site changed to promote the page but we didn't push it out on the blog or socials as there were only a couple of deals.
The annual AIR MILES Shop the Block event launched today and presents a really nice bonus mile earning
opportunity for AIR MILES collectors. If you meet the requirement of
using Shop the Block coupons at 3
or more sponsors you'll be awarded with up to 1,200 Rewards Miles over
and
above the base miles and coupon bonus miles awarded. The maximum 1,200
miles is the same as we saw last year so it looks like we won't see the 2,000 miles like we saw in 2017 and 2018.
There are actually quite a few promotions within Aeroplan's Black Friday Spectacular that they launched today. From the eStore offer (covered here) to a multiple offer usage bonus and more. One of those offers is a bonus on buying Aeroplan points. You can earn a 50% bonus when you buy points between today and November 29th. As long as you buy the minimum of 2,000 points you'll get the 50% bonus. Here's a look at what it costs to buy the maximum amount of points:
Today Aeroplan launched their annual Black Friday offers for shopping online via the Aeroplan eStore! From now until November 29 you can earn up to 10X the points when you shop online at select retailers that are partners in Aeroplan's online shopping portal. Members can also get up to 10% off when redeeming points for merchandise via the eStore.
The new offers are as follows:
Porter Airlines has further pushed back their re-launch of flights. The airlines is now set to start up again on February 11, 2021. Find out more here.
Image via Porter Airlines
---
Rewards Canada's charity partner Give A Mile has launched their annual Flight Hero Christmas Campaign. We have covered Give A Mile many times before on the blog and our podcast but as a quick refresher here is what Give A Mile is all about:
Launched back in September, WestJet's stay at home promotion for elite qualification with credit card spending has been extended to January 9th from it's initial end date of December 9th.
The offer provides all members who hold a WestJet RBC World Elite Mastercard with an elite tier qualifying spend boost of 10% of all their eligible purchases until January 9, 2021. This means if you go out and buy $250 worth of groceries you'll earn $25 in qualifying spend. Considering the airline has also extended the qualifying spend period of all members to the end of 2021 this boost should really make it a lot easier for a lot of members to reach that next elite tier.
Air Canada has release a new limited time flight pass option. The Gift of Travel Flight Pass offers travel to one of six geographic zones (Canada, US, South America, Europe, Asia, or Sun) anytime between now and April 2022. This pass is very flexible in that you can book, change or cancel your flight up to 2 hours prior to departure. Passes need to be purchased by December 1, 2020.
The Gift of Travel Flight Pass is special in how it works:
Best Western has brought back their offer for a 20% bonus on Best Western Travel/Gift Cards! When you buy a C$100 gift card they will give you a C$20 bonus card to use. You can buy up to $500 worth of gift cards with this promotion to receive $100 in bonus cards. Note the terminology difference in the cards – the travel/gift card is a true gift card – that is it has no expiry date as they can’t put one on them due to laws against it in countries like the U.S. and Canada. However the bonus card is not considered as such since it is an incentive and you are not paying cash for it. That means they can put an expiry on the bonus card and have done so. Any bonus cards you receive are only valid until March 31, 2021. Nonetheless if you think you’ll be traveling and staying at Best Western hotels by the end of March then by all means avail of this offer to garner those savings! Also note that you can buy the travel cards in USD, EUR or GBP currencies.