BMO Rewards Technical Issue Update: You can now redeem 150 points towards $1 for any travel booked on your BMO Rewards cards!

On March 1st we posted about BMO Rewards having technical issues for any one looking to book flights with the BMO Rewards online booking platform. We wrote about it as we took issue with how BMO was handling it by asking their cardholders to go out and book any travel they wanted on their cards and then redeem 175 points towards every $1 of said travel charge. We called them out on this as here are their customers expecting to book travel and redeem at 150 points to $1 but due to the bank's booking platform issue they were asking them to redeem more points than originally planned. Well lo and behold it appears they listened to us as sometime between March 2nd and March 3rd BMO changed it for the better. 

Earn up to 750 Bonus Miles when you shop online via AIR MILES Shops

 

AIR MILES launched a great new bonus offer today for shopping online via their AIR MILES Shops portal. It is a tiered bonus offer that awards you when you shop across multiple stores and roughly spend from $50 to $100 via each online shop. The offer is good until March 23, 2022. 

March 3 Update: The new Hyatt Place Brampton will open in July and be a World of Hyatt Category 2 Hotel, Rocketmiles and PointsHound combine into one booking site

Here's your Rewards Canada Daily update! Your near daily dose of loyalty program, credit card and travel news, bonuses, deals and more. This update is brought to you by the HSBC World Elite Mastercard which is currently offering a welcome bonus of up to 100,000 bonus points worth $500, has no foreign transaction fees and no annual fee in the first year! 

 
We already have one update to our series on New Hotel Openings in Canada. This one comes to us from Hyatt who have now revealed more details on the Hyatt Place Brampton. First it will be called the Hyatt Place Toronto / Brampton now and an opening date of July 27, 2022 has been published on the hotel website. Also, they have added the hotel to the World of Hyatt program and it comes in as a Category 2 Hotel. This means it will require 8,000 points for a Standard free night award, 6,500 for Off Peak and 9,500 Peak. Click here to learn more about this hotel and others opening in Canada this year.

Offer Extended: Earn up to 60,000 Bonus Avios with the RBC British Airways Visa Infinite Card + save 10% on all BA flights

 

 
RBC has let us know they have further extended the best ever welcome bonus on the RBC British Airways Visa Infinite Card. For quite sometime this card had an offer of up to 50,000 Avios however RBC bumped that up by 10,000 Avios last September. It was set to end on February 28 but now you have until September 30 to earn the best ever welcome bonus seen on this card of up to 60,000 Avios. 

March 2 Update: WestJet to acquire Sunwing Vacations and Sunwing Airlines; Fly Aer Lingus from Toronto to Dublin for under $500 roundtrip

Here's your Rewards Canada Daily update! Your near daily dose of loyalty program, credit card and travel news, bonuses, deals and more. This update is brought to you by the HSBC World Elite Mastercard which is currently offering a welcome bonus of up to 100,000 bonus points worth $500, has no foreign transaction fees and no annual fee in the first year! 

 

Big news out of WestJet today - they have announced they are acquiring Sunwing Vacations and Sunwing Airlines. If approved and the deal goes through WestJet will be creating a new tour operating business that will combine Sunwing Vacations and WestJet Vacations. On the airline side it almost reads that Sunwing Airlines will remain as a separate airline that operates under the WestJet group of companies. I could be wrong though. They state it will provide more affordable and competitive airfares and vacation packages however if history is any indicator that is rarely the case when an acquistion in the travel market takes place. (Source WestJet)

Images via WestJet/Sunwing

Offer extended: 10% cash back for the first two months with Tangerine Mastercards

Originally set to end on February 28 the welcome offers on the ever popular Tangerine credit cards have been extended to the end of this month. Both the Tangerine Money-Back Credit Card and the Tangerine World Mastercard will award a 10% cash back welcome earn rate in the first two months for any new approved applications made by March 31, 2022. The 10% is capped on $1,000 of purchases for a total cash back reward of $100. After that 10% cap is hit or after 2 months the regular earn rate of up to 2% cash back kicks in. 

New Amex Offers providing statement credits with lululemon, Lenovo and William Ashley

 

Three more Amex Offers came out this week in addition to the St. Louis Bar & Grill offer we mentioned yesterday. What is interesting is all three of these offers came on my Cobalt Card. and nothing on the Platinum Card. Typically it has been the latter card that gets all the offer with very few coming through on the Cobalt Card. 

Three months in and Scene+ doesn't seem any closer to having a fix for their ongoing issues - time to start asking for compensation?

 
Over the last few days I have been posting about some of the new (and old) Scotiabank credit card offers which in their own right are pretty good offers. I've also received general emails from the Scene+ program heralding the benefits of these cards but I feel I need to address the elephant in the room. This is a topic many of you are still writing to me about and that topic is Scene+ still being a complete disaster nearly three months after the new combined program launched and of course that disaster is primarily for the credit card holders.

Technical issues hamper new flight bookings with BMO Rewards, bank tells customers book elsewhere and redeem points for that travel but at a lower value!

 
UPDATE: We did it! This post seems to have made BMO change their course and are now charging 150 points for $1 instead of 175 to $1. Read our update here.

I went to check out the BMO Rewards site as part of my normal rounds of checking out all the issuers sites for anything new or interesting and it appears BMO Rewards is having technical issues for new flights bookings. Their temporary solution is letting customers they can book the flights themselves with whomever they want and they can take advantage of special promotional rate to redeeming points against the charge however that rate is not as good of rate if you book flights through BMO Rewards.  

New welcome offer of up to 35,000 Scene+ points with the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite card

 

Earlier we detailed the new bonus offer for the Scotia Gold American Express Card and as mentioned in that post there is also a new offer for the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite card. The new offer for the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite card sees it offer up to 35,000 points which is worth $350 towards any travel.