When I was working with The Object People, I had collected a number of Aeroplan frequent flyer miles from Air Canada. It wasn't much - just enough for one flight to a nearby city.

A few days ago, my daughter asked if we could allow her to take a short trip. This was easily do-able with the Aeroplan miles that I had so rather than pay $298 for airline tickets ($149 each way), I thought I would use my Aeroplan points.

Aeroplan now has a mechanism where you can share Aeroplan miles. You just give them the other Aeroplan member's number pay a service charge, and it transfers the miles. What I didn't notice was the note "for only 2 cents a mile".

I went through the online site to share the miles. It asked for my credit card number but never confirmed what amount would be charged to my card. I thought this was odd. I transferred the miles and bought the tickets from my daughter's Aeroplan number.

Then I get my VISA statement - they charged me $318 to share the miles. That's more than the price of the return ticket. They charged me 2 cents per mile. For 15,000 miles (which I transferred), that cost me $300 plus the $18 service charge. It turns out that 2 cents per mile is effectively what the miles are worth. You can buy new miles at 3 cents per mile (a current promotion - it's normally 4 cents). Now, I've lost 15,000 Aeroplan miles and still had to pay a transfer charge equal to the full price of the tickets.

This is insane. It's not a Share Miles program, it's a "Steal Miles" program. You can't charge a transfer fee that's equal to the value of the miles you transfer. Aeroplan customer service now tells me that I should have bought the tickets directly from my Aeroplan account without trying to share them. Regardless, the share option is just stupid.

Aeroplan is currently investigating whether they can refund me the money for the lost Aeroplan miles. So far I've talked to about 5 customer service reps who said that they couldn't do anything and asked "did you read the web page?" The last one sounds like he may be able to do something. When I get a final determination, I'll update this blog article to let you know how it came out.