I got taught a lesson today in exchanging money…

I was at the airport- about to board a flight to the US when I spied an ATM machine for US dollars. This is great- I thought- this way I don’t have to look for a machine when I land. Also, the transaction fee was $3.50 which is a lot for a regular withdrawal but I have found that banks can charge up to five dollars when you use ATM machines in another country.

What I should have noticed was that this was a standalone ATM- not affiliated with any bank- only a company called Direct Cash.

 What was the problem? Firstly the machine didn’t say what exhange rate was used until you actually received the money. When I checked my receipt I was astonished to find out that I got charged a ridiculous rate of 1.12 Cdn to 1 US- when in the real world the canadian dollar is the same value as the US dollar (today the Cdn is actually worth MORE than USD). I think they make more by giving you a crappy exchange rate than they do with the transaction fees.

In all I ended up paying $115 Canadian dollars for $100 US which at my bank would have only been $100. Even at an exchange booth I would have payed around $105.

The moral is to be very careful where you exchange money- and be sure to check the rates.

Too add insult to injury the ATM only gave me $60 instead of $100 so now I have to run after the banks to get back the rest of my money…

I just found out about the new Aeroplan Be a Miles Millionaire contest which runs from now until June 20th. The grand prize is 1 Million Aeroplan miles and there are 160 prizes of 25,000 miles.

This contest runs from today until June 20th, 2008. To enter you just need to collect Aeroplan miles from selected companies- each mile earned gives you one contest entry. Qualifying miles are any  Aeroplan Miles earned through Home Hardware, Esso, Tropicana-Quaker, Uniprix, Rogers Magazine Service, Primus Canada, Bose and Aeromove.

Usually I don’t enter contests, but the chance of winning a million miles will probably sway me to give it a shot. What I like about this contest is that there is a variety of retailers to choose from.

See full contest info here.

According to an article on yahoo  Air Canada has just added new fuel charges on all of their flights- effective immediately.

The new surcharges are $40 return for flights of less than 480 kilometres, $80 return on flights between 480 kilometres and 1,600 kilometres and $120 for longer flights.

It’s nice to see that Air Canada feels that they can do this without any warning at all. For a $25 additional fee for the second bag they gave 2 months warning but for a minimum $40 increase we get none. Thanks Air Canada.

According to the article  West Jet does not have any extra fuel charges- but they are considering them. I hope that if West Jet decides to do this it will not be out of the blue.

As seen in the National Post- Air Canada is introducing a $25 fee for checking a second bag on all flights within Canada and the United States starting on July 15th. The reason given for this is the increase in fuel charges. Usually I would tend to blame the airlines, but with oil prices increasing the way they have been I can see their point… Read the article here.

The annoying thing is that not only does it cost more to fill up my car- but now it costs more to fly too… Of course, not everybody is suffering.

A couple of days ago I received a newsletter from Lufthansa.

Usually I would delete the email (except for Aeroplan) but this time I opened it and while reading the latest Lufthansa news I spotted an interesting number in the corner- I actually have 47,000 Miles and More points.

47,000 is not a huge number of points- but it is enough for a free flight in North America- or if I can manage to get 13,000 more I will have enough for a flight to Europe, or 2 flights within North America.

If I had not signed up for the newletter I would have forgotten for sure and the miles would have expired, probably without me even knowing about it. I checked if these miles expire and sure enough they do expire after three years- which gives me only 11 months to use them. Many miles programs expire even sooner than three years.

So this is a reminder to check your old plans- you may get a nice surprise like I did.

In general I have been a fan of Delta… until today. My girlfriend reserved a week in the Dominican for my birthday, and because I have a lot of Delta miles I thought we could use my miles to fly there. One of the great things about the Delta website is that if your dates are flexible they give you a calendar which can help you determine which days require less miles.

Last week I made a reservation which had to be completed by this weekend. So a couple of days later I decided to complete my reservation online. I went through the entire process on the Delta website and entered all of my information… Uh-oh.. I get the following message

Call Delta to Complete Reservation

We are unable to complete this reservation online at this time. Please contact Delta immediately and provide your reference number to complete this reservation. Call 888-750-3284, or the number on the back of your SkyMiles card for assistance. Non-U.S. based customers, please call the Delta Reservation Sales office for your country. You must call within the next 4 hours to confirm your reservation. We apologize for the inconvenience.

I called the reservation number- thinking, this shouldn’t take long- after all, I had a reference number. The person took all of my information, my reference number, and my credit card number (for the taxes)… confirmed my address… and I waited… Then I was asked for a different credit card- so I gave them one… and I waited some more… the person I was dealing with came back and asked me to stay on the line.. then put me back on hold… for over an hour!!!

I didn’t want to hang up and have to start all over again but after 75 minutes I was worried that my cordless phone was going to die on me so I called the reservation number back from my cell phone, and sure enough, while explaining everything to the second person the first person came back on the cordless phone. They had finally worked it out, but in the process have given me two seperate reservations for my flights.  

I don’t know if it due to the fact that I was making a Skymiles redemption but my total time on the phone was 88 MINUTES!!!

Seems to me like Delta is making it complicated to redeem miles.

It’s interesting that I never had to wait that long to reserve a regular ticket.

I’m a bit late on this one but if you have not seen it yet, you should register for the Spring 2008 Mariott Megabonus.

If you are staying at any Mariott (or related brand hotel) before May 15th, you will want to sign up for this promotion.

Register here and get yourself up to 7,000 extra Marriott points for free.

Having recently come back from a trip to Dubai- I think that I have just had the experience of two airlines at the opposite end of the spectrum of airline experiences. One of them was one of the best experiences I have had and one was one of the worst. The airlines in question are Air Canada and Emirates.

Lets do a head-to-head comparison

Pre-flight

Check-in

• Air Canada has a very efficient self check-in process and bag drop off at Dorval airport.

• Emirates: self check-in did not work so had to wait in line

Advantage: Air Canada

Gate

• Air Canada does not make you enter the gate area prior to boarding (which is quite small).

• Emirates does make you enter the gate area, however, it is a huge area with enough capacity for double the number of passengers.

Advantage: Neither

Aircraft

• Air Canada: Aging Boeing 767

• Emirates: New Boeing 777

In-flight

Entertainment
Movies

• Air Canada transatlantic flights have one choice- you can watch the movie on the screens the middle. Or not.
• Emirates- Selection of several hundred movies on your own personal entertainment screen.

Advantage: Emirates

Music

• Air Canada- 8 channels to choose from.
• Emirates- Selection of several hundred music and video channels from your own personal entertainment screen.

Games

• Air Canada- none
• Emirates- Selection of 20 games from the personal entertainment screen.

Advantage: Emirates

Internet Access onboard

• Air Canada- none
• Emirates- available for a fee

Advantage: Emirates

Food

• Air Canada- 2 choices- beef or chicken
• Emirates- also 2 choices, but the quality of the food is significantly better

Advantage: Emirates

The Emirates experience contrasted so much with the Air Canada experience that it mades me ashamed that Air Canada is my national carrier. I was discussing this recently with a good friend of mine who said that he will only fly British Airways to and from Europe, because he is equally disgusted with Air Canada. 

Air Canada really needs to update their long haul aircraft. If I have a long flight to take, they will not be on my list of chosen airlines.

Now Air Canada has introduced a mobile boarding pass. What a great idea! 

They already had Mobile Check-In which allows you to log into mobile.aircanada.com on your wap enabled phone (which I haven’t actually used). Now, for certain flights, Air Canada will send you two sets of SMS messages to your phone.

The first message confirms your flight, the second sends a barcode which can be scanned, thereby eliminating the need for a paper boarding pass.

I was just thinking the other day that it is strange to arrive at an airport with all of your flight info- yet still had to print out a boarding pass just to get from the entrance of the airport onto the actual plane.

A couple of years ago I started keeping my flight information on my phone (without printing anything) until one day I had a hard time at Heathrow for not having any physical documentation regarding my flight. That was the point that I started printing out all of my flight details…. but now I may try to eliminate these printouts again.

All of the details of the new Mobile Boarding pass can be found on Air Canada’s website here

I am planning for my usual trip to Washington in February and on the e-ticket that was sent to me I got invited to contribute to the Air Canada Carbon Offset Program.

If you take a trip and contribute to this program, then Air Canada will use your donation, and also make a matching donation to Zerofootprint. 

For those who are taking flights and also want to be environmentally conscious, I think this is a good start.