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Update 9/15/21: One Mile At A Time reports that LifeMiles is advising that there isn’t a separate 15% bonus after all – the bonus advertised on their site refers to the 15% bonus on the Membership Rewards end. It sounds like an extra 15% was being added on the LifeMiles end early in the promotion, but they’ve since fixed that.
Thanks to Josh in the comments below for the heads up about this.
Update 2: Gene has shared in the comments that LifeMiles is clawing back the extra 15% bonus miles that they’d inadvertently awarded. That’s a poor state of affairs seeing as it was their mistake and means people will be rightly dubious about future promotions that they run.
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American Express launched a dozen transfer bonuses to airline and hotel loyalty programs last week. One of those was a 15% transfer bonus to Avianca LifeMiles which stacks nicely with a separate 15% bonus on the LifeMiles end.
The Deal
- Get a 15% bonus from Avianca LifeMiles when transferring American Express Membership Rewards to LifeMiles.
- Direct link to offer.
Key Terms
- This Promotion is valid only for the transfer of American Express Membership Rewards to LifeMiles from September 1st, 2021 (12:00 AM GMT-6) to September 30th, 2021 (11:59 PM GMT-6).
- A minimum transfer of 1,000 Membership Rewards point is required.
- During the promotion, the member will receive a 15% bonus over the Membership rewards transfer rate.
- The bonus miles and the transferred miles will be reflected in the account statement in two different transactions.
- Transferred LifeMiles as well as the bonus miles will be accrued no later than 24 hours after American Express Membership Rewards reports the request of miles transfer to LifeMiles.
Quick Thoughts
For every 1,000 Membership Rewards points you transfer, you’ll receive 1,150 LifeMiles thanks to the current transfer bonus on the American Express end.
LifeMiles is then offering a separate 15% bonus on their end which will increase those 1,150 miles to 1,322.50. That means you’re effectively getting a 32.25% transfer bonus overall which is a decent offer.
LifeMiles has a number of different sweet spots, so check out this post for ways to get even more value when redeeming your LifeMiles: Avianca LifeMiles sweet spots for award flights.
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Well after the clawback I’m done with this program. There is no way it was a “mistake”. Adding 15% on their end and on amexs end are two totally separate processes done by two separate companies, there is no way to pretend like it was all an accident. More likely they didn’t think through the timing of their promo and the Amex promo. But in any case, yanking the points back is BS. You got ~50k of my miles, you will get no more. I’m done with Avianca and LM. Can’t be trusted, not financially stable, and expires quickly. No mas.
Knowing how professional Avianca is, I transferred only 1K to test the waters. That was two days ago. I am so glad I didn’t trust this milage program. Just in time to move my rewards to a different program.
They haven’t just “fixed” this, they have REVERSED already granted bonuses. Very shady.
Ugh, that sucks. Thanks for the heads up – I’ll add that to the post.
Same claw back on mine
Same mine got clawed back too 🙁
I was able to transfer earlier this month and got ~30% bonus total. too bad they fixed it.
Look out they clawed back 15% of my miles
Has anyone also not had their bonus mies post? In past promotions, the bonus miles have showed up immediately. However, I transferred some miles from Amex yesterday and the initial amount posted, but the bonus amount still has not shown up in my account. Have others also seen a delay, or is there maybe an issue with my transaction?
I had this exact same problem. Just transferred from Amex, confirmed the 15% bonus from Amex at the point of transfer. But no additional 15% applied on the Avianca side. Emailed support@LifeMiles with screenshots and was told “we verified the miles were posted correctly.” Still has not yet been 24 hours post Amex transfer so technically still within the window for the “second transaction”.
The bonus never posted after 24 hours, so I also emailed the support team yesterday and was told my information was passed along to the relevant internal department for evaluation. Not feeling too optimistic at the moment and hope they didn’t change the promo midway through.
24h window has passed and no 15% bonus has showed up in a second transaction. No follow-up response from the Support@Lifemiles email help desk. Will probably have to chat or escalate somehow. Just another reminder that the Lifemiles program should be regarded with extreme skepticism.
Referred to internal relevant department for evaluation. Hopefully if enough identical complaints go through it will spur action. But for now claims that 15% is stackable should be considered false.
Unfortunately appears to be the case. OMAAT updated their piece:”LifeMiles has reached out to clarify that there’s just a 15% bonus, and not two 15% bonuses that stack. That being said, for a while the additional 15% bonus was automatically being added, but LifeMiles states that this was a mistake in the system that has now been corrected. You can find the original post below.“
Thanks for the heads up about this.
Do you think the 32% bonus warrants transferring points speculatively with no trip on the horizon. Do LifeMiles expire? Are there fees to cancel trips even during Covid. Can you cancel online? Thanks in advance for the answers to my questions.
Miles expire after 12 months, although you can extend their life by transferring more LifeMiles in the future. There are fees to cancel (the fee itself varies depending on the flight) and you have to call to cancel. I’ve heard a bunch of negative stories about how much hassle it can be to even get hold of an agent, let alone having them cancel correctly.
I personally wouldn’t transfer speculatively, but if you do then at least the 32% bonus helps offset the potential for a devaluation before you end up booking some kind of trip.
h/t Nick: https://frequentmiler.com/stacking-lifemiles-bonuses-new-domestic
Although this probably does deserve its own post with a good title – arguably I would have probably said ‘stack for 32%’ in the title tho for a little more pizzazz as 15% doesn’t sound as exciting.
Also, miles can’t be in fractions, so a transfer of 1000 would be 1,323, not 1,322.50, hehe. Although that fraction comes in handy when going up to 10k, as it would be 13,225 and not 13,230 – not sure what Amex would think doing 1k increments over and over again just to get 5 more miles, lol…
All in good fun, Stephen 😉
Ah, I thought we had covered this – I forgot that Nick had included it in that post!