Weekend Reading: Messy Aeroplan Transition Edition
Part of the new Aeroplan credit card agreement meant that some CIBC Aerogold accounts were sold to TD. Those affected by the move were to receive a letter from TD, along with a new Aeroplan credit card, prior to June 16th when their CIBC Aerogold account would be deactivated.
Related: Three Rewards Credit Cards Worth A Look Today
The transition did not go smoothly. Some customers didn’t receive their card from TD in time before CIBC pulled the plug, while others got a card, but no “PIN” letter to activate it. Credit card statements that were available online at CIBC went missing in the transition to TD.
I spoke with an industry insider who confirmed that the transition has not gone as smooth as planned.
Keep in mind this was a huge portfolio with massive amounts of data that needed to be converted from one bank to the other. Current account data, historical account data, statements, collections, call history, rewards. Each new TD account number literally has to inherit all of the previous data. Sometimes that attribution is not perfect.
Were you impacted by the Aeroplan transition from CIBC to TD?
On with the weekend reading:
In this Huffington Post article, author Dan Solin suggests that Canadian investors are losers because 90% of us prefer actively managed mutual funds, which are known to have some of the highest fees in the world.
J. Money at Budgets Are Sexy described his new (and lazy) one-fund investing solution – Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund.
Rob Carrick lists five questions to test your financial fitness – a perfect time for a midyear check-up.
J.D. Roth founded the popular personal finance blog, Get Rich Slowly, which he sold a few years ago for millions. He stopped by the Mr. Money Mustache blog to discuss how he learned to stop worrying and embrace “mustachianism” – living frugally so that you can pursue your dreams.
Speaking of frugal living, Sean Cooper wrote about how he reached $500,000 in net worth by age 29 in this post on Million Dollar Journey.
Joyce Wayne is a retirement blogger at the Globe and Mail. She wrote a thoughtful piece on living in retirement and why we worry about our grown children.
Dan Bortolotti argues that the best way to rebalance your portfolio is with new cash flows, rather than rebalancing annually or based on a target threshold.
Wayne Rothe, a certified financial planner, wrote about something near-and-dear to Sandi Martin’s heart: Using annuities to guarantee retirement income.
Dan from Our Big Fat Wallet listed some strategies to help teach young kids about money. This is something I’ve contemplated lately as my oldest turned five last month.
With recent studies showing RRIF minimum withdrawals are too high, causing seniors to outlive their money, Michael James offers this sensible solution – you don’t have to spend it all.
Mark Seed at My Own Advisor finally cut the cord on his home phone, cancelling Rogers and signing up for a $4.95/month service called Fongo.
Finally, I was excited to talk to fellow Toronto Star columnist Sheryl Smolkin about all of the side gigs that I’m working on. Read and listen to the full interview here.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Thanks for the mention Robb, always appreciated, have a good weekend!
Great to be mentioned Robb! Thanks for the ongoing support and have a great weekend 🙂
Mark
No doubt many Canadians won’t like Dan Solin’s message, but he’s absolutely right. Thanks for the mention.
“a huge portfolio with massive amounts of data”. I can’t resist commenting as I was a professional data architect and worked previously on an identical project moving credit card business to another company.
This type of conversion is actually fairly straight-forward if you devote appropriate resources and plan out the exercise reasonably. The quantity of data is irrelevant to the the task of designing the conversion from one company’s database to the other’s.
Yea, the banks dropped the ball. The devil was in the project plan somewhere. “sometimes the attribution is not perfect” is code for poor project management.
@Robert – I’m not sure if it was a time-resource issue or what. How long was CIBC obligated to provide interim service, and was the conversion rushed due to the terms of the sale?
From what I understand, both TD and CIBC use the same processing platform, so something was definitely messed up along the way.
I’m very glad I dumped my CIBC Aerogold cards last year because I was never able to use over 600,000 points that I still have. Admitedly I’m fairly particular about routing and times for flights, but found it impossible to ever get a flight. I now have a 2% cash back Capital One Mastercard (new ones are now 1.5%) and a Capital One Mastercard travel rewards card that are so much better value.
Great group of bloggers up there – thanks for passing on the good word!
Ours seems to have gone according to plan. It took a while for the transactions to show up on the TD card (a week) but they are all there now.
I liked the CIBC online process. From what I see at TD, I don’t like it as well. No problem with getting and activating the cards.
I hedged my bets by getting a Chase Amazon Visa card because I had cancelled a TD Visa card in the past over their crappy service. And the Chase card provides free FX which will help us in Mexico each year. And 1% cashback so an overall savings of 3.5% for pesos.