Aeroplan reminds of a Vegas casino. It’s Air Canada’s rewards program, and the no matter whether you’re high roller or a low roller, odds are Aeroplan comes out on top.

Over the last few years, they’ve crawled back the number of miles you earn, while at the same time, increasing the number of miles required to fly. Plus, they make using reward miles a real pain. Just try to book a non-stop flight in Canada on reward miles. Almost impossible.

My parter EB is still ticked at them for having to forfeit what few miles she had in last spring’s “use em or lose em” promotion. She was in a classic Aeroplan Catch 22. She hardly flies any more but still had 750 reward miles sitting in her account.

There is absolutely NOTHING you can buy with that few miles. She tried to trade them at points.com but they wouldn’t even compute that few miles. When she tried to use Aeroplan’s ‘donate your miles to charities’ function, she discovered that there was a minimum threshold of 1000 miles. Even giving her miles to me was problematic because Aeroplan charges a fee to do that. Ouch. She ended up forfeiting the miles because there was essentially no way for her to redeem them.

Annoying to say the least.

So, a few days ago, I got an email from Aeroplan offering me FREE miles for filling out a survey. What were they offering ? 100 miles.

Well, lets see if we can establish the value on those 100 miles.

On their rewards chart, I can get a Creative Live! Cam Video IM Pro for 9500 miles.

That unit sells at Future Shop today for 69.99. But wait, there’s a 30.00 dollar rebate offer, so it’s only worth 39.99.

9500 miles = $39.99 today.

That means 1 Aeroplan mile is worth about $0.0042

That generous offer of 100 miles to do a survey ?

About 42 cents. Gee, thanks Aeroplan.