Miles plus Money changes

Morning all, not been around for a while as my flying has been a lot more BA biased recently (plus I have the shame of being a mere VS AG these days...), but something I noticed buried at the bottom of my monthly statement email from Virgin this morning:

http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/gb/en/fl ... uly%202015

Given that I'm not chasing TPs with them any more, this fixed discount approach - if it's applied to all available fares including cheapo sale Ks - could actually be reasonably attractive in future. I need to find a way to deal with the 700k stash of miles I'm sitting on.

RC

Convert the miles to VH £s?

[Neil]

While the discounts offered give very poor value for your miles, at least it is now clear what the savings are using a MPM fare, something that has been very random over the years.

Can't disagree about value Neil, but as you'll probably recall from my previous rants on the subject, my big gripe with FC miles is my complete inability to find a use for them in the school hols (whereas I've had a lot more success with Avios). Even with m&m fares in the past, you got virtually no discount on sale fares, and in a few cases I saw that they they were MORE expensive than straight cash fares! So if these are fixed additional discounts and you have miles to burn, it could be useful...

As for the separate suggestion of converting miles to VH vouchers, now there's a seriously poor value proposition!

http://www.headforpoints.com/2015/08/01 ... lus-money/

Yes Raffles is fairly scathing about the changes.

But I think he's missing the point of M+M a bit - it's not aimed at frequent flyers (like him and many of us) who care about collecting serious miles and TPs and gaining status. For the serious miles collector there are far better ways to spend them and still earn TPs, as we know.

M+M is aimed squarely at the occasional, budget-conscious traveller who's earned a few miles, maybe through online shopping or Tesco or the credit cards or whatever, and for whom a saving of £30 in Y or £80 in PE actually makes a difference - particularly for a family.

No, it's not especially good value for money (although if you don't care about earning more miles, 15,000 for a £200 discount in UC is actually quite decent value). We've always said that on V-Flyer. But for people who do care about saving money, it's a perfectly good scheme.

I respect Raffles & headforpoints greatly but I do think sometimes he loses sight of the fact that the vast majority of passengers are ordinary people who don't fly that often and don't care about earning miles or status - they just want to go from A to B for the best possible price, and that's who M+M is targeted at.

This may also stop the occasional times where an M+M fare could be more expensive than a miles and TP earning sale fare.

But as Gumshoe says M+M fares work for some people but not others. Just like other aspects of any FF programme.

I'm not sure why Raffles is suddenly having a strop about them not earning miles and that the T&Cs aren't clear when it has always been clear that they aren't earning.

On the VS webpage, it says near the top:

Spend 3,000 miles in Economy (instead of 2,000 miles) and get £30 discount per ticket.

But further down it says:

Once you’ve earnt just 2,000 miles, you can combine your miles with money to get a great reduced fare. You need just:

2,000 Flying Club miles for an Economy fare

Confusing...

Yes Raffles is fairly scathing about the changes.

But I think he's missing the point of M+M a bit - it's not aimed at frequent flyers (like him and many of us) who care about collecting serious miles and TPs and gaining status. For the serious miles collector there are far better ways to spend them and still earn TPs, as we know.

M+M is aimed squarely at the occasional, budget-conscious traveller who's earned a few miles, maybe through online shopping or Tesco or the credit cards or whatever, and for whom a saving of £30 in Y or £80 in PE actually makes a difference - particularly for a family.

No, it's not especially good value for money (although if you don't care about earning more miles, 15,000 for a £200 discount in UC is actually quite decent value). We've always said that on V-Flyer. But for people who do care about saving money, it's a perfectly good scheme.

I respect Raffles & headforpoints greatly but I do think sometimes he loses sight of the fact that the vast majority of passengers are ordinary people who don't fly that often and don't care about earning miles or status - they just want to go from A to B for the best possible price, and that's who M+M is targeted at.

Maybe its just my reading of it, but Raffles didnt appear to know that M and M didnt attract TP and miles in the first place.

Yes Raffles is fairly scathing about the changes.

But I think he's missing the point of M+M a bit - it's not aimed at frequent flyers (like him and many of us) who care about collecting serious miles and TPs and gaining status. For the serious miles collector there are far better ways to spend them and still earn TPs, as we know.

M+M is aimed squarely at the occasional, budget-conscious traveller who's earned a few miles, maybe through online shopping or Tesco or the credit cards or whatever, and for whom a saving of £30 in Y or £80 in PE actually makes a difference - particularly for a family.

No, it's not especially good value for money (although if you don't care about earning more miles, 15,000 for a £200 discount in UC is actually quite decent value). We've always said that on V-Flyer. But for people who do care about saving money, it's a perfectly good scheme.

I respect Raffles & headforpoints greatly but I do think sometimes he loses sight of the fact that the vast majority of passengers are ordinary people who don't fly that often and don't care about earning miles or status - they just want to go from A to B for the best possible price, and that's who M+M is targeted at.

Maybe its just my reading of it, but Raffles didnt appear to know that M and M didnt attract TP and miles in the first place.

That is correct.

When I first wrote about this, a couple of years ago, I didn't realise that these tickets did not earn miles. This is part of the reason that I remain critical of it, because if I missed it then Mr Average will certainly not realise it.

The idea that " it has always been clear that they aren't earning" is rubbish. Go to the Flying Club page for this and click the 'terms and conditions' link. It takes you to the main Flying Club T&C's and you really have to dig around in them to get to the bit about 'miles plus money'. They do NOT bring up a pop-up box which tells you, in plain English, what you need to know.

Such important info should not be in the T&C's anyway.

I also disagree that this is aimed at the occasional Tesco or credit card collector. It is true that this is not a bad use of Clubcard points (but not a great one) but 'miles plus money' is really hidden away as a feature of the scheme.

Avios, on the other hand, actively promotes 'part-pay with Avios' as a selling point to Tesco collectors and they have done specific emails to Tesco customers to persuade them of the benefit of transferring to Avios in order to use them on this basis.

(I also have problems with the Avios version, though, because the rates is fairly poor - 0.66p per Avios - and for that rate they should let you redeem as many points as you want, even the full cost of the flight.)

At the end of the day, little tricks (for want of a better word) like hiding away in the small print that you won't get any miles do not benefit anyone and simply give people a bad impression of the sort of operation you are running. I know the guy who runs FC and, whilst he inherited this scheme, I would have expected better from him in terms of sorting this out to be honest.