{"id":446,"date":"2008-02-14T05:11:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-14T09:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/blog\/?p=446"},"modified":"2011-10-14T18:03:29","modified_gmt":"2011-10-14T23:03:29","slug":"westjet-reward-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/?p=446","title":{"rendered":"WestJet Reward Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

Westjet says in a Globe & Mail article that it’s considering moving away from Air Miles and starting its own reward program<\/a>. This seems to me to be a pretty rough move from the customer’s point of view. Air Miles is handy because it can be collected from so many places and redeemed for so many things. Air Canada’s Aeroplan has sucked monkey balls for years, and while recently it’s become possible to collect Aeroplan points in other stores (such as Futureshop, some gas stations, etc), there’s no reason to think that WestJet’s own plan would do the same, so it might be a very inconvenient, useless plan indeed, unless you fly a lot<\/i>. If they were to go it alone, I think I’d prefer instead that they just cut the price a bit, since airline reward systems are generally just quagmires waiting to happen.<\/p>\n

Borrowing a page from Shoppers’ playbook, Mr. Durfy said WestJet envisages stimulating travel demand by issuing bonus points to passengers who fly on slower days, notably Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.<\/p>\n

“There’s some neat stuff that you can do if you have control of your own loyalty program. The sky’s the limit,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ok, that is not<\/i> a reason to leave Air Miles. You can already offer double Air Miles or bonus 100 Air Miles for features — other retailers such as A&P do all the time<\/i>. Buy 4 pineapples, get 3 Air Miles; buy a carton of milk and a box of cereal, get 10 Air Miles; Sunday double bonus Air Miles day!<\/p>\n

And finally, a quick comparison of Air Miles vs. Aeroplan:<\/p>\n

Air Miles are worth approx 14 cents each (based on getting a $20 gift certificate to A&P). Aeroplan miles are worth approx 0.74 cents each (based on redeeming for a $100 gift card). For a direct flight to Victoria for a conference this summer, both Air Canada and West Jet are having a seat sale so it’s $264 each way, total of $528. Air Canada will give me 176 Aeroplan Miles, or a kickback of $1.30 (it’s actually better to take their offer to knock $3 off the price of the flight and not collect any!). West Jet will give 26 Air Miles, or a loyalty value of $3.64. That’s about a 0.7% loyalty kickback, which is pretty typical for many loyalty programs (Shoppers Optimum, RBC Rewards, etc). When it’s Air Miles they’re giving me, that can add up and I can use it somewhere. If they switch to their own flight rewards system, then it’s likely I won’t be able to redeem for anything until I’ve collected hundreds of dollars worth of points, which even flying a few times per year would never happen within my lifetime.<\/p>\n

I generally do like taking advantage of loyalty points programs — who doesn’t like getting something for nearly nothing — however, I start getting really pissed off and uninterested when each and every individual store has their own, separate points game. At that point, unless it’s somewhere I shop a lot<\/i>, I’d just rather they just cut the prices or improved the product\/service and stuff their loyalty programs. West Jet certainly fits here: West Jet has slightly better service than Air Canada, as long as the prices are close, I’m going to pick West Jet. The few dollars worth of points in Air Miles are not swaying my choice, and a more restrictive West Jet exclusive program would have no<\/i> influence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Westjet says in a Globe & Mail article that it’s considering moving away from Air Miles and starting its own reward program. This seems to me to be a pretty rough move from the customer’s point of view. Air Miles is handy because it can be collected from so many places and redeemed for so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}