Good luck from me also, I have signed the petition however to be honest I think it's over. With hindsight any campaign to save ECR should have been put into motion the moment the winning bidder was announced and Nectar was mentioned, and it was mentioned on the day of the announcement. Anyone who expected them to run two loyalty schemes is deluded it was a guaranteed certainty that ECR was gone.
Actually they are running two loyalty schemes - Nectar and Virgin Atlantic Flying Club. Three at the moment as EC Rewards is running while the wind it down.
IAG runs four loyalty schemes - BA Executive Club, Iberia Plus, Avios.com and Diamond Club (it's a bmi legacy but it's still running).
As for the timing we started in January when the changes were announced via email to all Rewards members. I must admit I hadn't seen the announcement when the franchise was awarded or this campaign would have happened much sooner.
Back in Feb/Mar what we asked was they'd put the introduction of Nectar on hold for a few months and launch a proper consultation.
The first Mk4 out the depot tomorrow morning has the capability to carry just short of six hundred people (I think) so any petition would at a guess need around 20,000 signatures to stand any chance of them taking notice.
Without the massive Virgin advertising budget I doubt we'd get that high. Virgin seem to have an army of supporters that will do anything asked of them (witness the WCML petition in 2012). The main purpose of the petition is just something we can point to to prove they don't listen.
Whilst Nectar will not be cheap to run (And it isn't as I have seen the costed projections from a company that was thinking of using the scheme a few years back) it will be much more cost effective to run that ECR is/was. Firstly as it is used by Virgin West Coast this will make the bulk purchasing of points cheaper whilst every person who signs up to Nectar via the VTEC site will gain a rebate on any purchase of points. Therefore whilst VTEC don't have to manage the scheme themselves as it is managed by a third party they are in a win/win situation as they save money from signing you up and save money by not managing it themselves. Although it is worth noting that Virgin West Coast did not announce Nectar until after the bids had been submitted for the ECML so they weren't basing it on the popularity there.
It was always the assumption by most that Nectar was cheap to run. Will VTEC be able to bulk purchase along with VT being separate companies?
One of my initial assumptions was it was based on the perceived success on the west coast. As you point out the bids were in before they added Nectar. I do suspect the same person was responsible for it being on both franchises.
There has been a lot of noise on their social media platforms, however when you scrutinise the posts a lot of them are by the same group of people and the ranting is reducing by the week, it is nowhere near as vitriolic as it was when it first launched. VTEC have done the right thing and blank it or refer the posters to Customer Services as an argument is clearly what the posters want. Someone will at some point go to far with the comments regarding Mr Branson and Mr Souter and it will land them in hot water, they will only take so much of the derogatory comments and someone will get a letter. And some of the posts that have been deleted have been derogatory. Whether one of the major shareholders of the holding company likes a particular segment of the population or not really shouldn't be ranted about on Facebook.
I've not seen that much anti-Souter stuff on the social media platforms, it does happen. I've mentioned Souter when pointing out the hypocrisy of Branson (a few days after he was with Souter for the VTEC launch he was on Twitter talking about tackling homophobia).
Funny thing was I seen quite a few of the Facebook posts yesterday and the ones they had removed were relatively innocent ones complaining about rewards or how poor the ads were (considering it's a £10m campaign). They left up some of the crazier comments!
I removed the rest of your quote just because there's a lot to reply to. I appreciate your comments.
Anyway, odd though it was, and I was better off on the old schemes that were for high spenders it was the most generous scheme around at the time.
What odd is the previous operators concentrated on their high spenders (GNERtime, escape), Nectar only will benefit those who didn't even get up to the spend required for a basic reward (lounge access or wifi). They really seem to be rewarding (and badly at that) the wrong segment.
SaveECRewards - can you get yourself to one of our forum meals sometime?
Replied to your message. May is out for me, but hopefully June. I know at least one contributor who may be interested too so may come along wither with me or instead of me if I can't make it.
I agree.
yorkie said:
Though most on this forum will surely have read the advice to get vouchers to bump up their points to sensible totals to qualify for Rewards.
I agree. They didn't consult with anyone I know, and I know a lot of people who used to book almost exclusively through the East Coast website.
Their minimum spend excuse is awful; as you say there was no minimum on EC tickets. Non-EC tickets could easily be booked at any value simply by purchasing e-vouchers anyway.
As for "the majority of our customers are in favour of the changes that we are making," that's a joke as I am not aware of
anyone who favours the changes to Rewards.
Their spin continues unabated.
I wonder if VTEC will do a survey in a years time to see if people are happy. By then everyone will have checked to see how many free tickets they've earned and for most it'll be zero.
Did you see how many people followed the advice to purchase e-vouchers?
They had record sales in February! (download the PDF at the top of the page) As far as I knew I was the first one to suggest doing this, if you beat me to it sorry for claiming the credit
For me this spike in e-voucher spend is proof that people really valued East Coast Rewards. I bet people didn't go to Sainsbury's on the last day of full points and emptied the shelves to get a higher Nectar balance.
Why are you lying? I dont care either way. I merely pointed out to you that you had on your website a number so small in the grand scheme of EC rewards compared to how many people were members. Not my fault you cant keep your website up to date with the correct in formation.
As I pointed out that was in the news section of the website. It said we got 225 posts in under 48 hours!
This is also false. You mention 'spin' from VTEC yet you are doing exactly that without the full data. Ill point out again that the money recieved covered the NON EC rewards,i.e. everything apart from tickets for journeys on EC. And speaking of spin in your first post you say you have 750 then your next post 749. Pedantic I know but you would do better sticking to the facts.
If you are going to carry on with this blatant misrepresentation then you are doing yourself and your cause a disservice. The very spin you accuse VTEC of doing for their cause.
I just noticed I edited the wrong post! What happened was we were one away from 750 when I was typing the post and then when I submitted I checked and we'd already passed the mark. I edited the wrong post so yes it does look like we've gone from 750 to 749!
As we keep telling you we're working with the figures we have. I can't go back and ask for that missing information now.
However, you have to remember it was totally obvious that most people would redeem for full tickets, it was the best reward, but it was also the cheapest reward for EC to provide (that's why I asked about the cost of the non-EC rewards as these cost real money to provide).
How can you accuse me of spin, when you have quotes like "the majority of our customers are in favour of the changes that we are making" coming from David Horne himself (someone I usually respect) and the marketing department who were really bad with spin at the beginning.
