Closure of East Coast Rewards now confirmed – what should you do?

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• Craig says:

  20 Jan20 January 06:13

  I’ve never travelled on West Coast but use EC Rewards a lot.

  In the email it said you could take the option of Virgin Flying Club miles. Is this something that happens on VWC already and if so is it any good as an option?

  Cheers

  • sandgrounder says:

    20 Jan20 January 06:31

    https://headforpoints.com/2014/08/18/virgin-trains-introduces-nectar-points/

    There are some restrictions in the Ts & Cs about starting your journey with another operator (recommends buying two tickets). It’s 2 per £1 from own website only.

    • AndyGWP says:

      20 Jan20 January 14:31

      Stupidly, I spent around £200 on train tickets thinking I would get the Virgin points, but missed the T&C re: other operators and lost out on the points because I tagged a cheapo Day Pass for the London Underground on the journey… stupid mistake that wasn’t massively costly, but I won’t be making again!

  • Speedbird_ABZ says:

    20 Jan20 January 09:17

    I thought I would convert mine to Virgin Flying Club as well, so seems like a better option for me.

• Scott says:

  20 Jan20 January 07:02

  I used what I could last week on April travel to Kings Cross.

• Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:

  20 Jan20 January 07:53

  Have they said what will happen to unused gift voucher balances?

  • Oyster says:

    20 Jan20 January 08:07

    Gift vouchers are issued through the regular booking engine and have a National Rail booking reference.

    Virgin will have to honour them or if they don’t want to do that they need to be refunded.

    Don’t worry. Do you think East Coast would be allowed to sell them over the busy Christmas period knowing their franchise was up and marketing them as having no expiry date? If they expired at the end of the current franchise then East Coast would have had to make it perfectly clear. Remember that East Coast was always meant to be a temporary solution until the government gave it back to the private sector to screw up for a third time.

• Oyster says:

  20 Jan20 January 08:00

  You are wrong: ALL TRAVEL does NOT need to be completed by 30 September that’s when it needs to be booked by. The text is quite clear about this. Presumably this is the date they’ll be switching off the East Coast booking engine.

  It’s worth noting that Beardcoach will be making wifi free throughout the train so there’s no point in using your rewards points to buy a wifi pass with validity beyond February. Those who always travel in 1st class anyway have no reason to rejoice, National Express did the same thing when they ran East Coast with the result that the wifi was even slower than it is now due to the increased demand.

  The bigger news is that season ticket holders and corporate accounts (which can both benefit from the current scheme) will be left without a loyalty programme.

  • TimS says:

    20 Jan20 January 08:09

    Copied directly from the East Coast website:

    Any unused Rewards Points will need to be redeemed and used up to and including 30 September 2015 (for example, a Rewards travel ticket will need to be both redeemed and the journey booked by that deadline).

    Seems very clear to me that travel DOES need to take place before 30th Sept as Raffles said.

    • Oyster says:

      20 Jan20 January 08:41

      It says journey booked by that deadline! You can book tickets in advance.

      Redeemed refers to the act of turning points into a travel reward.

• Henry C says:

  20 Jan20 January 08:04

  Remember you’ll no longer be able to earn Nectar points with ScotRail as of April too, when the current FirstGroup franchise ends.

  • Oyster says:

    20 Jan20 January 08:09

    Has Abellio confirmed this? They might decide to keep the promotion going, or if they have more sense create their own scheme modelled on East Coast rewards.

    • Henry C says:

      20 Jan20 January 08:15

      My apologies, seems Nectar is being kept, and some other loyalty scheme they did is being axed: http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/transport/east-coast-travellers-in-line-for-airmiles-under-new-franchise.116324554

      • Oyster says:

        20 Jan20 January 08:39

        From that article it appears Passenger Focus doesn’t really understand Nectar and the poor value it will bring. It’s impossible that it will offer the same value as East Coast rewards otherwise you’d get a free rail ticket with your weekly shop!

        Raffles: can you contact passenger focus as well as any paper that runs articles on this and explain why this will be a terrible deal for passengers?

        QUOTE:
        Consumer watchdog Passenger Focus said it was unclear whether passengers would be better off under the new scheme.

        Guy Dangerfield, Passenger Focus manager, said: “Passengers will welcome Virgin Trains East Coast’s link up with Nectar, but without more detail it’s impossible to say if that will offer more or less than East Coast’s existing rewards scheme.”

        • Alan says:

          20 Jan20 January 11:33

          What poor journalism! Have commented on their article, FWIW

      • Fraser says:

        20 Jan20 January 11:18

        The big news in that article is the scrapping of Scotrail Advance which, while not points-based, offers free weekend first travel as standard, various discounts such as £19 return anywhere in Scotland or £99 sleeper return to London from time to time. Given it was free to join if you have any first class ticket (eg Haymarket to Waverley!), this is a HUGE loss of savings unless the new operators come up with something special.

        • Alan says:

          20 Jan20 January 11:27

          Damn, didn’t real that was going – that was by far one of the best value for money promos going, made use of it quite a few times and got a few friends to sign up for it too!

• Oyster says:

  20 Jan20 January 08:32

  Personally I’m not a big fan of giving any of my rail travel business to Stagecoach, headed up by the homophobic Scottish nationalist Brian Souter. Of course all promotion of the franchise will be handled by the equally annoying beardy who will claim credit for buying new trains that the government have already ordered.

  If I was Grand Central, the open access operator that goes to Sunderland, I’d do the following:

  Rebrand as GNER, a train operator that was highly respected on the East Coast mainline. This is actually possible as a company called Alliance Rail Holdings bought the rights to the GNER brand and now both Alliance and Grand Central are owned by Arriva.

  Introduce a loyalty scheme along the lines of East Coast Rewards or maybe even look into a partnership with Avios (to counteract Virgin’s offer of Flying Club miles) or if they want an out of the box solution that’s still better than Nectar then Tesco Clubcard.

• startupflyer says:

  20 Jan20 January 09:50

  One of the things that I used up points on was Gourmet Society cards, you can get them from 290 points if I recall. The retail at £69.95, but you can get them for far less. I got two for my wife and I in early January and have already got £70 in value from them, as well as our final redemption of a first class return trip from London to Edinburgh.

  I will miss East Coast, really enjoyed travelling with them and as Raffles notes it was by far the best rail scheme out there.

  • Rob says:

    20 Jan20 January 10:17

    Thanks. Might look at that as I have a handful (150?) points expiring on January 31st so using 290 on one of these might be worthwhile.

    • Al says:

      20 Jan20 January 22:32

      Well gourmet society free 3-month trials are free all over the net… you don’t have to pay at all

      • Rob says:

        20 Jan20 January 23:03

        I’ve just – literally 60 seconds ago – signed up for the 12 month membership. 290 East Coast points of which I had 350 expiring in two weeks. No need for a train in the next 12 weeks and a £3 East Coast evoucher did not appeal!

        I am left with – luckily – almost exactly 920 points which a First Class return somewhere.

        • s33eetpea says:

          30 Jan30 January 17:51

          or for a Valentine dinner. 🙂

• takke says:

  20 Jan20 January 09:50

  The shopping voucher values actually aren’t that bad, might well be better value than taking a trip you don’t want to. As long as you choose the M&S ones and not East Coast vouchers – it never made sense to me why the M&S were better value…

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