What a Freedom of Information request revealed about East Coast Rewards

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• barnaby100 says:

  8 Mar8 March 21:31

  We still have about 8k East Coast points left having booked rewards as far as the system would go. I can see no need for nectar points. I did register the virgin atlantic account and as usual we spent about £500 last week. With the rate of earning the same for 1st and 2nd I think we will get about 50,000 virgin points a year- less than come from much less money spent with hilton. We redeem about 400,000 virgin points a year I think. There is no attraction at all for me in this scheme- and thats as a regular virgin atlantic flyer and east coast regular traveller.

  We have been in the various east coast schemes since about 2000- maybe earlier (before selby crash and foot and mouth)- pretty much at the highest earning levels in the older schemes.

  • callum says:

    9 Mar9 March 00:32

    If 50,000 virgin miles mean almost nothing to you, I assume you’ll be happy to enter my number on your bookings?

    • barnaby100 says:

      9 Mar9 March 17:44

      The cost of buying 50,000 virgin miles is negligible compared to the value of the redemptions that we have typically had via east coast

      To buy 50,000 virgin miles is £765 and much less during bonus periods- I would value them at £500. The value of east coast redemptions was many times that- plus we typically got 2 annual lounge passes and sometimes more. It will be the 1st time that I haven’t had east coast lounge access as far as I can recall.

      LBA needs to reduce their parking costs and BA could really mop up disgruntled east coast travellers.

      • callum says:

        10 Mar10 March 00:03

        So you’d be happy to credit those “negligible” miles to my account? If not, then they aren’t negligible at all!

        Worse than what you had before certainly, but not negligible.

• vontrapp23 says:

  8 Mar8 March 21:58

  I’ve just used 4 free first class singles from my account and it’s notable that Virgin has completely restricted their use across peak hours trains (even looking 2+ months in advance). I can see why they’ve done that but it does not feel right to me that they say they are honouring the old scheme until September – and then they greatly reduce supply… such that it’s not truly “honoured” at all. Also interesting that, at least when I checked last week, lots of their other offers (including House of Fraser gift cards) are ‘Out of Stock’. Interesting that they can somehow run out of infinite e-codes!

  Lastly, it seems that cheap peak-time tickets are also less available. What a surprise! Still aren’t super off-peak advance tickets something like 10% less now? Ah, OK, I guess we must be better off then!

  😉

  Thanks Richard and friends!

  • barnaby100 says:

    9 Mar9 March 17:38

    Thats interesting. I redeem for pretty much the same 2 trains (from Kings X on Friday pm) and back on Sunday pm and so should be able to see how this stacks up. I am booked to end of May at the moment but will be looking for early June onwards shortly.

  • barnaby100 says:

    9 Mar9 March 20:34

    I have sent you some feedback- not sure it was an open offer or just to vontrapp23

  • vontrapp23 says:

    10 Mar10 March 08:22

    @VTEC – thanks for the reply and happy to discuss but, in the spirit of this excellent forum, I think you should respond to these points beforehand. Either I’m wrong / my points are invalid, or I’m right and you should inform as to what’s going on here. Personally, I’m OK with being corrected in public…. but feels to me like VTEC is not so comfortable with publishing a collective response.

• barnaby100 says:

  20 Mar20 March 22:57

  I would advise not to tweet east coast from the train. They send the guard down to sort you out. Fine line between good customer service and big brother.

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