Great Western Railway is trialling GWR Rewards – and it’s far too generous

Great Western Railway is trialling a loyalty programme, GWR Rewards, in a new departure for the rail operator.

Unlike some rail loyalty schemes (I’m looking at you, LNER, with your 2% cashback offering) this is generous.

Perhaps too generous, to be honest …. you may want to reap the benefits whilst you can.

To encourage you to keep reading, there is a HUGE sign-up offer – 40% off two Advance Single standard tickets. This could save you a lot of money.

How do you join GWR Rewards?

The programme is currently in a test phase, with the full launch due in June.

EDIT: comments below suggest that the trial is now full, so you may need to wait until June to sign up

However, you can get yourself invited into the test programme. To quote:

“To be one of the first to join our new loyalty programme, simply create a GWR online account and opt in to receive marketing communications. Already have an account? Just log in, head to ‘My Account’, then ‘My Preferences’, and select ‘Product and Offers’ to get your invitation.”

How do you earn points?

This is a bit weird, and is going to lead to issues. It is based on your spend PER DAY at gwr.com and in the GWR app:

• earn 10 points for spending £30 to £69.99 (maximum two transactions per day, so capped at 20 points per day)

• earn 20 points for spending £70+ (capped at 20 points per day)

You can see the issue here. Imagine I am buying seats for my family of four. It makes sense to buy one ticket per day for four days, assuming each is over £70, rather than buying all four in one go! Does GWR really want this?

For Pay As You Go travel, points are awarded based on the total spend in a single week for one or more valid journeys.

How do you earn status and what benefits do you get?

There are three status levels:

Bronze	No points needed	* 40% off your next two Advance Single standard tickets * Free hot drink on your next trip * 10% off food and drink on all trips
Silver	50 points	* Two FREE Advance Single standard class tickets * One-off First Class lounge access * 15% off food and drink on all trips
Gold	120 points	* Two FREE Advance Single First Class tickets * Full First Class lounge access on all trips * 20% off food and drink on all trips * 3 courses for 2 with Pullman Dining

If you are a season ticket holder, note that:

Season Ticket holders receive Bronze welcome rewards upon joining. However, journeys made with Season Tickets don’t count towards Silver or Gold tiers. We are exploring options for Season Ticket holders and will share updates in the future.

Where are the sweet spots?

Now, some of this looks very generous to me.

Free for signing up – get 40% off your next two Advance Single standard tickets on GWR, which covers you for a return trip. Given that GWR isn’t known for its bargain prices, this could be worth a substantial amount.

(Of course, this is massively open to abuse with people opening multiple accounts to get 40% off all of their trips. Don’t expect this to last.)

For just 50 points – two free Advance Single standard class tickets on GWR

50 points is VERY easy to earn. You only need to make 2 x £70 transactions (perhaps a £140 round trip, with each leg bought on different days to get around the 20 points per day cap) and 1 x £30 transaction.

In fact, I suspect at peak times the free ticket could be worth more than the minimum £170 you need to spend to earn one.

For just 120 points – unlimited First Class lounge access for you and a guest, and two free Advance Single First Class tickets on GWR

I can’t believe this will last. If you are a commuter using GWR daily, take a break from your season ticket and buy a few tickets separately for cash to earn 120 points. You’ve got yourself an annual First Class lounge pass. You can bring in a friend too.

You could even buy 12 x £30 throwaway tickets, on different days, and earn the 120 points you need for this. Yes, you’ve spent £360, but remember that Gold status also gets you a two free Advance Single tickets in First Class on top as well as a year of free lounge snacks.

Are there any catches?

The only one I could see is that you must buy tickets via the Great Western app or website for them to count.

This means that you can’t take advantage of the regular 5% and 10% cashback offers that LNER regularly makes to American Express cardholders for bookings, for any train company, made their site. Uber users would be unable to claim the 5% in Uber credit given for booking trains via the Uber app.

Other bits of small print include:

• 40% off for Bronze members – you need to book your two ‘40% off’ tickets in the same booking session, because the promo code you get can only be used once. You must book within three months of signing up.

• Two free Advance Single standard class tickets for Silver members – must be booked within 365 days of reaching Silver, with both tickets booked in the same session

• Two free Advance Single First Class tickets for Gold members – must be booked within 365 days of reaching Gold, with both tickets booked in the same session

• Reward tickets and ticket discounts are non-transferable and do not qualify for Delay Repay

None of this should cause you any issues, however.

Conclusion

If you are a regular GWR traveller, it is a no-brainer to sign-up for GWR Rewards.

If you are an occasional user, do NOT register now. Wait until your next trip comes along, as the 40% discount on two Advance Single standard tickets must be used within 90 days.

We’ll cover GWR Rewards again when it rolls out fully in June. It will be interesting to see if the proposition is made more restrictive by then.

You can find out more on this page of the GWR website.

Thanks to Kyla for this.