Reply To: New reward scheme is a massive devaluation by the back door

[paul-uk]

BBbetter wrote:

paul-uk wrote:

its Virgin saying “we know you were planning to go to Barbados, but now you can only go to Barcelona”. And the key issue for Virgin is they don’t fly to Barcelona so their loyal customers are forced to accept what the airline offer in terms of alternatives – and there aren’t many of them.

Not really. You can still go to Barbados but on off peak days. If you really want to travel peak days, pay up.

Barbados just happened to be the first destination I thought of lol

BUT, lets try Miami instead – every single UC booking is much much higher than it was before the “improvements” – it doesn’t matter if its peak holiday or sometime mid winter.

I am looking at a one way for 2 adults MIA-LHR in November 2025 – the seats aren’t released yet.

I wanted to get an idea on how the fares were being priced so I looked at a weeks worth of dates in mid October (the latest available to book)

On the first day of sale, UC seats ranged from 136,000 points (for 2) up to 230,000 points – on the very first available day for booking. How can they be so far apart? (incidentally, IIRC the old-style system would have been 95,000 points (for 2)).

The last I looked, those same seats are now priced from 140,000 to 210,000 – meaning there is zero incentive to book early.

The interesting part is that Saver Rates can appear for Premium Economy as low as 23,000 points (for 2) – so I see no logic in rushing to buy over-priced UC seats with ZERO Saver Rates released in many months of checking – I guess we will slum it in PE and keep our cash until we see a Saver Rate appear in PE

Hardly a way to encourage bookings when all it’s done is make us hold back from actually booking.