New reward scheme is a massive devaluation by the back door

[JohnBart]

Response from Virgin:

Thank you for contacting us regarding your Flying Club account.

I’ve read through your feedback and I’m very sorry to hear that the new pricing structure has had a negative impact on you.

We decided to make changes to the rewards system after listening to our customers’ valuable feedback and addressed the challenges many customers faced when redeeming Virgin Points on flights. From now on, every seat will be available for booking with Virgin Points, making it easier than ever to enjoy your rewards.

With the introduction of our new dynamic pricing model, you will see an option to pay with Virgin Points for every flight, like our revenue bookings. I appreciate that this means that during peak travel periods, the Virgin Points required for seat bookings can increase. I completely understand that teachers are only able to travel peak periods, however unfortunately there is no way of us being able to revert back to the old Pricing Structure.

As with our other scheme, if you book earlier when the flights are released the points required will be considerably less than if you were to book a reward seat a few weeks later (when more than likely there would have been no availability under the previous scheme).

We are hopeful that in the long run this will benefit all our customers. The points required will depend on demand, so as availability decreases, the number of points required will increase just as revenue bookings would do.

We really appreciate your loyalty and would never want to lose you as a valuable customer. We sincerely apologise for any disappointment caused. I am hopeful that in the long run, the new reward seats will even out so that everyone will be able to take full advantage of them.

[paul-uk]

JohnBart wrote:

….[Virgin Reply]……if you book earlier when the flights are released the points required will be considerably less than if you were to book a reward seat a few weeks later….

The points required may well be lower the sooner you book BUT even when booking the day the flights are released, the points required (in UC) are substantially higher than they were before this change was forced upon us.

[paul-uk]

The whole “Dynamic Pricing” model is not new; I operated with it when I owned our hotel, so much so that rates could change more than once every day.

It’s a great tool to boost bookings (seats in this case) only at the times they needed to be filled.

However, the issue we all have with Virgin is that we’re not just choosing whether or not to part with some cash, we’re effectively being held to ransom with the points many of us have taken a year or more to acquire – 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.

[BBbetter]

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.

[NorthernLass]

You can fly TO Barbados at saver fare at the end of the season (from MAN, anyway), but will need to make other arrangements to get home!

[memesweeper]

I’d take issue with the premise of the topic title: “massive devaluation”.

I did an analysis of a few routes 6 months (+/—1 month). Many seats were 1p/mile (+/- 20%). There were some that were worse or better value.

It’s not a massive devaluation (assuming you accepted Rob’s previous valuation of a penny a point). It may be the scheme is much less useful for people who planned – indeed saved up – for super-peak redemptions like upper from Florida in school holidays, and less rewarding to frequent flyers, but it is not a “massive devaluation”. Conversely it’s a more useful scheme for people with large balances and/or ability to be flexible.

What Raddisson did with dynamic pricing was a massive devaluation.

[Freddy]

I’ve managed to make the most of the availability, had to be flexible with dates but has worked out for family of 5

[paul-uk]

I need to book 2 seats MIA to LHR on November 5th next year, ideally UC

To try and understand any “sweet spot” I’ve been monitoring points cost for the latest week available to book in Oct next year.

It really has no logic at all – a points cost of 140,000 for one date has gone up to 270,000 and back down to 136,000 in the space of 3 days monitoring it.

I’d be pretty ¥$¢^ off if I’d booked at 270.000 only to see it drop by half as the plane is supposedly filling up.

[Froggee]

Oh well – I had great hopes of October half term 2025 in Orlando showing that the new scheme wouldn’t be THAT bad.

Lots of numbers:

Four passengers
Virgin point value – 0.75p.
Avios value – 1p

So I had already booked BA MCO-LGW//LHR-EDI in Club as a backup to get us home. Cost 250,000 Avios + £1,750 = £4,250 (+ transfer between Gatwick and Heathrow). But I did not fancy that transfer.

I figured we would be able to book EDI-MCO direct with Virgin in premium economy using points to get us there. It is fine for the day flight.

EDI-MCO in Premium = 1,000,000 points + £1,588 = £9,058 (Grrrrr – and I don’t have that many points)
LHR-MCO in Premium = 108,000 points + £1,724 = £2,534
EDI-MCO in Upper = 320,000 points + £2,508 = £4,908
LHR-MCO in Upper = 500,000 points + £2,692 = £6,442
MCO-EDI in Upper = 1,100,000 points + $1,868 = £9,720
MCO-LHR in Upper = 500,000 points + $1,868 = £5,220

Grrrrrrrr.

Dynamic pricing has noted that it is the first day of the Scottish school holidays on the 11th of October. There are only two seats left in Economy, there are plenty in Premium and none have been sold in Upper hence the above pricing.

Paying cash for return EDI-MCO was ~£14,500 (out Premium, back Upper) or £15,000 Upper both ways.
Paying cash for return LHR-MCO was ~£8,400 (out Premium, back Upper) or £11,300 Upper both ways.

Despite the joy of a direct flight from Edinburgh to Orlando, we are off to Heathrow again. The timings of the Heathrow flights are also better as going there, a flight departs at 9:50am vs Edinburgh’s 13:10 and coming back the Edinburgh flight is 22:00 (quite late with kids) whereas Heathrow has 17:00 and 20:00.

So I have ended up booking Mrs Froggee and Freddo for £3,553 cash LHR-MCO return (out Premium, back Upper). There were two seats left in a lower fare class and Freddo is a kid so is cheaper. And then I booked Kermit and me for 154,000 points + £1,608 + 20 minutes on hold + a companion voucher which I got the full value on. Call that £3,000 putting a value on the companion voucher of the annual fee plus a penalty for earning poxy Virgin points instead of HSBC points on £10k of spend.

And I will be on the hook for £400 for the Hilton T2/T3 and EDI-LHR flights (call them £600) and I will need to pay £140 to cancel the BA flights so all in it is approx £7,700.

I have received vague value for my Virgin points (with the reward voucher) but I still have several hundred thousand of them.

Maybe I should have just booked EDI-MCO and MCO-LHR (both Upper class) for 670,000 points + companion voucher + £2508 + $1,868 = ~£9,000.

But I have naïve hopes for extracting value from my points one day.

Having been booked on the Edinburgh to Barbados flight only for the route to be cancelled and now dynamic pricing making things even trickier, Froggee is officially in sad face mode.

🙁

[can2]

Stupid me collected what I thought to be sufficient amount of VS miles to takes us all to DXB and back in a decent cabin next December. Now it’ll be a nightmare!
And Virgin’s route map is so unappetising for me to target somewhere else.

[Whatsthepoint]

Froggee wrote:

Oh well – I had great hopes of October half term 2025 in Orlando showing that the new scheme wouldn’t be THAT bad.

Lots of numbers:

Four passengers
Virgin point value – 0.75p.
Avios value – 1p

So I had already booked BA MCO-LGW//LHR-EDI in Club as a backup to get us home. Cost 250,000 Avios + £1,750 = £4,250 (+ transfer between Gatwick and Heathrow). But I did not fancy that transfer.

I figured we would be able to book EDI-MCO direct with Virgin in premium economy using points to get us there. It is fine for the day flight.

EDI-MCO in Premium = 1,000,000 points + £1,588 = £9,058 (Grrrrr – and I don’t have that many points)
LHR-MCO in Premium = 108,000 points + £1,724 = £2,534
EDI-MCO in Upper = 320,000 points + £2,508 = £4,908
LHR-MCO in Upper = 500,000 points + £2,692 = £6,442
MCO-EDI in Upper = 1,100,000 points + $1,868 = £9,720
MCO-LHR in Upper = 500,000 points + $1,868 = £5,220

Grrrrrrrr.

Dynamic pricing has noted that it is the first day of the Scottish school holidays on the 11th of October. There are only two seats left in Economy, there are plenty in Premium and none have been sold in Upper hence the above pricing.

Paying cash for return EDI-MCO was ~£14,500 (out Premium, back Upper) or £15,000 Upper both ways.
Paying cash for return LHR-MCO was ~£8,400 (out Premium, back Upper) or £11,300 Upper both ways.

Despite the joy of a direct flight from Edinburgh to Orlando, we are off to Heathrow again. The timings of the Heathrow flights are also better as going there, a flight departs at 9:50am vs Edinburgh’s 13:10 and coming back the Edinburgh flight is 22:00 (quite late with kids) whereas Heathrow has 17:00 and 20:00.

So I have ended up booking Mrs Froggee and Freddo for £3,553 cash LHR-MCO return (out Premium, back Upper). There were two seats left in a lower fare class and Freddo is a kid so is cheaper. And then I booked Kermit and me for 154,000 points + £1,608 + 20 minutes on hold + a companion voucher which I got the full value on. Call that £3,000 putting a value on the companion voucher of the annual fee plus a penalty for earning poxy Virgin points instead of HSBC points on £10k of spend.

And I will be on the hook for £400 for the Hilton T2/T3 and EDI-LHR flights (call them £600) and I will need to pay £140 to cancel the BA flights so all in it is approx £7,700.

I have received vague value for my Virgin points (with the reward voucher) but I still have several hundred thousand of them.

Maybe I should have just booked EDI-MCO and MCO-LHR (both Upper class) for 670,000 points + companion voucher + £2508 + $1,868 = ~£9,000.

But I have naïve hopes for extracting value from my points one day.

Having been booked on the Edinburgh to Barbados flight only for the route to be cancelled and now dynamic pricing making things even trickier, Froggee is officially in sad face mode.

🙁

Have you tried Manchester? I just booked UC on 23/10 to Orlando one way (so far) for 47500 miles (used a companion voucher) plus £1236 for 2 of us. Thos was on the A350 flight. It would have been cheaper on the later A330, dreaded coffin seats, 29k plus £936 for 2! I consider the former a good deal, the latter a steal!

[Froggee]

I kid you not, trains make Mrs Froggee puke (and to a lesser extent Kermit albeit he survived a school trip to London recently) so coming off a long haul onto a 3.5 hour train journey would earn me two demerits. We considered it when we were offered Manchester for the Edinburgh-Barbados route cancellation but pulled the plug and went to Tenerife instead.

Other than that it would have been a good call coming back (worse going out) at 66,000 points in Upper Class. As I keep saying too loudly “if only we didn’t have kids…” there are some okay deals still.

Weirdly I can live with the coffin seats. My biggest complaint last time was the cabin temperature rather than the seat. So I didn’t bat an eyelid booking them flying back to Heathrow saving £500 or so overall. Apparently avoiding the coffin is a dangerous game as they like to equipment swap to play with your emotions…

[ChasP]

after 30 minutes on hold and 20 minutes with Virgin rep I finally got my UC LHR-SFO return sorted for October. Her system was very slow and crashed twice!

Initially she tried to book me a PE and then upgrade it using my voucher – came to 85k points +£1040 When I pointed out that online I could get 139k points + £870 but couldnt use my voucher (which is worth 75k)
After 2 recalculations she finally managed to book me at the online price and after that separately re-imbursed me 75k points so we finally got to 64k points + £870
Don’t know what would have happened if I hadnt 200k points in my account or if I didnt realise what was available or if the rep didnt know her way around their system

oh and under the old system it would have cost 55k points + £1040 so I’m happy – but I should stress that I couldnt find another deal at anywhere near that price; most were 140k points + voucher + £1040 and many dates were double or treble the points so yes its a massive devaluation but there are a few – very few – bargains available

[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.

[ChasP]

It has become a gamble; there are a few seats going at around the previous points and a really scarce few that also have a reduced £ element. See my post above 🙂

For most seats on release expect around 50% higher points eg for west coast off peak 210 instead of 135; some can be 3-4x

The points algorithm is different to the cash one and often flights on a day that have the same cash price can be 30k points different

My gut feel is that some seats will get reduced around 9 months out by perhaps 20% Its early days but I havent seen any huge reductions for short notice flights

[Aardvark]

I have found an example where cash only flights are available and not an option to use points at all, which I find quite strange!

[ChasP]

Aardvark wrote:

I have found an example where cash only flights are available and not an option to use points at all, which I find quite strange!

on Virgin metal ? that would seem to breach their advertising claimss

[Aardvark]

I raised this with Virgin and the points option is available now.

[Mart]

What a joke virgin Atlantic have become ,i seen some reward flights i needed bought £1200 worth of points ,yes alot but suited my dates.
Kept failing on payment ,rang up ,doesn’t exist.
Sent a email to refund the points purchase god knows how long to refund.
Cant wait to get rid of my points or may even just let them expire

flying with them 28yr+
credit card probably more than 10yr

what was i thinking moving from Avios
yes im frustrated can you tell