US Airways Dividend Miles (Pre-FlightFund Merger) - Targeting

Greetings--

I don't get USAir's targeting. Still believe I am just too good of a customer.

I have flown TA 4 times this year, can't get targeted for the 25,000 to Paris or the 20,000 for any C class ticket to Europe.

I'm the Preferred member in the household (Gold), I routinely fly TA routes on Full Fare business class tickets (crazy company policy)

The killer (funny) is that my wife and kids, who fly about once a year, all the way down to my 2 year old get targeted for all the promotions.

I signed up for 8963 anyway, as some have indicated the language was not specific. I have an email in to the service center to try to get credit, as it has not posted for either of my last 2 trips.

Anyone? Is there a rhyme or reason?

Cheers

If it's any consolation, I don't get targeted for promotions either http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif And I fly a lot with US. I do appreciate the hard-earned Preferred perks, though.

I fly Delta once in a while, and I seem to get more than my fair share of promotional offers from them!

The airline marketing departments must measure their success by how much increased business they bring in......

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by ytjk:

I signed up for 8963 anyway, as some have indicated the language was not specific. I have an email in to the service center to try to get credit, as it has not posted for either of my last 2 trips.

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As You yourself pointed out in this thread
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum51/HTML/006910.html
the 20K bonus for Envoy RT is a one-off. So you will not get it for your last two RTs, only one. FWIW, I only got the 10K bonus for a Y RT when I called to complain and they manually posted it.

As for the targetting, it makes no sense to any of us either. My wife who hasn't flown to Europe since 1995 routinely gets the European promos. I go 1-2x per year on US (for all they know they are getting 10% of my biz) and I never get targetted.

In retrospect it looks like 8963 was meant to be targetted but they forgot to put the "addressee only" language in the promo.

I understand I would only get it once, if I was targeted--

I signed up, 2 RT's later still no miles.

*sigh*

From their point of view: They already get lots of your business. Why should they target you? Now your son, doesn't give them as much business, so he gets targeted.

Why they should target me is easy.

Now, I fly US for about 4-5 months every 2 years. I get to gold, keep my card that year and the next. When it's set to downgrade to silver in Feb, I fly them again for 3 or 4 months, get back to gold, and I'm good. Since I live in Philly, I really do need the local airlines' Gold card-- also will get me good star alliance bennies, I understand, if they finally get in.

The only bennie I truly care about is 100% bonus miles, that I use off-and-on for the rest of the time.

The entire point is to get to 150,000 miles to send my fam once a year on the direct flight out of Philly to Munich in the summer. I book these 300 days or so out.

I don't need the lounge, or upgrades. That's all meaningless-- I have them anyway with C fares.

Once I am gold, the rest of the time, I take whatever airline has the best bennies going-- free R/T, Companion tickets, every airline throws this stuff at you.

Not US. If they just targeted me every now and then, they could get an extra $6000 fare for throwing 20,000 miles at me. Seems like a decent deal to me. They are willing to throw the same 20,000 miles at someone to book an off-season $400 ticket to Europe-- why not an actual paying customer!

So, they don't actually have a lot of my business-- 4 or 5 TA R/T every 2 years, after that they only get the scraps.

My 8 year old flys maybe a $350 wintertime R/T to Germany every year. I spend $25 or $30,000 a year (this year) with USAir.

Yeah-- let's target the kid! (Actually, through "targeting" her she's already earned enough miles to cash in 2 TA R/T's with US, costing US even more of my high priced scraps)

Anyway, a silly gripe.

Cheers!

One would assume that you're not the "average" customer that US is dealing with, ytjk. I have trouble understanding why you'd go to this trouble to get GP and then not take advantage of the benefits that it provides. Since most Preferred members give more consistent business to the airline, there is no need to target them to increase their spend on US.

I still don't understand the logic behind targetted promotions vs. non-targetted promotions. If the idea of offering promotions is to generate additional business, why exclude half or 3/4's of the DM population? US is not sweetening the mileage pot because they're being generous. They're dangling a carrot in front of you so you'll choose US over the competition, or book one or two extra flights on US which you would not otherwise have taken at all. If that's the logic behind these promotions, why not open it up to all customers? Why cause animosity and ill will by targetting one member of the family, but not the others?

US has only targetted me once in my recent memory: They offered me a challenge to keep Gold, even though I had already booked enough flights to cross over the Gold threshhold. I know alot of former US fliers who moved to Los Angeles from the East Coast, and ultimately switched to AA or UA for obvious reasons. I can understand why West Coast-based fliers would not be at the top of US's targetted list, but if these promotions were opened up to the "general population," I'm sure US would see a surge in West Coast-based bookings. I don't know how much repeat business it would generate with such minimal service from the West Coast, but if US is looking to fill seats during slow periods, why not at least make a half-hearted effort to get business originating from the Left Coast -- especially now that MP members can get miles on US.

I get to GP so I have a fallback option when there are no decent promos on other airlines for free tickets to go with a C class TA roundtrip. When there are none, I just use US until I have my 150k to get my family to Europe on the PHL-MUC direct flight (which is my first priority of my entire Frequent Flyer mile existence)

Gold has no benefits for me, just the 100% mileage bonus. I don't purchase domestic tickets for me or my family, they are usually all award travel (mostly not USAir, everyone else gives a coach coupon for a single C class TA R/T). So upgrades don't apply. I sometimes purchase wintertime TA R/T for the entire family to Germany USAir, fares are cheap, usually bonus miles for the kiddies, and it saves my miles for the all-important summertime runs.

So, they can keep not targeting me, and keep losing some of my 12 TA C Class R/T every 2 years to better promos(I fly about 8 or 9 a year, 4 clumped every 2 years with US for status)

That's the logic, sad as it is.

Cheers