Qatar Airways Privilege Club - Are Etihad and Emirates trying to drag loyal gold customers away?

Etihad Guest is delighted to offer you a great opportunity to upgrade your tier status to Etihad Guest Gold and enjoy great benefits that come with it for free! Just show us your gold frequent flyer card (or any tier higher than gold) with another airline and we will upgrade your current Etihad Guest status to Etihad Guest Gold* - provided you are one of the first 1000 members to apply!
http://resources.etihadairways.com/etihadairways/htmls/Newsletter/EyGuest/UAE_Tier_Match_web_04_12.html

With Emirates it seems if you E-Mail Skywards they will consider matching your Qatar Airways gold status to gold Skywards has well.

I got this email as well and sent in some details too see if I am lucky to get my EY card upto gold, I would be silver eitherwise on EY which if Im not mistaken is good enough as EY gold is kinda rubbish.

EK Gold on the otherhand would be great except their prices in general tend to always be significantly higher when departing from DXB.

EK Gold on the otherhand would be great except their prices in general tend to always be significantly higher when departing from DXB.

EK is clearly milking the Dubai cow ...