Originally Posted by
thepla
I don't understand the math. There are few people who make changes to award itins but at $50 a crack that equals $160million. This is either a blatant lie or they are including the redeposit fee.
It's not the whole 160 m, but it's the biggest individual piece. I don't recall the exact number, somewhere between 80 and 120. IIRC that's the total for change and redeposit fees extrapolated to the number of changes/redeposits in the combined DL/NW system, and therefore the annual cost/revenue after the merger is complete.
A lot of people even request redeposits after the flight has departed.
I view this differently than you, but I see a change and a redeposit as being very similar; they certainly have a similar effect on the overall system and award availability, and processing costs are similar. To me it's nit picking to separate them, but to people who do those changes a lot I'm sure they are entirely different animals.
I guess they did the math, and decided it's better to tick those few individuals who do lots of changes, and thereby lose a few thousand in business, rather than to lose a hundred million in revenue. They indicated that when they ran the numbers they were quite surprised at how large the amounts are.