Originally Posted by
SkyMilesInsider
As far as the # of Choice Benefits, a status change will trigger the Choice Benefit. If your status changes to Platinum, you will be able to select one; if your status changes to Diamond, you will be able to select two. If you start out as Diamond and requalify (meaning no status change), you can select two.
Thank you for clarifying those issues. They confirm that skymiles is a good program, but not a great or best of class program.
I laid out the math upstream, but there is a lot of incentive for high mileage fliers to just ping-pong, PM one year, DM the next, while putting the rest of
their miles on a competing program. As you confirm here, a ping-pong flier can get the same
total number of choice benefits as a full time DM (although the full time DM gets
marginally bigger gifts in their choices).
You really need to tweak the system, throw more bones to the DM's, or they are just going to take their extra travel and book it elsewhere. It seems like you view Diamond as a subset of the higher mileage fliers of PM, so you separated out that subset and gave them a couple extras; it doesn't feely like you actually created a new real upper level top tier.
As to rollover segments, did you actually decide not to include them, or was that just overlooked and now the decision is entrenched?