Originally Posted by
ozstamps
United long term fliers please keep up the pressure and emails.
A UA Million Miler who has been 1K for 10+ straight years like me and many others will be 3 tiers down the totem pole in this new Math.
Any CO flyer who did 50,000 miles a year for FIVE years in the 90s, will be 1K for life!
How does that make ANY business sense?
Those folks were promised "Gold for life". Nothing more. Not "1K top tier for life". Which they ALL will be now. INSANE!
This is the letter below that these folks got.
A number of whom have not bought a ticket for a decade I'd bet.
I am annoyed I am STILL spending $25,000 a year to be given 3rd prize, and these folks get 1st prize.
How are they helping the revenue base today?
As I recalled, five years in a row as Gold CO was the bar, (50,000 miles a year when I was doing it) and it seems clear that latter 1990's this was still being honoured.
Any red highlighting is mine.
Loyalty to CO even 20 years back is still being handsomely rewarded. CURRENT loyalty and big spending to UA is being snubbed.
That is NO way to run a business in a super competitive field.
Either demote these guys to our MM level in the new Math, or crank us up to their level.
But leave things as they are, and you have BIG issues ahead.
Sorry I can't make the selective quote function work correctly, so the whole post is quoted.
OZSTAMPS, yes, it's obvious you're mad, but don't take it out on us (IEs) for UA/CO's fulfillment of an old "contract." Check your facts. Yes, the offer was for permanent Gold status - but in the early advertizing, it was described as "our highest tier of Elite level" for life. Recent subsequent correspondence between the surviving IE crowd and Gordon Bethune indicate that the intention indeed was for permanent highest tier recognition. SO, when Platinum was introduced (and Bronze deleted) it was really just a reshuffling of the nomenclature and the IEs were bumped up.
The creation of Presidential Platinum was in fact a slap in the face of the IEers. Our status was devalued at that time.
Yes, this made business sense - at the time (and the compact is still in force!) Recall also that this offer was made during CO's darkest days. Those of us who accepted the offer were taking a huge chance that things might not work out and we would end up with nothing! The company was in shambles after the Lorenzo years, service and reliability were notoriously poor, and CO was in very real danger of going belly-up. The IE program was a marketing effort to retain very frequent flyers - and it worked. Some of us stayed and the airline survived and even flourished. The requirements were for 5 consecutive years of highest level elite activity - but the specifics changed by the year - not always 50K.
Even though the program lasted for 7 years, the total number of actual qualifiers was quite low - estimated at 5000-10,000 max, and those numbers have dwindled. Our group of active fliers is now below 5000. So, for those who are rarely or are no longer flying, the new bennies have absolutely NO effect on YOUR status. And for those few of us who are flying, the effect on YOUR status is still vanishingly small. The few of us who are still active are only getting what were we promised in the original contract, and some of us are still VERY acitive. I'll hit over 150K on UA and over 100K on CO THIS YEAR, and have been 1K twice as long as you have. Perhaps the treatment of UA MMs is not quite right and they should be upgraded, but we IEs earned our status many years ago and deserve the benefits we have been given. No need to direct your hatred toward us.