Originally Posted by
lovestache
I did tell everyone about this incident. The comments all were in the lines of:
- You earned those upgrades so how does it matter to United what you do with them? its not that they gave them to you for free.
In point of fact, they
did give them to you for free.
Originally Posted by
lovestache
- If this is how they treat you (who has been 1k for 5 years and given them over $12k x 5 = $60k) who brought in big revenue, I'm sure they won't give about me.
$60K is big revenue? You were certainly a loyal customer since you made 1K for five years but give me a break on "big revenue". That's just a laugh when you look at the millions of passengers they carry annually and the total revenue stream they're looking at. You could quit flying United (and maybe have) and the dimple on their financials wouldn't even be perceptible.
Originally Posted by
lovestache
Maybe United should run ads on how many accounts were canceled that month. That'll make them real popular to earn future business. Heck, include clips in the ad from the Dr Dao incident with the message - this is what happens when you don't listen to us. LOL.
It actually might work. Just title it, "For our valued Premium Elites who follow the rules, we got rid of ### cheaters this month. You won't have to compete with people illegitimately using their accounts for upgrades because they're gone."
Originally Posted by
lovestache
Long term solution - United should behave like a business.
They are.
Originally Posted by
lovestache
Moreover, lets do the math:
By all means. As an engineer and physicist, I
love math.
Originally Posted by
lovestache
So a person spends $12k to become 1k (previous figure, now it is higher). Ok so assume that this person sold half of their GPU's: say 3 @ $300 - this is less than one grand. Why would United want to lose someone as a customer who is still netting them over $11k in revenue annually? Life time value for this customer (assuming avg of 12 years of continued 1k status due to the nature of their traveling job) is over $120k. What is their cost of (high rev) customer acquisition?
Because United would like to get the $1000 or so of revenue themselves or give the upgrades to loyal customers (many of whom spend a lot more than $12k per year) who follow the rules instead of having that seat go to a non- or low-status customer who bought the upgrade cert on the Internet and deprived a higher status customer (who is also spending a lot of money annually) of that upgrade. Let's flip that equation: Why would a person who can afford enough travel to amass over 1M award miles endanger their status and account for $1000? That's right up there with someone owning a high-end sports car driving miles out of his/her way over a bumpy dirt road to avoid taking a toll road.
Originally Posted by
lovestache
{W}ith the airlines constantly 'amending' their FF policies, the miles are only decreasing in value, not increasing. If my intent was to monetize by selling the miles, it would have made sense for me to do that long long time ago. They are worth a lot less now as compared to 15 years ago (when I still had 500k miles).
My remark was more to use them as a retirement fund to travel for me and my partner.
So again, why exactly did you intentionally endanger that retirement fund for travel to garner a few hundred dollars? Did you at least enjoy the proceeds?