flyertalker00133

Looking at how this is being handled does it appear to anyone else that given how quickly the author of the blog has an article ready (the mainstream blogs were then playing catch up) and how defensive he’s being using incorrect information (‘the old redemption bands are still available’, which they are not for large swathes of users) that he was paid by BA for input/good press and this is backfiring?

Dave_C

OMAAT has similar coverage. I suspect there was a certain line fed by BA to the bloggers who lapped it up, lest those credit card referrals start to dry up. HfP, which I must confess I was premature in my criticism in their comments, does seem to have done a good job in highlighting the issues.

flyertalker00133

I don’t think OMAAT had an article up that quickly nor are the defensive so rabidly though.

erikh94

Could you please unwind the acronyms? I’ve found one mille at a time but *STP is still a mystery to me.

Also is this referring to the redemptions changes or the earning changes?

flyertalker00133

*** Save The Points and it’s the big redemption spending devaluation

crazy8534

FT has literally hundreds of regular posters “working” for it and giving any changes a breadth and depth of scrutiny that no blog could match. This is the huge strength of our community. I think it’s fair to say that many of us on here (I include myself) initially had a false, positive (although somewhat fleeting) impression of these changes. It’s become clear that there are many scenarios and individuals for whom they are pretty dramatically bad, albeit with a small number of situations that have improved.

I am inclined to think that most blogs don’t wish to wilfully mislead their readers but were misled themselves by BA (commercially, understandably) putting a heavily optimistic spin on everything. Kudos to those who investigated further and are reporting what has been determined on FT, by their own readers or by themselves. There will be reputational damage (at least from regular frequent flyers) to those who double-down on their errors.

Same in all aspects of life, if you can’t acknowledge a mistake in the face of overwhelming evidence then at some point you start to look a bit silly.

orbitmic

I personally don’t agree bloggers are dishonest nor corrupt. I just think it’s important to understand that they effectively follow an information business model which constrain their needs and their operations.

The paradox being that many people intuitively think of bloggers as “normal passengers who represent the interests of the passengers’ community”, whilst by nature keeping a blog is a job increasingly akin to a standard media role (albeit without the same training or ethics oversight as standard media). It requires regularly posting early (or ideally exclusive) info to keep readership and thus advertising income. Blogs are also increasingly identified by airlines who treat them almost exactly like journalists and thus provide them with information they wish to share and in a way they wish it framed as they see them as potential communicative sounding boards. Optimally, they will do so using a precise timing which enables bloggers to publish before news is publically released but with too little time to analyse it independently and freed themselves of the airlines’ own framing at least initially (ie when people care and read). conversely on Ft, none of us get a single peanut from BA and other airlines, yet when asked to be forum “”moderators” or ”ambassadors” (again, no perk of any sort), we are immediately suspected by hundreds of members to be biased secret airline employees who are only in here to defend those airlines’ interests. I should hope that those who then read our posts over time ultimately realise we are not too weakly endowed in the “critical spirit” department.

EuropeanPete

Some of the coverage of these changes do push that belief to the absolute limit though. In the example of the God Save the Points' article, he's either willfilly misleading his consumers or being too stupid and/ or lazy to realise that he's misunderstood. I wonder if perhaps BA provided bloggers with a set of key messages to use, but which were less truthful than usual.

"British Airways is massively reducing the surcharges attached to Avios." - But increasing them elsewhere

"Is it all positive? To me, given the added ability to earn Avios, mostly yes" - But actually, there's a large devaluation for thousands of flights and a relatively large proportion of BA customers may never find a flight where they haven't seen a devaluation

"Old Pricing Still Exists, If You Want It" - This is untrue for most flights

I suspect this all comes back to the inherent corruption at the core of the paid influencer model, where content producers often secretly take money in order to misrepresent the relationship between them and a product. Fitness models will pretend to use dangerous weight loss products. Travel bloggers will mislead their readers. Obviously some are more reliable than others (I feel Raffles here does a pretty good job), but on occasions we'll see outright nonsense like this from those with less of a feeling of obligation to their readership.

Raffles

Have faith Dave :-)

atcer28

I’m going to stick my head above the parapet here. No doubt I’ll get shot down in the weird hatred that many people have for bloggers despite the fact they offer their product for free to readers.

And I’m going to be very honest. I’m in no way defending the blogger involved as I haven’t read it and I don’t agree with not admitting if you made a mistake if that’s what’s happened.

People are very keen to bash bloggers yet so much of what is said from my point of view is completely false. And most people literally have no idea what’s involved in someone that gets their full time income from blogging. It’s not fun most of the time. It involves working 7 days a week, on holiday, bank holidays etc. And as the blogger in question has mentioned before it can be utterly exhausting and isolating as well as dealing with constant criticism and trolling that most people never have to deal with at work.

Yes you also get some amazing experiences but they are generally few and far between. We do it because we are passionate about the subject and our readers. Certainly not for the money in most cases.

From my own experience and everything I know bloggers do not get paid by airlines at all. And certainly not to bribe them to write things. We do get advance notice occasionally on press releases. This one was sent out but then delayed which is unusual. Usually you only get a few hours notice.

when you get to a certain level you get invited on press trips. These sound very glamorous but they are far from it. You are often working from 5am-12am with long haul flights and a schedule that is non stop. If you are like me you are a one man band you still have to “mind the shop” as well.

My coverage on this has been very lacking in depth I’ll admit. I have not spent time looking at all the details because unfortunately it got delayed and I’m supposed to be having a rare couple of days off which all went to pot due to all the announcements. But eventually I will have the time to sit down properly and analyse it properly. I rarely take time off (usually just Christmas) but sometimes you get to the point of burn out and you just have to protect yourself even if it means your coverage is shallow.

You also have to consider the readers. For the blogs mentioned that are pretty US centric then the changes for them are primarily good news. Many readers that just want to go away once a year from the UK and use their companion voucher it’s generally good news for the future (ignoring the old vouchers). For me 95% if my readers are from the UK and US so naturally I’m going to focus my efforts on those readers. I couldn’t possibly cover everything from every countries perspectives. That’s why there are blogs covering it in every country.

At the end of the day there are always winners and losers from most changes. People on here are usually frequent flyers that may have a different perspective from someone who has saved their Avios and just wants to spend them without paying £900 charges for a J long haul for their yearly holiday. Personally I’m happy with it as I can use my new companion vouchers to get it down to a lower level of Avios and much cheaper cash outlay.

*ducks for cover*

Raffles

Let me tell you what I learned about money in this game. If you seek it out, it won’t come. If you ignore it, it arrives.

With no real interest in cash I built HfP based on what people wanted to read. No favours to anyone. Guess what? That level of honesty got me a lot of readers, and now I can charge five figures for ad campaigns - and the people who pay are people who have had, and continue to get at times, a tough time from us editorially.

If your readers don’t trust your content they won’t trust your advertisers either, and vice versa.

36902BRF

I am not anti-blogger at all and follow many of them including HFP and GSTP (the latter somewhat against my better judgement at this point) even though I am US based. I don't expect perfection from the bloggers and they like all of us are going to have their perspective/bias/spin. All that said I have seen GSTP report on other things where he/she just plain had some facts wrong and either clearly didn't want to understand and/or didn't want to walk back their claims once presented with evidence to the contrary. Essentially they reacted the exact same way as here. I had already mostly tuned them out after the last incident but at this point I am dropping GSTP from my RSS feed, there are enough solid bloggers I don't need to waste my time on one for whatever reason cannot acknowledge certain facts. Even for US members the claim that the old pricing is still available is patently false. So highlight the positive changes if you want (as they are there for US members) but don't claim you can still get the old pricing because you cannot and, please, please, please don't try to spin the higher surcharges for US members (when booking one-ways from non-US origins) as a positive because they are "consistent" as GSTP has, I mean seriously?

corporate-wage-slave

I just think these are very different markets. Some, perhaps many, people have a 10 or 15 minute ration of this per week, between awesome cleaning products and the latest updates from the Duchess of Sussex, and any of the "household" name bloggers will suffice for that, at a given level. They serve that market.

In all candour, I don't think I have read anything of substance in any of the blogs where I learnt something worthwhile. Not ever, and even I think that's a bit odd - except that I know that there are quite a few regular visitors here on FT who do far more travelling, and have far more experiences, than these social media publishers. That showed up to my mind in an amusing way when one outfit proudly discovered that BA's Arrival Lounges actually has baths. Occasionally these bloggers (not really the right word to my mind) have a 30 minute advantage on Flyertalk but that's not often and very quickly FT has the depth and detail. And that's what collectively we are better at doing.

labdoctor

OMAAT had a good writer (an Aussie?) who then appeared to leave very suddenly and now it seems It's a one man band with frequent credit card pitches.

orbitmic

I certainly agree they would be well inspired to revise their article... (and update the situation on the new JFK lounges too as long as we are at it. If I were a blogger, I'd be quite fuming that BA and AA had effectively manipulated me by showing great new lounges using smoke and mirrors whilst they offer my readers a radically different/vastly worsened experience...)