cfischer

Bad move. This stinks! First they announce the promo to run through 12/31 and now they cancel it

Points Scrounger

Even Wednesday, Sept 1st would've been okay with me, but now I have to scramble for my handful of "new" AA joints.
Two weeks notice, with only three qualifying days/week, is too short notice!
I'm at $40/$100 for the 1000 AS miles; I can live without doubling (most of) the rest of the qualifying $60, but this makes me less inclined to go for a second $100 in spending.

KhalilSheikh

That's the message I'm seeing too (AA).

NJUPINTHEAIR

The link I provided is from AAdvantage's own site, as the OP had mentioned first.

I will now go onto the RN site and see if it still reads ending 12/31 for me.

I now get site temporarily down -- that does not portend good things for me, as well, I believe.

Points Scrounger

RN's AA site came up fine for me just now, with the August 18th message.

As a side note, when I went to rate a dine at Alaska's site, I got an error message telling me to contact RN. The rep assured me that the rating had gone through, but the issue might not be resolved for a few days. When I logged back in, the dine showed as having been rated.

Open Jaw

I will never understand why they changed the promo. I planned extra dines to earn miles. But now I think I will just save my money.

infiniteflyer

I would have thought that if there was a lack of participation from people eating out on Mon, Tue, and Wed, they would want to give us MORE incentive to eat at an RN restaurant! Strange...

ronan32

Hilton HHonors participation is also ending Aug. 18.

Could it be that the program is actually being seen as too successful with more dines taking place on double days while they have noticed a decline in restaurant visits on non-double days? Their line of thought could then be "why pay out double points if it is costing business on other days where we would only have to give the normal points?".

Corporate announcements are rarely what they seem at first glance.

NJUPINTHEAIR

Now mine says it is ending as well on 8/18.

I think that it might have something to do with those eating out on those days as well as upcoming promotions where the double miles would have made the promotions too generous in their eyes.

jftino

just got the email from Hilton HHonors as well. Like the rest of you i wonder what "drop in participation" means?

You'd think restaurants would be glad to have customers in on what is typically the slowest 3 days of the week for them, so it doesnt make much sense on their end to complain about it.

dstan

Received the same email from Priority Club as well. I'd assume this is RN-wide.

RewardsNetwork

Hi all,

Thank you for your feedback. We sincerely regret that we were unable to continue the All Double, No Trouble promotion through the end of the year, as we had previously planned. Despite the positive feedback we received from the Flyer Talk community, overall member participation in All Double, No Trouble had dropped to a level that made the promotion unsustainable.

We cycle through different promotions throughout the year, and we look forward to bringing you more great promotion and bonus opportunities in the future.

Thank you again for dining with us,

Elizabeth, on behalf of Rewards Network

http://facebook.com/RewardsNetwork
http://twitter.com/RewardsNetwork

dstan

Hi Elizabeth - thanks for the information. I'm sure we're all a bit curious why the promotion became "unsustainable", since there would seem to be no cost (miles/points) associated with members who do not participate. I'm guessing that perhaps there are some fixed costs or overhead somewhere, but you may not be able to share that information with us.

Hope to see some more bonuses to replace this!

adzel

Thank you, Elizabeth, for your additional information.

Rewards Network needs to understand that with the drop in miles per dollar spent, the motivation for eating at a Rewards Network restaurant versus some other restaurant has gone down significantly. When you dropped from 10 miles/dollar to only 5/dollar, you made up for it with the bonus for completing a survey. However, when the survey bonuses went away, Rewards Network became a significantly less attractive proposition.

All Double, No Trouble at least restored that for Monday through Wednesday, the days that most restaurants naturally see less traffic. Taking that bonus away is likely to further reduce participation in the program as a whole.

Your 500 point bonus for eating at a new restaurant helps a little, but there are only so many participating restaurants in an area that are match someone's food preferences.

If you compare just my own situation, my frequency of Rewards Network dines has gone down significantly since 10 miles/dollar went away. Last year, I qualified for VIP much earlier in the year. I will have just qualified with my most recent dine, but that is several months later this year than in 2007-2009.

Lowering the miles earned simply makes Rewards Network restaurants less competitive against other restaurants that might have other promotions (like coupons). While lowering the number of miles you give away reduces your costs, that does not necessarily improve your profits if you lose too many customers because of it.

Hope this info is helpful in future decision processes for RN.....

morerainplease

So why extend the promotion in the first place? Did the participation really drop that much in July? The extension ended up being effective for 6 weeks instead of the announced 6 months.

This is strange and does not engender confidence in the future of the program.