Hello Marathon Man and FlyerTalkers,

As an employee of Points.com, I was disappointed to read your post. At Points.com we have remained silent viewers of the FlyerTalk forums for many years, but feel that perhaps some of the issues and comments that are being raised here could be dispelled if we were to provide some commentary.

I can assure you that at Points.com we have no desire to take advantage of our users. We are doing our best to work with loyalty programs to provide their members with new ways to use their points and miles. And we're frequent flyers too. Over 100 people work at Points.com, which is now traded on both the US and Canadian stock markets; We're the real deal. Points.com also now has almost 3 million users worldwide, and almost a billion miles have been transacted through our services since we opened our doors over ten years ago.

We do work closely with our loyalty program partners for fair exchange rates for our users, and we're always trying to improve these rates. In many cases, the exchange rates and fees that you find on Points.com are set by the participating loyalty programs. We're also always working to update our technology so that our systems work faster and more efficiently, and we're looking to expand our customer service team. But, as several of your posts point out here, nobody's perfect. Also, our services and tools are not for everyone at every point of their loyalty program life cycle � as several FlyerTalkers have pointed out in the past, some of our services are best used in specific situations.

I firmly believe that Points.com can be a great tool for flyers, and I'd really like to hear suggestions from FlyerTalkers about how we can improve Points.com so it can become a more useful tool for you. Although exchange rates aren�t always in our control, we are always trying to provide the best value we can. We take your feedback seriously and are here to answer questions you may have.

If we're welcome, we'd like to start addressing your questions and feedback about Points.com. If you have any comments you'd like to share via email, you can reach me at [email protected]. Otherwise, we'll respond to your comments right here in the forum.

Thanks,

Sean Hutchison
VP Consumer Products
Points.com

Sean,

Welcome to posting! It's good to have you here.

Some of the exchange rates truly are ludicrous, especially for large quantities of miles. Points.com is useful to me for orphan mile use and for occasionally taking advantage of good deals like newspaper subscriptions or the like.

Sometimes it does feel like points.com is trying to find suckers willing to trade 100,000 miles in one program for 2,000 in another. This is probably more a result of automatic marketing glitz being applied no matter how poor the transfer ratio, but perhaps presenting users with alternatives could help mitigate any appearance of hoodwinking.

Lastly, points.com does not have easily-accessible customer service should something go wrong with a transfer. Getting live assistance is non-trivial.

I've never signed up for points.com because: I don't have any need to transfer points (especially at some of the plain horrible rates I've seen mentioned- and seems to be most people's main gripe with the site), and I track all of my points with another program.

However..

I've read old posts about new member signup bonuses for points.com... And now I can't find a single one. Why were the discontinued? Offer a decent sign up bonus, and I'll look at your product firsthand to form my own opinion.

1 877 637 0111
Their voicemail says M-F 10am-5pm Eastern, although my notes say M-F 9am-6pm.
I haven't used their phone support in months, but, when I did, the phone was answered by a reasonably competent apparently native English speaker.

Well Sean, although your post comes close to violating FT T&C's, I'll address it anyway:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...consumers.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/us-ai...om-paypal.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...er-beware.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/s-p-m...dishonest.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...-big-time.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...oints-com.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...ot-joking.html

Yup. Over 15 pages! of complaints/reports of loss, etc. From FT moderators to FT ambassadors to longtime and trusted posters (as well as myself, an early victim of Points.com back in the early 2000's), there does seem to be a consensus here....avoid Points.com.

Oh, and um, welcome to FlyerTalk. I'm quite sure you're here for altruistic purposes, and not just to "talk up" your employer.

I'm not going to defend Points.com cause I think it isn't really close to a fair price (although arguably fair for a small number of orphan miles), but I don't think there was anything wrong with that guy's post. How is it any different than the Lurkers on this site? I think it could be beneficial to have some sort of actual human being with knowledge of the program here to provide input and maybe be receptive to suggestions.

Thanks for the warm welcome!

You're right, sometimes the rates are not always ideal and we are always working with our partner loyalty programs to improve them. Our approach has been to provide our users with as many options as possible for moving their loyalty currency in the hopes that they will find one that works for them in the right situation.

We're also working on finding ways to help loyalty program members educate themselves about the value of their loyalty currency so they'll be better able to make the right decision for their current situation. FlyerTalk also does a great job of helping people understand the value of their miles, and we've been directing users here for info when possible. We've also started a blog where we post some educational content (here's an example of a series of posts we made last year: http://blog.points.com/2011/03/15/mo...-points-miles/ to this end).

In terms of customer service, this is an area we really tried to improve this year. Realizing that most of the questions we get from our users had some similarities we launched http://questions.points.com/home. We're always trying to improve the content here as well so we're open to any suggestions. If you can't find answers to your questions there you can use our live chat (the quickest), email and then phone is an option for transactional issues. In the past when you have had issues with customer service, has it been related to transactional questions? Is the main issue the methods that we have for contact (chat, email, FAQs) or that your issues went unresolved?

Thanks for your comments!

Hello @tripice351,

Regarding join bonuses: Yes, we did discontinue these because we realized most of our users were frequent travelers and the relatively small mile/point number we could offer as a join bonus wasn't much of an incentive after all. Instead we pooled our resources and we now offer a 1,000,000 mile/point give-away every month for a variety of different programs. We've had a great response so far. You can check out the participating programs here http://blog.points.com/2011/02/17/co...ontest-winner/ .

To me the bottom line with points.com is this, yeah overall for most situations its a total rip off. But it's very helpful in some instances so its a very situational thing. If you have orphan miles that you will truly never use then getting something for them is better than letting them expire. So that's an excellent use. And also keeping accounts active. I know like a year or so ago I made a small transfer to a usairways account just to keep it active. Yeah there are other ways now like the toolbars that have sprung up, etc but its another option.

I also think that it's not points.com's fault that the values are crap.
I mean that is set by the airlines and such. They charge just stupid fee's just to even transfer miles to someone else to where it makes no sense. Points.com simply has to pass that expense on. So it's honestly pretty pointless to always be ragging on them, to me its the airlines that are to blame if you really want to complain to someone it would be them, but I doubt that would help.

So take points.com for what it is. If its not of use to you, move on. But for a lot of people it does come in handy every so often. Another instance I just thought of is partner activity like with priority club, there have been several times where various promo's required partner activity and points.com was great for that. I think you could transfer like 10aa miles or something for 1 pc point and boom you got credit. Is the 10 to 1 trade a great rate, of course not but it was still a great overall value and deal a super cheap way for a activity. So honestly I think its a good service and I'm glad its available vs having nothing at all. Again is it a great value on just the trade basis, no of course not, but you have to look at the bigger picture of what you get (getting rid of orphan miles, partner activity, etc)

Welcome to FT, Sean! It's good to have a real Points.com person attending to FTers' comments.

However, can you handle the truth?

I don't blame you that you stand by your products and services. You work for Points after all. But I have to say this is probably the most underestimated statement of the month, if not the year or the century.

The more close-to-FTers'-reality statement should be: the rates are hardly ideal. They are ripoff deals.

Keep in mind, you are hearing this line of "criticism" from savvy FTers, who know how valuable or how much value their miles are. FWIW, Skypesos (aka Skymiles) do not earn the name for nothing on FT. Just like the reputation of Points.com.

We know for a fact that Points have changes hands and been under different management a handful of times over the years. Good to know that now you are the VP Consumer Products and take a priority to improve customer services in 2011.

Please don't take any of our put-down personally. You just have to know you are facing a tough crowd and it will be a bumpy ride ahead, given how Points had "performed" previously for FTers.

Welcome again!

So did your company do actual research on this (percentage of "frequent travelers" vs leisure travelers, how effective of an incentive it was)? Your 1M mile sweepstakes entry is less of an incentive to me than a couple hundred miles. I'll take the sure thing every time. Perhaps you could offer a choice - entry into the sweepstakes or some miles?

Hello lin821,

We are definitely here the lend a virtual ear to feedback from savvy FlyerTalkers. We really are always making improvements and updates to our products, so any feedback, kind or otherwise, is useful to us. If you'd like to give feedback on a regular basis, you could join our Points.com panel, Points of View. Through the panel you would be able to respond to surveys about Points.com and the loyalty industry once or twice a month. Here's the link to join: http://bit.ly/gHy1xH. Otherwise, you can also reach me via email ([email protected]). Thanks again for the welcome.

Thanks for the feedback on the join bonus. A choice between the two is an option we considered, but in the end we went with the million miles contests. So far we’ve had a good response to the million miles contests, but that’s not to say we won’t change the bonus in the future.

Sean thanks for coming in here and showing yourself.

When one needs to transfer airline miles within various carriers, the link to do so has often been powered by Points.com. Paying the associated fees and clicking through has in fact resulted in the promised transfer to go through and credit card to be charged accordingly.

So while I personally have rarely used this feature--and only for very small amounts if I have used it--I find that is just about the only thing your company is good for. The fees are really high for that, by the way, but at least you do seem to get most of it right in that one area.

For all else I have found that your main problem in doing business is two-fold:

1) completing a promo for the user.

2) communicating with/solving issues with (in a timely matter) that user.

I have been on this board for a number of years. I have participated in a lot of promotions. I have followed the posted rules in every single one of them and when I do that I expect to receive the bonus or benefit I set out to obtain. Sometimes people have to write in to various companies find out what happened to their miles or points but generally speaking they do get what they expected. With you that process is horrific or non-existent.

Fix that and you will be liked and I will stop plastering this place with negative reports of things I have seen. Fix that and people like me will stop making countless posts in numerous threads about your company not coming through for them in the clutch. Fix that and I will stop helping people to avoid your company.

Fail to fix that and you will probably run away from this board faster than we will chase you.

Thanks. It was a pleasure talking with you. Now please get to work.

MM

As with most FTers, the only use i find for points.com is to transfer orphan miles from one program to the other.

I dont get why so amany FFPs use points.com as a backend for gifting, buying miles etc. Cmon how hard is it to build that?