jerryhung

Realistically I don't think awards do show up daily, so I don't mind a Weekly search on a less known route knowing or on an existing segment that I'm already comfortable with, but just checking available award for fun

So weekly would be great, so long that we can choose the ON days to search (say 2/4/6 only). It's not that big of a deal relatively

Thanks Peter

IMH

I can't see any point in monthly searches, but weekly would make a lot of sense. If my research into a route leads me to believe that an airline releases redemption inventory on something other than a daily basis, for example, I might want to schedule searches for Tuesday evenings and Saturday mornings.

gpeso8

ckpeter I know I've said it before but AwardNexus makes my life sooo much easier! This week I've been used it for 4 separate redemptions. Any update on a Krisflyer availability search?

ckpeter

Make sense. It sounds reasonable to me, but that is also an edge case. The system is not really designed for something like that now, but I'll keep that in mind for the next redesign.

ckpeter

Glad to hear that!

The Krisflyer airline site option is still being worked on, but I've added you to the list. You would be among the first to know when it becomes available.

jerryhung

Peter

Maybe remove this message on login dashboard, when one's TripPasses are ALL expired (I have 1 expired)
"You have Trip Passes! Click here to use your Trip Passes"

And +1 for Weekly search for sure
I don't know why, even having 2000+ points, I still want to save my points :P
We miles hoarders simply like to hoard miles & points

Daily search (-1 point daily) is killing me, ha, when I almost know I'll get NOTHING for the next 60 days and I still wasted 60 points, instead of 9 points (9 weeks)

Last thing, maybe show the website status before search?
e.g. Aeroplan is down often at night for maintenance or (if ANex cannot talk to it), and the [Star Alliance (AC)] option should be greyed out, or show a warning sign, instead of enter & search & get error

ckpeter

Sorry it took me a while. I have been traveling.

I fixed the Trip Pass notice. You should no longer see it, unless you have an active Trip Pass.

The AC message is trickier. The nightly maintenance window is not consistent, so the best way is to let a search errs out. The backend is not designed to keep "pinging" without an active search.

With the points thing, look at it this way: 60 points is about $3-$4 dollars, or a single cup of coffee at the airport. Think about how much you would be willing to hire someone to consistently check awards for you for two months. When you realize that the international premium awards, which is easily worth $2000 - $4000, a few dollars is a very small price to pay, to even increase the chance of redemption by 5%, or $100 - $200 in "expected value".

I hope this gives you some assurances. Let me know if you have more questions.

jerryhung

Thanks Peter

I totally understand your view, it's just crazy to imagine, for my trip in May 2015 (6 months away), I may need to spend 1 point per day = 180 points, when I suspect AC availability will only open up in the last 2 months

Daily = 180 points minimum, even more if I have 1+ schedule
Weekly = 24 points or Twice weekly = 50 points
Monthly = 6 points only, but too unrealistic


AC availability is a crapshoot recently anyway, even "frequent" YYZ-LGA would sometimes show 0 J for the whole day in May 2015 also, then open up for few days, then totally gone again (i.e. it's not someone releasing J seat back into the pool)

ckpeter

Ultimately, as a traveler / customer, you have to decide if the value is right for you. I think the way you have to look at is, as a traveler, given that my award is valued at $2000 - $4000, would I be willing pay a few dollars each week to ensure that I can catch that award at first opportunity? Keeping in mind that the few dollars is cheaper than what you spend on train fare for that week (or coffee, or phone bill, in other words, its a nominal cost).

As you said, sometimes a whole month can go by without availability, but then it opens up for a few days. On a limited twice-weekly MON + FRI frequency, you may well miss the award if it only opened Tuesday - Thursday.

Above all, the Award Nexus philosophy is - Let's design a system and a pricing model that, with some nominal but non-zero costs, maximize the chance of redeeming high-valued premium awards. Because of this, I am hesitant to include a weekly / monthly option, because inevitably some members will select it, thinking that it saves them a few points, but in the process risk missing out on an award. I am a points hoarder myself, but the one feeling worse than seeing my points balance decreasing, is the feeling that I am missing out on a redemption!

Godspeed. Godaward.

jerryhung

Ha, no worries, I'm simply asking for a Weekly OPTION/FEATURE, whether we use it or not is up to us and I'm sure we will not blame you or AN anyway.
I do believe in "More options = better for users" and I certainly hope it's not hard to implement.
I know I'd hate for my commercial software provider to decide users' preferences for users.
Now that leads to another idea --> Maybe implement a Feature Poll at AN homepage/dashboard

I thought of another FEATURE, if possible
Is it possible to have a "Check-out/shopping cart/scratch pad/watch list" (whatever you call it) for us to ADD a route/flight, shown in the search result/history page, into it for our own "collection"? Either for copy-and-paste, or email to ourself

e.g. if I'm searching 3 segments separately, they'll each have 10+ options, and I want to add Flight #1 from Segment #1, Flight #5 from Segment #2, Flight #10 from Segment #3 into my "shopping cart/watch list" so I can see all 3 segment info in 1 place and call the airline, instead of "writing it down" on paper.
It's simply a "big textbox" for us to write notes

Hopefully you understood it, LMK if you need further explanation

Thanks Peter

IMH

+1.

Several people seem to think this might be useful. Unless it's hard to implement, why not do it, ckpeter?

The customer is sometimes right. Saying that we might use it and regret it is, I believe, underestimating your client base.

ckpeter

Actually, that's feature is something that I have been looking at adding for a while. It's conceptually simple, but it requires a lot of UI work, and I am not yet sure how it interacts with the rest of the site, so that's why it's taking a while. It is definitely on my list though.

I understand that it can be useful. At the same time, the less-than-daily frequency is tricky to implement. Lots of places in the backend and the points model assumes a daily (or more frequent than daily) frequency. I have actually been looking at this for a while, but more in the context of having the system automatically determine how often to search (e.g. less frequent far out, and more frequent close-in). This is why no change has been made yet - it's not just one setting to change. It interacts with the rest of the site.

Appreciate your feedbacks.

jerryhung

Peter
Can't wait for you to implement this feature

I thought it would've been a simple hack, database/code-level speaking
- Add a new bitmap column to each Job (or whatever data type) to indicate which days
7 bits all checked = Daily; bit 3 & 7 checked = Wed/Sunday
- Add an extra check in your Daily search to check whether Job 1 is Daily or Weekly (on what days)
- If it's daily, run it; if it's Weekly but on this day, run it; otherwise do NOT run it


I'm okay with Weekly option search (pick days 1-7, and 3 different times per day)
No need to be fancy like Monday 7 am, Tuesday 9 am, Wed 4 pm, etc...

Thanks for listening to our feedbacks

ckpeter

Nothing is quite as easy as it seems. I don't want to turn this into a public design session, but just for fun, let me share some of my considerations on adding a standalone frequency setting.

- If it runs non-daily, need to significantly tweak the code for calculating estimated point usage on the confirmation page.

- If the search fails, on Monday, and the next run is on Friday, does the backend try again on Tuesday, or wait until Friday? What about partial failure?

- If someone sets a weekly check, using a single point, that's 4-5 pt, or as little as $0.25 - $0.30, for the whole month. That's a very unprofitable search from a business perspective. Should some kind of minimum points be imposed?

- Some members are getting confused by the email notification settings already. Will adding another frequency box causes an increase in support email load?

This is probably the biggest concern - every bit of UI complexity turns away some potential customers and adds a few more support emails to the load.

- How does the changing of frequency affect the Trip Pass customers, who are currently promised a certain level of automated search access?

As you can see, there are design complications, and none of them are straightforward to resolve. At the moment, I am already very constrained in terms of engineering resources. I appreciate your feedback and I see variable frequency coming at some point in the future, but it will most likely be part of the overhaul for the entire site.

jerryhung

Happy 2015

Still waiting for some new features, like Weekly search, ha

Another idea, should be easy to do
In email alert we get this hard-to-read result text, is it possible to show the simple routing at least?
I know we can click the link "Email is mobile-optimized and full result at XXX", login, see it, but showing the routing saves me a click, and I don't have to know which flight # is what

Current
[AC] YYZ-TPE 2 x Economy
=========================
SU-06-07: AC1175-BR9, AC1-BR195, AC8
80-BR88, AC1175-AC63-BR159

New
[AC] YYZ-TPE 2 x Economy
=========================
SU-06-07: AC1175-BR9 (YYZ-YVR-TPE), AC1-BR195 (YYZ-NRT-TPE), AC8
80-BR88 (YYZ-CDG-TPE), AC1175-AC63-BR159 (YYZ-YVR-ICN-TPE)