Changes to Virgin (Miles) Points Scheme

Skoobaskunk

Whilst the new structure of the Virgin Points incentive scheme definitely adds flexibility, the amount of miles required to book a comparable flight before the new scheme was introduced is significantly higher now than it was before.  

The value of existing miles has been devalued, after customers were encouraged to accumulate points via other schemes (i.e. Virgin Atlantic Savings accounts, Virgin Credit Card spend, Clubcard Points Conversion, purchase of points from Virgin Atlantic for cash, etc,).  Feels like you’ve moved the goal posts on unsuspecting, loyal customers and massively disadvantaged them whilst making a land grab for their points, all under the pretence that you’re doing us some sort of favour.  Very disappointing and an utter disgrace.

Are these type of programs subject to any form of industry regulation, especially given that they are regularly associated with heavily regulated financial products such as credit cards, savings accounts, etc, etc?

Alan_Bowen

The system is entirely under the control of Virgin, they could cancel the entire programme if they wanted and there is nothing you could do. Indeed if you read the conditions, they own your miles and you travel entirely at their discretion. Many have taken this opportunity to use up the miles for something else and move over to BA Avios. Virgin would argue that the benefit is that if there is a seat for sale you can now purchase it for miles whereas in the past they limited the number of seats on each flight, but just like the cash price, there is now flexible pricing in miles. 

bagand96

Skoobaskunk said:

 Very disappointing and an utter disgrace.

Are these type of programs subject to any form of industry regulation, especially given that they are regularly associated with heavily regulated financial products such as credit cards, savings accounts, etc, etc?

Loyalty schemes are not regulated, and all loyalty schemes will have somewhere in the T&Cs that points have no cash value, and also that the scheme operator reserves the right to modify how points are collected and spent.

Some years back Tesco Clubcard points could be exchanged for upto 4x face value on a number of partners. This has slowly been decreased over a few years and now the maximum exchange is 2x. Same sort of thing. 

If you hold large balances in loyalty points schemes you're always at risk of devaluation. 

StuieUK34

Indeed!
I been with VA since the days of getting the MBNA Horizon card after they left Amex (super handy card!)

But yes, in a nutshell, Virgin have got greedy (my perception)..
Whilst the door opens up as such to plenty or slightly cheaper Econ seats, the PE and Upper are beyond a joke with points value in peak times.....

I'll be leaving Virgin as soon as my year is up (i pay for the Rewards+ card) , and will bite the bullet switching to BA and paying £300 a year for the Amex card with them.

Gotta be honest, did find it funny how it went from 120k VA points for a Upper return LHR-LAX  in Oct , then looking at same flight in June next year, it went upto 300k !!

Skoobaskunk

StuieUK34 said:

Indeed!
I been with VA since the days of getting the MBNA Horizon card after they left Amex (super handy card!)

But yes, in a nutshell, Virgin have got greedy (my perception)..
Whilst the door opens up as such to plenty or slightly cheaper Econ seats, the PE and Upper are beyond a joke with points value in peak times.....

I'll be leaving Virgin as soon as my year is up (i pay for the Rewards+ card) , and will bite the bullet switching to BA and paying £300 a year for the Amex card with them.

Gotta be honest, did find it funny how it went from 120k VA points for a Upper return LHR-LAX  in Oct , then looking at same flight in June next year, it went upto 300k !!

Your experience, sentiment and thought process mirrors our own and we too have been Virgin Customers since the old MBNA card days, whilst also taking advantage of generating points via other initiatives and financial services (which we'll not be doing again in the future).  I've already started transferring my spend to our BA Amex card, but not sure I'll pay for a Platinum card after this experience as there's nothing stopping BA making similar changes to their program in the future.  Really disappointed with this approach from Virgin and we've already had to reconsider some of our future travel plans.