Flying Blue raises Flex and La Premiere award cost by 25% with no notice. Shame on them.
Did any of you see an email or get any notice of Flying Blue's 25% award ticket mileage cost increase? Thought not.
As of 1st July 2015, all business class flex awards and La Premiere awards have gone up 25%. Their attempt to notify member is somewhat half-hearted as they published this news item on 1st July (according to Google's cache). This means they gave no notice to their members and they do not give a grace period if you book online!
There is nothing worse about a loyalty programme than if it pulls the rug from under you with no notice. Loyalty should work both ways, and their efforts just go to show how little they care about you! Remember this is the same programme that last year won the “Program of the Year” at the Freddie Awards.
Their news release has this ‘example' table:
Classic and Flex Awards in Economy or Premium Economy Class miles remain unchanged, but even then these are the worst ways to spend your miles anyway.
Luckily for me, my friend managed scoop an internal memo that if you wish to book at the old rates then you have until 31st August 2015 to lock in the prices. You will need to specifically request this over the phone and it cannot be done online. There is no mention of this anywhere publicly, and don't expect them to honour this if they get inundated with requests!
I suggest retweeting or resharing to make sure your friends knows about this, and at least let Flying Blue know better!
I did -not- know this, and it is (of course) very unwanted! FB Awards are already pricey, and with these increases for Flex C and F awards I will very probably not book them anymore. Not that I booked many Flex awards – not if I can avoid it – but I always wanted to try a flight in AF F, but with 200k for a one way between Europe and the US the cost is now (even more) absurd! I’ll write a post on Ikvliegveel about this too.
Thanks for the post Tim!
All F awards are flex, so it’s not like anyone can escape the increase if you ever want to try La Premiere!
I hope this isn’t indicative of a company that wins Program of the Year
I understand devaluations but they had a recent devaluation 2 years ago … when La Premiere between CDG and USA was 125,000! Now it’s 200k?!?!?!?!??! Wow! Just wow! What bothers me more is the lack of communication.
Flying Blue, like all the FF clubs, have you by the balls and will not hesitate to squeeze if that is what makes them happy. What can the customer do, take his points somewhere else? Oh, I hear you say, he can fly with a competitor. That probably doesn’t bother them with a few times a year flyers and they have sweet commercial deals negotiated with those they care about.
I called the North America FB service center and they confirmed I have until Aug 31st to book it in the old rates. 🙁 I was definitely upset with the lack of communications but the agent did inform me she’ll tell her manager to tell the proper team to inform us in advance next time. Ugh!
I guess I’ll be flying La Premiere sometime within the next 12 months.