re: Avianca "Life Miles" - New FF program in *A
Ahhh... bloggers, everyone hates them when the 'reveal' something to the masses. I laughed at the notion of 'secret deals' need to be sustained so everyone in the know can book them when they decide to travel in the future. Everyone knows these 'loopholes' do not last very long and if one has no plans to travel in the next 11-12 months, it will not benefit. If it is not due to bloggers, Lifemiles probably will close the loopholes eventually but technically they would have to tweak their chart since North America is defined loosely as United States and Canada, there is no geographical distinctions like United has on their award chart. The practice of dumping segments however can be irritating to the airlines but it's being in practice for a long time and I don't think it will stop.
My issue with bloggers publicising deals that are buried in forums/locked spreadsheets is the effect publicising the deal has on the deal, and their reasons for publicising the deal in the first place.
Most of the time, when the deal is blogged, it dies within a day. This is because with so many people reading about it and sharing it around (re-blogging etc), there is a very sharp spike in the number of people booking the deal, and it brings the irregularity to the airlines attention. Some of the less savvy travellers may also call the airline to ask if the deal is legitimate, which also brings it immediately to their attention. By the time it makes the front page of flyertalk, the airline has corrected the error because it is everywhere.
I'm not suggesting that only certain people
deserve to know the deal (i.e. people reading this thread), but I truly believe that more people get to utilise the deal (and over a much longer period) if it is kept within a specific forum or spreadsheet because when it is blogged it is killed so quickly that very few people can actually utilise it, and then it is gone forever. Do you think it's 'fairer' if everyone knows about it but they only have 8 hours to use it before its corrected? This leads to people panicking and booking things they later wish to change because they did it in such a rush.
If this is the result of blogging a secret deal, then I question the motive of the blogger. Do they think it is better for a large number of people to be able to use a deal but only for 8 hours, than a smaller group of dedicated contributors to a forum/online group being able to use it over a long period of time? I bet the USDM GUM deal would get corrected mighty fast if Ben Sandilands wrote instructions on how to do it on The Age travel site.
So, what is the reason for the blogger to want to kill a deal? Because publicising a deal, even if it will be useless to read about once it is cancelled, increases the popularity of the blog. This makes the blogger feel more important and may also drive revenue from ad blocks, CC referrals etc. If the blogger wanted to keep the deal alive the last thing they would do is publicise and promote it on their blog.
Yes, there are some deals I would never have heard about if these bloggers hadn't publicised them because I don't read some forums (I find the trick it threads on FT like trying to decipher ancient script and I still don't know why the 'Gummy Bear' is called that?), but I personally would rather miss out on these deals and only know about those ones buried within the forums I read rather than have every deal blogged and killed the next day.
This is going to be as personal a debate as 'should kids be allowed in first class', but this is my opinion and I believe it is a fair and balanced one.
- maybe consider buying it soon.
