Quite a few of us here would understand the frequent flier points game esp with respect to long haul premium awards, however there will be people who won't be as savvy or up to speed and will need help. This will remind me a bit about USDM 4-5 years ago where people were buying points - expecting premium travel - but didn't have any flexibility, couldn't get the exact routes they wanted, just an entire family to occupy a cabin but had no luck and were coming here and elsewhere to say how useless or ripped off they were.
I can't remember too many of those kinds of "rip off" posts in US DM threads (people tend to post them more in QFF threads, and those aren't purchased points); I must have a poor memory or just wasn't in that thick of it. Let's not forget AFF Knowledge Centre now educates (their word, I guess, but appropriate enough) people on how to use their points more effectively or how to procure points in order to redeem for normally unattainable classes of travel. Now captivating headling course names like "Premium Travel for Peanuts" and "Fly FIRST CLASS to Europe for just $2000" concern me, but it's their material, I guess. (That all said, I haven't participated in the course nor even read the discussion threads, so that should be taken into account.)
In any case, we get back to the whole thing where people who were not savvy in the first place may not be looking for J or F flights anyway. There's not an iota (or a lot of, anyway) advertising on Amex about what 110k Velocity points can give you, let alone allow you to fly in Business and First Class,
let alone that these are on Velocity partner airlines. To those who aren't here and can't get the rewards they want, well our response is that they just don't know better, not that any particular company is ripping them off. So for us who are actually running the real race, there is almost no effect.
If it is any consolation, 110k points for $349 (not including referral bonuses nor attributing any of that fee for the other benefits) is almost little risk compared to, say, even US$1900 for 100k miles (in the good old days).
Fingers crossed some people use it on domestic flights rather than those elusive J/F flights that I am after
Many will, but for the rest of us, we're still all in the same race
feel free to use mine below...
