It is articles like this in today’s Fairfax media that must be causing concern among airline propaganda units world wide.
The report blows the whistle on a ‘free’ customized web browser for Qantas Frequent Flyers that invades user privacy, tracks their web choices, and seeks to tailor offers to them based on their internet behavior as to how they might be parted from more of their money.
As the report notes, the fine print that such FFP members might not necessarily read nor comprehend doesn’t categorically exclude nor guarantee that this sensitive personal data might not be onsold or passed on to other parties unknown to the loyal Qantas flyer for a range of purposes.
FFPs, here and everywhere, have changed in recent years far more than unquestioning members of those programs might have noticed.
They are no longer loyalty programs. They are selling programs. As such they are an attractive opportunity for carriers to make money out of thin air, since they can vary the value of points and the availability of rewards at whim, and sell them to third parties such as grocery chains, petrol stations and hotel and resort managements, restaurants, credit card services and boutiques and department stores for whatever they like and in whatever quantity they see fit without regard to the dilution of the reward options to people who actually think they can get a useful ‘free’ ticket before they die, or before the onset of the next ice age.
FFP schemes do not use fuel, employ pilots, or require the purchase or funding of machines that can cost close to half a billion little Aussie battlers each.
Until recently airlines in general needed what was left of the legacy media to dutifully print whatever cr*p they wanted to extol the merits of FFP schemes in saving consumers from the tyranny of choice and the tiresome tasks of comparison shopping that come with being diligent shoppers.
Now the power of social media, and walled gardens secluded from the real world by ‘likes’ that shut out disturbing voices, means that airlines, and other enterprises and causes, can get their prey to come to them, and voluntarily set themselves up to be exploited, without having to deal with the ‘old’ media nearly as much as before.
How long this situation of self delusional loyalty marketing can persist is questionable. The programs can only survive as long as they are profitable, and some are very profitable. But as they replace rewarding with ‘screwing’ with extra cash fees and levies that exceed the price of the similar but freely available bargain fares often posted online by the same airline, rational consumer reactions to poor value propositions will help bring them back to earth.
The Fairfax story, and the comments it has elicited, carry some important implications for flyers who want to be flown, rather than manipulated.
