01-12-2011
02:43 AM
1 Love
Reposting my comment from Cranky Flier (with minor edits).
I agree the whole points and multipliers thing is confusing. Here’s another way to look at it.
For wanna get away fares, you earn 6 reward cents per fare dollar you pay. For anytime fares you earn 10 reward cents per fare dollar, and business select gets you 12 reward cents per dollar.
You can redeem your reward dollars for anytime fare at a 1:1 ratio. When redeeming your reward dollars for a wanna get away fare you get a 40% discount off the already discounted fare, whereas buying a business select fare with reward dollars extracts a 20% premium above and beyond the higher fare.
Now doesn’t this sound a lot simpler than the points and multipliers system? The two are mathematically equivalent. Just framing the issue in terms of dollars and cents instead of earning and redemption points makes the whole thing much easier to understand, and that's because people are already familiar with the concepts of getting a rebate of 6 or 10 or 12 cents per dollar, and of percentage discounts and premiums. Additionally, the way I presented it sets the anytime fare as the basic unit of calculation, emphasizing the discount of wanna get away and the premium of business select.
Of course, my way of looking at things doesn’t change the fact that many people are losing value under the new system and are therefore unhappy. Nor the fact that wanna get away fares disappear 7 days before a flight, making last-minute redemptions expensive and taking away one good way for the airline to dispose of unsold inventory. But it does make the new system a bit clearer, and I think Southwest would be wise to start calling their points cents, because that's what they are.
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