ModernRailways
Established Member
- Joined
- 21 Apr 2011
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- 2,050
So I've just had a look at the East Coast site.
Have I got this right?
They're giving double points in March (4 points per £ spent), so normally:
£1 spent = 2 points
Say a first class return from Edinburgh to London is £60 (I tend to have one trip to London every year and for almost 5 hours, I'd prefer the comfort compared to the frankly awful seats in standard)
I would need 12,000 points (after June 1st 2015), therefore, need to spend £6000 to get that free ticket.
Compared to EC Rewards, I could get that journey for 900 points (£900)
Bit harsh, isn't it?
That is correct.
Even with East Coast when you bought an eVoucher, 500 points (£500 spent) meant £5.00 eVoucher. With VTEC it equates to £2.50. That's half of the EC value. That's crazy! It means I must spend around £10,000 just to get a £50 eVoucher! What a f***ing joke - but this is clearly what the public prefer!
I also noticed a few newspapers today had mention of the rewards scheme and that Passenger Focus were planning on also joining the fight to go back to the old scheme. The problem is, Stagecoach (Sorry, Virgin) East Coast likely have a contract with Nectar and I doubt they'll be able to just change back to the old style scheme without penalty from Nectar and when they need to get as much money as possible from the franchise it's unlikely they will want to spend additional money on reverting back.
Does anyone know when/where you can swap Nectar points for a VTEC ticket? I can only see the option for the eVoucher (mentioned earlier). Is that all that is on offer and in fact no specific VTEC tickets, but just a crappy eVoucher for their services (which as mentioned is crazily priced)?