Heading off to the airport my wallet bulges like one of those doorstep-size pastrami-on-rye sandwiches from Jerry’s Deli at Marina del Rey in Los Angeles.
Pierre Cardin’s finest cowhide is crammed with (apart from the usual credit cards) five airline reward cards, four bits of plastic indicating my loyalty to various hotel chains, and a card pledged to give me goodies from an American long-distance telephone programme I still use.
The wonder is that I ever have to pay for a flight, a holiday, a case of wine or a domestic appliance. Each card comes with gasping prose promising me the earth – or at least the parts of it the airlines fly to – as well as a host of other freebies.
I’ve collected 14,500 miles with one programme, 8,500 with another, and 6,000 with a third.
And if American Airlines had not mistakenly given me a card calling me Scuart White – (I mean, honestly, is there anyone with the first name of Scuart?) – I’d have about 25,000 with them.
When I try to tell AA I am Scuart White (as it were), they tell me I’m not. (And if there is such a named person out there, get round to my place toute-de-suite and for a small outlay in my direction there’s some seriously free long-distance travel in it for you.)
Hotels? Well with my points from three of the world’s major chains I should in theory be able to live comfortably in Hawaii for a year.
And therein lies the grouse. It’s all very well earning these points and having them stored on your points statement, but just you try actually using them.
I have. Frequently. I recently tried to shave a thousand or so points off one lot by getting a couple of tickets to Lisbon. TAP had a direct flight from Gatwick. I keyed in the details. The rewards system could certainly get me to Lisbon on my miles, just as long as I didn’t mind leaving at 4am from Manchester and having hours-long stop overs and flight changes at Paris and Prague en route. And no I’m not joking. If you don’t know how ludicrous that routing is, check a map.
I estimated the journey time on what is a two hour direct flight from London at – oh about 14 hours. I said abrigado but no abrigado to that one.
I once tried to see if I could use some of my points with a hotel chain which had better remain nameless, to get six nights on a Mexican beach in February.
When I called I heard stifled laughter from the female rewards programme staffer and a muffled remark to her colleague that I imagine went along the lines of, “This must be the most naïve jerk on the planet.”
February was peak period; in short it was a blackout date. Ah, the blackout dates. It means that whenever you actually want to go on holiday using your points, you can’t. That’s usually May, June, July, August, September in Europe; the winter months in the Caribbean and Mexico.
Wise up is the message. We’re not giving you a free room at peak times that we can sell at premium rate.
We’re not putting you in a seat on a direct flight that we can sell to a punter with plastic and a pin-code.
I gave up on Lisbon. I gave up on Mexico. Now just the thought of trying to arrange anything depresses me.
OK, I confess I did once get two free tickets from Los Angeles to Fiji with Air New Zealand on the Star Alliance programme, and two BA freebie flights London-Seychelles through the Air Miles programme. And an automatic coffee percolator.
But that was ten years ago. They’re not stupid these rewards people. They know that the power of inertia is the strongest power of all. After a while you give up, or you forget. You file those ever-growing mileage and points statements in the waste bin. Sometimes the system ends in Kafkaesque fashion. With my free flights London-Mahe return, I booked my own hotel for 12 nights in the Seychelles – at the rack rate.
When I got back I discovered an all-inclusive brochure holiday to the same hotel for less than I’d paid for the hotel alone independently.
My ‘free’ deal actually left me out of pocket. Next time I think I might dump the cards and pack that pastrami sandwich.
To contact Stuart White email stuartwhite383@btinternet.com
