Every now and then a ridiculously bad priced award redemption pops up that makes me wonder what the folks in the head office are thinking. Often it ends up being a mistake, but there are plenty of truly bad deals out there. Still, I’m not sure I’ve seen a worse offer from FlyingBlue than this one I stumbled across last night. Points can be used to pay for a checked bag fee on an Air France flight. At a staggeringly poor valuation.
Of particular interest in this case is that I cannot reproduce the listing this morning. Maybe it was just a fluke that the number showed up at all, lending credence to the idea of mistakes often being made. Alas, digging in to the webpage a bit shows this is unlikely. The points price is no longer visible, but it is still in the underlying source code for the webpage. The number is very, very real.
The program is changing the reward redemption scheme starting on 1 June 2018. My initial thought upon seeing this absurd number is that we might have seen a sneak peek of just how bad that new redemption scheme will work. I’m now even more convinced this is the case. And if it proves out that FlyingBlue believes its points are worth only a fifth of a penny that’s really, really, really bad news for the program and its members.
To be fair, the 38,4000 price appears to apply regardless of the number of bags being checked or the route involved; last night it was changing as the number of bags adjusted. Perhaps it is just a default placeholder or the maximum price one can expect to pay in points for checking a bag when the new feature rolls out in a few days. In the meantime, a friendly reminder to developers to not test your code in production. Because stupid stuff like this happens.
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I’d wait for them to release more information, this screams IT mistake.
I think that a mistake is very likely part of the situation. I also think that they are playing with I in a manner which suggests it unlikely the rates will be great.
$80 that is crazy
Given the ridiculous number of points charged for selecting an extra leg room seat on European SH flights I would guess that the baggage points are about correct.
The whole new FB scheme is a disaster and I have to wonder how many loyal customers KLM and struggling AF are looking right now.i am certainly one of them!
Given the ridiculous number of points charged for selecting an extra leg room seat on European SH flights I would guess that the baggage points are about correct.
The whole new FB scheme is a disaster and I have to wonder how many loyal customers KLM and struggling AF are loosing right now.i am certainly one of them!
Wait I hear the good news is they will let you check a second bag for only 35000 more
Deal!
I recently flew from SFO to Paris, and the extra bag one way cost 16,000 miles.
Still WAY too high a price, but at least it isn’t 38k.