When I was younger, and broke-er, and making a depressing inventory of my paltry assets, I’d always include my Boots advantage card points. “Ha! I might be 30 quid over my overdraft limit – and counting, because the bank keeps charging me money for having no money – but look! Seven pounds and 76p to spend on shower gel and Shapers sarnies! I am totally beating the system!” Now that I’m in a slightly stronger fiscal position, and can afford to occasionally leave the country, I have a new obsession: airmiles.
In The Pursuit of Love, Radlett sister Jassy is obsessed with building her running away fund. Similarly I work out whether a flight is good value by the number of airmiles it will give me and thus subsequent escapes it can facilitate. A return to New York will get me to Milan, but not home again. Is it worth going all the way to Delhi if I can also go to Amsterdam? If I have nearly enough miles to get to Mexico, how much more money do I have to pay to stop myself being dropped in the ocean en route?
If I book after the end of April, I shall be swimming most of the way. BA have just changed the points system, so if you’re flying economy, you earn far fewer points and you’re charged many more. If you fly first or business – so if you’re extraordinary wealthy or someone else is paying for your flight – you will be earning more points than you previously would have done. Given it’s supposed to be a loyalty reward scheme, I don’t think my loyalty is being rewarded at all. In fact, I’m fairly sure that someone at head office is looking at my account on a screen and laughing right now, while muttering “Idiot! She could fly with us every week and we still wouldn’t let her in the lounge.”
Because I would fly every week if I thought it would help. I’ve seen the points structure and tried to work out strategies to improve my lot. I’ve even looked into moving banks and taking out new credit cards because some offer miles and points as a signing-up bonus. I’ve wondered whether I could max out these credit cards by buying flights to far flung places, cashing in the miles and then cancelling (you can’t). One acquaintance has admitted to the potentially illegal practice of buying all the seats in business class months in advance and then stopping the transaction at the last possible second in order to secure a cheap upgrade on the one economy seat he also bought. (Even I think he’s an idiot, but an idiot with nerves of steel.)
We’re all convinced that we can somehow make a capitalist David-and-Goliath-inspired dream come true. One day we will get one over these corporations. Yes, they might have all the money, but we have time. Surely there must be a way to wiggle through the loopholes and profit from airmiles, Nectar points and Tiger tokens? Well, not as long as we’re captive customers. As long as there’s a system in place that might offer us a paltry reward, we’ll keep coming back. The idea that we have any power or control in this corporate climate is the greatest con of all.
However, there’s something strangely sexy about airmiles. Air travel has an emotive pull, and as long as there’s a chance that my loyalty could take me to a distant land, I’ll keep typing in my credit card number – the one that earns me extra frequent flier points. After all, I only need to take another 20 flights before I earn priority check in, but Boots will never let you queue-jump no matter how many bottles of shampoo you buy. I can complain about BA changing the rules, but I’ll probably just end up booking an unnecessary flight before the rules change, in order to “beat” the system. Even though I know, deep down, that the system has been beating me since the day I signed up.
