Exploiting Surveys in Loyalty Programs

Loyalty programs are those programs set up by companies to build your allegiance to them. Companies know their best customers are the loyal ones. They try hard to set up a system of points that cause people to become addicted to the system. The addiction can be so strong that a consumer can be labeled as a “Points Junkie.” Because the Points Junkie is so proud of all they “get for free”, the moniker is a point of pride. Points Junkies are the best friend of companies. Period. They want more Junkies.

As we prepare to sail, we have been diligent in accumulating points so that when we cast away, we can have “free rooms”, “free airfare”, and other “free stuff.” During this process, we’ve learned about an interesting phenomenon that allows us to exploit these point systems.

Now that we are accumulating points, we find that surveys tend to find us more frequently. We considered them a nuisance and passed at first. However, once we realized what they were trying to do, we turned the tables and found ourselves with some pretty amazing offers.

Tying all this together, companies want more junkies and what they need to do is identify them. They do this based on spending patterns and surveys. When we get a survey from a company that has loyalty programs, we now overstate what we spend with their competitors! In fact, we way over state it. We lie. We tell them that we spend gads of money and that we are super junkies.

The consequence? We get some pretty interesting offers. Some we can’t take advantage of (because we are not really the super-premium-triple diamond-platinum-gold we pretended to be so we don’t have documents to prove we are), but others are easily taken advantage of, like “stay with us for 2 nights and here is a bazillion points.”

Have fun, turn the tables, and hell yeah you traveled to Bora Bora last year. Twice! ;)

Remember, this is war!