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LNER Perks

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STEVIEBOY1

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Hi, I just an email from LNER about a "Perks" System, has anyone joined ? I presume it is a bit like the old frequent traveller scheme which then was taken over by nectar, then suspended I think?
 
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Mike99

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Hi, I just an email from LNER about a "Perks" System, has anyone joined ? I presume it is a bit like the old frequent traveller scheme which then was taken over by nectar, then suspended I think?
Hi, I joined, this is the first bit of text from the email I recieved,
Hello Michael,
Thank you for joining our new loyalty scheme, LNER Perks!

As a thank you we’ve given you £5 credit for free - and that is just the start. If you’re on our trains, you will now earn 2% credit back for every £1 you spend. Save it, gift it, donate it.

To offer you all the benefits of LNER Perks membership we need to collect and store your data. You can find out all about how we use your data in our Privacy Policy.

Seems all ok, there is a link after this bit, that says click here for more perks.

Hope this helps,

Regards Mike
 

yorkie

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I joined and bought one ticket but after that I decided not to bother with it; LNER are often found to be charging more than split ticket providers in my experience and a tiny percentage back doesn't offset this

I also want a seat selector that works with all TOCs, not just LNER and I want all my bookings in one place.
 

Mike99

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I joined and bought one ticket but after that I decided not to bother with it; LNER are often found to be charging more than split ticket providers in my experience and a tiny percentage back doesn't offset this

I also want a seat selector that works with all TOCs, not just LNER and I want all my bookings in one place.
Other than join I haven't actually done anything with it. I booked a set of tickets with LNER and after the transaction the Perks, emails started to arrive.
 

Fuzzytop

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I joined and bought one ticket but after that I decided not to bother with it; LNER are often found to be charging more than split ticket providers in my experience and a tiny percentage back doesn't offset this

I also want a seat selector that works with all TOCs, not just LNER and I want all my bookings in one place.
It still seems you can import tickets purchased in advance elsewhere, but at 2% it's going to take quite a few imports to build up enough credit that will pay for a journey in full.

Last November seemed an odd time to launch it, really - I'd all but forgotten about it with not travelling lately. Realistically anything compared to the (perhaps too) generous EC Rewards scheme will seem miserly and uninspiring in comparison.
 
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L401CJF

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It still seems you can import tickets purchased in advance elsewhere, but at 2% it's going to take quite a few imports to build up enough credit that will pay for a journey in full.

Seemed an odd time to launch it, really - I'd all but forgotten about it with not travelling lately. Realistically anything compared to the (perhaps too) generous EC Rewards scheme will seem miserly and uninspiring in comparison.
Maybe not such an odd time to launch it, with lockdown slowly easing perhaps they've done it now to try and persuade people onto the train. Seems like an incentive to tempt some commuters back?

The question is, is the "reward" enough to bribe people back onto the train.
 

alistairlees

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Where do they get the money from to fund the £5 and the 2% giveaway? It can hardly be from the 5% commission. Is it cross-subsidised from operations?
 

kez19

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I noticed for my bookings it’s 80p per transaction is that about right for 2%?
 

ta-toget

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I noticed for my bookings it’s 80p per transaction is that about right for 2%?
Assuming I've understood you correctly, that seems reasonable. If you're getting 80p back per transaction, that suggests your transactions are for £40.00 each. (£40.00÷100=£0.40 and £0.40×2=£0.80)
 

johntea

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Where do they get the money from to fund the £5 and the 2% giveaway? It can hardly be from the 5% commission. Is it cross-subsidised from operations?

Your data is probably worth a lot more than £5 / 2% to them ;)

To offer you all the benefits of LNER Perks membership we need to collect and store your data. You can find out all about how we use your data in our Privacy Policy.
 

Fuzzytop

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Your data is probably worth a lot more than £5 / 2% to them ;)

To offer you all the benefits of LNER Perks membership we need to collect and store your data. You can find out all about how we use your data in our Privacy Policy.
For sure. And the credit is only available to spend via the LNER mobile app - a good way to bribe drive adoption of that.

I allowed notifications from their app to use the journey tracking feature, but note I get the occasional marketing notification from it (which I'm not sure follows the spirit of App Store rules). £5 of journey credit represents money well spent to push adverts to customers in real-time.
 

Mcr Warrior

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The collection of valuable marketing information probably explains why so many companies (such as LNER) are endeavouring to sell their products and services primarily via apps.
 

kez19

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Assuming I've understood you correctly, that seems reasonable. If you're getting 80p back per transaction, that suggests your transactions are for £40.00 each. (£40.00÷100=£0.40 and £0.40×2=£0.80)


That’s right as paid for first class (not good at maths lol)

I’m going to guess the 2% back will be less than what I get by first class? (as well as vary by area and travelling to/from)
 

Starmill

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Where do they get the money from to fund the £5 and the 2% giveaway? It can hardly be from the 5% commission. Is it cross-subsidised from operations?
Perhaps they're hoping to use the 2% to attract their most loyal customers to their own retail channels and thus stop competitors from earning as much commission from their own sales. The 2% doesn't appear to be available if your booking doesn't include travel with LNER. In addition they may think that people prefer to stick with one main provider for all of their bookings, which is perhaps well supported by evidence, and they hope that the 2% on journeys including LNER will make it them.
 

kez19

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Perhaps they're hoping to use the 2% to attract their most loyal customers to their own retail channels and thus stop competitors from earning as much commission from their own sales. The 2% doesn't appear to be available if your booking doesn't include travel with LNER. In addition they may think that people prefer to stick with one main provider for all of their bookings, which is perhaps well supported by evidence, and they hope that the 2% on journeys including LNER will make it them.


I can understand stand that, is it Transpennine doing Nectar? If I am honest I liked nectar for bookings with LNER, but with the 2% for now I’m on the fence. If the 2% doesn’t really work for me may book via TPE to get Nectar points again.

Just to add if I was booking first class all the time and getting 80p a transaction it’s £1.60 return and I only do 5 return journeys a year plus the odd one to York, roughly would get back between £5-£10 a year plus pending sitting in standard or first class.

I know I mentioned TPE but unfortunately they don’t come further north of Edinburgh ie Aberdeen pity though as they could have been an alternative to use
 

Alex365Dash

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I know I mentioned TPE but unfortunately they don’t come further north of Edinburgh ie Aberdeen pity though as they could have been an alternative to use
TPE offer Nectar points regardless of whether your journey includes travel on TPE.
 

Bletchleyite

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The collection of valuable marketing information probably explains why so many companies (such as LNER) are endeavouring to sell their products and services primarily via apps.

You can collect that from a website too. The reason for liking apps is that they put less load on the IT infrastructure because the "heavy lifting" is done by Google Play or the Apple App Store, and so the infrastructure cost is lower than a website that has to serve the application as well as the data each time.

The business-speak term for it is "externalising costs", i.e. getting someone else to pay for things you would otherwise need to fund.

The other advantage of apps is that people will use them on the go, further reducing the use of TVMs and booking offices.
 

alistairlees

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You can collect that from a website too. The reason for liking apps is that they put less load on the IT infrastructure because the "heavy lifting" is done by Google Play or the Apple App Store, and so the infrastructure cost is lower than a website that has to serve the application as well as the data each time.

The business-speak term for it is "externalising costs", i.e. getting someone else to pay for things you would otherwise need to fund.

The other advantage of apps is that people will use them on the go, further reducing the use of TVMs and booking offices.
What is this ‘heavy lifting’ of which you speak? Do you just mean reducing web traffic?
 

island

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You can collect that from a website too. The reason for liking apps is that they put less load on the IT infrastructure because the "heavy lifting" is done by Google Play or the Apple App Store, and so the infrastructure cost is lower than a website that has to serve the application as well as the data each time.

The business-speak term for it is "externalising costs", i.e. getting someone else to pay for things you would otherwise need to fund.

The other advantage of apps is that people will use them on the go, further reducing the use of TVMs and booking offices.
Probably more importantly, ad-blockers don't work on apps.
 

Kite159

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The good thing is that if you buy a ticket in the app using up the£5 freebie it comes as a PDF e-ticket so you can uninstall the app after purchasing.
 

SickyNicky

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What is this ‘heavy lifting’ of which you speak? Do you just mean reducing web traffic?
I think that it means that the majority of the processing is being done by the customer's device, not some server in AWS that costs money. But you still need to provide a back-end API for the app, so I don't think it makes that much difference myself.

Your data is probably worth a lot more than £5 / 2% to them ;)

I don't understand the maths behind that. If they're giving away 2% but they only get 5%, the remaining amount does not even come close to paying the costs of retailing, which include the journey planner, RARS2, staffing, customer support, complaints, ToD and e-Ticket fees, accreditation costs, ticket purchase fees, infrastructure costs, card fees and probably a whole bunch more.

You can't properly cover that on 5%, so you certainly can't on 3%, no matter how much data you gather and how much you can expand sales. So you must be cross-subsidising from somewhere else. Question is, is that morally or even legally acceptable?

Probably more importantly, ad-blockers don't work on apps.
Really? They seem to work remarkable well on my phone.
 

Bletchleyite

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What is this ‘heavy lifting’ of which you speak? Do you just mean reducing web traffic?

Yes, server bandwidth. To use an example, when the shops were shut Moonpig (the greetings card site) were experiencing huge traffic volumes and reduced this by switching to app-only. This wasn't a conspiracy as now things have calmed down they've switched back to app and website.

Not having to serve images etc is going to make a considerable difference.
 

Starmill

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I think that it means that the majority of the processing is being done by the customer's device, not some server in AWS that costs money. But you still need to provide a back-end API for the app, so I don't think it makes that much difference myself.



I don't understand the maths behind that. If they're giving away 2% but they only get 5%, the remaining amount does not even come close to paying the costs of retailing, which include the journey planner, RARS2, staffing, customer support, complaints, ToD and e-Ticket fees, accreditation costs, ticket purchase fees, infrastructure costs, card fees and probably a whole bunch more.

You can't properly cover that on 5%, so you certainly can't on 3%, no matter how much data you gather and how much you can expand sales. So you must be cross-subsidising from somewhere else. Question is, is that morally or even legally acceptable?


Really? They seem to work remarkable well on my phone.
I don't disagree with any of this. However, I do think one key thing here is that the 2% isn't being immediately paid out cash, it's only built up as credit over time. LNER are probably also able to cover the costs of infrastructure from another budget as they're obliged to provide booking offices, ticket vending machines etc regardless of whether they were doing online retail. At least, for now. Also back in the days when ToD was the dominant online fulfilment method they'd have their ToD fees offset by charging other retailers to fulfil at their machines.
 
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