I thought the article was spot on. Unfortunately, I have lost my gold status with Qantas earlier this year as our company has moved all travel to Virgin. As a Virgin gold member, I feel as though they treat me much better than Qantas did in recent years. I have always been given consideration to board an earlier flight, if available. This is a welcome change from the Qantas policy, which never allowed a flight change in my five years of Gold. (The only exception being on a r/t MEL-BNE on a Saturday that I purchased myself just to extend Gold in 2012. I was in the lounge and asked if I could be sent on a sooner flight back to MEL and, of course, give a flat "no." That's no problem, I told the Customer Service woman, let me get settled for five hours of ravaging the food and drink at the lounge. Believe it or not, I got a page offering me the next flight back).
Virgin has it shortcomings--the flights are uneven and less reliable and the lounges can't compare to Qantas. But, the attitude and energy is much better. At least they seem to care about their premiere flyers. With Qantas, it seems the staff is entrenched in old habits and policies.
As a comparison, by the way, the United FF program allows MEL-LAX for 80k points and about $100 in taxes. I know United is pretty average, but there are amazing differences in FF reward redemption schemes.