Hi VFF,
An issue experienced by many members is the problem of status credits disappearing into a "black hole" when there is a significant lag between the activity date that gets a member to a new status level, and the processing date of those points.
For example, consider a member who takes a flight on 1 April that takes their SC balance from 390 SC to 510 SC. By the rules of the program that member should now be Gold.
However, as many here know, flights sometimes go missing-in-action for several weeks (For example, I had a series of 2 February flights post on 13 April). Consider that our theoretical member then earns another 100 SCs before their 1 April flight is processed (ie their running processed SC balance reaches 490 SC). The April 1 flight is then processed on 2 May. Thus the member would become Gold with a status credit balance of 610 SCs, and a requalification date of 3 May.
The problem is that 100 SCs obtained after earning gold - but before being awarded it - are effectively lost, unless the member continues to fly and earns platinum. They will expire twelve months after they were earned - ie just before the members' assessment date. If a member closes out the next year on a balance of 370 SC they might feel a bit hard done by.
My question/suggestion (I appreciate you won't be able to really give an answer, but you might at least acknowledge you'll talk about it
) is would you consider a system where either (a) the assessment date for a member is defined as twelve months from the activity date of the flight that earned them the upgraded status, rather than twelve months after the processing date or (b) allowing some sort of "opening balance" feature whereby SCs earned in the 'wrong year' due to system lags are counted in the next qualifying year.
(a) has a significant drawback in that members might only initially hold their new status for 10.5 months or perhaps less, so (b) would be my suggested solution.
A needlessly complicated option (c) would be to take a hybrid of (a) and (b) - award the member twelve months gold from the processing date, but set their assessment date relative to the activity date that qualified them for gold. However I doubt you'd want to separate assessment date from membership expiry date - that could get messy. However, it would keep intact the strict twelve month expiry system that VFF uses.
An issue experienced by many members is the problem of status credits disappearing into a "black hole" when there is a significant lag between the activity date that gets a member to a new status level, and the processing date of those points.
For example, consider a member who takes a flight on 1 April that takes their SC balance from 390 SC to 510 SC. By the rules of the program that member should now be Gold.
However, as many here know, flights sometimes go missing-in-action for several weeks (For example, I had a series of 2 February flights post on 13 April). Consider that our theoretical member then earns another 100 SCs before their 1 April flight is processed (ie their running processed SC balance reaches 490 SC). The April 1 flight is then processed on 2 May. Thus the member would become Gold with a status credit balance of 610 SCs, and a requalification date of 3 May.
The problem is that 100 SCs obtained after earning gold - but before being awarded it - are effectively lost, unless the member continues to fly and earns platinum. They will expire twelve months after they were earned - ie just before the members' assessment date. If a member closes out the next year on a balance of 370 SC they might feel a bit hard done by.
My question/suggestion (I appreciate you won't be able to really give an answer, but you might at least acknowledge you'll talk about it
) is would you consider a system where either (a) the assessment date for a member is defined as twelve months from the activity date of the flight that earned them the upgraded status, rather than twelve months after the processing date or (b) allowing some sort of "opening balance" feature whereby SCs earned in the 'wrong year' due to system lags are counted in the next qualifying year.(a) has a significant drawback in that members might only initially hold their new status for 10.5 months or perhaps less, so (b) would be my suggested solution.
A needlessly complicated option (c) would be to take a hybrid of (a) and (b) - award the member twelve months gold from the processing date, but set their assessment date relative to the activity date that qualified them for gold. However I doubt you'd want to separate assessment date from membership expiry date - that could get messy. However, it would keep intact the strict twelve month expiry system that VFF uses.
