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"4. Life memberships are silly. If they want to attract the business flyers they were talking about it should be an annual charge." I'm not sure an annual char

by Bamafan 14y ago

"4. Life memberships are silly. If they want to attract the business flyers they were talking about it should be an annual charge." I'm not sure an annual charge would necessarily fix the situation for heavy users. It's very similar to the situation of cable and phone companies losing money on heavy users of their service.

fpgeek 14y ago
An annual charge would give the company the freedom to adjust the terms on an annual basis in response to problems that are discovered. For a high-end product targeted at a very small market and a small part of the overall customer base, I think that makes a big difference. The problem cable and phone companies have is that lots of people sign up for unlimited plans when available because of the mental transaction costs of doing anything else. That makes adjusting terms to manage heavy users harder because those adjustments also affect a large slice of customers where the unlimited deal is working as designed.
bergie 14y ago
Deutsche Bahn (German railways) provides this option, you can buy a "100% discount" yearly card to either first or second class. But these are quite expensive. Just hop on the next train: BahnCard 100 offers 12 months travel on all DB services. It only costs 3,990 EUR for standard class and 6,690 EUR for 1st class. They also have 25% and 50% discount cards available. The 50% is quite a good deal, as I think I paid mine back within the first week of getting it. http://www.bahn.com/i/view/DEU/en/prices/germany/bahncard.shtml http://www.bahn.com/i/view/DEU/en/prices/germany/bahncard.sh...
- excuse-me 14y ago
  Railways have an even lower marginal cost than planes. DB would rather have a person travelling in the seat for 'free' and encourage ridership than have it empty. Airlines used to think this way - the marginal fuel cost for a seat was something like $10 (essentially it only costs you at takeoff). But then airport improvement fees, security fees, faa upgrade fees meant that they were paying out $100s for passengers who were travelling for free.

by Bamafan 14y ago

fpgeek 14y ago

An annual charge would give the company the freedom to adjust the terms on an annual basis in response to problems that are discovered. For a high-end product targeted at a very small market and a small part of the overall customer base, I think that makes a big difference. The problem cable and phone companies have is that lots of people sign up for unlimited plans when available because of the mental transaction costs of doing anything else. That makes adjusting terms to manage heavy users harder because those adjustments also affect a large slice of customers where the unlimited deal is working as designed.

bergie 14y ago

Deutsche Bahn (German railways) provides this option, you can buy a "100% discount" yearly card to either first or second class. But these are quite expensive. Just hop on the next train: BahnCard 100 offers 12 months travel on all DB services. It only costs 3,990 EUR for standard class and 6,690 EUR for 1st class. They also have 25% and 50% discount cards available. The 50% is quite a good deal, as I think I paid mine back within the first week of getting it. http://www.bahn.com/i/view/DEU/en/prices/germany/bahncard.shtml http://www.bahn.com/i/view/DEU/en/prices/germany/bahncard.sh...

excuse-me 14y ago
Railways have an even lower marginal cost than planes. DB would rather have a person travelling in the seat for 'free' and encourage ridership than have it empty. Airlines used to think this way - the marginal fuel cost for a seat was something like $10 (essentially it only costs you at takeoff). But then airport improvement fees, security fees, faa upgrade fees meant that they were paying out $100s for passengers who were travelling for free.