A couple of Flyertalk members met with management from Northwest Airlines and the Worldperks program and filed this report.
An interesting read, though I’ll nitpick at a couple of explanations Northwest offers for decisions.
- In keeping with its commitment to customer loyalty, WorldPerks currently has no plans to participate in the American Express Membership Rewards program. Northwest see this as simply: “Why should someone who has no loyalty to Northwest Airlines receive miles for the points they have in another loyalty program, and redeem them for awards, thus reducing the number of awards for loyal WorldPerks members?
If that’s the case, how come I can transfer points to Northwest from Diners Club, Starwood, Goldpoints, etc. etc.? And if the issue is sharing a fixed pie of award seats with folks other than Worldperks members, how come they allow redemption by members of Skyteam and other partners? (In the latter case, sure, Northwest members also access award seats on these partners to be sure.)
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Northwest has also made a conscious decision not to “give away” WorldClub membership due to elite status in order to prevent overcrowding of the clubs and dissatisfaction of Club members
Then how come they let me in with my Amex Platinum card?
But other than some minor snarkiness on my part, I’d suggest giving the piece a read.
You said – “Then how come they let me in with my Amex Platinum card?” in regards to NW not allowing elites free entry into the WC’s – I don’t think it’s a bad thing – they let you in with the Plat Amex only when you’re flying their metal & they also get paid everytime they let you in by Amex (which is part of the reason you have the ~$400 annual fee) – they don’t get paid when they let their elites in (although their elites do pay for it with their paid flights) – but as a WC member, I’d rather pay the $300/year for the membership instead of getting in for free with my elite status…just my 2 cents…