In June of 2006, I
purchased a $200 product that
also included an offer for a “free companion airline
ticket.” I mailed
the required form but it contained very little detail. A
"buy one, get
one" coupon quickly arrived with the detailed restrictions
(limited
availability, reserve at the CompanionFare web site or call
them, book
at least two weeks ahead, a Saturday night stay is required,
etc.).
It listed the specific fares to various zones and
cities in the
country. A $9.95 processing fee is also charged for each
ticket. The
coupon had a unique certificate number allowing access to
the
“CompanionFare.com” web site. Companion Fare is run by
PROPCO
(Promotions in Travel Marketing) and their web site lists
the following
companies as their clients: Kroger, Chase Bank, Discover
Card, National
City Bank, US Bank, American Express, General Mills, Walgreen,
Wells
Fargo and Verizon. PROPCO offers other products and
services and no
mention is made whether these companies offer or offered the
"free
companion airline ticket."
What is the value of the “free” companion airline
ticket? I attempted
to reserve flights to 10 different cities from Detroit (Phoenix,
Las
Vegas, Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago,
Miami, San
Diego and Washington, DC) for two mid-week trips; one in
mid August and
one in late September. CompanionFare was unable
to find flights at the
fares listed on the coupon 65% of the time but did offer to make
reservations at a higher fare. I included those fares
in my comparison
of fares for comperable travel from another public web
site. The result: CompanionFare prices had
only 35% availablity and
were higher 80% of the time! Two lessons to be
learned: don't use the
offer of a "free ticket" in deciding to buy something; if your
company
is considering offering this type of promotion to help sell your
products, check-out the real value to your customers. In
this case, 80%
of the customers will be disappointed (if my testing is
typical). Is
this what you want your customers to think of your
company? On June 25,
2006, I sent the results of my testing to AeroBed (the product I
purchased that included a mail-in form) and Promotions In Travel
asking
for their comments but have not received a reply as of this
publication
date.
