exschlub

I’ve been a happy JetBlue customer for years now. Because their hub is JFK and they pretty much fly everywhere I need to go (Las Vegas, West Palm Beach, Los Angeles, Tampa, etc). The fares are always reasonable, the seats are nice, and I love the DirecTV. All that came to a crashing halt over the past few days.

As you know the Wynn is offering two free nights for Amex Platinum card holders. Perfect opportunity to use my TrueFalseBlue points and put together a free weekend in Vegas. Easier said than done.

I logged into my TrueFalseBlue account and started looking at flights. I had no problem getting flights out of JFK in the evening so I could put in a full day at work and still make it to Vegas at a reasonable hour, but the ridiculousness became apparent when I tried to book a flight back.

Simply put there is not a single decent available reward flight from Las Vegas to JFK that leaves on Sunday. Sure there is the 1:00AM flight and a couple of scattered redeyes, but the 7:00AM, 11:30AM, and 1:50PM flights are never ever available period.

This wouldn’t be such a problem if TrueFalseBlue points didn’t expire. I’d bite the bullet buy a cheap flight and claim my hotel deal. But the points do expire one year after they were issued.

It’s a pretty good scam that JetBlue is running.

1. Sell tickets

2. Issue TrueFalseBlue points

3. Expire points in one year

4. Make decent flight unavailable

5. Profit!!!

I also want to point out how useless their customer service is. First I thought it was a bug in the system so I tweeted @JetBlue. They have a reputation for being really on the ball and helping customers out. Well, I was blown off and told to call the reservation hotline. Once I did I found out the scam that was being run. The phone agent said that he couldn’t find a single rewards flight for the next 4 months and agreed that it was pretty scummy of JetBlue to have this sort of bait and switch. He suggested that I buy two one way tickets and use the TrueFalseBlue points for the JFK-LAS leg. That’d be great except those tickets only cost about $150, it’s the return flight that starts at $350 before taxes and fees. For that I could get an entire round trip ticket on another airline.

In one last ditch effort to stay a happy JetBlue customer I tweeted them again last night. After explaining the issue I was met with silence.

It’s a shame really. JetBlue at one point was by far the best airline out there for all the reasons above. They just lost a previously happy and loyal customer.