Campaign group say rail loyalty scheme is ‘an insult’

LOYALTY club passengers travelling on the new East Coast franchise will have to spend 10 times as much to earn enough points for a free train ticket, it has emerged.

Campaigners have branded the return “an insult” after the new franchise holder, Intercity Rail (ICR), a Stagecoach-Virgin consortium, e-mailed final details of its Nectar point scheme to East Coast customers this week.

The Nectar scheme will replace the popular East Coast Rewards loyalty club from Sunday as the publicly-owned franchise is handed back to the private sector.

Existing Rewards members will be able to convert their current tally into Nectar points at a rate of six Nectar points for every one Rewards point. There will also be an introductory rate which will see 500 Nectar points worth £3.75 on the Virgin East Coast website until May 31, falling to £2.50 thereafter.

Calculations by campaign group, Save East Coast Rewards, calculate that this means passengers will have to spend £2,500 to earn enough Nectar points to ‘buy’ a £25 standard single – compared to £255 currently under East Coast Rewards.

Dan Hopkins , who founded Save East Coast Rewards in January, said it was “a bit of an insult” for ICR to claim any passengers would be better off.

He added: “Those who’ve been following our campaign won’t be surprised at how poor value Nectar points.

“Every time East Coast sends out e-mails about the switch to Nectar we see an increase in followers to our Twitter account.”

A spokeswoman for the Stagecoach-Virgin consortium said: “We have made a commitment to introduce Nectar on March 1 and we’ll also offer the choice of collecting points on Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club.”