Frequent Flyer Friend.
Discuss Frequent Flyer Friend, on the Open Discussion forum of FrequentFlyer.com.au, the home of frequent flyers.
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Anyone use the Frequent Flyer Friend program? Anyone pay for it yet?
There is a 7 day free trial but I'm hesitant to use it now as I will probably need it later this year when I start to book my RTW trip for 2007.
I'm curious as to how it treats the internal AA flights in the USA as the current Qantas FF online system only lets you see flights such as Los Angeles to New York but not destinations like Las Vegas or San Francisco.
I think the operators can see those sort of destinations (which means using the operator to book the RTW flight might be the optimal way).
The concept of the FFFriend sounds great though but is it as slow as using the internet manually? I don't suppose it does a regular suck of all available flights and puts it into a database that is accessed by the software for fater availability searches?
Oh well, I hope to hear from someone soon.
Regards
Daniel
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I did get it to work however it won't help you out for internal USA flights or any that you can't pick via the QANTAS website. It's main feature is that it keeps checking to see if the flights are available so you don't need to go to the QANTAS website.
No way around having to call QANTAS for these flights and cost you the 2,500 points.
I tried it for the full 7 day trial period and couldn't get it to work once!
I'm sorry to hear you couldn't get Frequent Flyer Friend (FFF) to work. FFF has had hundreds of downloads since it was launched last week, with very few support queries.
The purpose of the 7 day trial period is to get FFF to work properly on your machine before committing you to purchase a license.
In future, any problems should be forwarded to our Support Team via the Support Page or emailing support@frequentflyerfriend.com. We usually respond within the hour.
The two main problems that I had were that it told me my details were correct, despite the fact that I double checked, triple checked and still didn't work.
The other problem was that I kept getting the "Waiting for next Qantas login" message, and it never connected.
I wonder how QF are viewing this product? As it uses SSL pretending to be you looking for flights it may significantly increase loads on the QF web site hardware.
If they are ok with it then, fine.
If not how would they prevent it's use? They could change the way the web-based award booking engine is accessed so that a new version of the FFF product would need to be released.
There is another way that would be a lot more difficult for FFF to counteract that is used more and more these days. A random pin would be generated for each booking session request. This would be delivered to the Frequent Flyer as an 'encrypted' image file, readable as an image, but not quite formatted correctly so that OCR software would have a hard time accurately analysing it. This pin would then need to be manually input by the user before the booking process could proceed.
Note that the $65 fee is once off and there are no recurring fees.
I'd be very surprised if FFF results in a "significant" increase load on the Qantas website.
Firstly, there are over 4 million members of the Qantas Frequent Flyer program. Most of these members have internet access and are actually encouraged to use the Qantas website rather than calling the service desk – as evidenced in the recent changes where booking online is free, but booking by phone attracts a fee. So you would assume that the Qantas website has adequate capacity to deal with such a load.
Secondly, FFF was designed specifically to prevent an excessive demand on the airline's system. For example, automatic searches cannot be scheduled more frequently than once every 12 hours. And the "Check Now" option restricts the number of ad-hoc searches you can make in any given period. We believe this is a responsible compromise - providing a useful service to members but capping demand on the airline's systems.
Thirdly and most importantly, FFF is tool which is incredibly useful to Qantas customers. One would expect customer satisfaction to be important to Qantas, so they should welcome any product which their customers find useful and of benefit in helping make the most of their program.
Using 'encrypted' images to restrict internet access is usually used in situations where something is offered (such as free Hotmail accounts) which has a direct impact on system resources. I've never seen it being used by a company to hinder it's customers from accessing their website. Its use would inconvenience (and possibly be problematic) for all the millions of users of their website, not just the few who use FFF... And anyway, there is no guarantee that we can't come up with a solution which bypasses the image :wink:
After booking a flight for my mate and I, we have decided to try and upgrade ourselves from Economy to Business. Unfortunately I have just discovered that on our particular flight, there is only 1 upgrade seat available.
Does the Frequent Flyer Friend show the number of available award and upgrade seats on a particular flight, or does it simply state that there is availability?
I am wishing to know this before I attempt to download the trial on my computer, as I really hate computers and am very much computer dumb! :cry:
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