The latest news in the world of customer experience and customer loyalty.
Is MoviePass Watching You?
Beware of Big Brother? No, beware of your MoviePass membership! It IS watching you! According to an article in BGR.com, MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe admits that the company “watches” where you go before and after a movie. According to the article, MoviePass has a built-in location tracking service. Lowe is quoted as saying: “We get an enormous amount of information. We watch how you drive from home to the movies. We watch where you go afterwards.” In a statement, the company stressed that it doesn’t plan to sell your data to third parties.
BP, United Airlines Fuel Up and Fly Home to Offer Unique Joint Rewards Program
United Airlines found a perfect passenger as it has partnered with BP to launch a unique joint rewards program. According to PR Newswire, on Wednesday BP and United Airlines began offering BP Driver Rewards and United MileagePlus members the option of earning and using miles on fuel purchases at participating BP U.S. retail locations. This is the only program in the U.S. that allows customers the ability to earn and use U.S. airline miles at the pump for gasoline purchases. BP and United officials praised the joint rewards program for allowing consumers choices to help simplify their lives. Last May we wrote an article about how BP simplified its Driver Rewards loyalty program.
Marriot, China, Twitter and Lessons in Geopolitics
A note to Twitter junkies: One little tweet can really screw up your foreign relations efforts. According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, Marriott International upset its Chinese relations when it emailed its rewards program members a survey that included a question about what country they were from. The list included Tibet, Macau, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Oops. According to China, those aren’t independent countries but part of China, and viewing them otherwise is a subversion of national sovereignty. The trouble escalated when someone from a Tibetan separatist group applauded Marriott for recognizing Tibet’s independence, and a $14-an-hour social media account rep in Omaha, Neb., liked the post on Marriott’s behalf. China scours the Web for violations of its cybersecurity laws, and upon finding the survey and the liked tweet, forced the hotel chain to stop accepting bookings at its 300 hotels in China for a week. That’s a significant punch in the wallet. Other U.S.-based companies have also gotten slapped by the Chinese cybersecurity police. Marriott, meanwhile, worked to get the matter settled. It also terminated its contract with the agency that put together the survey and fired the $14-an-hour social media account rep in Omaha, Neb., for not being up on his geopolitical sensitivities.