Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to negatively market yourself. Take for instance the JetAirways 50% off Companion Coupon, available with the Jet-Citi Platinum Card.You can’t use it if you’re booking online, calling the Jetairways booking line, or even via a travel agent. The only way is to visit their office on JC road or at the airport! I think they designed this coupon to be hard to redeem. Which had the unsurprising effect of making me & my business – feel unwanted.
If you’re going to incent people to use your service, make it easy for them. Don’t forget you actually want people to use your service, even if its on-the-cheap. Making it unnecessarily hard isn’t going to win you any brownie points, if anything it’ll make your customer realise the actual value of the coupon – nil, because they can’t or (worse) won’t redeem it.
Update: just visited the JC Rd JetAirways office, these are the fares for a one way blr-bom ticket at 6pm Monday:
Counter fare: 6034 Rs
Using the discount coupon: 8276 Rs (2200 rs more!!)
The girl at the counter was kind enough to advise me that the internet fares on jetairways.com would be a least 5% cheaper than the counter fare.