V-Flyer

Looks like this site has now shut down, have been looking at it every day recently as I am trying to get an idea of when to book seats next year.

Big shame as it was a great tool to find rewards without having to do slow dummy bookings. anyone know of any other sites like this?

Was just about to post the very same thing. Frustrating, as liked it a lot

Great loss as I was on it most days looking for the little gem of a trip for the late summer

Anyone know if this was a VA sponsored site and/or will it be resurrected ?|

Guessing not.. This holding page has been added.

We no longer offer our online flight search

Thank you to all our users for your support. We hope you enjoyed the service - we just couldn't find a good business model to support it.

Happy Flying

No money to be made it seems n(

Any way a similar tool could be added to V-Flyer?

Kabuta007 wrote:Anyone know if this was a VA sponsored site and/or will it be resurrected ?|

ISTRC a message posted somewhere on here that said it was associated with neither VS nor VF.

Paul

pjh wrote:

Kabuta007 wrote:Anyone know if this was a VA sponsored site and/or will it be resurrected ?|

ISTRC a message posted somewhere on here that said it was associated with neither VS nor VF.

Paul

That is correct, it was a fully independent site from VS or VF.

We would love to have a tool on here, but getting the data is not very easy so it currently isn't possible.

Rewardseats is a member on here, I remember the first post back in August 2012

Your feedback on new reward finder tool
... up finding reward flights. I've been working on a reward seat search tool in my spare time and have a very early version online at http://www.rewardseats.com. There's some way to go before it's truly useful but I'm hoping to connect with VS frequent flyers to understand your experiences and ...

Would in not be worthwhile V-Flyer contacting this member to discuss further?

There is always the KVS availability tool, though it does require a small payment.

Very easy to set up a macro to use it constantly and tell you when it has found availability. We have found this very useful. Also learnt that a lot of BA availability is released in the small hours of the morning.

I would gladly pay a monthly subscription like I do with expertflyer if you plan to bring it back.

We've couldn't find a business model that would offer sufficient potential to fund expansion of the site. Subscriptions wouldn't really make it an exciting proposition given the limited audience size.

Happy to hand over the reins to someone that wants to continue the site but there would need to be a bit of money involved (~$1,000?) to cover legal fees for transferring the ownership of the IP so I don't think it can happen.

Sorry to take the tool away from you, hope you find a new time saver for reward search soon!

Sorry to hear of the demise of the site - I too would consider paying a subscription, but accept that the number of people willing to do this would be minimal.

Good luck in the future, I hope someone takes up your offer of taking over the service - or, better still, VS get their finger out and make their site more user friendly for both VS and partner redemptions.

Nick

If it had worked for more than 1 seat at a time, then I would have happily payed a subscription but whilst it was only possible to search for 1 seat I wouldn't have paid.

I was only on this last night planning my next( the one after the next two already booked LOL) trip away. I know my dates and don't really mind where I go as long it has some sun.

I would also have paid a monthly/yearly subscription as ultimately it saves me lots of money.

Gutted about this, was a great website which filled a really useful gap. Would be great if V-flyer bought it up... surely £1,000 is do-able?

etk wrote:Gutted about this, was a great website which filled a really useful gap. Would be great if V-flyer bought it up... surely £1,000 is do-able?

Remember that V-Flyer is privately owned and Pete might not see it as a viable entity. I'm sure if he had been able to do it before now, he would have done so, especially when you consider all the other bits of information he has been able to access in the Toolbox.

Wonder if it would be worth asking for a "show of hands" of members who might be willing to donate via v-flyer for Pete to take over this service. ?|

I for one would happy at donating ten or twenty pounds to have this added to the members section.

David.

David wrote:Wonder if it would be worth asking for a "show of hands" of members who might be willing to donate via v-flyer for Pete to take over this service. ?|

I for one would happy at donating ten or twenty pounds to have this added to the members section.

David.

That's what I was thinking, wouldn't take many of us to cover the £1k purchase cost. I'm not technical so don't know about what other costs would be involved in keeping it going but hopefully it could work out.

Actually they said $1000 not £ but that is only for domain transfers etc.
There would be on-going costs and probably a fair bit of time running it (not that I have a clue).
However, I found it very useful and would gladly pay a fee. Maybe it could be charged like expert flyer - limited monthly searches and unlimited for different monthly fees. Maybe this is just too complicated to run.
EF is about $10 per month which seems great value. I use it most days.

RewardSeats wrote:... there would need to be a bit of money involved (~$1,000?) to cover legal fees for transferring the ownership of the IP so I don't think it can happen.

"There would need to be a bit of money involved"? Why? Transferring IP doesn't need legal involvement - it's a very very very simple document to make that happen.

Hosting, would be down to the individual who took it on. I'd be interested to know what the ongoing costs were. i.e.: it sounds like it was only set up on the basis that in future it could make quite a bit of money as part of a bigger business model. If hosting costs weren't the problem, what was?

Given V-F isn't set up to do that (it barely scrapes the barrel, from my current understanding), maybe it would work for an individual/company who weren't trying to make it into a future gold-mine and just provide it as a member service?

preiffer wrote: Why? Transferring IP doesn't need legal involvement.

This was an experiment within a large organisation. In this organisation IP is closely guarded, a transfer won't happen unless it's done by a law firm. If one will do it pro bono, it could work but if our retained firm and internal dept. get involved it will cost.

preiffer wrote:I'd be interested to know what the ongoing costs were. i.e.: it sounds like it was only set up on the basis that in future it could make quite a bit of money as part of a bigger business model.

Monthly costs were minimal and almost covered by revenue. You are right that it would work nicely for a individual or small organisation. It simply would not scale enough to make a relevant amount of money for the organisation it was an experiment within.

Just open reward-seats.com or .co.uk, both still available and set it up with your own hosting -simples! (Not me thanks)

I think there's a bit of IP confusion here, I believe the "IP" RewardSeats is talking about is Intellectual Property, the coding to enable the website to work not the actual Internet Protocal (IP) address of the website.

The large organisation won't just give away their intellectual property it will have to be sold.

I always did wonder what the relation was between Trend Micro and airline reward seats... seemed a strange one

RewardSeats wrote:...a transfer won't happen unless it's done by a law firm. If one will do it pro bono, it could work...

Better call Saul !

I would definitely be prepared to put some money into this, maybe make it some form of VFlyer platinum membership or some-such? Got to be worth a poll?

David wrote:Wonder if it would be worth asking for a "show of hands" of members who might be willing to donate via v-flyer for Pete to take over this service. ?|

I for one would happy at donating ten or twenty pounds to have this added to the members section.

David.