Over the last few days I have been posting about some of the new (and old) Scotiabank credit card offers which in their own right are pretty good offers. I've also received general emails from the Scene+ program heralding the benefits of these cards but I feel I need to address the elephant in the room. This is a topic many of you are still writing to me about and that topic is Scene+ still being a complete disaster nearly three months after the new combined program launched and of course that disaster is primarily for the credit card holders.
We first wrote about some of the issues on December 16, just a few days after the new program launched and at that time Scotia said they would have the issues resolved by December 19 (Read about that here) Of course they weren't resolved otherwise this post would not be happening. On December 22 we provided another update (Read that update here) pointing out more of the issues and that Scotia was now saying everything should be fixed by February.
Here is a list of some of those issues that members were encountering and in some cases still are:
- Scotia Credit Card Multipliers not showing up in their accounts - that is 3x, 5x, etc. points are only showing up as 1 point or even in some cases as 0 points
- New program points balance not matching the balance before the two programs combined
- No points at all in accounts and all of a sudden appearing in old accounts that people were not using and/or were not tied into their credit cards
- Partial redemption for any travel purchases not working online or via the app
- Welcome bonus points from the credit card offers not showing up
- Some points transactions posting twice
- and the latest that Joshnet sent us on March 1st, not being able to log in to his account and receiving a statement that was something like this: "Oops, your account is not allowed to sign in now."
There is a very good thread over on RFD with many of these woes being discussed and that thread is up to date and current. What is concerning is that Scotia and Scene+ have been letting this go on so long. They had a year to prepare from the initial announcement and then even delayed the launch further by roughly three weeks in late 2021. You would have thought in that amount of time they could get it working right and while issues can be expected the fact that they have dragged this on so much longer is disheartening. If you read that RFD thread, some cardholders are in fact no longer using their cards. They've stopped putting purchases on them as they are tired of trying to chase after the points, keep track of what points they are owed and don't want to be stuck on hold with an overwhelmed call centre.
It may seem minor to Scotia and Scene+ but for a customer to potentially be out thousands of points it could affect their vacation plans or other plans they have or had with the points. I'll just throw out one example, say a cardholder was counting on redeeming 20,000 points (which they thought they'd have but don't) for an upcoming Spring Break vacation they booked on a Scotia card. Their plans were to redeem 20,000 points to receive a $200 credit on their flight so that they would have $200 extra cash in their pocket to spend while on vacation. However, since they don't have that 20,000 points due to the multipliers not showing up or the welcome bonus not showing up they can't redeem for the credit and are now their vacation budget is $200 short as it had to go to pay for the entire ticket. Yes, Scotia provides up to 12 months to redeem points against a charge but that doesn't change a cardholder's current cash flow position and budgeting plans for an upcoming Spring Break vacation. And that's where this whole mess from Scotia and Cineplex with their Scene+ program is in fact hurting their customers financially.
Wrapping it up
I'm sure Scotiabank and Cineplex are working tirelessly to try to resolve these issues but I feel they need to step it up even more. They are at a point where they are now losing some revenue over this as some customers have stopped using their Scotia credit cards. That may not end up being the only revenue hit, once all is said and done, in my honest opinion I do think Scotia and Scene+ need to make good with their customers by providing them with some sort of compensation. I wouldn't be surprised if some customers have already asked for compensation. Actually, I'd rather call it "interest" for the dollar value on the amount of points being held by Scotia and Scene+ that should be in their cardholders accounts, the time spent on hold trying to reach customer service by so many members and so on. I think something in the neighbourhood of 5,000 to 10,000 points to each affected cardholder would be a fair amount to cover it. It may actually be time for our readers who are Scotia cardholders to start asking for compensation, especially so if your plans for using points have been affected by these ongoing issues. I'd be willing to bet if Scotia and Scene+ start getting bombarded with requests for compensation they'll have the issues resolved before we know it.
And let me quickly go back to September 2021 where I posted the following:
"The only other thing I can think of, was pointed out to me by our Twitter contributor @joshnet who believes the merger process may go poorly. We can only hope Scotia and Scene have done a lot of behind the scenes testing to avoid a dumpster fire during the merger as Josh puts it."
I really think Josh should take up business as a psychic. What do you think? 😃
Talk to us! Let us know in the comments section if you are still experiencing issues with the new Scene+ program. Whether it's missing points, log in issues, you name it, post it below.