Programme terms should be readable

The argument

Loyalty Register's 217 programme profiles show that tier status is not legible in the same way across sectors. Of 214 programmes where tier status is known, 112 run tiers. Airlines run tiers in 61 of 61 profiles with known status, and hotels do so in 18 of 18. Grocery runs none in 18, fuel none in 12, and banking only 1 in 14. Retail runs tiers in 25 of 46 programmes with known status, restaurants in 2 of 22, coalition in 2 of 15, and telecom in 2 of 7. A member moving from an airline to a grocery programme cannot assume that a tier chart or equivalent summary will be present. Where terms are buried in a separate document, the same member has to click away from the offer to learn what a tier grants, what it costs to earn, and when it expires.

The technology side shows the same pattern. Among 87 vendors profiled, 48 publish full or partial pricing. A programme running on a platform whose pricing is hidden is unlikely to expose its own member-facing terms clearly. Loyalty Register has published 305 glossary terms, which reflects the volume of jargon a member must decode before comparing programmes. Readability is not an aesthetic preference. It is the condition for consent.

The strongest counter-argument

Terms documents are long because they must remain enforceable across jurisdictions. A one-page summary cannot carry the legal weight of provisions on bankruptcy, data handling, fraud, and dispute resolution. If a programme leads with a plain-language summary, a member may agree without seeing the clauses that limit liability or revoke points. Simplifying also risks ambiguity. For example, a rule that says 'flights earn points' may omit fare classes, code shares, or partner bookings, and those omissions create disputes. The strongest version of this objection is that a readable programme is not necessarily a fair programme, and a fair programme may still need unreadable terms.

What would change our mind

We would reverse this position if a comprehension test across the 217 programme profiles found that members recalled tier thresholds, expiry dates, and redemption limits more accurately after reading full legal terms than after reading a plain-language summary, and the effect held across the 112 programmes with running tiers. The same reversal would follow if a regulator required full legal terms on the join page and member complaints fell without a decline in sign-ups. Either observation would show that readability is not doing the work we claim.

What follows if we are right

A programme owner should publish a plain-language summary of tier qualification, earn rate, expiry, and redemption limits on the same page as the sign-up flow. The full legal text remains available, but the summary is the default view. Before launch, the team should ask a new member to state what a tier requires and what a redemption costs after one reading of that page. If the member cannot answer, the page is not readable. This applies especially to the 112 programmes running tiers, where a status chart without thresholds is common.