Duane Reade introduced a new rewards program today. I happened to be in a Duane Reade this afternoon, where the cashier swiftly upgraded me to the new system and gave me a thick coupon book for my loyalty.

The pharmacy and quick-shop chain is promoting its new program, Flex Rewards, as a consumer-friendly upgrade. They cite the new system's non-expiring reward points and paperless redemption as the main improvements.

Which is great, until the consumer finds out the real meat behind the change:

What Rewards will I receive?
You will receive a $5 Reward for every 500 FlexRewards points earned.

The new program is more confusing and far less valuable. Consumers now get two points per dollar spent and the same $5 reward now comes at 500 points. Or, in layman's terms, after $250 spent rather than $100. Earning the five bucks just became two and a half times as difficult.

Flex Rewards also has a couple of gimmicks in the system, such as SuperSaver, which encourages customers to not redeem their points in exchange for bonus points back when they finally spend the credit. It's a cash-back system that feeds itself.

If any of this has heads spinning, I suspect it's by design. Duane Reade has devalued its loyalty program by a minimum of 60 percent. It cloaked the bad news in technical upgrades and new schemes that try to divert attention away from the devaluing.

With Flex Rewards, Duane Reade stands to give away a lot less value in 2010 than it did in 2009. If I had a stake in the company, I'd be pleased with the new program. As a regular Duane Reade customer, though, I'm probably just going to stop using my card.

Last Friday my iPhone's vibrate feature failed. I had a day or two of odd brrrraap buzzes, wheezy ailing things, and on Saturday, pfft! no more vibrate.

I went to Apple's Genius Bar on Sunday, fighting masses of bored tourists on Easter to get my phone inspected. The technician (genius?) took a quick look at my phone and decided that I had broken the external silence switch when I dropped it at some point. "There's your problem, right there," he said cheerily.

Before I had the chance to get defensive, he had opened a drawer and taken out a small white box. Out came a new iPhone--refurbished, I'm sure, but visually perfect--and within five minutes the genius (technician) had swapped SIM cards and activated the new phone. He took my phone--nine months old, dropped several times, with the scuff marks to prove it--and put it in the box with an explanatory label.

And that was it. "Here you go," he said, "you're all set." And I went home with a new phone in my pocket.

I tell this story not simply to add to the "cult of Mac" but to examine just why Apple has been so successful.

• Trust. The tech who met me listened to my request, quickly verified it, and moved onto solving the problem. No challenges, no curiosities, no wondering whether I had violated an arcane clause of my limited warranty. Heck, the tech even pointed out that I had dropped the phone--surely grounds for voiding my claim, and for which I had prepared an extensive explanation about timing, cause and effect, and so on. But it made no material difference to him.


• Ease. All I did to get my phone replaced was make an appointment, hand over the phone, and sign a form acknowledging my receipt of a new one. No other paperwork or, as noted above, difficult questions.


• Flow. The Genius Bar is, of course, free. I booked online, arrived late on Easter Sunday, and still got taken within minutes.


• Goodwill. The net effect of the above: I am a newly satisfied Apple customer, not only proud of my iPhone (proud! of a phone!) but delighted with my recent experience. I've spent the week telling people my story, which routinely elicits amazement and wonder: what other company is this easy to work with? This in turn continues Apple's amazing halo effect, which translates into ever stronger sales.

The Leaders Club, a chain of luxury hotels, recently sent me an email that I had to "renew my membership," which is free. The email did not have any links in the text version. The link in the HTML one sent me to a page with multiple upsells and a small "renew membership" button. Clicking the renew button sent me to the Leading Hotels of the World home page without a confirmation or thank-you page.

Snapfish sent me three warnings in December that they were disabling my account--not because of inactivity, but because I hadn't made a purchase. I could have logged in, emailed a request, posted new photos, sung the site's praises on this blog. But because I hadn't completed a paying transaction in a year, they turned off my account and wiped out my photos.

These organizations share the same shortcoming: in an attempt to cleanse their database of inactivity, they purge much of the loyalty and positive experience that was once part of the relationship. Both companies have a service that I once found compelling enough to join and, in both cases, spend money on. But somewhere along the line, an administrator set a renew-or-kill point in the database.

Consider how the competition handles this. Unlike Leaders Club's renewal request, Starwood has had my Preferred Guest account for years. I use it once a year, give or take, just like Leaders Club. They have twice upgraded me to Gold status after a period of inactivity, to encourage me to interact again. Marriott and Intercontinental send me monthly reminders to pay them a visit, despite the fact that I've not used either account in more than a year. Meanwhile, Leaders Club suggested I'd lose my privileges if I didn't go through the renewal process. Which one is more likely to get my business the next time I book a hotel?

The Snapfish situation is even worse. I have photos on Kodak Gallery that date back to the Ofoto years, and I've never had trouble with my account (although people have lost images due to inactivity in the past). My Flickr account is free and accessible in perpetuity. What makes Snapfish so inscrutable is their hypocricy: I logged in today, several weeks after not taking action on their last "You're going to lose your account" warning, and my photo album from December 2006 is still there.

Maintaining links to opted-in consumers is the prime objective of today's marketplace. Doing it right leads to better word of mouth, retention, and revenue. Do it wrong, and, well....