Amex Plat lounge shenanigans – Cathay Gold extended, AA/US going, Delta charging?

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• Puldruk says:

  13 Jan13 January 20:44

  I have used the Small Business Platinum Charge Card to get the 60k bonus. Will I still be ineligible for the bonus on a personal Platinum Charge Card?

  • Rob says:

    13 Jan13 January 21:34

    Not sure. Do the MR points go into an account in your company or a company name? If its your name then, unfortunately, you won’t qualify. Your partner could apply, but of course the Cathay card will be in their name (although they could guest you in when travelling together).

    Of course, this is worth doing even without the bonus points – you can cancel pretty quickly once you have the Cathay card, if you did it in a month you’re only about £38 out of pocket.

    • DV says:

      13 Jan13 January 22:16

      My small business card MR points go into a separate MR account from my personal card MR points. The small business card account has both my name and my business name.

• Chris says:

  14 Jan14 January 22:03

  Raffles I know you always talk about cancelling the platinum after 3 months for pro rats refund but is there any reason to keep it open (ie minimum term) for 3 months or safe enough to cancel it as soon as bonus has been triggered?

  • Rob says:

    15 Jan15 January 08:11

    I tend to say 3 months because that is the time you have to meet the spending target for the bonus, and most people would take this long.

    If you can do the £2,000 very quickly and Cathay, Starwood etc are prompt at sending your membership cards, there is no reason why you can’t cancel within 4-6 weeks.

• Chris says:

  17 Jan17 January 17:51

  I always seem to be asking about this card but do I need to empty my MR account before I close my plat account? I think is as referenced somewhere you could link another Amex card to the account but don’t have one of them at the moment. So are my options either take out another Amex card and link accounts or empty my MR account?

  • Rob says:

    17 Jan17 January 18:29

    IIRC, if you have another Amex – a non-MR earning one – you get a grace period to empty your MR account before it is closed. If you do not have another Amex card, it is closed immediately.

    It is all in the MR bit of the terms and conditions.

• Josh Davis says:

  18 Jan18 January 16:06

  Someone above mentioned that the Priority Pass is definitely cancelled once the platinum amex is cancelled – can anyone confirm through experience that this is the case?

  • Rob says:

    18 Jan18 January 18:15

    Plenty of people have confirmed this in the past

    • Josh says:

      20 Jan20 January 10:22

      Great, thanks. Actually, not great – a real pain – but thanks nonetheless 😀

  • Czechoslovakia says:

    29 Jan29 January 21:22

    For sure AMEX (who look after the PP side of things themselves – inhouse) will cancel the card within a few days of cancelling the Plat card. PP will however send you an invite to “rejoin” at 20% off the standard rate – making it £200 for the first year.

• Som says:

  25 Jan25 January 15:40

  Hi Raffles,
  Just a quick question about using marcopolo gold card on BA flights to get seat choice and excess baggage( BAEC says you can get them by adding MP GC but miles will be credited to MPGC not BA). Is there any way to get both benefits and miles & tier points credited to BAEC

  Thanks

  • Rob says:

    25 Jan25 January 17:25

    Yes, you simply change the number in your booking back to BA. Wait until you are in the lounge and then get the ticket desk in there (if there is one) to switch it, or use a lounge PC to quickly visit the Finnair website and use their Manage My Booking feature to change your number back.

    Theoretically, you don’t need the BA number in your booking at all, simply flashing the Cathay card will do it, but some lounge staff and check-in staff can be a bit funny.

• Som says:

  26 Jan26 January 23:30

  Hi Raffles,
  Will flashing the MPGC card allow you for an extra baggage or is it just easier to change to BAEC after check in

  thanks

  • Rob says:

    27 Jan27 January 08:13

    Best to try flashing it first. If they insist on changing it in the booking then fine (you can change it back later) but is more bother.

  • Pete says:

    28 Jan28 January 21:19

    Just to add!

    I used my new CX benefit to do Seat Selection on 2 of my bookings. 1 a redemption and 1 a paid for. They were already both Business class so just the Seat selection I wanted.

    Before trying the Finnair route I tried the call centre route , which many advise it takes a long wait in a queue, and this was my experience.

    1) It took 3 calls over a period of 2 weeks totalling about an hour to 3 different CS people and it didn’t quite work even after that.

    2) my 1st call failed as was put on hold after giving my CX number and line went dead. Total time 20 minutes.

    3) 2nd call managed to explain I only wanted Seat selection and not the earning for my paid flight changed. Lots of typing entering my CX number. Altogether 20 minutes and it seemed it work but didn’t! My 2 bookings changed to Select your seat for Free but after choosing them I simply got an Error I couldn’t change them!

    4) 3rd call! Another 20 minutes. Explained error and confirmed my CX number in both bookings but couldn’t help me as to why I couldn’t submit changes. Team leader suggested it was a Cathay issue!

    So this was quite laughable. I sent an email explaining my experience to BA complaints and suggested surely all this could be made easier ! Not heard back yet!

    In the end I used Finnair to enter my CX number but it insisted it was already entered. Even though my BA number was showing ! So I changed it back to BA and oddly the CX number then appeared in Finnair. Most odd. But on BA I was then able to submit my seats!

    Now I didn’t use Finnair to change my Paid booking as this was still showing as I would earn the tier points under my BA account which I didn’t want to play with. Then last week I revisited this booking and suddenly I could choose my seats and my CX number was now showing on The fin air website. May be they read my email and did something. I don’t know! But that booking still says I will earn BA tier points under my account and shows my BA number in manage my bookings.

    However I would expect my boarding card to show the BA number if I am going it earn BA tier points. Guess I’ll find out this Saturday when I fly!

    So to sum up it was all very confusing and still is!

    • Polly says:

      28 Jan28 January 21:32

      Just get your boarding pass double checked in the lounge, they may re issue it with your BAEC no on it….

    • CV says:

      28 Jan28 January 21:33

      Had a similar experience, wonder if there is something I am doing wrong on the Finnair website with all the error messages. Also on the BA MMB had the option to choose a seat for free but which then wouldn’t work after trying to confirm seats.

      You can also repeat the same fun experience using Qatar website instead of Finnair’s!

      In the end called BA and they resolved it very quickly by confirming seat over the phone. Still wouldn’t work online though. BA advisor said its a glitch with BA Blue and MP Gold, but that both numbers were allocated to the booking.

      At checking into T5 Galleries staff asked what scheme i wanted to earn the points on and seemed more than happy to allocate the booking to whatever loyalty scheme.

      • Pete says:

        28 Jan28 January 21:57

        Great replies. Thought it was just me! On my 3rd call after speaking with team leader they could see my Sapphire status but refused to manually do my Seats as they were convinced that either they were all ‘reserved’ or Cathay Pacific didn’t give me the same seat privilege. I could tell they wanted to get rid of me hence I gave up and sent a complaint.

        The fact both these bookings still appear in my BA account and also my CX account at the same time seems odd to me but I think when they manually enter FFs for different privelages this is what must happen?

        But I will double check at the lounge! I’ll be using Mobile boarding pass so be interesting what that shows. The number shown on this should be the one I earn Miles and Tier points with?

        • CV says:

          28 Jan28 January 22:17

          They (the lounge check in staff) changed my booking to the CX number, which i didn’t realise as i still had the original boarding pass. Only found this out when i left lounge and then went back in again later. Was then asked if i wanted the points on my BA number as it was showing against my CX number! So it doesn’t seem to matter, just tell them what you want.

          I used mobile boarding pass, but then also printed off a copy at self check in out of curiosity, both only showed BA number.

    • Marco says:

      29 Jan29 January 18:04

      Dear Raffles,
      Perhaps you have already explained this before in another post, but what is the utility of using the Finnair website to change one’s booking so as to get one’s CX Marco Polo member number changed to one’s BA Executive Club member number? Cannot one just use the CX or BA websites, or does the Finnair website have special functionality? (By the way, I was completely unaware that one could even use the website of another oneworld carrier to alter the details of one’s booking!)

      • Rob says:

        29 Jan29 January 20:27

        Yes, BA doesn’t make it easy to change the number cleanly. For some reason it ‘sticks’ better via Finnair.

• 8ee8y says:

  30 Jan30 January 11:26

  I understand the process of changing your number on Finnair, also that the check in desks can swap it. However, if you put the CX number on your booking to select seat and then swap back to BA, is their then a loss of other options such as the priority boarding?

  I.e. my boarding card has BA ref on it, can I priority board with CX status?

  I’ve got BA Bronze (just lost Silver) but want to know for future reference before deciding whether to go for BA status again…

  • Rob says:

    30 Jan30 January 11:38

    Priority Boarding for BA is fine if you flash the card.

    It is more of an issue on things like lounge access where money changes hands. If your Cathay number is not in the booking, BA cannot charge Cathay, which is why some lounge agents insist on switching it over (you then get the ticket desk or finnair.com to switch it back.)

    • Pete says:

      30 Jan30 January 11:53

      Makes you wonder though. If they swipe it overwriting the BA number and then you change it back later then will BA still get the Fee from CX?

      If they swipe it as a Once only which registers the Fee at that moment then why then overwrite the BA number at all?

      Either way it’s a pretty dumb way of making it inconvenient for everyone!

      • Pete says:

        31 Jan31 January 09:31

        Just an update from me as I’ve just checked in online for my flight.

        Brief recap.

        Had a Club Europe booking which I wanted to use my CX benefit to choose my seats a few weeks ago. Lots of hassle doing this on phone. Full details further up thread.

        It seems having 2 FF numbers in a booking really confuses their system. My BAEC was always still showing in MMB against my flight to earn miles and tier points. However a few days ago it changed to my CX number and went to 0 miles and 0 tier points.

        So I checked on Finnair and CX was there. So I changed it back to BAEC and then in MMB it also reverted to showing my miles and tier points again. All was well?

        Nope! Did online checkin this morning and low and behold my CX number appears on the boarding card! So phoned up explained was concerned the benefits would go to my CX account and was told yes the CX number had confused the system as there were 2 numbers in the booking against me still.

        He completely removed the CX from the booking and told me all is now well. However I called back again as my boarding pass was still showing CX and it wouldn’t refresh even deleting it. So once issued it seems to not change.

        I’ll have to recheck this at the airport as they can’t reissue or withdraw a boarding pass on the phone!

        So this whole fiasco was a nightmare really and I don’t think id bother with all this hassle in future simply to chose a seat a bit earlier!

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