The British Airways ‘upgrade to First’ offer is back

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• Tom says:

  7 Jul7 July 16:25

  Hi Rob
  It seems IB are backing out of paying up the 90k for those with recently opened accounts (see Flyertalk thread), even after getting valid id’s sent in. Have you heard anything from IB about this?

  • Solo says:

    7 Jul7 July 17:03

    Be interested to hear about this too. I have an account that was created in 2015 and not heard a peep from Iberia about where my 90k is…..this is despite the fact that my partner received hers on Monday. Anyone got Iberia’s comms department contact details?

    • John says:

      7 Jul7 July 22:39

      Same here, my account was opened months ago and still no avios nor replies to emails. Dreadful. Calling their UK ‘Iberia Plus’ number just goes through to sales who say they are unable to transfer and give the same number to call again.. Rob, would appreciate if you can give Iberia a nudge as plenty of us are yet to receive these avios and getting no where with them. Thanks

  • Rob says:

    7 Jul7 July 22:27

    No

• Jtz says:

  7 Jul7 July 16:52

  OT but I booked a flight with 2 people the first day of the iberia promo and then cancelled it because of the risk of both accounts getting into minus. Next day I booked 2 flights from my account and only one batch of 9000 points have posted. I called iberia and they said to send the booking confirmation…my account is couple of years old so I don’t think I count as the new accounts that require a copy of passport…

  • the real harry1 says:

    7 Jul7 July 18:15

    Just send the booking confirmation, + screenshot showing your IB number was included

• Dan says:

  7 Jul7 July 17:37

  I got an 11k offer for the white card 3 weeks ago, nothing yet for the black – hope I’m somewhere on the list.

  • ColinJE says:

    7 Jul7 July 18:28

    Is the Virgin MBNA? What was was your offer please? I stupidly cancelled my white card and retained my black as I was a few hundred points away from another upgrade voucher. Managed to hit the spend target but it’s strange not to have heard anything when we are a few days away from earning no further points on the cards!

    • Mr dee says:

      7 Jul7 July 19:06

      Assume signup for new virgin card. Got 45k extra for spending 1.5k each month for 3 months.

      • Alan says:

        9 Jul9 July 08:31

        When |I followed my link for teh new black card, I coudl select the white card offer instead if I wished. I imagined that this worked the other way around for those only offered the white?
        Have you tried following the link (on a PC) and had a good look around the landing page?

• Mark says:

  7 Jul7 July 18:07

  O/T staying at my first Waldorf Astoria tomorrow (Versailles) and have HH Gold through Amex Plat…any tips for making the most of it?

  • Rob says:

    7 Jul7 July 22:26

    You get free brekky, possibly not much else but you never know.

• james says:

  7 Jul7 July 18:42

  Re; the Iberia promotion: I can’t believe people are still moaning because they haven’t managed to rip a company off. I saw the ‘offer’ on so many sites like this and didn’t touch it with a barge pole, even though I’ve had an active iberia account for several years.

  Well, actually maybe I can believe it 🙂

  • Brian W says:

    7 Jul7 July 20:26

    Absolute Hero 🙂

  • Mr(s) Entitled says:

    7 Jul7 July 20:56

    “I can’t believe people are still moaning because they haven’t managed to rip a company off.”

    Perspective has gone out the window. Entitlement walked in the door.

    • Doug M says:

      7 Jul7 July 23:21

      I think you have a very subjective view here. Company makes an offer, seems to good to be true, bloggers and travel journalists contact company and are given confirmation it’s as good as it seems. People take advantage of the offer.

      I don’t get the remarks about perspective and entitlement.

      We’ll see how this plays out. But I think Iberia are knowingly now backtracking and creating rules on the fly to deny what they clearly initially offered.

      On Flyertalk there are now stories of people that have held accounts for several years having the flights refunded and the points cancelled. At face value this is very very poor, and will turn a positive marketing move into a PR disaster.

      • Tom1 says:

        7 Jul7 July 23:41

        Exactly this.

      • BJ says:

        8 Jul8 July 02:02

        Ultimately Iberia are at fault and only have themselves to blame, they should have insisted on the flights being flown or restricted it to existing members. It is true that they are now playing games but most suspected they would do and went ahead with the promotion anyway. In this respect thousands appeared to have played games with Iberia too, and frankly I think they are getting off lightly by being offered refunds. I don’t count longstanding Iberia plus members who booked 10 flights in this category, I refer to those setting up multiple accounts and purchases of many 10s of tickets. For them, I have no sympathy.

      • Mr(s) Entitled says:

        8 Jul8 July 08:56

        PR disaster? There is that perspective again.

        I’m yet to see this anywhere in the mainstream media. I’m aware of it but dont consider it a disaster. My spouse, who flys regularly for work including Iberia, has no idea but she doesnt follow a handful of blogs.

        It will have no impact on her, or my, choice of airline moving forward. It may impact yours but how many times have you flown Iberia in the past decade? Just because it impacts you does not make it a PR disastor for the company.

        Fixing emissions on hundreds of thousands of cars. Bad. Refunding flights priced by own admission “to good to be true”. Who cares.

    • Doug M says:

      7 Jul7 July 23:24

      A further point. How is this really any different to people that continually churn credit cards? The comments section on this site alone are a ‘how to’ exploit Amex’s generous rules for churn. Is that a rip-off, are all those people entitled?

      • BJ says:

        8 Jul8 July 02:20

        Churning credit cards does not deprive genuine travellers of seats they will use or inflate their fares. To date, churning appears to have had little to no impact on availability of credit or bonuses to nonchurners. If it ever does amex can deal with that simply by targeting churners in the same way as Iberia is targeting those it believed abused their promotion.. Unlike the Iberia promotion, churning does not create chaos on amex websites or in the services they offer.

      • Mr(s) Entitled says:

        8 Jul8 July 08:58

        Difference is minor. It’s not the offer that is amusing. It’s peoples up-in-arms reaction.

      • Doug M says:

        8 Jul8 July 09:38

        I get some of the reaction has been OTT. But underpinning all this is Iberia made a dumb offer, but now have to honour that. You can’t have a system of offers whereby companies rescind them subsequently if they’ll be too expensive to honour. When this offer was made anyone reading the endless online comments could see the problems, why couldn’t Iberia?
        I’ve no problem with them cancelling the multiple fake accounts, that’s just fraud. But we shouldn’t have to apply our own value judgments to an offer that a company has gone to the effort of clarifying, it should be their responsibility to get it right or suck up the cost.

      • Doug M says:

        8 Jul8 July 14:25

        BJ. Because it’s not immediate and simple to quantify doesn’t mean that churning doesn’t have an effect on others. Broadly speaking it’s like those that think insurance fraud is a victimless crime. Churned points pay for seats and rooms which means a reduction unavailability, this has an inflationary effect for others.
        As for web issues maybe that’s because Amex is a better run organisation than Iberia.
        My ultimate point remains that Iberia made this offer, it’s not up to the customer to apply judgment has to the logic of the offer, or the knock on effects of it. The fault entirely remains with Iberia.

• Derek says:

  7 Jul7 July 22:05

  Doesn’t make sense that Calgary is an eligible route for the Upgrade to First.. it uses a 787, with no First…!

• Tim says:

  8 Jul8 July 13:26

  Hi,

  I have an IB account which is around 6 months old; I successfully signed up for the 90k avios which are now in my account, but need to buy some avios at the discounted rate so I can transfer them to BA for a redemption to take advantage of a Amex 2-4-1.
  I obviously can’t transfer the 90k; will I definitely be okay to purchase the 15k I need to transfer to BA?
  Thanks
  Tim

  • the real harry1 says:

    8 Jul8 July 17:39

    Sure, that should be absolutely fine. I transferred IB—>BAEC successfully just now – they’re only ring-fencing the 90K

• TT says:

  8 Jul8 July 18:57

  Talking BA, Ive booked the ” dream deal companion fare” for January 2019 to CPT. Paid £3601 including a car I might just use! If I now book Y flights from NCL to LHR , will BA merge this booking with the F booking? Or is this just hoping……? Any help appreciated

  • Rob says:

    8 Jul8 July 19:13

    In theory no but if you call You First they are more flexible than the main call centre.

    • TT says:

      8 Jul8 July 19:34

      Thanks for that, and thanks for flagging up this deal Rob, great deal as for once no multiple positioning flights needed!!

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