The new HFP chat thread – Saturday 20th June

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We have decided to run this new daily chat thread on Head for Points.

Historically, the daily ‘Bits’ articles were the defacto repository for random comments and questions. It is unlikely that the news flow will be so big over the next few weeks that we will need many ‘Bits’ articles, however.

The comments under this article are where you should post questions about travel and, indeed, anything else on your mind. At this tricky time, and given that many of you are stuck at home self-isolating, we want the HFP community to have a place to chat.

Please only comment under the main articles on the site if your comment is directly related to the topic of the article. This has long-term benefits as its keeps the commentary relevant for people who read those articles in the future.

By default, HFP shows the last page of comments under the article. If you want to see the first page of comments and read them all from beginning to end in order, click here: https://hfp2022.headforpoints.blog/2020/06/20/the-new-hfp-chat-thread-saturday-20th-june/comment-page-1. The page will refresh with this article but the comments will now show the first page and not the last page.

We will continue to monitor how this is working. Let’s see how it goes. Take care!

Category

General

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

Law2006 says:

20 Jun20 June 11:47

Hi I was hoping someone could give me advise. I bought flights with Turkish airlines through American Express Travel. The 3 months has passed since I requested a refund and I called Amex Travel yesterday and they have now said they couldn’t say when I will get the refund due to Covid19 (previously I was told it would take 3 months). Does anyone know how it works re section 75 chargeback? I was informed that because I bought the flights through American Express Travel with my American Express good care they can’t do a charge back against themselves. All I can do is make a complaint to customer service. Just wondering if anyone else has any similar experiences?
- Law2006 says:
  
  20 Jun20 June 11:49
  
  Typo – bought tickets through Amex travel with Amex gold card
- Lady London says:
  
  20 Jun20 June 16:31
  
  with respect, please just research similar queries raised and options given for a number of similar cases on here. Every day you have some and the existing answers will give you the options
  - Law2006 says:
    
    20 Jun20 June 22:52
    
    Oh nice. First time I’ve posted and you have to be snarky. Sorry was just looking for some genuine help. Hope you have a lovely day too!
    - Polly says:
      
      20 Jun20 June 23:56
      
      With respect it’s this very lady Lady London who has been posting extremely detailed and helpful answers to help others out, so a thank you would be a better response. So spend some time checking other articles.
      - Law2006 says:
        
        21 Jun21 June 00:10
        
        Why should I thank her? She was just rude to me, obviously quite a miserable person
Ian says:

20 Jun20 June 12:20

Phoned up BA early evening yesterday for a refund of 4 booking cancelled by BA. Got straight through, avios back in my account instantly, will be looking out for the cash portion arriving in the next few days.

Only problem was that it took over 40 minutes to work through the 4 bookings.
rob says:

20 Jun20 June 12:35

Just checking

My brother has just received his new Amex gold credit card, and he has previously held one less than 6 months ago.

However his welcome bonus is showing on the tracker bar. Does that mean he will actually receieve the bonus or will it get picked up by Amex later on?

Many thanks
- Peter K says:
  
  20 Jun20 June 12:43
  
  The only way to tell us to hit the spend target. He may be lucky, some are.
  - Secret Squirrel says:
    
    20 Jun20 June 19:05
    
    Does IC Ambassador status recognised in Hotel Indigo properties?
    - Rob says:
      
      20 Jun20 June 19:53
      
      No, but the Platinum IHG Rewards Club status you got with AMB is.
- Polly says:
  
  20 Jun20 June 23:58
  
  Rob, Best not to post such questions, just in case. It’s always a nice surprise when a glitch occurs, know what l mean???
Peter K says:

20 Jun20 June 12:44

Some words are banned. For example ca$h backk. Your post gets deleted before it even gets a chance to post.
rams1981 says:

20 Jun20 June 12:48

Noticed today curve have automatically increased my limits. £500k per year. Had been asking for a while and had been told to vary my spend I and last month used it for genuine reasons. Good news!

Anyone else had similar?
- Jimbob says:
  
  20 Jun20 June 12:58
  
  I’m still on 100k, how close were you to your previous limit? Do you have much manufactured spend on there ?
  - rams1981 says:
    
    20 Jun20 June 14:32
    
    Reduced spending to keep under the 100k limit. Had asked for increase previously and been declined. It was mostly manufactured until last month when all spend was genuine.
- johnny_c-l says:
  
  20 Jun20 June 19:00
  
  I’ve also been bumped up to half a mil. No idea why, I haven’t asked for it and also haven’t really been using Curve the last couple of months.
  
  This must be an IT glitch or at least unintended as most of my usual 100k goes on MS and Curve banned me before for taking the mick with cash withdrawals.
Jody says:

20 Jun20 June 13:03

Would anyone be kind enough to briefly tell me what the deal is with flights booked using avios and the 2 for 1 companion voucher please (specifically in terms of how the refund voucher works if we go for this instead of a cash refund).

We’ve got return flights booked to Miami in January 2021, as we had booked a cruise (flights and cruise were booked in April of this year). However, said cruise has now been cancelled due to new cruise passenger terminal in Panama City not being ready. Our 2 for 1 companion voucher expires in February 2021 (that is with the 6 month extension already given on it). However, my understanding is that if I ask for a voucher instead of a cash refund, then this would effectively extend the companion voucher until 2022, is this correct?

Am I correct in thinking that the voucher we would be given would effectively have the taxes we paid, the avios we used, and the 2 for 1 on it? How would this work if we ended up going somewhere that was less avios or taxes? Are we still charged the £35 per person for cancelling if we go for the voucher rather than cash refund?

Thanks for any assistance, slightly struggling to get my head round the different variables.
- Anna says:
  
  20 Jun20 June 14:03
  
  The voucher should be the equivalent of what you paid in cash & avios plus your 2 4 1. It is essentially your cancelled tickets so has to be used for the same people. It sounds as though people are getting different information from BA CSA’s so it might be wise to double check anything you are told! I think someone last week did say they had used their voucher to book a “cheaper” flight and got the avios difference refunded back to their BAEC account.
  There’s a lot we still don’t know at the moment!
  - Jody says:
    
    20 Jun20 June 14:13
    
    Thanks Anna. Think I’ll give them a call next week and ask, as we have another one way flight from Miami to Panama City that were avios and minimal taxes (was somethng like £4.50 each) that I also need to cancel and don’t want a voucher for that one.
    
    If everything is as suggested, it seems like a very good way of extending our 2 for 1, as I think we will struggle to use to by February with the way things are.
Roger says:

20 Jun20 June 13:06

Are we expecting any Amex Platinum (esp. Travel related offers) to sprung up over next couple of weeks?

I am thinking of cancelling my current card but might hold out in case something may be coming.
- Andrew says:
  
  20 Jun20 June 13:19
  
  I think that’s a possibility. More likely a BA offer on the BA cards – they are going to want to encourage people to start booking coming July for the year ahead and get some money in the till.
- Polly says:
  
  21 Jun21 June 00:00
  
  Am in the exact same position, holding out, next statement July 5th with fee, so need to cancel well before that date.
Jason Scott-Taggart says:

20 Jun20 June 13:52

I was just looking for a way to pay a large bill using a debit/credit card when they only offered bank transfer. I remembered seeing about Billhop on H4P and so checked it out again but then also found Xoom by Paypal. Am I missing something or is the latter not a lot cheaper to do the same thing? Still works out as an expensive way to get points and so I will probably not bother!