The HfP chat thread – Thursday 7th January

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• Gringo says:

  7 Jan7 January 21:20

  Paypal offer question – can you pay at a BP/M&S petrol station with an M&S voucher?

  • TGLoyalty says:

    7 Jan7 January 21:33

    Nope

    • Gringo says:

      7 Jan7 January 22:08

      Thanks 🙁

  • kitten says:

    7 Jan7 January 21:52

    Below for James. wordpress misplacing again

• kitten says:

  7 Jan7 January 21:38

  Firstly line up whatever evidence you have of these conversations. Ideal would be recorded call or at least notes you wrote down right after any conversation. Ideally, if you got it, which agent you spoke to. Make sure you could get a phone record listing time and duration of any call.

  Check in another source flightradar ? expertflyer ? did both your booked flights run. Not sure if either source will give how many passengers were on these flights in particular the long haul one. If you post on flyertalk, someone with an appropriate subscription might be able to check for you (plus you could check there for similar cases with Swiss).

  If the flight from Zurich took off with 160-170 people on it plus crew, on an aircraft type seating 180 then this could be a hint the flight had earlier been oversold and the cancellation you received was in fact you being offloaded. You being offloaded would come to you as a cancellation.
  If that Christmas period flight took off from Zurich to South Africa but you were told it was cancelled I would bet on this. I’d just want the fact that it took off verified through a second source and ideally its passenger load.

  The issues seem to be

  (1) Swiss lied to you and did not admit to you even in a personal telephone call, that you were being involuntarily offloaded. They did not advise you of your rights which EU261 requires them to do.

  (2) Swiss then denied your right to a reroute.

  Because Swiss (a)did not advise you the truth that you were being offloaded from a flight that was still running, then (b)did not advise you of your rights according to this situation and (c)then denied you a reroute as you requested which EC261 does give you the right to receive from them…you were misled by these various misrepresentations, withholding of the facts, illegal failure to infom you your rights and then denial of your rights… into taking a refund .

  SOP wil be some kind of Swiss Public reconciliation or consumer service. No idea if they perform or not but IIRC seen on Loyaltylobby coverage that indicates Swiss denies EU261 rights all the time.

  You bought your ticket on a website you accessed in the UK, paid with UK card etc?

  I would MCOL it in the UK. Recount as above. Claim compensation for being unvoluntarily offloaded (find the text and the compensation in text of EC261 it’s very readable). It’s about 600 euros for this happening 4 days before your flight. No exemption for Covid here.

  Additionally .see below

  • kitten says:

    7 Jan7 January 21:50

    Additionally do as in my other post this thread today book your fully flex (so you don’t have to pay for it till near to flying it) replacement rerouting date ticket on travel agent system as I explain other post.

    Ask agent to issue pro forma invoice (best) or at least a quote. Submit this as your reroute claim less the refund you already had ( you are pretty much stuck with that refund). Add any costs for phone calls and only a reasonable amount of time at your professional rate ‘preparation time’ for your time spent sorting this out after they refused your reroute.

    Lastly add 8% statutory interest to the lot plus claim your MCOL fee back.

    Let’s see if they like that. If your evidence is strong enough and the flights went then I think you have a good chance of getting the lot.

    • kitten says:

      7 Jan7 January 22:14

      PS James very important on this one. Dont book your replacement reroute flight (that travel agent will hold and quote) on any Lufthansa group airline if you can possibly avoid it. So not on Swiss, Lufthansa, Lot, Brussels Airlines.

      Choose someone like QR or BA if you can.

      Reason is after all this stress and not knowing what the future holds you want your excess rerouting rights to be paid out in cash.

      If you have a flight on any LH Group airline, not just Swuss, held as your rerouted flight, then it would be all too easy for Swiss/LH Group to want to take over the booking and provide it in a way which forces you back onto them, costs them less and restricts you more than the cash value which you are due as the remainder of your rerouting cost.

      • kitten says:

        7 Jan7 January 22:16

        please post how you get on

        • James says:

          8 Jan8 January 00:33

          Just seen this because of the mis-threading but thank you for the incredibly detailed response!

          I had (just) submitted a claim to SOP for the €600 but do like the idea of claiming for the cost of replacement flights too given they offered nothing despite protestations on the phone. I don’t suppose the SOP claim prevents (or prejudices) me pursuing MCOL?

          I will see if anyone on flyertalk can help me out with the flight details and occupancy. I suspect it may not be a case of overbooking given the rules around UK-CH-ZA flights were changing by the day around that time, but there’s only one way to know for sure.

          Will keep you posted.

• Baji Nahid says:

  7 Jan7 January 21:53

  Sorry i haven’t seen the last new pages on here but has the new BA food catering been announced? I’ve some pics sent to me if i can send them to ROB etc?

  • Rob says:

    7 Jan7 January 22:00

    We have them!

    • Baji Nahid says:

      7 Jan7 January 22:05

      sweet! what do you think of it rob? Looking forward to your analysis

  • TGLoyalty says:

    7 Jan7 January 23:43

    https://tourvestretailservices.cld.bz/BritishAirways-SpeedbirdCafe/4/ ?

    • Andrew says:

      7 Jan7 January 23:47

      Yes and BA are showing images on Instagram this evening of the pies and wraps

• TGLoyalty says:

  7 Jan7 January 22:19

  Update from Paul Charles Travel update: @transportgovuk extending travel bans from Seychelles, Mauritius, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, Lesotho, Mozambique, Angola, Eswatini – entry to UK banned to anyone who has travelled through in last 10 days except British nationals

  Botswana, Seychelles, Mauritius removed from travel corridor list. @ThePCAgency Due to steep rise in #Covid infections. No Test To Release allowed for anyone entering from these countries. #Israel also removed from corridor list.

  Sounds like all inbound travellers will need a PCR from next Thursday but not yet announced.

• Koi says:

  7 Jan7 January 22:24

  Any crypto websites take PayPal?

  • John says:

    8 Jan8 January 06:53

    Paypal wants you to use its own crypto service

• Gerard says:

  7 Jan7 January 22:32

  Any recommendations on IHG credit cards, aiming to retain spire status but with limited travel it’s proving difficult:(

  • Alex says:

    7 Jan7 January 22:42

    Creation offer a IHG credit card which gives gold status and with £30,000 spend you would be able to earn Spire. They used to have a £99 paid for version which gave spire but this currently isn’t open to new applicants. I have the free card and find it useful, especially as can be paid off with beardy to double dip

  • kitten says:

    7 Jan7 January 22:45

    look into intercontinental ambassador. on here or google it. probably cheaper. you dont get the 25k but other than that spire and plat close enough. The ihg credit card that gave you the free night is closed to new applicants and the remaining one iirc no status benefits but according to posts on here may have some ms type talents.

• Graeme says:

  7 Jan7 January 22:41

  Just a heads up that Amex may have got a bit looser on retention offers. I just got offered 50k MR points when I called to cancel my Plat card (fee due next Month). When I phoned in December I got offered nothing. HTH

  • kitten says:

    7 Jan7 January 22:47

    with a bit of luck this could be due to blowback they got from the Marriott £400 fiasco

  • Buxton says:

    7 Jan7 January 23:40

    I called today to ask regarding cancelling my gold credit before the free year is up. Got a spend offer for 10k MR for 2.5k charged to the card.

• Cuchlainn says:

  8 Jan8 January 05:15

  Fri 8th Jan – 05.15 :
  Currently not received any daily emails for today and no Friday articles posted on website….

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