The HfP chat thread – Friday 8th January

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We have decided to run this daily chat thread on Head for Points during the coronavirus outbreak.

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General

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fivebobbill says:

8 Jan8 January 09:18

Just on the Tesco clubcard Avios, not sure it’s been mentioned recently as I’ve been out of the loop a bit.
I’ve been on the old legacy 800 rate for as long as I can remember, but converted £12.50 of faster vouchers into Avios a few days ago.
Right through the online process I was quoted 3,000 Avios (600 per £2.50), so I was resigned to that as even the confirmation email mentioned 3,000.
However when I logged into BA today I have received 4,000, so the 800 rate held up.
I remember some saying they only got the 600 rate recently, just my experience.
jil says:

8 Jan8 January 09:28

amex platinum is dropping shangrila jade …
- Rhys says:
  
  8 Jan8 January 09:29
  
  Article tomorrow unless there are any more big news stories!
Rum says:

8 Jan8 January 09:44

Accor ALL points transfer to Iberia. I keep trying to transfer my 18K points across, but they keep getting returned to my ALL account due to ‘an issue with Iberia’. I’ve already moved across 1,000 MR points to Iberia to ensure the account is not dormant, but the transfer from ALL is still not succeeding. Both accounts are in my name and I have checked the spelling of my name, postal address, email and phone numbers on both accounts but I keep running into the same issue. Not sure what else I can do. Can anyone shed any light on the best way forward?
- TGLoyalty says:
  
  8 Jan8 January 09:46
  
  Stupid question time but that’s about 360 EUR of hotel night(s)
  
  Why swap that for £180 of avios?
  - Rum says:
    
    8 Jan8 January 17:36
    
    Because I have no intention of a hotel stay, especially with Accor. These were Aegean points that I transferred to Accor. Hoping to move them 1:1 into Avios, if I can ever figure out what is wrong here…
    - TGLoyalty says:
      
      8 Jan8 January 18:03
      
      Fair enough. Hopefully someone else can help.
      
      I just assumed someone who needs avios stays in hotels at some point. Even if it’s the well liked by some Sofitel Heathrow pre flight.
      
      Serves me right for assuming 🙂
Ross says:

8 Jan8 January 10:03

Travelling Abroad – Now?

If one needs to attend to a foreign property for the purposes of sale/rental/purchase of such overseas property – my understanding is that this remains allowed.

Do you agree?

*Obviously, being sensible and staying at home, unless absolutely necessary to leave*
- TGLoyalty says:
  
  8 Jan8 January 10:11
  
  Further reasonable excuses
  
  There are further reasonable excuses. For example, you may leave home to fulfil legal obligations, or to carry out activities related to buying, selling, letting or renting a residential property, for the purpose of picketing, or where it is reasonably necessary for voting in an election or referendum.
  - Ross says:
    
    8 Jan8 January 10:31
    
    Thanks – will be a genuine property thing, to do with potentially buying a property abroad.
    
    Good to see you agree – all that stuff is hard to read!
    - TGLoyalty says:
      
      8 Jan8 January 10:51
      
      That’s directly from Gov.uk not me 🙂
      
      https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-lockdown-stay-at-home#when-you-can-leave-home Is the correct page.
- Colin MacKinnon says:
  
  8 Jan8 January 11:09
  
  Of course not many countries will let you in, unless you are a national, and as a result airlines are cancelling left right and centre – so you may get stuck for a while!
  Flight back from the canaries flew out empty because no Spaniards had wanted to travel that day.
  - TGLoyalty says:
    
    8 Jan8 January 12:33
    
    There will always be some way it just might leave you having to do a 5 day quarantine and pay for a test.
- ChrisBCN says:
  
  8 Jan8 January 11:10
  
  Don’t forget to check if the other end will actually let you in, if you haven’t already.
- ChrisC says:
  
  8 Jan8 January 12:36
  
  It may be a permitted reason by the UK Government to travel but you need the Government of the country you are visiting to allow such travel.
TomD says:

8 Jan8 January 10:09

Any website that I can buy crypto with a debit card? i.e Curve linked to HSBC WEMC
- Youllnever says:
  
  8 Jan8 January 10:21
  
  Curve doesn’t allow crypto according to their T&Cs
- Mr. AC says:
  
  8 Jan8 January 10:27
  
  Tried a lot. Only one I got to work is Wirex (referral, both get free crypto https://wirexapp.com/r/ef1vrzzfnj). The prices are not always great and they charge your card in USD (which is not that big of problem if you use Curve to shift to GBP). MCC is 6012.
  A bit too much hassle, so I ended up with regular BACS into Coinbase and buying on Coinbase Pro (less fees). Bitstamp too if the prices lower there.
- Pangolin says:
  
  8 Jan8 January 12:40
  
  You could also try the phone apps Quppy and Lumi. At least one of those accepts Apple Pay also. The issue with these is that the charges tend to be high (for small purchases) if you don’t add money via bank transfer, so any gain via being able to use Curve is likely to be more than offset by that.
  
  That means you have BTC/ETH in a wallet on your phone, but you can then send it somewhere else (e.g. exchange or Nano ledger). In general, it’s probably not worth the effort. Cryptocurrencies are hypervolatile assets so scraping a few points here and there is far less of a priority than monitoring what’s actually happening to the value of the crypto itself.
  - Mr. AC says:
    
    8 Jan8 January 13:04
    
    Indeed. A bit silly to worry about getting 1% in rewards when the whole thing (Bitcoin) grew 8x since March… Energy better spent thinking about if you want to jump into it at all or not at this point.
- Alan says:
  
  8 Jan8 January 15:20
  
  I don’t know if it works, but you could try buying it via Etoro.
MiddleEngland says:

8 Jan8 January 10:35

There has been lots of marketing regarding a law suit BA customers can join if they suffered from the BA data breach in 2018. Is it genuine and if so might BA kick you out of the Exec Club and cancel your Avios if you join in?
- Rob says:
  
  8 Jan8 January 10:51
  
  BA can do what it likes to you, although I would consider it unlikely.
  
  You may want to ask yourself, however, at a time when BA has just had to make 12,000 people redundant and is scrabbling around for cash, whether you want to do this. The lawyers take most of the money (35% + expenses) and you are making more redundancies more likely.
  - MiddleEngland says:
    
    8 Jan8 January 11:14
    
    I am, perhaps, motivated by Experian notifying me that my details have appeared on a list that is being sold online.
    - ChrisC says:
      
      8 Jan8 January 12:46
      
      Is it a BA related list though?
      
      The BA breach was in June 2018 so over 2 1/2 years ago. Data from breaches like this is sold and used PDQ after it has been harvested before people can cancel their credit cards.
      
      BTW I’ve just noticed that the password feature on my iphone is highlighting passwords I’m using on other apps and some have been part of an (unspecified) data breaches
      
      Guess I’ll be going through all of them this weekend to add some variety!
      - avstar says:
        
        8 Jan8 January 18:07
        
        everyone in this day and age should check their email adresses regularly on https://haveibeenpwned.com/
747_Brat says:

8 Jan8 January 10:48

Does anyone here uses Club Marriott? I got it free as a credit cark perk, and struggling to understand if there is any value in it. It is predominantly meant for Marriott hotels in the Asia Pacific region, so little use here in Europe.

Any thoughts/experiences are gratefully welcome! 🙂

https://myclubmarriott.com/marriott/
- Pangolin says:
  
  8 Jan8 January 12:34
  
  Are you based in APAC? It’s aimed more at residents than tourists, so you’re unlikely to find much value unless you’re a regular visitor. Still, if you got it for free there’s no loss.
  
  If you’re based in APAC you’d probably get more value from Accor Plus (assuming that hasn’t yet been canned).
  - Pangolin says:
    
    8 Jan8 January 12:42
    
    Ah, just reread your comment and see that you’re based in Europe.
    - 747_Brat says:
      
      8 Jan8 January 15:05
      
      I am an ex APAC resident, and still hold a few credit cards from that region. I don’t make frequent trips there, just once or twice an year really. But like you said, since it is free for me, I guess there is no harm is holding it to try it out next time. I just wanted to learn more about the scheme, and any experiences fellow HfP poster might have had with the program.
Simon D says:

8 Jan8 January 10:52

Morning. I suspect that many of us have bagged a free IHG night (40,000 point cap) as a result of last year’s Ambassador promotion. Given that it has to be used by the end of April i was wondering if anyone had found anywhere interesting to use it? I’m not sure that overseas is going to be particularly viable in the Mar-April timeframe and most of the UK cities I have been looking at have such low cash prices that the use of the voucher seems a bit wasteful.

I keep on thinking about a Mr & Mrs Smith redemption, but there really don’t seem to be that many available.
- Anna says:
  
  8 Jan8 January 11:44
  
  OH and I both renewed membership when this offer appeared. I triggered my free night back in October and have used it to book our first night in April at the IC Dubai Marina (and been upgraded to a suite!). IF the vaccination programme goes as hoped, there’s a chance leisure travel may resume to some degree by Easter. Otherwise we just have to hope there might be somewhere we can use it in the UK by then.
  OH hasn’t been able to complete the stay to trigger the free night as all our Kimpton and IC stays are currently cancelled. There was a bit of a discussion about this on HFP the other day and I did email IHG Ambassador but they said they haven’t made a decision on extending the offer yet.
  - Simon D says:
    
    8 Jan8 January 13:37
    
    Thank you. I am hoping that there is an extension as that would give me many more options. Well done on the upgrade; after cancelling so much last year I’m not sure I’m going to book abroad until there is a little more clarity!