The HfP chat thread – Friday 29th January

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• Hotelier says:

  29 Jan29 January 09:55

  Have flights to Japan for Easter this year in to Tokyo / out of Osaka with BA (2-4-1 Voucher) booked last march. They have been cancelled by BA, I would like to rebook for Easter next year however, this falls in April so flights won’t be available yet. Is it best way to take full refund and book once they start selling them or would BA allow to move dates to such a later date.

  • Aston100 says:

    29 Jan29 January 10:12

    When does your companion voucher expire?
    Me personally, at this time I’d rather take refunds for all my bookings and start my holiday planning again later with a clean slate once things look a bit clerarer.

    • Alex D says:

      29 Jan29 January 10:25

      You can only re-book a flight up to a year out from your original booking date, whether BA cancelled or not. So I believe you can only book up until March this year with it – I may be wrong but I’m sure that’s what I’ve read on previous comments.

      • Nick says:

        29 Jan29 January 11:36

        This is not correct – or at least wasn’t for me. I booked flights on 10th October using Avios for travel to Singapore this February. BA cancelled the flights in December and automatically booked be to a different date which did not suit. The email asked me to go to Manage my Booking on BA website and confirm or change the dates. I went to Manage my Booking and changed the dates to November 2021 which is 13 months after I made the original booking.

    • Hotelier says:

      29 Jan29 January 10:27

      Voucher expires July 2022. I’m with you on taking refunds for all bookings, I have done with 99% of them, thing with this one is that availability is always so limited. Osaka route has been cancelled by BA as far as I know so will need to do return to Tokyo. If they don’t let me move it will probably have to rebook once they load the dates.
      I knew this would happen and didn’t even rebook on the 50% sale knowing Easter was ”later” next year otherwise it would have been nice to move the booking one year forward. Anyways. still not confident will be able to do the trip in Spring 2022.

  • AJA says:

    29 Jan29 January 10:28

    You have a right to be rebooted onto later flights at your convenience however BA will say you can only do so 1 year from booking. You can try to force BA to ignore this limitation but you also have the problem that flights are not yet available. Either take a FTV which will now be valid until April 2023 or just get a refund and start again later in the year.

    • AJA says:

      29 Jan29 January 10:29

      Re-booked not rebooted!

    • Hotelier says:

      29 Jan29 January 10:46

      Thanks all for the advice. I think I will cancel and rebook once they start selling for the dates I want.

      • memesweeper says:

        29 Jan29 January 18:26

        I wouldn’t. Don’t do anything until the flights you want are available both directions, then call up and ask for those. Should be OK.

• RussellH says:

  29 Jan29 January 10:39

  Re e-Rewards…

  Got a nasty surprise at the weekend when I saw that the balance on both my a/cs was negative. -2594 and -2372. I assumed that they had rumbled me as having more than one a/c.

  However, the “official” explanation arrived by e-mail last night.

  “During a small window in late 2019 and early 2020, a selection of our members redeemed AVIOS points.
  Due to processing issues, this redemption was automatically refunded despite your order going through.
  We have now deducted this erroneous refund and corrected your e-Rewards account balance
  Your AVIOS points were sent to your AVIOS or British Airways account.”
  The e-mail goes on to say that they will “reset the balance to 0 as a gesture of good will”.

  This has to be largely rubbish. Since starting to read HfP all transfers to Avios have been to Iberia and I have no recollection of points being refunded. Further, the amounts deducted ought to be a multiple of 2000 (or possibly 1200), when I know that they have taken 5775 off one a/c.

  Anyone else had this?

  • Also says:

    29 Jan29 January 11:08

    I had a negative balance and couldn’t figure it out

  • AJA says:

    29 Jan29 January 11:14

    Just checked my account and all is normal. I don’t understand the adjustment to your accounts or the confusing email. I think that what they are saying is they transferred Avios but did not deduct the redemption in your e-rewards account but if so it should be a deduction of either 1200 , 2000 , 3500 or 6500 points. No idea how they arrive at a deduction of 5775 points. Not sure what advice to offer. I keep a spreadsheet of all surveys I complete as that way I can check if I receive the points for participating and can verify if the balance is correct. Do you have a record of redemption made in late 2019 early 2020?

    • RussellH says:

      29 Jan29 January 12:19

      Thanks, AJA. I was not really looking for advice, as e-Rewards are pretty much a law unto themselves. Though to be fair, CS has been better recently.
      Just as well as the technical side has got significantly worse. Several times I have had to complain about being “rejected” after finishing a survey, but they have manually credited the points.
      The 5775 point deduction was on an account that has been my main source of Accor points for a few years.
      I see that I did redeem 6000 points for Iberia Avios in the time frame the e-mail quoted (by calling up their list of redemptions “in the last 180 days” – so how does that go back to Dec 2019?).
      I can still log in to the account.
      They have now reset the a/c to zero points and are still sending out invitations to surveys. I shall let it all rest for some time before thinking of starting again.
      I also have a Club Opinions a/c (also for Accor) to which I can no longer log in, nor reset the password, but they still send me invitations to that too. If they invite me to a short survey I shall see if that still gets me some Accor points.

      • kitten says:

        29 Jan29 January 15:24

        They’re playing games and I wouldn’t let it rest even for a short period.

        Demand they state specifically what they took back, and why.

        Survey companies are a load of bandits and exceed even estate agents, car dealers and financial services salesmen in mendacity.

        • RussellH says:

          30 Jan30 January 14:06

          I am well aware that they are trying it on, but to some extent so am I, by having more than one a/c, contrary to Ts+Cs.
          As I mentioned, it appears that they took off 5775 (which could actually have been 6000 if I had lost track of 25 points, which is easily enough done) and I did redeem 6000 points for avios at the time they state, except it was Iberia Avios.
          If I do make a fuss, it will be just on this a/c.
          I did redeem 2000 points for Iberia Avios in their time period on the other a/c, but the number of points I have lost on this a/c is just not enough to make a fuss over, in the circumstances.

  • Lula says:

    29 Jan29 January 14:19

    So I had a large refund of e-rewards points at the start of last year, which I immediately cashed out into avios. A friend had the same. A few weeks later the refund was reversed, and I had a large negative balance for a long time. The same happened to my friend. Last night she received the same email you’ve received. But I didn’t and my account all looks normal. It’s odd because they reversed the erroneous refund at the time, so I have no idea why they are now fiddling about with it a year later.

    • kitten says:

      29 Jan29 January 15:27

      trying it on as I said above.

      They’re probably a bit short of cash so processed an automatic clawback based on at least 80% of clawback-ees not noticing or persisting with a protest.

      Be in the 20%.

• Jonathan says:

  29 Jan29 January 10:40

  Does anyone know if you can use bendy’s good back in time feature to make a refund transaction to a debit card ?

  I brought some stuff a while ago using a rewards credit card via bendy, decided I didn’t want it, now I’ve just had one the refunds, there was two in total from the same place, so there’s the potential here to bah some extra credit card rewards that’d usually be clawed back

  • Jonathan says:

    29 Jan29 January 10:42

    Sorry for the two spelling mistakes above 😑

  • Jon G says:

    29 Jan29 January 10:48

    No – unfortunately refunds will always go back to the same card – legally required for anti fraud

    If you use go back in time it will:
    1. refund your rewards card anyway
    2. charge your debit card
    3. refund your debit card if order returned

    In fact it makes the process significantly more complicated and your cash may be lost in bendy’s suspense accounts (I did something similar and my £4k refund was missing and was only reallocated to my cards after I spoke to them).

    • Lumma says:

      29 Jan29 January 11:29

      Never accidentally use Curve for a refund if you didn’t make the original purchase from it either. It’s a nightmare getting your money back

• Jeremy C says:

  29 Jan29 January 10:56

  What would be the best portfolio of credit cards to have if I’m going to spend over £20k in a year? Currently I only have the premium BA AMEX. I’m also invested in Avios more than other frequent flyer miles as I’m a BA silver card holder.

  Would a Virgin+ card make sense? So £10k on BA AMEX, £10k on Virgin, then any extra spending back on the BA AMEX?

  • Aston100 says:

    29 Jan29 January 11:04

    Amex PRG?
    10k MR for £15k spend

    • Freddy says:

      29 Jan29 January 11:14

      If you’ve paid out for the BAPP I’d go head first spending on that card only rather than spreading my spend across different schemes especially when the yearly spend is 20k

  • AJA says:

    29 Jan29 January 11:17

    I second the Amex Preferred Rewards Gold card as a second card as the MR scheme is much more flexible than the Virgin card. It allows you to redeem for BA or a number of airlines or hotels.

• flyforfun says:

  29 Jan29 January 11:00

  MBNA Smart Rewards cash back is now available on the Android App following the latest update this morning.

  Trouble is I mainly use the card for FX transaction when abroad and it’s 11 months since I last went OS, so no rewards are showing for me!! I’d switch some of my BAPP spend this way but I’m going to have trouble hitting the £10K threshold while we are in lockdown. Especially as they are now predicting we won’t be moving freely again until the Autumn.

• Anna says:

  29 Jan29 January 11:17

  Heads up for anyone still trying to get an award stay at The Langley – it’s currently 36k points per night on some week nights in June (I haven’t looked at any other dates), nearly as good as the old days! Cash prices are still high but the Quintessentially English package is a decent deal (includes $100 credit, breakfast, spa access and a bottle of champagne).

  • Tracy says:

    29 Jan29 January 15:35

    Thanks Anna, just booked for a Sunday night. Hoping to be allowed to travel in the motorhome by then and a luxury night with a shower is just the ticket 🙂 Imagine the look of horror as we pull up in a converted Matco tools van😂😂

• Peter says:

  29 Jan29 January 11:21

  Morning all
  Seeing all the comments about MF. Made me remember that for a 241 BA voucher I need to spend best part of £2k by Feb 25th 🙁
  While not looking to actually MF. I am looking at gift carding for actual purchases planned later in the year. We are having the kitchen done for example. I ‘may’ want to buy a new laptop 🙂 I actually fancy a Nintendo Switch, but how much I will play it ?? Might be an upgrade from the PSP though!
  Any other suggestions that I could be missing?
  Thanks

  • Anna says:

    29 Jan29 January 11:37

    Depending on who’s doing your kitchen, B & Q vouchers are always a good option (or if you’re generally into DIY). Most supermarkets sell them – you can’t use Amex at B & Q itself. Council tax is one of my favourites, if your council accepts Amex or Paypal (or Paypoint but I’ve never used it). I just paid £1k up front towards a bonus spend target on my gold MR card.

  • Sean says:

    29 Jan29 January 11:43

    you might want a fully flexible flight that you may or may not be able to use.

  • Dace says:

    29 Jan29 January 17:04

    I suggest you make some hotel bookings for the future. Of course, do it with free cancellation as who knows what is going to happen with Covid.

• pauline says:

  29 Jan29 January 11:23

  Can anyone help with an Iberia question please. I haven’t used my account for a while (probably 3 years!) although I think I had approx 20k miles in it from a booked and cancelled flight. I know my account number but can’t access it as the password I have entered is incorrect. I have changed my e-mail so the reset your password link to e-mail doesn’t work. I have tried phoning but gave up after an hour and no response to an e-mail. Does anyone know the best method of contact or am I wasting my time as the avios will have expired and I should just create another account?

  • Lumma says:

    29 Jan29 January 11:33

    Have you tried using a different browser to reset the password? IIRC the Iberia website doesn’t like Google Chrome. I use Firefox to access it and it works* fine

    *as fine as the terrible Iberia site can work

    • Lumma says:

      29 Jan29 January 11:34

      If it’s over 3 years since you had any activity you will have lost the Avios however

  • marcw says:

    29 Jan29 January 11:34

    Have you tried using the App?

    • pauline says:

      29 Jan29 January 11:48

      It still sends an e-mail to my old e-mail address which is disabled so that unfortunately doesn’t work

  • Jon says:

    29 Jan29 January 20:25

    Does this help? http://help.iberia.com/frequently_asked_question/what-happens-if-i-forget-my-iberia-plus-number-or-don-t-have-my-pin/

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