The HfP chat thread – Tuesday 9th March

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

• Aston100 says:

  9 Mar9 March 09:49

  Does anyone know why Google Flights search is well under a year in advance?
  I prefer this to Skyscanner, but Skyscanner and others seem to go a full year (assuming airlines are selling tickets that far out).

  • Doug M says:

    9 Mar9 March 10:38

    Lots of airlines do +330 days, although I’m unsure what LCC like Ryanair do. BA quite unusual I think in +355 days.

    • Super Secret Stuff says:

      9 Mar9 March 11:35

      Easyjet releases in blocks, like “Winter 2021” or “Easter 2022”

• HF says:

  9 Mar9 March 09:54

  Reference the post yesterday “Phil says: IS the HFP RSS feed broken? It’s reporting issues in my feed and the last reported post is the BA/SITA post yesterday.”

  Did anyone mange to solve this as I’m having problems too – have tried in 2 different feed readers and both report errors. Error message is “A feed could not be found at https://hfp2022.headforpoints.blog/feed/. This does not appear to be a valid RSS or Atom feed.”

  Have also put the feed into a rss checker which gives the following message “XML document with no namespace; cannot determine any schema to use for validation.”

  Hope somebody more technical than me might be able to help in getting this working.

  Thanks

  • Rhys says:

    9 Mar9 March 09:58

    W3 validator suggests it is valid although it does highlight a tag issue….but it should still be valid. Very odd

    • Phil says:

      9 Mar9 March 10:04

      It is still showing as broken for me.

  • Rob says:

    9 Mar9 March 10:21

    The emails work off the feed, however, and they are fine ….

    • BlueHorizonUK says:

      9 Mar9 March 11:39

      I heard back from my feed provider:

      It looks like the provided feed is “behind” Cloudflare captcha protection which is causing this. Please note that similar protection doesn’t make sense for RSS feeds since the polling servers are not browsers. It could be geo-restriction or something similar.

      As a workaround, to bypass that protection, you can try using the ”FeedBurner” (free google service for generating RSS feeds). I had to do this to get it working again.

      • Rob says:

        9 Mar9 March 12:09

        OK, this is what it might be.

        In recent weeks we have restricted HfP access from countries where have seen multiple attempts to hack the site – Russia, China, Bulgaria and Lithuania. Visitors from these countries must now complete a Captcha. 99% of visitors do not, which is a sign of how much fake traffic we are getting from there.

        Your feed is being pulled from one of these countries, probably Bulgaria if it only happened in the last day or so. We can fix this for you.

        • HF says:

          9 Mar9 March 12:27

          Ok thanks for feedback from everyone. Rob this makes sense now as I use a feedreader called Inoreader and they are based in Bulgaria. If this can be fixed that would be great thank you.

        • Rob says:

          9 Mar9 March 13:07

          OK, should be fixed.

        • BlueHorizonUK says:

          9 Mar9 March 13:15

          Thank you. Yes I too was using Inoreader and they are based in Bulgaria.

        • HF says:

          9 Mar9 March 13:51

          Thanks Rob – all working for me now.

        • Phil says:

          10 Mar10 March 16:30

          Thanks for confirming. I also use Inoreader like BlueHorizon. It is now working too.

• TJ says:

  9 Mar9 March 10:00

  Qantas Tip: If you need a few points to keep your existing stash of Qantas FF points from expiring, you can get 900 points for free just by signing up to the Quandoo restaurant site, linking your Qantas FF number and then downloading/signing-in to the Quandoo app. Full details from the Qantas partners page.

  It is supposed to take 14days for the points to materialise, but I received them in a couple of days.

  • The real John says:

    9 Mar9 March 10:07

    I joined the Red Planet research and click a few buttons to screen out of the surveys which gets me 15 points each time.

    • Alan says:

      9 Mar9 March 23:16

      @The real John – unfortunately Red Planet research seems to not be taking new registrations for now 🙁

  • Alan says:

    9 Mar9 March 23:10

    Nice, thanks

• JSlv says:

  9 Mar9 March 10:01

  Random one.
  Experian offers to boost your credit score by linking your bank account and other financial commitments. That scares the hell out of me. What are your views?

  • The real John says:

    9 Mar9 March 10:08

    Experian does not lend money so its score is basically a random number.

    • Neil Donoghue says:

      9 Mar9 March 11:45

      +1 – It is excellent for a quick 15 points

  • Sandgrounder says:

    9 Mar9 March 10:09

    Don’t bother with paid services from Experian. If you want a good ‘credit score’ borrow money and always pay it back. Put as much spend on credit cards and you can and pay in full every month. Don’t apply for too many products in a short space of time. These ‘scores’ don’t really exist, all lenders will look at your history and make their own decisions.

    • Andrew says:

      9 Mar9 March 10:12

      I heard from a reliable source the other day that lenders now look at your Nectar / Clubcard / etc spend to have a snoop at your lifestyle, before considering you for a mortgage.

      I am not sure if that’s true (or even legal) or not.

      • Rob says:

        9 Mar9 March 10:19

        Sainsbury’s and Tesco might, others won’t have access to that.

        • Andrew says:

          9 Mar9 March 10:35

          Good. If every T, D & H had access, then they can forget “loyalty”.

          Thank you Rob.

      • The real John says:

        9 Mar9 March 15:44

        When you apply for a Tesco product you have the option to give them an existing clubcard number (if not, you would get a separate account with a new credit card). They do say that by giving them the number you are allowing them to use your data and it may get you a better deal.

    • Benilyn says:

      9 Mar9 March 10:19

      Is there any free / cheap services that notify you on a credit check? I’ve been hit by fraud and so would rather know sooner rather than later on these things.

      • Steve says:

        9 Mar9 March 11:44

        Credit Karma (free) seem to notify on credit check. At least they have been sending me emails with “were you applying for something” or “there’s something new in your report”. I doubt it is instant though.

      • Sandra says:

        9 Mar9 March 12:19

        Martin Lewis’ MSE site has a check free credit report you can sign up for.

      • BuildBackBetter says:

        9 Mar9 March 14:52

        Totally money is free, but there’s no alert.

    • Lady London says:

      9 Mar9 March 14:01

      +1 IIRC I had to raise a GDPR issue with them and got the impression they couldn’t care less.

      Remember your data is their product.

  • 747_Brat says:

    9 Mar9 March 10:16

    If you were scared thinking about just the “Boost” feature, you should read this:

    https://www.which.co.uk/news/2021/03/from-property-to-pets-what-data-does-experian-collect-about-you/

• meta says:

  9 Mar9 March 10:07

  It seems BAEC portion of the site is down as is the app. Anyone else having issues?

  • The real John says:

    9 Mar9 March 10:08

    Yes but see my comment on the new article

  • Paasan69 says:

    9 Mar9 March 10:09

    Having the same issue. “Sorry. We regret to advise that this section of the site is temporarily unavailable.”

    • Alex says:

      9 Mar9 March 10:21

      Been down most of the morning I believe, either due to announcement or another issue, I checked around 8am and wasn’t working properly then either

• Nigel Simon says:

  9 Mar9 March 10:14

  Just had my BA First flight from LHR to Mumbai on 7th October downgraded to Club. Reason is that BA have taken First off a large number of flights including all of India as well as apparently Vancouver, Los Angeles and one for the SFO flights. Coming back from Hong Kong in November; flight still has First for the moment!

  • Alex says:

    9 Mar9 March 10:22

    It sucks but I’d keep an eye on it, could change back, could also change to CS instead! It could also be to your benefit if you fly it and claim after for a downgrade you can get a nice return in comp, in cash!

    • Nigel says:

      9 Mar9 March 10:55

      Thanks Alex
      It was an Avios 241 booking so compensation isn’t on the cards! I just wondered whether it was an equipment issue or signs of a longer term policy of BA making (another) massive reduction in First routes. CS would be great. Haven’t tried it yet!

      • Anna says:

        9 Mar9 March 12:02

        You’re entitled to something like 2 x 75% of the avios cost of the downgraded sector, if you fly, so don’t let BA fob you off. LL and TripRep are the experts on this!

        • Nigel says:

          9 Mar9 March 14:36

          Thanks for your brilliant advice!

      • AJA says:

        9 Mar9 March 12:13

        As Anna says if you do fly in Club you will be entitled to downgrade compensation in Avios. It applies to both passengers even though you only paid for one seat.

        Be on the lookout for BA automatically refunding you the difference between First and Club although if they do you can still claim for the 75% downgrade compensation and offset the amount BA automatically refunds against the 75%.

        It could work out nicely for you especially if you end up flying CS as well.

        • Lady London says:

          9 Mar9 March 14:15

          +1
          same rights as a paid ticket for each ticket even on a 241.

          75% of cost of yr First ticket back after you’ve flown it. For every seat in full even the +1 based on full rate for the first seat.

          So if avios booking then 75% back of (avios x 1.6p) per seat. plus per seat, 75% of BA’s so-called ‘taxes’ back except for the small portion that is really departure tax or airport fees.

          Just make sure to keep it clear in any contact that your downgrade is involuntary. do *not* accept any refund even partial. if need be i’d be quite frank that I intend to claim. keep your boarding passes as you can only claim after the flight but then it’s open and shut slam dunk under EU261.

          Don’t feel sorry for BA as regardless of covid they had made a commercial decision to pull out of First on a lot of routes and this was a commercial decision. plus they do not have clean hands on provision of EU261 rights. So when you can get them on an open & shut entitlement, go for it.

        • Nigel says:

          9 Mar9 March 14:37

          Thanks for your help. Appreciated.

• AMP says:

  9 Mar9 March 10:21

  Just seeking views – no definite answer. Is it save to book a half term holiday to Dubai? Sat 29/5 – 4/6? ‘Save’ means no quarantine required on return. Dubai is 80% vaccinated and the UK will be similar by then and the travel ban is pencilled in to be lifted 17 May. Views?

  • Rob says:

    9 Mar9 March 10:23

    This isn’t why Dubai is on the red list. It is on the red list because it is a major transit hub and so lots of people from literally all corners of the world are milling around in the airport.

    Dubai had already vaccinated everyone at risk at the point it was put on the red list.

    Pretty hot in June too … October to Easter is the sweet spot.

    • TGLoyalty says:

      9 Mar9 March 10:25

      But Qatar isn’t on the list …

      • Rob says:

        9 Mar9 March 10:48

        There is also political points-scoring after all the publicity of influencers hanging out in Dubai over Christmas 🙂

        • TGLoyalty says:

          9 Mar9 March 11:04

          Exactly. It’s political which makes mockery of the lists purpose.

        • Lady London says:

          9 Mar9 March 14:18

          so…. which influencer(s) was that hanging about in Dubai over Christmas, Rob ? 🙂

    • Yuff says:

      9 Mar9 March 10:33

      I have booked Dubai fir May half term, but also looking at a back up just in case.
      I had booked Easter but that’s a no go

• cha says:

  9 Mar9 March 10:37

  Anyone else having issues with BA website?

  • Rhys says:

    9 Mar9 March 10:38

    Yes, it’s down

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