The HfP chat thread – Thursday 18th March

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

• John says:

  18 Mar18 March 05:21

  Finally got my curve failed transactions which posted to card refunded after 11 days.

  • Ben says:

    18 Mar18 March 09:21

    Out of interest did you have to call? Or was it an automatic thing?

    • will says:

      18 Mar18 March 09:31

      Had same, auto for me.

• MarkS says:

  18 Mar18 March 05:29

  Apologies I did ask this a couple of days ago but didn’t get chance to check back before the thread disappeared. Quickest and cheapest way to generate 10k of spending?

  • AW says:

    18 Mar18 March 05:43

    https://hfp2022.headforpoints.blog/2021/03/16/the-hfp-chat-thread-tuesday-16th-march/comment-page-1/#comments

    Replies here.

  • Ian M says:

    18 Mar18 March 06:38

    Fully refundable flight or hotel booking

  • Jonathan says:

    18 Mar18 March 06:39

    Legitimately: pay off chunks of council tax at Pay Point, put your energy accounts in credit if they take Amex, buy gift cards you know you will use eg. Supermarket or Amazon.

    Bending rules: buy an expensive, refundable air fare eg. Business to LA.

    Depends how much you value your relationship with Amex?

    • SwissJim says:

      18 Mar18 March 07:03

      Can someone educate me please. I’ve seen a lot on Pay Point recently. But when I google it says Amex not taken, or that cash and debit cards taken. Is it just trial and error to see where Amex accepted? And is it a machine – or do you deal with the person behind the counter?

      • Jonathan says:

        18 Mar18 March 07:10

        Find a co-op that offers Pay Point & also takes Amex. There’s often a sticker for both on the door.

        You give the staff member at till/kiosk your barcode to scan then pay using a card terminal as you would for any other purchase.

        Don’t ask, just put your Amex in & see if it works. If not just use a different card.

        • TripRep says:

          18 Mar18 March 07:48

          I used to do this pre pandemic. These days I’m hardly ever in a shop with getting food deliveries.

        • Lady London says:

          18 Mar18 March 11:57

          Yes don’t wave it around just put it in.

          Many shops and restaurants say they don’t take Amex but they do (well, their machines do 🙂 )

  • Andrew says:

    18 Mar18 March 07:48

    If you ask a question and people take time to respond, you should make the effort to check the page throughout the day for the responses.

    • 1ATL says:

      18 Mar18 March 08:33

      +1 and for exactly this reason is why I’m not going to bother responding for a second time.

  • Peter K says:

    18 Mar18 March 08:36

    There is a link in the blurb above from Rob to get a list of old comments threads. Why not have a look there for the original answers to your original question? 🙂

  • MarkS says:

    18 Mar18 March 19:34

    Thanks everyone, and thanks for pointing out the link to the old thread! My bad. Been a busy week

• Andrew Mc says:

  18 Mar18 March 06:00

  Answers were forthcoming. Instructions for pulling up old chat threads are given in the text above these comments.

  • Andrew Mc says:

    18 Mar18 March 06:37

    Or simply change date in URL

• Kevin says:

  18 Mar18 March 06:43

  The last Xmas return biz flight LHR -KUL booked via BA avios sales has been moved to MAS on this summer due to BA stop flying to KUL.

  However got an email from BA this morning that the sept inbound flight has been cancelled and rescheduled a day early. While I checked MAS website and noted that MAS is still show flying on the day I was booked, in fact that flight seems to have BA share code but just shown as 3x higher than normal price. While the day BA is trying to rescheduled now is shown as being normal price (no BA share code).

  It sounds like BA/MAS is trying to move the existing passenger (booked with cheaper fare) to a cheaper fare flight but let others to book for an increased / expensive new fare (due to demand/new arrangement with BA). In this case what right do I have? TIA.

  • Jonathan says:

    18 Mar18 March 06:52

    I don’t think BA, for all the games they play, move people off flights months in advance just so they can sell the seat to someone else for more money.

    If the MAS flight you want is only showing expensive, flexible fare buckets then this is more likely to mean that flight is about to get cancelled itself.

    Give it a week or two & see what happens before you start wasting hours on hold to BA.

    You are entitled to fly on the original dates if that flight still goes ahead though.

    • Kevin says:

      18 Mar18 March 08:48

      Interesting, never aware that they push up the price merely for cancellation. Will give a week or 2 to see what is happening.

      • Jonathan says:

        18 Mar18 March 09:51

        They’ll always take a full fare booking even when they know it will be cancelled as the margin is so high even if they have to rebook you on another carrier.

        A cheap ticket costs them money if they end up having to pay out for duty of care/reroute costs so they will stop selling them as soon as they think there’s a high chance the flight will be cancelled.

        If they’ve moved you already I suspect they’ve already decided that flight is not going to happen.

      • Lady London says:

        18 Mar18 March 12:07

        Easyjet appears to do this too.

  • Lady London says:

    18 Mar18 March 12:05

    @Kevin I am sure you are correct about what BA is doing here.

    If an airline offloads you from a flight but it’s still running then it will come to you looking like a flight cancellation. You have checked and identified what’s going on. BA might be following some changes actually made by MAS but not your problem.

    Do what I did when British Midland tried this on me. Call them and insist on being on your original flight as booked. Share with them what you’ve found out if they get funny about it.

    Please let us know the results of this conversation. Btw : even if you get it fixed keep an eye on the booking as they might try it again.

    • Lady London says:

      18 Mar18 March 12:13

      @Jonathan you could also be right it will be interesting to see what happens with this one.

      Personally I wouldn’t want to fly MS particularly not even to KL but rather than agreeing to change day if the flight is gone I might see if QR is flying on that day as I like QR J despite the mess of DOH connection.

      BA might think about CX via HKG buy for that timing perhaps HKG and CX might not be as reliable as QR and DOH.

      • Aston100 says:

        18 Mar18 March 12:24

        What is it that puts you off MH? their direct nonstop flights seem to be at reasonable hours of the day (though they’ve cancelled the overnight red eye for now) and their J and F products look fine to me.

        • Lady London says:

          18 Mar18 March 12:42

          IMV : financially unreliable. so all sorts of messing around might occur. Even if they are propped up by locsl govt.

          Also 2 crashes in one year with massive loss of life. I know one of them was just bad luck. But IME having worked in a highly safety-regulated industry even though any provider meets the standard people in the industry know who is safer and it comes out with greater susceptibility to apparently random incidents.

          Same as Ethiopian. Apparently a lovely airline. But news coverage of burning plane and another one lost not too far apart has stayed with me.

          Sometimes superstition and irrational fear are just reflecting things that as are there but not connected in the conscious mind yet.

• Safety Card says:

  18 Mar18 March 06:50

  Would anyone care to offer me any advice on this. Will try keep it short.

  Virgin UC return booked in the sale. Meant to fly next week. Outbound has been cancelled twice and now moved to a day earlier. Return has been cancelled and moved back by two days.

  I believe my rights under EC261 article I are
  Full refund
  Next available flight
  Later flight at my choosing.

  Virgin are offering a refund however I want to move the flight to the autumn where it’s more likely to happen. To do this they’re insisting I pay a fare difference which is £1.8k more than the original booking.

  Spoken to various people at Virgin with no luck. No one will explain to me why I can’t move it for free, or why the EC rules don’t apply, or why they won’t do what they say on their website (https://flywith.virginatlantic.com/us/en/at-the-airport/rebooking-after-flight-disruptions/flight-disruption-policy.html)

  I’m at a loss as to what to do. I just want to take the flight at a later comparable date.

  • Jon G says:

    18 Mar18 March 09:44

    Tricky as the flight is next week while both countries are still under covid restrictions. They could argue that the change is due to extraordinary circumstances and would not be covered under EC261. If you can get them to answer why the flight was cancelled, and only if it was an operational change (no staff, consolidating seats) then maybe you have a case, but even so the probability of actually winning any form of arbitration is low.

    • Safety Card says:

      18 Mar18 March 10:17

      Thanks Jon. I’ve tried a few times to find out why the flight was cancelled but am never given an official reason. Three cancellations make me think without a doubt at least one of them is a consolidating of seats. One was cancelled months out, moving from VS7 (cancelled) to VS23 on the same day.

    • Lady London says:

      18 Mar18 March 12:26

      NO fare diff is payable and no charge to move, ever, if airline cancelled your flight. Doesn’t matter if replacement flight costs £5,000. EU261.

      @Jon G extraordinary circumstances is only relevant to the compensation part of Eu261. Currently there’s a general view that Covid is a prevailing extraordinary circumstance. So for cancelling a longhaul the normal compensation, which would be around 600 euros, is not applicable.

      The duty of care part is separate to compensation part. It must be provided by airline regardless of exceptional circumstances and includes rerouting if customer chooses, refund if customer chooses, and makes the airline responsible for any extra accommodation, meals, transport to and from any hotel needed due to the cancellation/reroute.

      • Lady London says:

        18 Mar18 March 12:28

        So @SafetyCard you have a right to reroute or refund at your choice *regardless* of the reason for cancellation. Fact.

        • Safety Card says:

          18 Mar18 March 14:40

          Exactly as I thought. Yet they are adamant that they don’t have to do that. So currently stuck and getting legal advice.

        • Lady London says:

          19 Mar19 March 23:40

          s75 on credit card if UK one paid on for cost of replacement flight. otherwise you will have to mcol it do it now you dont have to wait till flight. if hard to pay twice meanwhile get quality agent like Trailfinders or friend in airline or t/a to hold a ticket in airline GDS for you meanwhile ticketable at last minute you will pay agent fee add that to cost claim in mcol. Will be vastly expensive fare type thata what you claim.If airline sees sense once they receive mcol claim you lost nothing just cancel it aiekine has to oay travel agt fee and court fee abd you claim 8oc pro rata statutiry intereat on top of all…

          Thinking airline may know your wanted flight not be operating either.

• Jonathan says:

  18 Mar18 March 06:56

  nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2102214?query=TOC

  AZ vaccine essentially useless against South African variant.

  Shows that we will still need some restrictions on travel until they can roll out new versions of the vaccines to deal with SA +/- Brazil mutations.

  • Tracey says:

    18 Mar18 March 07:57

    Very small study, no cases of hospitalisation in the control or vaccinated group. I wouldn’t take that study as indicative of anything other than further studies are needed.

  • Paul says:

    18 Mar18 March 08:03

    Definitely more research required, but let’s not panic yet…
    “While it looked into whether the vaccine prevents mild and moderate disease in a group of mostly young people, it did not look at whether the vaccine prevents severe disease, hospitalisation and deaths.”
    So you may still get the disease, but less severely, or not, but that of course was not important enough for the article, or even the study?

  • AndyW says:

    18 Mar18 March 08:19

    This info came out a month ago, though only just published. No doubt still a lot of unknowns, certainly wouldn’t be counting on getting to SA anytime in the near future.

    • Yuff says:

      18 Mar18 March 09:07

      Seems to me it prevented severe illness in all cases and the dosage interval is now known to reduce efficacy of the vaccine……….

      • Yuff says:

        18 Mar18 March 09:07

        Dosage interval used in the trial I should add

      • will says:

        18 Mar18 March 09:38

        How did you conclude that it prevented serious illness in all cases?
        My reading of it is that neither the placebo or vaccinated group had cases of severe illness …

        “there were no cases of severe disease or hospitalization in either group”

        So the data does not allow any conclusions to be drawn on severe cases.

        It absolutely highlights a need for a more thorough analysis as the only outcomes possible to compare were not favourable.

  • marcw says:

    18 Mar18 March 09:50

    It’s a badly designed experiment / clinical trial. Now, was it on purpose or not. It’s strange, and to me very suspicious, why they excluded the elderly group from the experiment, when we know the elderly are the key/target population. Why?

    • Jonathan says:

      18 Mar18 March 10:23

      It’s not a badly designed trial. It’s analysis of data from the original AZ trial’s South Africa cohort. It’s fairly standard to start a trial with healthy under 65’s as they did here. Older cohorts were added to the AZ trial but there isn’t data available on variants yet.

      It’s a huge leap of faith to say that it would somehow show efficacy in older patients with comorbidities when it’s shown no efficacy in vitro or in vivo in younger cohorts.

      The sample size is relatively small so 95% confidence intervals are wide but there’s no way this data can’t be interpreted in any other way except we need to remain very cautious about this variant taking hold in the U.K.

      I’m in favour of the current road map but when it comes to overseas travel we’re going to have to be careful to limit it to other countries with low prevalence & strong restrictions on travel from Brazil/ Southern Africa.

      We’re finally in a position where our levels of travel & virus prevalence allow us to detect & contact trace new strains effectively. We really can’t throw that away.

      • Lady London says:

        18 Mar18 March 12:52

        Scary but reinforcing @BJ’s point made yesterday that caution for a bit longer would make sense in case we can avoid wasting all the sacrifices made so far.

        If it’s not the SA variant it will be something else but we don’t even know how long vaccjnes are effective yet.

  • Gareth says:

    18 Mar18 March 20:23

    AZ in real life shown to work on Brazilian variant in cutting hospitalization , data from people vaccinated in Brazil. As Brazilian variant is similar to S African expect it work on S.A.

• Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:

  18 Mar18 March 06:58

  Earn 2,000 Hilton points in exchange for a $5 ‘donation’

  https://www.lyft.com/blog/posts/vaccine-access-chase-hilton-delta

  Probably not worth signing up for Lyft if you don’t already have an account (and will travel to the US) as you’d presumably miss out on new customer discounts.

• KS says:

  18 Mar18 March 07:52

  Datapoint: Received Hyatt free night award on completion of 10 nights a day after checkout. Validity till September 2021.

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