The HfP chat thread – Friday 9th April

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• 1ATL says:

  9 Apr9 April 05:03

  I have a small amount of IB Plus Avios due to expire at midnight tonight (all earned via Accor stays when working for my previous employer). Combining to my BAEC seems problematic as I’m part of a household account which seems to throw a spanner in the works and I don’t have a Vueling/Aer Lingus account to transfer them to. Will purchasing a token amount of Avios on Iberia.com prevent my stash from expiring in a similar way they would if I purchased at BA.com? I haven’t got enough time to purchase anything. I’m happy enough to purchase 2k Avios (the smallest amount on Iberia) but won’t bother if that’s not going to save the points, I’ll just use them for a redemption and hope the flights don’t operate in order to get them refunded… I just don’t want to go through this process unnecessarily.

  • John says:

    9 Apr9 April 05:36

    Why can’t you open aer lingus, then send them to BA

    • 1ATL says:

      9 Apr9 April 06:22

      Unfortunately we are unable to complete your registration.

      It’s been happening for 3 weeks now and I don’t have the time or inclination to pursue fixing this. I just want to know if the IB points I already have will be preserved where they are if I add to the balance by purchasing some points.

      • Ed says:

        9 Apr9 April 10:38

        I had that problem, and asked them to investigate. It turned out that Aer Lingus will have a problem creating your AerClub account if you use an email address that was previously associated with an old Avios account. The solution is to sign up to AerClub using a different email address, and then get in touch with their customer service people to get them to change it to your preferred email address.

  • AJA says:

    9 Apr9 April 09:09

    I would redeem Avios for a flight There is a thread over on the IB board on FT that says buying Avios WONT work.

    Apparently changing your address to Spain allows you to use IB”s shopping portal to earn Avios but I guess you’ve left it too late to do thar.

• Dubious says:

  9 Apr9 April 05:37

  Not 100% sure but I thought buying counts as a transaction. Only ‘transferring’ is excluded.
  “In accordance with the Avios expiry rules, you must make at least one transaction with Avios every 36 months to avoid losing the Avios you collect. Transferring Avios (either issuing or receiving) is not considered a transaction.”

  • 1ATL says:

    9 Apr9 April 06:23

    Yes this was my thought process too. Works at BA . Just wanted to know if it’s the same policy at IB

    • AJA says:

      9 Apr9 April 10:14

      If you do buy Avios please can you report back if it successfully resets the clock?

• BuildBackBetter says:

  9 Apr9 April 06:54

  3 additional MR points for every £1 spent at Sainsbury’s – on the gold card.

  • BuildBackBetter says:

    9 Apr9 April 10:17

    Yes, looking forward to try it.
    Am not sure if its a problem, but if i use the link in the offer to find stores, it doesnt list the nearby sainsburys local.

  • Andrew says:

    9 Apr9 April 10:27

    If you’re a member of a Union or an employer scheme, there’s always 3% back at Sainsbury’s on your Spree Card.

  • Harry T says:

    9 Apr9 April 10:52

    Thanks, might be worth a look after Morrison’s gift cards all spent. Has anyone got it on a supp card? Only on main gold cards in our household.

    • BuildBackBetter says:

      9 Apr9 April 12:00

      Same here.

• mzb says:

  9 Apr9 April 06:54

  “Earn 3 additional Membership Rewards points for every £1 spent at Sainsbury’s” appeared this morning on my Amex Gold. Regular Sainsbury’s shopper so this is very welcome. Expires June 9th.

  • Patrick Cold says:

    9 Apr9 April 11:55

    This will keep me shopping at Sainsbury`s until June but not after that. Now that credit card and insurance sign-ups are exhausted I can`t justify shopping there for the paltry Nectar offers when better quality and value are easily found elsewhere.

    • Andy says:

      9 Apr9 April 17:47

      By buying stuff I usually buy, I got 1650 bonus Nectar points at Sainsbury’s yesterday. It not to be sniffed at

  • Andy says:

    9 Apr9 April 18:47

    Hasn’t appeared on my BA card

• YC says:

  9 Apr9 April 07:04

  Potential sweet spot in Kyoto (Bonvoy points) – hotel mitsui. Is this better than the RC?

  • Red Flyer says:

    9 Apr9 April 07:54

    No

    • meta says:

      9 Apr9 April 08:37

      Already discussed a while back here…

      • YC says:

        9 Apr9 April 09:00

        Thanks meta – picked up some 50k nights for 2021!

  • Rob says:

    9 Apr9 April 10:04

    Very unlikely, give the R-C is probably the best R-C in the world, but if there is a big price gap …

    • meta says:

      9 Apr9 April 10:38

      R-C doesn’t have a proper hot spring water onsen. As a guest you can book private onsen for a few hours with a huge lounge (at a cost, but not too extortionate). Shame the hotel does not yet participate in SNA, but neither does R-C. Japanese bloggers report some upgrade successes at Mitsui. I’m planning to split my stay next year between PH Kyoto, Mitsui and R-C. R-C is 65k points a night on some days.

      • Lee says:

        9 Apr9 April 10:56

        if stick with Marriott, RC and Suiran is good combination for Kyoto. Always upgraded to room with onsen at Suiran as platinum member.

        • meta says:

          9 Apr9 April 11:02

          Onsen in Surian is not an onsen as it does not have proper hot spring water, just regular tap water whereas Mitsui does. Mitsui also has a huge history. Surian is also far from everywhere. Really terrible location.

• Dips says:

  9 Apr9 April 07:04

  Question about getting the 25000 Avios with Barclays Avios Rewards for new customers, providing you use the “Current Account Switching Service”.

  I opened the new account this morning and the terms state.
  “To qualify for the 25,000 Avios joining bonus, you’ll need to join Barclays Avios Rewards – within 4 months of opening your first Barclays current account. Then, you’ll need to complete a full switch of your old current account to us, using the Current Account Switcher Service – within 3 months of joining Barclays Avios Rewards. You will then receive your joining bonus in the fourth month of Barclays Avios Rewards membership.”

  I don’t want to use the existing account I currently pay my salary into since I have had it for many years and its good for my credit history. Can old dormant account be used for the purpose of “switching” and getting the bonus. I understand when you use the switch service it will close your old account permanently and hence I want to use an account I hardly use and have not had for a long time.

  • Genghis says:

    9 Apr9 April 07:56

    Yes

  • Red Flyer says:

    9 Apr9 April 07:56

    Yes use that and pay your salary into Barclays and flip out to your ‘usual’ account same day. I did that and 25k has been pending in the app for a few weeks now and first 1500 avios and £12 deduction happened in past week.

    • Sam G says:

      9 Apr9 April 08:21

      Note warnings on here in previous days about moving the money straight out to an account in your name, Barclays seem sensitive to “gaming” .

• Hay says:

  9 Apr9 April 07:26

  I’m having problems with HFP RSS feed in that no images are displaying in my feed reader. I’ve raised it as an issue with Inoreader which is the feed reader I use and they have come back with following. ……….We are receiving “403Forbidden” when we try to fetch the images from that source. It looks like they are 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. Please note that we/our servers are located in Europe/Bulgaria.

  Rob/Rhys – Is there any way to fix this please? There was a similar issue a few weeks ago when the feed was not displaying at all and I think it was because Bulgaria was blocked and you managed to fix so maybe it just needs a further tweak to sort out the images. Thanks.

  • Rob says:

    9 Apr9 April 10:01

    The system now allows access from Bulgaria for headforpoints.com/feed, but only that URL.

    What might be causing it is that it has to pull the images from their URLs, which all look like https://hfp2022.headforpoints.blog/wp-content/uploads

    So …. what I will do is whitelist the path above. This should do it. Let me know.

    • Haydn says:

      9 Apr9 April 11:37

      Hi Rob – Thanks for the reply. I’ve just checked and the images are still missing.

      • Rob says:

        9 Apr9 April 12:27

        Not been done yet, that’s why 🙂

        EDIT: Now done

        • Haydn says:

          11 Apr11 April 14:06

          Hi Rob – Thanks for the update. Have tried this today (Sun) and yesterday and am unable to load the feed at all now (i.e. no text or images) which is position it was at month or so ago before you whitelisted Bulgaria.

• Ant says:

  9 Apr9 April 07:40

  For next year we are thinking of booking open jaw flights to Asia – out to Singapore and return HK or vice versa using the 241.
  Plan is to book when flights are released so will book the outbound than call the US number to add the return.

  As I am booking them seperate I was wondering what will be the charge for my HK flight – the taxes only of £33 or the BA fees? If it is just the tax than it would be worth it to come back from HK.

  • 1ATL says:

    9 Apr9 April 07:48

    If using a 241 (Amex) you pay the full charges as the voucher is only valid. Even if doing an open jaw. You could use your 241 on a one way to SIN and get the ultra low fees ex HKG on a separate one way back to LHR but you’d be paying full Avios for those. So you’ll need to weigh up which is most important – you can’t do both unfortunately.

  • 1ATL says:

    9 Apr9 April 07:48

    only valid ex UK I meant to say!

  • Genghis says:

    9 Apr9 April 07:54

    If you book the outbound applying your 241 and then book a separate return leg once released from HKG, you’ll pay the single taxes from HKG (you call up after you’ve booked and avios refunded but taxes not touched). You’ll have two PNRs = 2 sets of cancellation costs if cancelled?

    • 1ATL says:

      9 Apr9 April 08:15

      That’s assuming you have enough Avios balance to shell out for 2x Avios tickets on the return separate booking to reconcile later. If you didn’t and called up to add on the return journey would the agent reconcile the taxes to reflect an ex UK open jaw?

      • Genghis says:

        9 Apr9 April 08:26

        If you call, it gets booked as a return with return taxes.

        • 1ATL says:

          9 Apr9 April 16:21

          Interesting. So OP is financially better off making 2 X OW transactions for Avios online assuming they’ve got sufficient Avios to do so then manually getting the 241 applied to the return OW at a later date over the phone. I’m genuinely surprised the taxes and fees aren’t recalculated when doing to to reflect an ex UK round-trip.

        • Genghis says:

          9 Apr9 April 20:58

          Exactly. Though I’m not too sure whether “at a later date” is accurate. I’ve always called up in the morning after booking at midnight GMT (which is within the 24 hour cooling off period) to get it sorted out. Any later, I don’t know what would happen.

  • Paul says:

    9 Apr9 April 08:04

    There are some very good cash prices ex the EU to HKG and SIN and much more in SE Asia. Open jaw is widely available.

    The best fares have been with Swiss/LH and particularly their 241 deals. Qatar, BA but also AY and TK provide excellent value. I’d be wary of booking using Avios when the cash element on two tickets will be at or just below the cash price of a seat on other airlines.

    I currently have ex CDG for £1250 to DPS. If it comes off – 640 tier points per passenger and around 80,000 Avios in total. For an extra 100 Euro I could have added stops in HKG. Upgraded BA sectors to F using Avios.
    BA cancelled my final segment 3 days after booking so now sitting on things to see what happens. At worst a full cash refund, at best use the 300 mile rule and route ex LHR on CX in F. I can but dream!

    ITA Matrix and google flights is your friend.

    • Clive says:

      9 Apr9 April 18:01

      If coming back from HKG with the low taxes it works out extremely cost efficient.

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