The HfP chat thread – Wednesday 7th July

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• Toby says:

  7 Jul7 July 08:59

  Just got a BA cancellation LHR-Marseille for the end of August. I’m a little surprised, I was hoping end of August to France would be fairly safe…this is now our eighth cancellation! Not sure when we’ll be able to leave this island!

  • Anna says:

    7 Jul7 July 09:11

    Thanks Toby, hopefully that means my NCE flight will also be cancelled for August bank holiday weekend as my so would have to quarantine if we did go.
    There’s possibly not enough passenger interest for these flights to run given the ever-changing rules.

    • Toby says:

      7 Jul7 July 10:09

      Yes I think that’s right Anna. Looks like they’ve dropped from two a day to one a day.

      Fingers crossed for your NCE cancellation!

    • Lady London says:

      7 Jul7 July 13:27

      Believe it or not I’m actually feeling sorry for British Airways now. They really needed summer to start their catchup

    • Jonty says:

      7 Jul7 July 13:43

      I’m in the same boat, hoping BA will blink first

• Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:

  7 Jul7 July 09:00

  Does signing up for the new Curve rewards stop you earning the original Curve Rewards (https://www.curve.com/reward-retailers/)?

  • Phil W says:

    7 Jul7 July 09:06

    Not in my case. However, I am yet to find a single new Curve reward of any use that I wished to avail myself of.

    • Harrier25 says:

      7 Jul7 July 10:48

      Yes I agree @Phil W, yhe Curve Rewards are of very poor quality.

  • Genghis says:

    7 Jul7 July 09:54

    Yes, in my case. When signed up to Metal and got the new rewards (Amazon, Tesco, Lidl etc at 1%) I stopped earning the original rewards on my legacy black (Boots, B&Q at 3%).

    • TGLoyalty says:

      7 Jul7 July 10:10

      Correct re metal and old legacy black rewards but the new “rewards” which is essentially ca$h back doesn’t affect either of those programmes.

      I continue to get money back from the 6 retailers I chose and the new rewards.

  • the_real_a says:

    7 Jul7 July 11:24

    I have the same rewards as in the MBNA article (10% Sainsburys, Pret etc). I believe they are all sharing the same affiliate network.

  • Peter K says:

    7 Jul7 July 14:54

    I lost the c@shb@ck on my metal card when I joined curve rewards. I make enough from our elsewhere not to complain about it however…

• Craig says:

  7 Jul7 July 09:17

  It would appear the Royal Caribbean/Eurofins testing regime isn’t working too well. Test taken 48 hours ago and boarding in 4 hours but still no result. Lots of emails from RCI saying not to worry and come anyway so they must be confident. Sat in our room Holiday Inn looking at the ship feeling somewhat anxious and constantly checking email. Fingers crossed.

  • Jody says:

    7 Jul7 July 11:24

    Exactly the same thing happened with Princess cruises this week Craig. They were also using Eurofins. Princess had to put stuff up on there FB page etc telling passengers to still come, and that there would be PCR testing at the port.

    I hope you have a wonderful cruise, look forward to hearing about it when you get back. Haven’t cruised RC but love the look of the ship you’re going on.

    • Craig says:

      7 Jul7 July 11:28

      Thanks Jody.

• Reney says:

  7 Jul7 July 09:35

  I asked yesterday but no response. Anyone having problems with paying Virgin using Curve? I have not had a payment go through for the last few days.

  • Benilyn says:

    7 Jul7 July 11:13

    paid on monday no issues, but did not work yesterday

  • VerdantBacon says:

    7 Jul7 July 11:51

    Worked on Friday for me, haven’t tried since. What card are you using behind Curve?

    • Reney says:

      7 Jul7 July 12:01

      tried creation and bezos neither is working. I think it has something to do the approval part of the process, where they either send you a sms or make you click confirm in app.

      • VerdantBacon says:

        7 Jul7 July 14:31

        I’ve just tried with Creation and it was stuck on loading until it logged me out of the app, tried three times and same result, so does appear to be an issue

• Stephan says:

  7 Jul7 July 09:49

  Anyone having issues with the rewardflightfinder.com? I have been looking at London Geneva flights and it just keeps showing nothing for the year but on the ba website I can see lots of availability from August.

  • MW says:

    7 Jul7 July 09:51

    They’ve not been accurate for a while. Consider using seatspy

    • Stephan says:

      7 Jul7 July 09:58

      Thanks haven’t been flying for while. I’ll give it go

  • Anna says:

    7 Jul7 July 09:51

    RFF has been unreliable for ages, try SeatSpy.

    • Stephan says:

      7 Jul7 July 09:58

      Thanks

    • Rhys says:

      7 Jul7 July 10:17

      We have it on very good authority that SeatSpy data is accurate 🙂 RFF is not.

      • Anna says:

        7 Jul7 July 10:44

        I haven’t got round to cancelling my RFF subscription as they keep giving it me free because it’s not accurate, but the email notifications are much more accurate than the ordinary searches for some reason!

        • MW says:

          7 Jul7 July 11:39

          What do you think about ExpertFlyer alerts?

          I tend to have an active subscription while monitoring for seat and aircraft changes prior to a reward flight but their award seat availability seems to be hit and miss and I often get a notification from SeatSpy before EF.

• Dips says:

  7 Jul7 July 09:53

  Looking for recommendations in Reading or surrounding areas recommended hotels where I can use a stash of IHG or Bonvoy points.
  Anyone been to the Reading Voco?
  Does the Crowne Plaza Reading do anything special for Spire Elite?
  We are 2 adults and a 3 year old!

  • Karl says:

    7 Jul7 July 10:23

    Voco is a perfectly pleasant, newish generic 4-star hotel. Has a pool but pretty small. Attached to the football stadium which has a bit of novelty value. Well out of town near the motorway with the only thing walkable being a retail park.

    I like the CP. Great location on the river with a nice path to walk along. Very close to central Reading and Caversham. Don’t recall getting much for IGH Plat so not sure if a decent Spire option.

    • David S says:

      7 Jul7 July 20:56

      Crowne Plaza is a rebranded Holiday Inn just off A329 . Is there one is central Reading as well ? If so, that’s an old rebranded Holiday Inn as well. I think the Voco is a rebranded Millenium hotel

  • BP says:

    7 Jul7 July 11:11

    Crowne Plaza did used to give club access to Spire members pre-covid. I’ve not stayed since 2019 but used to stay here a lot. I’ve probably done close to 100 nights in this hotel over the years. The club is nothing to get excited about.

    The rooms were getting a little tired when I last stayed but the common areas were nicely refurbished. Good location as Karl has said.

  • Matt says:

    7 Jul7 July 12:35

    Can pretty much back up Karl and BP. The CP lounge was closed when I stayed last summer so worth contacting them if it’s a deal breaker.
    Good location and friendly staff.

  • Jonty says:

    7 Jul7 July 13:47

    Voco has some very big rooms for up to 6, HI Reading was very welcoming to my kids, with drinks, pirate space whatever activity packs etc. Seemed like the longest hotel corridor walk ever from reception to our room

• Reeferman says:

  7 Jul7 July 09:53

  I have an Amex 2-4-1 outbound PE, return Club. If outbound Club seats appear (courtesy of Seatspy) and I manage to nab them for full AVIOS, am I right in thinking I can then phone BA and get them to adjust the booking and incorporate the Club seats as part of the 2-4-1? And refund the PE 2-4-1 portion, of course. Appreciate there will probably be a £35pp fee. Thanks

  • MattB says:

    7 Jul7 July 10:19

    No you would need to ring up they can’t swap seats from one booking to another

  • Sam G says:

    7 Jul7 July 10:28

    You need to call and do a change on your existing booking, shouldn’t be a change fee as they are currently waived under book with confidence

  • Reeferman says:

    7 Jul7 July 11:15

    Many thanks

  • MW says:

    7 Jul7 July 11:40

    Also worth noting that there is currently no change fee due to “book with confidence”.

• Moktar says:

  7 Jul7 July 10:06

  Anyone got any tips on how to contact Iberia? Trying their UK phone no, Spanish no, twitter, web contact form but with no luck. Twitter is full of people complaining the same

  • Isherwood says:

    7 Jul7 July 11:21

    Only suggestion, if you have time, is that you consider writing a letter to IAG and complaining to the senior management. Sounds like shouting into the void but surprisingly it greased the wheels when I hit a brick wall with the equally uncontactable Vueling last year. Within a week we finally had an email, apology and Avios / cash refunded for our cancelled flights. Mrs Isherwood was amazed as she had given up.

  • Matthew says:

    7 Jul7 July 12:09

    I accidentally locked myself out of my Iberia account last week and needed to call to get it unlocked and my password reset. After getting through the automated options, I always ended up timing out with the line saying there were too many people in the queue and to hang up/try again. Had to call in 15 times over the span of 2 days before I was able to get through to a human. If you have the time and the patience, I’d suggest just trying over and over again with them on the phone until you get lucky. Thankfully I wasn’t in any urgent situation like needing to have a flight rebooked or cancelled or else it defintitly would be quite stressful.

    • Moktar says:

      7 Jul7 July 13:05

      Matthew, that gives me hope! was it the UK contact no you managed to get through?

      • Matthew says:

        7 Jul7 July 13:23

        Yep, was eventually able to get through with the UK contact number. I did however also try the Canadian and US phone numbers as well but wasn’t able to get through on those with the same automated time out recording. My suspicion was that those numbers were all being redirected to the same call centre.

  • C says:

    7 Jul7 July 16:20

    Ring the U.K. number at 8am on the dot. I’ve got through instantly a number of times

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