The HfP chat thread – Thursday 18th November

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• BP says:

  18 Nov18 November 07:39

  Hotels.com reward nights and stamps extended until June 2022.

  • Anna says:

    18 Nov18 November 07:45

    The possible changes to the scheme have gone a bit quiet! I did an 8 day stay in Mallorca in August which was supposed to only give me one stamp (special discounted rate) but I was actually given the full 8 which triggered a free night plus now I have another 4 stamps towards the next one.

  • Reney says:

    18 Nov18 November 10:01

    Thanks for sharing, good news for me. Don’t have the head space to try and use my night before the year end.

    • BP says:

      18 Nov18 November 12:21

      You can always search “Cambodia” as the destination and book a £1 a night hostel bed. Easy way to extend these but the value of your subsequent free night will take a hit.

  • The Savage Squirrel says:

    18 Nov18 November 13:39

    Haha, I’d just cracked and done a £1.50 malaysian hostel stay to extend a free night about to expire in Dec. I’m furious and demand a refund!! 😀

• Allan says:

  18 Nov18 November 07:40

  Does anybody know if there is a new Kimpton secret password? I think last one expired in September.

  • NSL says:

    18 Nov18 November 07:50

    I’ve not seen a new one. It’s usually announced on the Kimpton Instagram page so worth checking uploads since September. The fact that no travel blogs seem to be reporting anything suggest that there isn’t a new one.

    • Allan says:

      18 Nov18 November 08:38

      Thanks

  • Aston100 says:

    18 Nov18 November 10:35

    I’m going to do my first Kimpton stay at Christmas.
    As I’m arriving at night but my body clock is telling me it is late afternoon, I might have a couple of hours to kill before I get sleepy. Therefore, does anyone know if there is a maximum limit to the password guesses?
    Perhaps after 2 hours they’ll have had enough and just give me something to go away.

    • ChrisC says:

      18 Nov18 November 18:41

      Why guess?

      Just add it as a note to your phone or put a post it note in your wallet / passport!

      And that’s if the promo is running. It’s not a constant one that just changes the secret word every couple of months.

• Craig says:

  18 Nov18 November 07:44

  Managed to log into my BAEC account using a process I saw posted on FT. Start to make a booking and log in when you get to that step; I was then able to access my account. Might help the early bird with an Avios booking.

  • Shaw West says:

    18 Nov18 November 07:48

    Tried that, Doesn’t work for me

  • PGW says:

    18 Nov18 November 08:28

    Thanks. For once 1 of these things worked for me

  • Ian says:

    18 Nov18 November 08:30

    Yep, works for me too.

  • Thywillbedone says:

    18 Nov18 November 09:19

    Worked for me also (for those reading, simple dummy book a flight and once ‘pay with Avios’ option shows, you can attempt to login then).

    Slightly worrying for me is that 330k Avios refunded to me on Monday are not showing in my account. Hope that won’t involve too much chasing to fix!

    • FFoxSake says:

      18 Nov18 November 13:36

      Awesome tip – thanks HfP-ers!!
      Just managed to check Avios availability with that online hack, then call BA to snag an upgrade from WTP to Club for an earlier BA 241 voucher booking.
      Now have Club both ways for our Japan trip next Sep/Oct 🙂

  • Soo says:

    18 Nov18 November 14:55

    A thousand thanks, got my flight for next Monday. Great back door to full account details!

• Jody says:

  18 Nov18 November 08:04

  NCP car parking tickets….

  Came home from our recent cruise to a parking charge notice from these bunch of crooks. Said I parked without buying a ticket.

  Luckily I still had the ticket, but I noticed that although I had typed my registration into the machine, it had somehow defaulted to ZZ, which I unfortunately didn’t notice at the time.

  Anyway, duly followed their appeal process and sent off pic of ticket along with screenshot of my credit card statement and explanation.

  Received email from them yesterday basically saying they’ve looked at the info I’ve sent, but I’ve still parked without a ticket! However, they’re reducing the charge to £10 as a goodwill charge if I pay by 1st December.

  If i want to appeal further I now apparently have to do so via POPLA or whatever it’s called, and if I lose that I’d have to pay the full charge which is something ridiculous like £160.

  Any advice? Is it just scare tactics by NCP and I’ve got a slam dunk case? Or just I just pay the £10 (very begrudgingly) and vow to never park in that carpark again?! 😁

  • Anna says:

    18 Nov18 November 08:13

    These companies are a complete nightmare. My guess is that they will say you haven’t input the correct reg, which is one of their Ts and Cs for charging you the full penalty. I would probably pay the £10 just to avoid the stress of going through the process. I had something like this a couple of years ago, had to prove the system was faulty but the aggravation and bureaucracy was unreal!

  • Can says:

    18 Nov18 November 08:14

    Depends how much you value your own time. If the pleasure and the pride you’ll get are worth the time you spend plus £10, then go ahead.
    Sometimes I do similar things for such a little financial return just for the kick of it.
    Or, I am just practicing for a future possible serious and similar situation by testing the water. I am sure something like that will happen again and it won’t be just £10. Then you’ll look back and be thankful that you’ve “practised”

  • Toddy says:

    18 Nov18 November 08:14

    Hi Jody, it probably depends how much you value your time. I’m a bit of a stubborn ‘so and so’ but for the sake of a tenner, I’d just pay it….

    • Jody says:

      18 Nov18 November 08:30

      That’s kind of how I’m feeling about it too. Like you I’m definitely a bit stubborn, but I’m not sure I’ve got the energy for endless bureaucracy as Anna mentions above for £10.

      I imagine they know they’re in the wrong which is why they’ve reduced it to £10, as it’s easy money to them and they’d rather get something than nothing.

      Anna, you mentioned entering the wrong reg. I could understand if I’d maybe got one letter or number wrong, but no idea how the machine got to ZZ when I have a perfectly normal registration!

      For the sake of £10 it’s probably not worth the effort, so I guess I’ll just pay it and be extremely grumpy and mutter on about it for the next few days! 😂

      • Tariq says:

        18 Nov18 November 08:49

        IIRC the Code of Practice (can’t remember the parking body’s name right now) says that operators should forgive when the customer has a ticket with the wrong reg number on (the assumption being that the customer has entered it incorrectly). In my view you would win at appeal, but as others say £10 is a quick and easy way out.

      • Red Flyer says:

        18 Nov18 November 09:01

        Christmas is coming and I’m sure you have better things to spend your time on in the next few weeks for the sake of £10.

      • Anna says:

        18 Nov18 November 09:04

        To paraphrase Michael Biehn in the original Terminator film, “You cannot reason with them”, Jody, it’s either the correct, full reg to them or it isn’t!
        By all means leave them a stinking review on Trustpilot or whatever but then re-focus your energies on getting £10 of value elsewhere, which is a great tactic for cheering oneself up when one’s been done over by a shower like private parking operators!

      • Keith says:

        18 Nov18 November 11:12

        “Zzzzzz ..” Perhaps the machine was asleep? Incidentally, I paid in advance on their website for a day’s parking at Stratford Int’l station car park run by NCP. A few week’s later they notified me that I had parked without paying with photo evidence from ANPR.. Having been able to retrieve email confirmation of the online booking I DID appeal. Received communication accepting the appeal but absolutely no apology. Next time I’ll just pay at the machine

  • Char Char says:

    18 Nov18 November 08:49

    I would respond with a letter sent recorded delivery asking how it became zz and that your not paying the fine, if they wish to take it further please send court proceedings and you will present the evidence to them.

    Now the question would be is it worth them bothering for the now £10 of value they claim to have lost

    • TGLoyalty says:

      18 Nov18 November 08:52

      So spend £3 on recorded delivery plus printing/envelope and the time and effort to print it and post it vs pay £10 now and never hear about it again.

      I’d be inclined to have one last stab via email (if that’s possible) to someone saying it should be 0 as it’s obviously a fault with the system that it’s come out with ZZ and you paid for parking.

      • Jody says:

        18 Nov18 November 09:32

        Email not possible unfortunately. The initial appeal had to be done via the website, and they’re very clear on there they won’t deal with appeals via email.

  • peter says:

    18 Nov18 November 09:38

    Pay and forget. I had numerous issues with them and only once had a positive outcome – I bought a car at 11am which got the ticket at 7am the same day – but I appeared as the owner on that day so they chased me – after numerous emails with screenshots of payments, phone calls they went after the previous owner in the end but if I had a chance to pay £10 I would have done that without thinking!

    • EwanG says:

      18 Nov18 November 21:55

      What would HFP do…..?
      Pay £10 and do a chargeback for the original parking fee if NCP says you didn’t pay for the parking initially 🤣

  • den says:

    18 Nov18 November 12:00

    I had an issue 2 weeks ago at Edinburgh airport, the automatic number plate recognition decided the N on my car plate was a W so didn’t tie it to the online booking. We all got Covid abroad so had to make two new bookings to keep the car in the car park at online prices. Total cost for around 2 weeks was £75. But when you go to leave you still have to put the original ticket with incorrect registration into the machine, it was asking for £480. I had three different booking refs in front of me prepared to thrash it out with the guy on the intercom and he couldn’t have been nicer, let me through in about 30 seconds.

    • BP says:

      18 Nov18 November 12:34

      Guys on the intercom at EDI don’t care. My mate parked in the wrong car park (paid for a 3rd party and parked in NCP) and chanced his luck saying he’d prepaid and the machine wasn’t recognizing he’d paid. The intercom guy just let him out.

• Max says:

  18 Nov18 November 08:10

  Any economists here who could explain Klaus Schwab’s (WEF founder) ‘The Great Reset’, ‘The 4th Industrial Revolution’ and ‘Transhumanism’?

  • Colin MacKinnon says:

    18 Nov18 November 08:49

    He can’t be much of an economist if you can’t understand his writings!

    A quick google of the 4th Industrial Revelation reveals a paper where he seems to focus on the hollowing out of the middle income groups due to artificial intelligence.

    Reckon he is right with that one – and it is being accelerated by Covid. When will people realise work from home means work from anywhere. And work from anywhere means work done by someone else – anywhere cheaper!

    His answer seems to be education. But my thought: As other – cheaper! – countries become more educated, they get our jobs. While we spend 30% of our day on social media (like HfP!) instead of evening classes etc.

    • Worksop Dave says:

      18 Nov18 November 08:54

      “ When will people realise work from home means work from anywhere.”

      Not really because all the data/facts show that people are generally going in to the office at least once or twice a week now. Probably because employers want people in the office at least part of the week.

      Are people really going to be coming into the office from abroad a couple of times a week? Of course not.

      Move on. Nothing to see here.

      • Colin MacKinnon says:

        18 Nov18 November 11:45

        Back in the 1980s I used to live in Scotland and go to the office in London!

        A few Continental countries nearer London than Scotland!

      • Rui N. says:

        18 Nov18 November 16:11

        Why not? Plenty of people already commuted into London, e.g. from a lot of places in Europe before the pandemic. Instead of travelling Monday-Friday every week, they can now travel once a week/fortnight for 2 days instead.
        If my company is any example, I’d say half of EU-born people have now moved back to their original countries and only come to the UK once a month or so.

        • davef says:

          18 Nov18 November 16:23

          I used to commute to near amsterdam to work there all week and come home at weekends.

          This is nothing new just more of what happened before. It’s still cheaper to commute from here to europe than to get the train from manchester to london at peak times

        • Worksop Dave says:

          18 Nov18 November 18:59

          People in continental Europe aren’t the ones who are going to be much “cheaper” though are they?

          Move on, nothing to see here. Jobs aren’t suddenly going to be moved to mainland Europe.

  • BuildBackBetter says:

    18 Nov18 November 10:11

    Paul Donovan has written on fourth industrial revolution as well.

• Shaw West says:

  18 Nov18 November 08:15

  BA has no direct flights to Alicante in the winter schedule. 🙁

• Allan says:

  18 Nov18 November 08:41

  Any experience of how strict are Air France are with cabin bag size? A few cm over in one dimension (width), on BA it would never be noticed but do AF enforce strictly?.

  • Ashraj says:

    18 Nov18 November 09:00

    On a recent trip to pairs no one checked at Lhr. However at CDG they had checks for both bags. My bag sizes were ok within the guidelines however I was 1kg overweight. Told me to be more careful next time and waived me through.

  • Blair says:

    18 Nov18 November 11:10

    Their outstation check in agents can be total dragons on bag size. I own a Delsey Air France cabin case for this reason

• Andrew H says:

  18 Nov18 November 08:46

  The BA IT cock up continues… I’m only trying to use their shopping portal to get xmas stuff on their Avios bonus scheme, so it’s no biggy. Must be more frustrating for others trying to sort flights.

  They allowed 4 days and still couldn’t get it right…

  • Lyn says:

    18 Nov18 November 16:20

    The Aer Lingus shopping portal is working, or at least it was yesterday. I don’t know if they have a special avios promotion but at least you should still be able to earn some avios.

    • Lyn says:

      18 Nov18 November 16:22

      I just checked – Aer Lingus do have a promotion. At first glance it looks like the BA one.

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