The HfP chat thread – Saturday 4th December

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Aston100 says:

4 Dec4 December 14:03

Are we required to wear masks in club world heading to the USA, and if so, do we need to bring our own or do BA supply them onboard?
Thanks.
- Sean says:
  
  4 Dec4 December 14:26
  
  Yes re wearing masks on the flight as that is what you attest to when filling in the pre-entry forms.
- SteveJ says:
  
  4 Dec4 December 14:51
  
  Bring your own. Not required when eating or drinking, so keep the champagne flowing of you don’t fancy wearing it.
- Doug M says:
  
  4 Dec4 December 15:04
  
  Flew to Miami on BA this week. Zero enforcement of mask wearing after take-off. Probably varies by crew. I suspect it’s more likely to be enforced on a US airline.
- meta says:
  
  4 Dec4 December 16:28
  
  You are also required legally to wear it the moment you arrive at the airport, so not sure how you would even think that BA would supply you with one.
  - KBuffett says:
    
    4 Dec4 December 16:30
    
    BA had plenty of masks available when boarding F last week
davef says:

4 Dec4 December 14:08

Yes and Yes.

Most airlines will have a stash of spare ones to hand out to comply with the law but I would always prefer to bring one that I’m going to find the most comfortable for 7-11 hours of flying.
Maria says:

4 Dec4 December 14:19

Can I be punished, i.e. loose my amex account if topping up balance on amazon/parentpay and others with £1 transactions on a regular basis? Just had a thought after reading hfp article on shop small and mentioning closing accounts if the offer is abused. Any thoughts? Thanks
- John says:
  
  4 Dec4 December 14:34
  
  Maybe. What is the purpose of topping up £1 repeatedly
  - Maria says:
    
    4 Dec4 December 14:36
    
    gaining more avios
    - Youllnever says:
      
      4 Dec4 December 14:40
      
      How’s that different from buying anything else? You’re not gaming them by topping up your account.
      - Maria says:
        
        4 Dec4 December 14:46
        
        bapp gives 1.5 avios for every pound spend and always round it up, so spending of £10 in one transaction gets you 10 avios. But 10 transactions of £1 will get you 20 avios
      - Maria says:
        
        4 Dec4 December 14:48
        
        sorry, miscalculate £10 is 15 avios
      - Youllnever says:
        
        4 Dec4 December 14:49
        
        Uh, no… they both end up as 15 avios.
      - Maria says:
        
        4 Dec4 December 14:54
        
        no, I checked. I do get more avios for single transactions. I got this tip from someone on hfp
      - Youllnever says:
        
        4 Dec4 December 15:02
        
        I’m guessing you mean £.5 gets rounded up in terms of avios. Your example of £1 do not get rounded up.
      - Genghis says:
        
        4 Dec4 December 15:30
        
        @Youllnever
        On a BAPP, £1 spend x 1.5 avios / £ = 1.5 avios and this is rounded up to 2.
        So 10 x £1 top ups = 20 avios.
        Or 1 x £10 top up = 15 avios.
        In the past I have split things in Tesco then figured my time is more valuable!
      - Youllnever says:
        
        4 Dec4 December 15:37
        
        @Genghis ah interesting, wasn’t aware of this. So does £0.5 then earns 1.5 avios, which is then rounded up to 2 avios?
      - Blenz101 says:
        
        4 Dec4 December 16:05
        
        Amex have some of the best card monitoring / fraud prevention. Spending in a particularly unusual way, such as hundreds of transactions to the same retailer, will quickly get the attention of their fraud team and a KYC check.
        
        How they react to your plan is anyones guess when you have to explain your spending pattern to them. Doesn’t seem like fair use to me.
      - Genghis says:
        
        4 Dec4 December 16:09
        
        @Youllnever.
        £0.50 @ 1.5 avios / £ = 0.75 avios, which then gets rounded up to 1 avios.
        Spending 0.34p would earn 1 avios, almost double the headline rate, but not possible on Amazon top ups (min £1).
      - Youllnever says:
        
        4 Dec4 December 16:29
        
        @Genghis very intriguing! I agree with you – even if this was possible without potentially flagging your account, your time is probably better spent elsewhere.
      - John says:
        
        4 Dec4 December 17:13
        
        When you can choose the amount you pay, you might as well get it rounded up. So if you wanted to top up amazon or your energy provider by £100, you might as well do £99.67 as you get 150 avios
        
        I once had a card in another country that would always round up. So when I was waiting for a train I used to top up my oyster by 5p many times and got 1 point per transaction…
    - Chrisasaurus says:
      
      4 Dec4 December 17:03
      
      Maria if you’re seriously willing to work for the hourly rate you’d be getting doing hundreds of topups in order to make an additional 5p for every 10 you do then I have endless jobs need doing in the garden I’ll pay you twice that for
      - Chas says:
        
        4 Dec4 December 22:27
        
        I’ll pay her triple!
      - Chas says:
        
        4 Dec4 December 22:28
        
        Well, I’ll pay her 2.5 times, but I’ll round it up to 3….
- Mattb says:
  
  4 Dec4 December 14:47
  
  Do you mean buying amazon credit? That’s no different than buying a gift voucher.
- Dr C says:
  
  4 Dec4 December 18:06
  
  Realistically how many are you intending to do?
  
  I’ve done 300 transactions on Amazon and only had to verify once that it was me.
Marie says:

4 Dec4 December 14:22

Hi
Has anyone been to Dubai Expo ? Thoughts?
- Genghis says:
  
  4 Dec4 December 14:33
  
  Yes, just today. There’s loads to see. To get through it all would take a few days and would be a little tedious. I did a whistle stop tour of some of the pavilions I wanted to see and had a decent Korean lunch in around 3.5 hours. I enjoyed what I did.
- Blenz101 says:
  
  4 Dec4 December 14:35
  
  It’s excellent. The site however is vast and will take a few days to explore. Better by night lit up and also cooler. Concerts are great. Queues for the more popular pavilions especially at weekends can run to nearly an hour.
  
  You would do well to plan in advance what you want to see and do.
  - Marie says:
    
    4 Dec4 December 15:23
    
    Thanks will do
    - Blenz101 says:
      
      4 Dec4 December 16:07
      
      If you drink alcohol then a number of the pavilions do serve it and also offer live music. Irish village is very close to one of the main stages for example.
- BP says:
  
  4 Dec4 December 20:38
  
  Yes, yesterday. It was worth visiting. Highlight was the New Zealand pavilion as well as the Expo Water Feature. Food at the Singapore pavilion was poor. Caught a BTS tribute act as we walked by the South Korean pavilion and that was pretty good. Germany pavilion had huge queues.
- Orla says:
  
  4 Dec4 December 21:31
  
  I would recommend downloading the app and pre-booking slots at the pavilions you want to see. Think you could book up to 10 at a time. They act like fast passes at Disney and we were able to bypass queue and walk straight in
BillyWillySilly says:

4 Dec4 December 14:28

My new IHG rewards card arrived on the mat this morning, along with a welcome letter in a separate envelope. Tried activating and it won’t work – restricted functionality. I called customer services and it has been canceled. Now I was expecting my previous card to be cancelled in line with the Great Curve Cull but it appears that their systems are seeking out similar accounts and terminating them too. Nefarious stuff. I’d think they were clever enough to not give me another card…
Customer service couldn’t help as this is a weekend but it appears that the same day my card and welcome letter was printed, the new account was also closed. I need to phone back on Monday…
- Rachel Robinson says:
  
  4 Dec4 December 14:35
  
  This happened to me too. And they also then cancelled my black card early but didn’t actually give me a reason why. Added it to my complaint. They’re a bunch of jokers.
- Craig V says:
  
  4 Dec4 December 16:47
  
  File a DSAR. File a formal complaint too. Then say after Christmas file an FOS complaint?
  
  My DSAR went in yesterday. I still have a complaint outstanding that is over a month old, and am missing some 27K points not transferred to IHG, plus a free night for spend >£10K. Got the £99 back though!
- Lady London says:
  
  4 Dec4 December 18:29
  
  Thought Creation was contractually required to give personal notice of 60 days aheadin writing to the individual cardholder?
  
  If you did not receive this full notice of any alteration or cancellation from Creation, raise a formal complaint. Then if no satisfactory resolution within 8 weeks, or no response or refusal to deal with it or unsatisfactory final response from Creation, submit an official complaint to the FOS (Finance Ombudsman).
  
  There are quite a nunber of reports on here of individuals’ cards being closed who did not receive the due notice. Also things like monthly points not being credited. Or hotel night award denied when earned or stated without due notice to be ceased unilaterally.
  
  Creation could theoretically try to claim they sent a particular cardholder a letter about any changes and claim this was done by them at least 60 days ahead. But if Creation try this, it seems enough people on here didn’t get due notice of several things.
  
  If enough people that didn’t get the required notice of any change implemented by Creation complain and make it a FOS complaint if necessary, then the FOS should reasonably conclude that Creation did not in fact give required notice of changes to a significant number of individuals.
  
  So to help everyone, if you didn’t get 60 days notice personally in writing then please make sure you officially complain including to the FOS if necessary.
  - BillyWillySilly says:
    
    5 Dec5 December 09:48
    
    To be fair, they could’t give me 60 days notice as the account was only open 1 day! Very odd. Thanks for the tips all. I’ll see what happens on Monday.
Rachel says:

4 Dec4 December 14:45

Has anyone received their EasyJet Advent calendar? Looking at the terms and conditions
“1.9 The vouchers may only be redeemed by the purchaser or the recipient designated by the purchaser.” Obviously, that permits the purchaser & recipient travelling together. But does that mean that the purchaser can allow two recipients to travel separately from the purchaser? Giving away the voucher basically.
- David D says:
  
  4 Dec4 December 15:25
  
  No still waiting for mine to arrive, however some others on here have received theirs.
  I asked the agent if the the vouchers are in the name of the purchaser and he confirmed no, anyone can use the vouchers. However, they need to be redeemed in pairs.
  Further, you have to speak to customer support to redeem them which leads me to believe they may validate (It’s a dedicated Advent calendar email). There is nothing stopping you booking for friends/family as you (as purchaser) are designating how they are being used.
  - Rachel says:
    
    4 Dec4 December 16:04
    
    Sweet, I hope to be able to gift one to my brother and sister in law.
    - Tom says:
      
      4 Dec4 December 18:03
      
      I’m still waiting too David. Whilst I’m not pleased you haven’t received yours, I am pleased that I’m not the only one.
      I’ve chased via the designated adventure calendar email address twice, but had no response. It doesn’t bode well for these tickets being easy to redeem!
Morgan says:

4 Dec4 December 16:20

Am in need to book a cash fare for JFK-LHR (preferably on BA) next year. I’m quite familiar with what’s a good price for the LHR-JFK roundtrip, but don’t have any experience with the inverse route. I’ve found a fare of circa $2350. Is this a decent price or is it fairly standard for Club? By UK sale expectations it would be erring towards the expensive side.
- Jonathan says:
  
  4 Dec4 December 16:56
  
  Generally ex USA is significantly more expensive than vice versa. They never get the £1-1.2k east coast sale fares we regularly do.
  
  Look on Google Flights & it will tell you how it compares to usual price but I’d guess that’s a good but not great fare.
  - Morgan says:
    
    4 Dec4 December 17:16
    
    Great tip on Google Flights – thanks. I had forgotten about that feature! Looks like it’s a reasonably OK rate with Google Flights showing a “typical” price range of £1200-6000 for the route, which I assume is a gauge across all airlines and not specifically BA.
Nicky says:

4 Dec4 December 16:41

Excuse my ignorance but what is VeriFLY (discussed a few pages back) is it something that I need if I am flying BA?
- Genghis says:
  
  4 Dec4 December 16:48
  
  Used to authenticate covid 19 evidence, eg upload PCR test, vaccination status, Passenger locator form etc, as required. This can be done at the airport but then you need to queue up. Can only online check in if complete verifly.
- Rob says:
  
  4 Dec4 December 16:51
  
  It is a third-party app that BA uses to verify your covid documents. If want to do online check-in then you need to upload the required docs first. They are read by machine and usually approved within 30 seconds. This also allows you to go straight to your gate if you have just hand baggage without showing anything to anyone at the airport.
  - davef says:
    
    4 Dec4 December 18:03
    
    Verifly doesnt work on all routes or with all airlines.
    
    For Cyprus you have to upload docs via BA’s MMB doc checker service which is terribly uninformative and limited in the web browsers that it works with
- Phil says:
  
  4 Dec4 December 16:52
  
  It’s a mechanism for pre-checking your COVID vaccination status – allowing you, in principle, to either avoid the check-in desk or use the separate, dedicated Verifly check-in desks.
  
  You don’t need to do it, but if you don’t you’ll have to go to the check-in desk – regardless of whether you have luggage.
  
  However, your “value” out of it will vary depending on how you’re travelling – e.g. First Wing at T5 is very fast anyway – and whether the Verifly check-in desks are actually open – they haven’t been the last two times I’ve flown.
  - Nicky says:
    
    4 Dec4 December 17:59
    
    Thank you