Bits: 480 Avios with £8 HP ink, the best BA email yet, Zipcar sign-up bonus

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

• Nick says:

  6 Jul6 July 06:22

  “We have been informed that BA520 London Heathrow to Madrid on 06 July 2016 has been cancelled in error and customers have been re-accommodated onto alternative services.

  Revenue Management are in the process of reinstating the flight and rebooking customers back onto the original service.”

  LOL, Don’t you just love, what looks like, typical corporate ‘speak’!
  “We” have been informed? “We”, as in BA presumably. So who’s informed you? Maybe that other BA department somewhere else in the big corporation? LOL!
  Who are Revenue Management? Do we care? Surely it’s “BA” who are rebooking! We don’t need to know which department is doing it. Unless of course, just maybe, there is some sort of blame culture going on here. 😉

  • John says:

    6 Jul6 July 07:19

    This is what some linguists term “nerdview” – see http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=106 for more examples 🙂

    TfL are particularly bad at this.

  • Andy S says:

    6 Jul6 July 18:40

    > “We” have been informed? “We”, as in BA presumably. So who’s informed you?
    > Maybe that other BA department somewhere else in the big corporation? LOL!

    Or more likely several pax phoning up saying WTF? 😉

  • Fenny says:

    6 Jul6 July 20:47

    “We have been informed…” = “a junior lackey has just noticed this and told his manager that someone has made a bit of a boo-boo. Manager has had to report it to the directors, who are not best pleased and told him to bloody fix it!”

• vol says:

  6 Jul6 July 06:32

  😀 British Airways

• Paul says:

  6 Jul6 July 07:04

  I flew Ryan air to France the day after strikes. The staff believed it was cancelled and arranged for swissport to start rebooking people (not that there were any alternates for days). Around 30 mins before the flight was due to depart they realised it wasn’t cancelled and the mad dash started.

  I’m fairly certain those at the front of the rebooking queue who disappeared once sorted never found (fortunately not too many as the queue was so slow) and missed the flight

• Mattsan1 says:

  6 Jul6 July 07:17

  The Shopper Points link title about 200 points with ‘any’ HP inks is a bit misleading.

  The HP cartridges I need (standard 364s) are not included in the offer despite having availability. Only the more expensive XL versions seem to be included which makes the bonus points significantly less attractive…

  • Rob says:

    6 Jul6 July 09:25

    It did cross my mind briefly last night that the 364’s were not on the list. Will re-do the headline, was not meant to mislead.

• Chelseafi says:

  6 Jul6 July 07:20

  My ink is 301, so I make it 200 bonus + 125 for recycling, + 9 for shop using tesco m/c so 334 x 2.4 = 802 avios.

  • roberto says:

    6 Jul6 July 07:51

    125 for recycling? How does that work?

    • harry says:

      6 Jul6 July 07:56

      short answer is: it doesn’t

      it used to be a neat way to get cheap points – now it is hardly worth the bother

      http://www.therecyclingfactory.com/tesco/

      by all means give it a go & report back

      fwiw I used to be a keen ink recycler but they now make it so difficult (ie refuse too many for spurious reasons) I just can’t be bothered

      • roberto says:

        6 Jul6 July 08:19

        Thanks Harry.. I appreciate your prompt and candid reply.

        Slightly O/T … I bought 20 yesterday and will figure out what to do with them once I get back from Costa Rica. I bought a couple of J/R business returns from our home town of Malaga out to San Jose for a crazy €707 each.. Was a tip from an FT premium thread last week. The price jumped to €3300 per pax an hour later and was over €6000 yesterday as we prepared to leave home..

        The 40 odd thousand avios and 360 tier points will be great too. Looking forward to the number1 zoo at gatterers in a bit and our trip starting in three hours.. Sometimes BA’s IT works in our favour.. 🙂 Happy travels folks..

        • Lady London says:

          6 Jul6 July 22:53

          I’m trying to feel sorry for you roberto about the number 1 zoo at gatters but it’s just not working, sorry

          And the avios and tier points rub salt into the envy.
          🙂

      • Tilly71 says:

        6 Jul6 July 08:20

        Same here, I wouldn’t use them ever again after my last experience, just one too many times of conning people.
        I sent in two genuine HP ink cartridges, bought from new and used in my home printer, treated with care etc. Both refused??

      • Mr Dee says:

        6 Jul6 July 19:08

        I think the scheme has been abused over the years so not they are very strict or have started to con people to compensate.

      • Lady London says:

        6 Jul6 July 22:50

        … and they lost loads of my cartridges each of the two times I tried, without explanation or even seeming to care.

        I nearly lost my rag with them.

        I did wonder whether perhaps a circular thing could be going on and lots of cartridges could be being rerererererecycled… including my lost ones.

        If you’re the sort of person who would take a Lloyds credit card because it’s a really good offering and believe you can stand your nerves being frazzled, or who loves to chase Iberia for points, then go ahead, try this

  • Tilly71 says:

    6 Jul6 July 09:19

    So only this amount of points if you use the ink yourself and needed it. I wouldn’t count the recycling points into your calculations as rarely credited due to various reasons we have no control over.

• AlanC says:

  6 Jul6 July 07:34

  Article on Loyaltylobby today regarding the cancellations at Vueling. Who was the boss there up until recently -Alex Cruz!
  http://loyaltylobby.com/2016/07/05/vueling-chaos-at-barcelona-airport-leaves-over-8000-people-stranded-company-execs-summoned-by-local-government/

  • Rob says:

    6 Jul6 July 09:27

    Indeed! I thought I’d give Alex the benefit of the doubt before I start running that sort of thing though. Although the stories I have heard coming out of Waterside …..

    • Rob says:

      6 Jul6 July 13:46

      What stories? Do tell….

• AndyW says:

  6 Jul6 July 12:24

  O/T question..
  Is there any referral scheme for Amex business cards? If so is there any way to refer from a personal to a business (gold to gold)?

  • Rob says:

    6 Jul6 July 12:54

    Yes. If you refer a personal Gold to a personal Gold, the application page has an option where you can switch your application to a Business Gold instead.

• LaineyLing says:

  6 Jul6 July 13:58

  BA cancelled Christmas Day flights from Frankfurt to London. I booked via GotoGate (mistake will never do that again) and spent over 2 hours in various call centres as staff members tried to work out what could be done. I still have no resolution and have bought another flight with Lufthansa while BA tries (I hope!) to sort out the booking.

  Whole process has been an absolute mess and has put me off booking with BA.While there is still time to re-book flights it is such an admin pain and their options included flying from Munich or via Madrid. Given we are trying to get back to London for Christmas lunch not very helpful!

  • harry says:

    6 Jul6 July 14:25

    Sounds like you are blaming BA when you should be blaming GotoGate?

    • Genghis says:

      6 Jul6 July 14:32

      Yes – I’d be complaining to GotoGate. I booked a HBO BA flight IST-LHR for easter just gone + luggage with eDreams but on arrival at IST was told I did not have luggage. After much complaining with BA they sent my luggage for free but I got a refund of this from eDreams.

      I can empathise with cancelled flights as I’ve recently had rotten luck. A month or so ago I had a STN-GOT SAS flight cancelled (going this Friday) and last week China Southern cancelled a flight for Sep and so had to rearrange itinerary and rebook with Dragonair at considerable further cost and spend another night in (expensive) Hong Kong. Woe is me…

      • harry says:

        6 Jul6 July 14:54

        OTOH GotoGate T&Cs tell customers to deal directly with airlines in the event of flights being cancelled. Sounds a messy situation & I certainly would not like to go through those call centres.

        When BA cancelled our flights once (snowy Xmas), it was extremely easy to re-book – but those were Avios flights I guess.

        • Rob says:

          6 Jul6 July 15:14

          That simply is not true. The agent is legally liable for helping you out, but as they are rarely UK based that doesn’t help much. BA has a contract with the agent, not you.

          There really is little value in booking a flight via a 3rd party unless it is cheaper or you need to get multiple airlines on the same ticket to protect you from baggage misconnection or a late first leg.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.