Bits: British Airways credit card fee change delayed, up to 3000 Avios from Europcar

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• AH says:

  3 Feb3 February 06:45

  Silly if they charge for anyone using a BA issued card!
  Maybe they need to up the bonus mileage in doing so to compensate

  • AH says:

    3 Feb3 February 06:49

    its still more than triple the inter-fee charge cap which is 0.3%.

  • Jeff says:

    3 Feb3 February 08:46

    Yes, it will be unbelievable if they add a 1% fee for using their card which they presumably get a cut of the fees from. I agree with Rob also, that just because you can afford £8k flights doesn’t mean you don’t care about an £80 fee.

• Jonty says:

  3 Feb3 February 06:48

  Edit needed I think – AA credit card is free in 1st year, the credit itself is not?

• Robbie says:

  3 Feb3 February 07:06

  To be fair, if you’re paying the full £80 your tickets for four would be £8k, doubt you really worry too much if that’s the case

  • the real harry1 says:

    3 Feb3 February 07:11

    but it’s quite appalling to charge £80 to cover the costs of banking in this case – there’s little if any human intervention or service involved

    clearly a ridiculous charge and we are completely justified in devising workarounds

  • Rob says:

    3 Feb3 February 08:06

    I think you would, trust me.

  • Mr(s) Entitled says:

    3 Feb3 February 09:32

    You don’t get rich by giving it all away.

    The charge is in no way commiserate with the cost so I for one would object. If they want to pass on 0.3%, or maybe slightly higher to compensate for their (automated) time then sobeit. But I loath profit being misrepresented as something other. Shows a lack of integrity but BA are far from alone on this.

    • Cate says:

      3 Feb3 February 10:23

      ‘You don’t get rich by giving it all away’

      Exactly Mr(s) Entitled. It doesn’t mater how much one has one can never afford to have service providers thinking they can do what they like with one’s money.

      • DN says:

        3 Feb3 February 17:24

        It kind of gets a bit worse than that too….

        If the 1% charge is implemented, you’d only need to spend £501 to be worse off under the changes.

        I hope BA have a rethink on this. it feels small in isolation, but £20 in fees could be the difference between me booking BA or another airline either due to cost or (more likely) purely on a point of principle.

        • Cate says:

          3 Feb3 February 18:20

          +1

• Gareth says:

  3 Feb3 February 07:15

  Morning-OT- but on bits so hope nobody minds. Sainsbury’s swipe and win starts again today until Sunday for spend of £10 or more…

  • Genghis says:

    3 Feb3 February 07:25

    This is where you’re meant to reference the SP article for further traffic there 🙂

    • Gareth says:

      3 Feb3 February 07:29

      Aha this one?! Sorry don’t check sp that often!!
      http://www.shopperpoints.co.uk/2017/02/03/swipe-and-win-at-sainsburys-from-today-you-are-guaranteed-to-win-nectar-points/

• krys_k says:

  3 Feb3 February 07:17

  OT – looking at a redemption flight 10th / 11th September to NY, but no availability. I’m checking a few times every day to see if any seats open up. Are seats likely to become available or am I onto a hiding for nothing?

  • Zoe says:

    3 Feb3 February 07:39

    Have you tried via Dublin or Madrid? Or could flying into Boston or Philadelphia work for you. We first visited Boston as we couldn’t get 5 redemption tickets to New York.

  • Anna says:

    3 Feb3 February 07:40

    I’m seeing loads in WT for both dates and CW from the 12th. Both into JFK and Newark. What exactly are you looking for? I don’t think WT is particularly worth using avios for as BA’s taxes are as high as some economy fares with other airlines!

    • Anna says:

      3 Feb3 February 07:43

      There’s good availability from London – just on the off chance that your starting your search in, say Manchester, and there’s no connection available, it will show the whole sector as unavailable. (There’s a way of getting round this if so).

      • Grimz says:

        3 Feb3 February 08:26

        I have this problem at times – how do you get round this?

        • Anna says:

          3 Feb3 February 08:55

          Sometimes the long haul segment leaves too early for it to be possible to connect the same day, so in that case we stay over at Heathrow the night before. You need to start your search from the date of the first leg; the system will then ask you if you want to stopover in London. You tick “yes” and it will then show connections the following day, but your journey will still be treated as a single booking.

          Depending on how much money and time between connections you have, hotel options range from the very expensive but very convenient Sofitel to the Heathrow Premier Inn which we’ve paid as little as £21 for!

          I’ll be interested to see if the new Man-LCY route makes this option viable, as I really like the idea of the JFK flight from LCY where you go through US immigration in Shannon and not JFK!

      • krys_k says:

        3 Feb3 February 09:34

        Thanks for the replies! My bad. I should have said, I’m using a lloyds upgrade voucher and when using it, there is no availablity on those dates (as a contrast, there are seats available next week).

• Gavin says:

  3 Feb3 February 07:29

  O/T – not targeted for Payqwiq emails but have had 100 points credited for using it earlier this week

  • Stu R says:

    3 Feb3 February 09:49

    Me too, 2 uses so far and 200 points credited!

    • rams1981 says:

      3 Feb3 February 10:09

      me three, three uses and 300 bonus points

  • Nick_C says:

    3 Feb3 February 13:04

    +1. Which was surprising as the offer is meant to be 50 * 10, but it looks like it is staying as 100 * 5 which is even better.

  • Rich says:

    3 Feb3 February 16:01

    I’ve had 200 points added today. I phoned Tesco as I still hadn’t received any points for the promotion which ended 15th January (I made five transactions during that period, so should have got 500 points).
    They said the 200 points I got today was for that promotion (couldn’t explain why I didn’t get 500, but said they will be added in due course).
    If you’ve not had points for the January promotion, it’s worth chasing them up.

• Gibbooo says:

  3 Feb3 February 08:18

  Yet another reason to give Ba the big middle finger.

  I hope the management burn in hell

  • LB says:

    3 Feb3 February 08:36

    Maybe a little harsh…

  • Gareth says:

    3 Feb3 February 08:51

    Bit strong…..

    • Rob says:

      3 Feb3 February 08:56

      They are pretty much as bad as each other. I once had a Hertz employee, in London, ask me for a £50 bribe or he would mark up some pre-existing damage and charge me for it. I had him fired, obviously.

  • Graeme says:

    3 Feb3 February 10:41

    wouldn’t like to be sitting next to you on a flight… anger management course 🙂

• Richard says:

  3 Feb3 February 08:40

  DO NOT USE EUROPCAR! They made up damage on a rental recently and have charged me £500! Luckily I had iCarHireInsurance. Just read the reviews on Trustpilot. Absolute crooks!

  • the real harry1 says:

    3 Feb3 February 09:02

    I think there’s often this possibility with all car rental cos – rather easy for them to inflate the bottom line by charging through the nose for damage you didn’t cause then either not getting it repaired at all or getting it repaired for far less than you got charged.

    I got stung for £300 about £20 years ago so have been careful ever since.

    I do use Europcar and have never had a problem with them personally, getting ripped off will depend on particular agents.

    These days it’s easy enough to take photos of your vehicle before and after.

    Always get the existing defects listed when you take out the car, in excruciating detail.

    Always get the receiving agent to write ‘no further damage’ when you hand over the vehicle.

    Always take out cheap 3rd party insurance which will only be a couple of £s a day.

    Not so easy in the dark & rain but plan ahead for this (coat/ torch etc).

    • Brian says:

      3 Feb3 February 09:24

      Given how easy it is to photoshop, I very much doubt that a photo would be taken as evidence of no damage, though…

      • Anna says:

        3 Feb3 February 10:18

        I think you’d have to be unusually clever to manipulate GPS!

        • Brian says:

          3 Feb3 February 11:04

          But not the damage part, presumably – not that I would try!

        • Alan says:

          9 Feb9 February 15:45

          Very easy indeed to change the EXIF data to reflect different GPS co-ordinates 😉

    • Michael Jennings says:

      3 Feb3 February 10:12

      If you are charged for damage for a rental car, always ask for quotation/invoice for the repairs to the car from the repairer. (If you have car rental excess insurance from a third party insurer, you will be required to obtain this to make a claim). If the car rental company does not do this, then the issuer of the credit card is obliged (under Visa and Mastercard guidelines for dealing with such matters) to give you your money back if you issue a chargeback.

      I once had a case in which I returned a damaged car (no issue there – I had an accident and it was my fault) and I was charged the full excess. I heard nothing more from them, but several months later I realised that one of my insurance policies covered it. So I then asked the car rental company (Europcar in Malaga) for the repair invoice. They sent it to me, and I then noticed that the repairs had cost rather less than the excess. I then pointed this out to them, and only then did I get an “Er, sorry” e-mail from them and a refund for the difference.

    • May says:

      3 Feb3 February 15:07

      Which 3rd party car insurance would you recommend? I don’t have UK / US / EU car insurance or credit cards to use.
      Thanks

  • Anna says:

    3 Feb3 February 09:07

    We’ve never had a problem with them, however each time we collect a car we make a big deal of inspecting it and taking photos (GPS on camera proves time and date) so they know we are well aware of this trick.

    • David Prior says:

      3 Feb3 February 12:23

      Excellent advice to take photos, but on s technical point metadats such as time/date/geodata can be easily edited or copied from one photo to another using programs like exiftool.

  • Marc says:

    3 Feb3 February 09:20

    I’ve used Europcar at least 20 times in the last 18 months. Never had a problem (yet). ive always taken pictures and written down all damages but never had any problems.

    • Wayne Phillips says:

      3 Feb3 February 09:53

      I had a funny one with them, where they passed on parking ticket charges from 2 days after my dropoff. They’d shifted it out of the Putney Bridge depot onto the street to do a reshuffle and (I assume) forgot about it.

      They withdrew obviously when I complained, but I’m glad I took photos on dropoff with time/date showing I’d left it inside their compound

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