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Bits: Barclays / IHG compensation payments, BA toilet trouble

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News in brief:

More news on Barclaycard / IHG compensation

Following on from my article this week about Barclaycard closing the IHG Rewards Club card, it seems that the call centre has now been officially briefed to offer you £25 compensation for every £1,000 you have spent on the Premium card if you have not yet triggered your free night voucher.

This is in addition to the pro-rata card fee refund that you will receive in April.

By a huge coincidence, this is exactly the same amount that I suggested readers should ask for when I wrote my article on Tuesday …….

British Airways BA 777X 777 9X

When BA cabin crew clean your plane ….

A couple of weeks ago, The Sun ran this story about BA cabin crew at Gatwick being paid £10 to clean short haul aircraft when they arrive late.  They don’t do a great job as they have no cleaning materials but it does allow the plane to take off again more quickly.  As part of the time saving measures, the toilets are not emptied.

I didn’t write about the story at the time because, frankly, a steady drip drip of ‘anti BA’ stories isn’t a lot of fun to read or write.

Yesterday, however, I received a shocker of an email from a reader.  British Airways had done this on a LONG-HAUL flight to Mauritius.

Our reader boarded his delayed Club World flight from Gatwick last Monday to find his seat covered in crumbs and grease marks on the windows.  It had already been announced over the PA that the cabin crew had tried to clean the plane instead of the contract cleaners due to a marginally late arrival.

However, as with ‘quick turnaround’ short hauls, it seems that the toilets had not been emptied.  After 10 hours of a 12 hour flight, the crew announced 3 of the 4 Club World toilets were closed as they were full.  A few minutes later, it was announced that ALL of the toilets on the plane were now full and closed.

BA has offered our reader 10,000 Avios as compensation.  This is, apparently, the most they are allowed to offer for any disruption now following the new ‘compensation scale’ introduced last year.  As the readers was on a £7,000+ BA Holidays package I have encouraged him to reject this and seek a larger sum through the Small Claims Court.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

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Barclaycard Avios card

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There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

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You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

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We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

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You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

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There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

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Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

Comments (112)

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

  • Nick says:

    I received a response to my complaints from a 3 hr plus delay granted due to fog chaos but it stemmed from 30 Dec flight from Brussels. So it took 3 months to respond and the first line was sorry to hear about the delay on your flight from Madrid. I skim read saw the cut and paste and no avios compo the denial of eu261 which I know didn’t stand up. So paying for club getting garbage service not given any information not allowed on another flight then get on and overbooking meant club got used my family’s coats bags etc all taken from the locker and moved elsewhere then given one drink before the the club crew member disappeared to economy for the rest of the flight deserves nothing oh well

    • Genghis says:

      So what’s your next move?

    • Andy says:

      So no you weren’t entitled to eu261 because it was weather related. But I must be missing something here. Your stuff got moved to another locker, and you only got one drink on a short flight,
      so you want compensation for BA being “rubbish”?
      Sorry if this is wrong but I simply don’t understand your post.

  • Mr Brown says:

    Hi Rob

    Re the IHG card – is what Barclaycard have done against their own T&Cs with regard to timings/notice etc?

    I haven’t called about mine yet, however a couple of people I know have. The first one got offered a full refund of the fee and and a rambling response about what they have done is within the T&Cs in the account. The second person contacted them and they folded like a house of cards. The first one was ten months into the annual fee period the second one was about seven.

    • Sididdly says:

      I am only one month into my new year with the IHG Barclaycard but had spent nearly £2500 before being notified of the card cancellation. I requested a full refund on the annual fee plus a pro-rata refund on the spend so far. They replied back saying the cancellation was in their T & Cs but they would pay my annual fee back in full plus 15% of my aspirational hotel value. I counter-offered with 20% and they agreed to compensate me £60. In total I received £159 statement credit. Not too shabby really and now I can move over to the Creation card and bank a few more bonus points.

  • Phil says:

    Our 3 hours delayed plane from Bangkok in December must have had the same crew as our club seats were covered in food and wrappers

  • Peter K says:

    This has happened to me on an easyjet flight before where all toilets closed about 30 mins into a 4hr flight from Algarve. Not fun I can tell you. Worse for my friend with kidney problems. In the end the pilot stopped at Brest on the way home as he was so desperate.
    It’s not just a BA issue then, but long haul is crazy!

  • Phil says:

    BA are adamant they don’t target Avios seats or those on 2-4-1 vouchers and I’m sure they wouldn’t lie to me

    • Anon says:

      Lol – Funny, nice tongue in cheek dry humour early on a Sunday.. 🙂

    • Rob says:

      Tell them you are a shareholder and you think they SHOULD be targetting Avios / 241 redeemers because you don’t need to pay them EU261 whereas compensation for someone on a full fare cash ticket would run into £thousands …..

  • Genghis says:

    OT. I’d like to commend the BA social media team on their customer service. I booked some avios flights a couple of weeks ago but the return leg had not been charged or ticketed. I wanted to pay the taxes so I could cancel the BAPP. Sent a tweet to BA, a really helpful agent then called me back within a couple of hours and needed the credit card security code. The flight was ticketed a few mins later and received another call back to confirm everything. It’s not all bad at BA…

    • TGLoyalty says:

      Absolutely there are some great employees out there more than willing to look after their customers.

      While I enjoy all the good service I get from BA the incidents of bad customer service leave a sour taste in your mouth.

      Personally I think T5b is a great lounge, quiet enough with a good selection of drinks and nice food in the evenings. In contrast using the lounge in Dubai on the way back there was no hot food at all at lunchtime inc in the CCR.

      With all the stories of people getting downgraded I was upgraded all the way from the back to the front recently. Won’t make up for me ever being downgraded though as I expect to receive at least the service I’ve paid for

      • Yuff says:

        To be fair to BA don’t they fly 40 million passengers a year, they are going to have issues in a service industry. Most traders on here are likely to travel more, than average, due to the nature of the content. This site does highlight the very, very good alternatives and that tends to portray BA in a poor light.
        The worst that has happened to me is not getting served, on a 2hr flight last month from Verona, as we was sitting in row 30 and they ran out of time. I would have been more irritated if I had paid cash for the ticket as it £300 each way!!!!

  • flyforfun says:

    “Yesterday, however, I received a shocker of an email from a reader. British Airways had done this on a LONG-HAUL flight to Mauritius.”

    I don’t understand how the crew would be expected to clean a long haul plane? While I can see how a short haul crew on a turnaround can give the plane a quick once over as they are already at the outstation waiting for the new pax to join, Don’t most long haul crew board the flight just a few mins before the pax, maybe 10 to 20 minutes before? Does this mean they are needing to get on board sooner? Unlike some US airlines that only pay when the doors shut, doesn’t the clock start ticking for BA staff when they sign on or similar? Surely their rate is more expensive than the cleaners?

    • Nige1 says:

      If they have time to hook up the refuelling truck, they surely have time to hook up the toilet truck too…

  • Genghis says:

    Another OT. Broke my hiatus and signed up to the IHG White card just now. I already have the IHG Black with Creation. Another decent credit limit given. Easy 20k IHGs.

    • Alan says:

      Wish I’d gone instant acceptance, hopefully just an address issue with flat number format!

      • Lumma says:

        I passed the initial eligibility check for the IHG card then after applying got told they needed 7-10 days for further checks. Got a text about 4 days later saying I’d been approved. Will have to wait until the post arrives to find out the credit limit and such. Same thing happens with AMEX for myself. I think it’s something to do with my home address. I’ve been turned down in the past and gotten a rejection letter that says they “can’t match my details with credit reference agencies”, even though i have free accounts with all 3 of them that show no problems with my address.

      • Roger says:

        Done the same.

        As I posted yesterday link it to curve, withdraw £200 from ATM and get your 20000 IHG points.

        • Genghis says:

          I saw your post yesterday Roger about having both cards. Thanks for the tip.

        • Alan says:

          Indeed so!

        • Andy says:

          But isn’t there a charge for cash withdrawals?

          • TGLoyalty says:

            £200 a month is allowed without charge

            I don’t believe they have found a way to charge for more than £200 either but you could fall foul of their fair use policy

    • AndyR says:

      I thought the IHG White card was 10k points?

      • Alan says:

        Usually it is, that’s the whole benefit to this offer in that it has been doubled 🙂

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

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