Big news – ‘small print’ of the Avios sale bargains revealed, including the £1 RFS destinations

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• JPR says:

  8 Jan8 January 09:55

  Thinking of taking a punt for an RFS in May but cannot confirm an actual date yet. If I cancelled it, would I get the Avios back and simply lose the £1? Perhaps I could book a couple of dates? Would that work? Thanks.

  • Rob says:

    8 Jan8 January 11:37

    Yes, that is how it works. This is already how it works if, for eg, you book a Boston to New York redemption for 4,500 Avios + £1.60. You lose the £1.60 but BA doesn’t ask you for the additional £23.40 (to make up the £25 cancellation charge) and you get the Avios back.

    • Nick says:

      8 Jan8 January 13:04

      Do you really get the avios back if a flight date is changed?

      I booked lhr-dme last year for 20000 avios and the reward flight saver fee. Return flight had to be changed. I was told the 10000 avios was forfeited and I had to shell out another 10000 avios for a new flight back to london

      • Rob says:

        8 Jan8 January 13:40

        Was this AFTER you had flown the outbound? Until last year, you couldn’t change the return once you’d flown the outbound. However, that rules has now been scrapped and you can change the return for the £25 fee even after you’ve flown the outbound.

        If you hadn’t flown the outbound then you were wrongly informed and were ripped off of 10,000 Avios!

        • xcalx says:

          8 Jan8 January 15:45

          This was what I was talking about yesterday I had to pay £10 on top of the RSF fee of £15 to get 7500 Avios back for a LIS-LHR-LBA OW I cancelled. I am glad to hear things have changed as I will now book a couple of MIA-CUN flights X2 then cancel the one I dont need for £1.50 pp

        • Rob says:

          8 Jan8 January 16:48

          Really? They made you pay the extra?

          How did you cancel? Online or by phone? I have cancelled a few RFS tickets (and AA redemptions last year) and was never asked for further cash, although I always cancel online.

        • xcalx says:

          8 Jan8 January 18:05

          Cancelled by phone. I didn’t think to question the agent as I had read about a £25 cancellation fee. Thinking back I cant remember if it was BAEC or Avios I booked with.

• Stuart McIntyre says:

  8 Jan8 January 10:24

  Re: Avis car hire costs. It’s often worth checking the Avis car hire costs via the ba.com site as well – I normally see significant savings there compared to booking direct with Avis or via corporate account with Hertz.

• Macca says:

  8 Jan8 January 10:38

  How do you go about working out the value you are getting when booking a hotel. Do you take the price on the hotels official web site or do you use the lowest price you can find on sites such as LastMinute/Hotels.com/Booking.com?

  If the latter, is there a preference on site for finding consistenly low prices? I don’t want to spend hours trawling the internet for the cheapest price just to get a 100% accurate representation of my ‘pence per avios’! I’d just like to know if I’m getting sub-1p or not 🙂

  • Macca says:

    8 Jan8 January 10:50

    Thanks JF. I have just re-read the HFP Uni post on Avios hotel redemptions which answers a lot of my questions, although it is good to hear your experience with hotels.com.

  • AndyGWP says:

    8 Jan8 January 13:32

    I tend to use Trivago now, as they screenscrape other sites for me (including the hotels own site, which helps decide whether its worth paying the extra)

    HotelsCombined is similar, but I’ve yet to use it.

    Expedia also do the ‘pricematch’ (against their own website) that someone mentioned earlier too, quite simply by filling in a small form on their website 🙂

    • luckyjim says:

      8 Jan8 January 17:01

      If you really want to know the value you are getting for your avios check Trivago for hotels and Kayak for car hire.

      If you’d rather kid yourself into believing you are staying in a $300 per night hotel ‘for free’ go with the Expedia rate.

  • Lady London says:

    9 Jan9 January 01:38

    Just saw a laterooms.com sale on bespokeoffers.co.uk and have had the odd good bargain with them in the past.

• Tim says:

  8 Jan8 January 10:45

  I’ve always been put off RFS because of the amount of Avios required plus the requirement to connect in London; the £35 fee is neither here nor there.

  This offer would have been more appealing had it included destinations which are not so easy to get to using low cost airlines, as I can fly to most of these destinations for around £70-£80 return directly from Glasgow or Edinburgh. Jersey is the obvious exception.

  That said, it’s still a nice offer if you were looking for a weekend break and the £68 you’d save (for a couple) could go towards a nice hotel.

  • squills says:

    8 Jan8 January 11:14

    I’d echo that – in part 😉

    If you can’t really change flight times much, for us because of 3 kids in tow, then RFS/ Avios can really help. OK you can get lucky or plan well & pick up the Ryanair/ Easyjet flights at Xmas/ Easter for less than the true cost of Avios + RFS from LHR (Summer never seems to present quite the same problem). But often the no-frills boys fill up pretty fast at key travelling times so go expensive, whereas Avios flights can be available for a few days longer, at least that’s what I found.

    Another point: yes @ 1p per Avios, the no-frills airlines are invariably cheaper normally. But some of us manage to pay an awful lot less than 1p per Avios to acquire them 😉

    Not to mention luggage, particularly at Xmas when we are loaded to the gills with pressies and BA makes a lot of sense.

  • Rob says:

    8 Jan8 January 11:33

    That’s a good point. A few more obscure destinations would have been useful. A lot of people will have already ‘done’ that list as well.

  • AndyGWP says:

    8 Jan8 January 13:36

    RFS works for me at ‘peak’ (expensive) times such as bank holidays etc. where it is worth the hassle (and cost-saving) of connecting through LHR (from MAN)

    You’re right though, a lot of the times it is just cheaper to use the budget carriers. Especially for a weekend break where I don’t really need to use my status for extra bags (etc).

    To maximise time, I’ve also found I now have to add on the cost of a hotel @ LHR the night before so I do the connection down to London, then stop over so I can take an early flight the next day and arrive at my destination with still some daylight left!

• ankomonkey says:

  8 Jan8 January 11:01

  What a shame the RFS cities are not the same as the 50%-off-hotel cities…

• Idrive says:

  8 Jan8 January 13:04

  the problem with this car rental is that you can only book in some locations (presumably where BA fly) not on all AVIS locations!!

  by the way, i am not jumping on any of this “offers”…
  People do not forget that the smart redeemers are just a niche of the market. there are LOTS of people who occasionally or regularly earn and that are not avios conscious and for them anyoffer could look good.

  the USA sales are no good for me, I prefere paying a cash economy tickets
  RFS: the places i want to go are not on the RFS 1£ except Dublin for a combination with a potential Airlingus-Boston redemption (but I do not know the dates so I prefere paying whenever it will be)
  car hire…i need it now but the location i need is not on the list…so what’s the point…

  i am glad i kept my Tesco CC safe and MR too! and looking forward for a bigger bonus or till I have gathered enough for a nice First intercontinental flight!

• CV says:

  8 Jan8 January 12:11

  Nice to tie in the RFS £1 with IHG Reward Nights. Some good value redemptions to be had in Madrid, Lisbon and Rome, so could have a look weekend away for £1 per person and a load of avios/IHG points used up.

  • Rob says:

    8 Jan8 January 12:56

    Madrid hotel prices are low these days anyway.

    If you’re doing the IHG Big Win this may be a cheap way of picking up overseas nights.

• pazza2000 says:

  8 Jan8 January 12:12

  I suspected a very limited list of ‘near by’ destinations, sad to be proved correct. Will check out the Hotel Sale, could be interesting…

  • Rob says:

    8 Jan8 January 12:56

    Hey, could be worse!

    You may even be able to do connecting RFS flights for £1. So, for eg, London to AMS one way for 4,500 + 50p. Then AMS-LON-Jersey (with a long stopover in London) for 4,500 plus 50p. Then Jersey to London back for 4,500 + 50p.

    • callum says:

      8 Jan8 January 13:51

      So Dublin counts as a domestic connection then?

      • Rob says:

        8 Jan8 January 13:51

        Er, no. Typo! I will rewrite that comment!

        • callum says:

          8 Jan8 January 14:47

          No worries, we all make mistakes. You did get my hopes up for a second there though!

      • Lady London says:

        9 Jan9 January 01:47

        Not Dublin, but would perhaps BHD might count as a domestic connection?

    • Bobby says:

      8 Jan8 January 13:54

      would AMS-LON-DUB not be 9,000?

      • Rob says:

        8 Jan8 January 15:00

        Yes, now corrected! Last time I checked Dublin was not part of the UK ….

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