Bits: 500 Accor points with wine, double Heathrow Rewards on fashion

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• harry says:

  23 Mar23 March 07:52

  1000 clubcard points on £100 wine
  XXFYFY

  • harry says:

    23 Mar23 March 07:53

    sorry that’s £10 off

    1000 code is XXPPPT

    • Rob says:

      23 Mar23 March 08:23

      Targetted, does not work for most people

• Steve R says:

  23 Mar23 March 08:13

  I got sent that code

  Only trouble is that it is for wine by the case, & T’s are doing 25% off 6 bottles in store

• Gavin says:

  23 Mar23 March 09:20

  Accor autoconvert trick worked for me this morning direct into Iberia

  • Tilly71 says:

    23 Mar23 March 09:33

    Are you using Chrome or ie to redeem as when I last tried to do this it didn’t go anywhere.

    • Gavin says:

      23 Mar23 March 19:22

      I think I eventually set it up on my iPhone using Safari. Requires patience!

• John says:

  23 Mar23 March 10:18

  Tesco direct also offering 500 or 1000 clubcard points on a range of “Beats by Dr Dre” headphones.

• harry says:

  23 Mar23 March 18:33

  Bad news for Avios RFS Europe users if you’re tall.

  Just checked in for tomorrow (ie 24 hrs in advance) and exit seats are now £18, same as when you buy them in advance.

  I guessed they would get there in the end but this was free for us at Xmas out & back.

  • Gavin says:

    23 Mar23 March 19:25

    When I checked in for my flight with Aegean for tomorrow (cash HBO ticket) I had no issue getting the exit row free of charge. Their food and wine is better than BA (in J anyway, and very probably down the back as well)

    • harry says:

      23 Mar23 March 19:33

      BA 🙁

      Choose seat
      1.Select a passenger
      2.Choose an available seat Exit row seat £18
      Standard seat FREE

      • harry says:

        23 Mar23 March 19:36

        Which means I had to double check in case I screwed up 🙂 but no, it is £18. Tomorrow IS the 24th, right? lol

  • Genghis says:

    23 Mar23 March 19:44

    Even further evidence BA is moving towards LCC service will full service carrier prices.

    • Harry says:

      24 Mar24 March 16:35

      You can still get a free exit seat by asking at check in

      We got offered five times gbp250 to give up our seats on this flight and fly later, same thing happened last Xmas

      Sadly I didn’t,t even have to ask my wife to get an answer lol

      If it was just me I would have taken the grand

  • Alan says:

    24 Mar24 March 08:56

    Hadn’t realised they’d left them free on RFS (Gold so no charge anyway) – at least they haven’t gone down the route of making them like HBO tickets and not even allowing seat selection in advance for those with Bronze upwards!

• harry says:

  23 Mar23 March 18:42

  OK got a reply to my APD query yesterday – if you remember, I emailed avios.com asking for the refund of APD incorrectly applied to my 2 sons 12-15 (after change in HMRC rules). Here is the answer:

  Dear harry
  Thanks for your email regarding your flights to somewhere in Europe. I’ve checked your
  booking and I can see that you’ve used your Avios to pay for your flight.

  When you’re a regular Avios collector, you’re eligible for our Reward
  Flight Saver when travelling within Europe. This means that you don’t pay
  the taxes on the flight, just £17.50 per flight sector. Avios then pays the
  full tax amount to the airline.

  When you book a long haul reward flight, you pay taxes, fees and charges,
  therefore APD would’ve been paid.

  Regarding your flight to somewhere in Europe, we wouldn’t refund the APD as you
  haven’t paid it on this flight.

  I hope this clarifies the matter for you. Thanks again for contacting us.

  Kind regards
  ***

  What do you reckon? RFS fee is clearly meant to cover APD and airport fees. Or do I stand a snowball’s chance and no point pursuing? For info: BAEC refund the APD in this instance, initially charging the same £17.50 per flight leg as avios.com.

  • harry says:

    23 Mar23 March 18:57

    First point, I guess, is that BAEC quotes that the £17.50 is part of the ‘Total Price (Including all taxes, fees, and carrier charges).’

    So avios.com are possibly incorrect to try to say that there is any difference between RFS flights (paying all taxes, fees, and carrier charges) and long haul reward flights (paying all taxes, fees, and carrier charges).

  • Rob says:

    23 Mar23 March 19:11

    Hmmm. If you book one-ways, as you know, you now pay the LOWER of £17.50 or the actual amount. This is why it is now usually cheaper, especially in CE, to book 2 x one-ways rather than a return.

    This does not appear to apply to return tickets – or perhaps it does and there are no examples. Given how steep the Heathrow departure fee is, you would struggle to find many routes where the combined taxes on a return were under £35.

    • harry says:

      23 Mar23 March 19:23

      I think that’s only via BAEC? Which is why it’s better to use them rather than avios.com, point noted from your earlier article though didn’t stop me booking this on avios.com, unfortunately. For my route, the difference is negligible. But the APD refund would have been automatic (from BAEC) rather than refused by avios.com.

      Point remains that I was charged (for the outward leg) £17.50, to include APD fees, and now thosefees are not payable. So I reckon I’m due a refund. Avios.com are just swallowing up my unpaid APD as extra income.

      • Rob says:

        23 Mar23 March 19:36

        Both sites now charge the lower taxes – although on avios.com it will show you £17.50 until you get to the final payment page, at which point it drops.

        Your core point is wrong though. The Heathrow Passenger Service Charge is £29.81, adult or child. Unless you are flying back from, say, Luxembourg (£3 tax) there is no way that your total for a return would be under £35 anyway.

        And guess what?

        I just did a dummy RETURN booking from Heathrow to Luxembourg. The RFS charge for 1 adult and 1 kid is £67.78. This means the system DOES work properly – the adult is £35 and the child is £32.78.

        • Sussex bantam says:

          23 Mar23 March 19:38

          This is all news to me and may well be of interest given recent family bookings. Is there a link to some background ??

        • Rob says:

          23 Mar23 March 19:45

          On which bit?

          This https://headforpoints.com/2016/01/20/british-airways-reward-flight-saver-save-money-on-tax/ covers the idea that 2 x one-way is cheaper than a return.

        • harry says:

          23 Mar23 March 19:47

          Thanks, that means no point pursuing with avios.com, saved me some time

        • harry says:

          23 Mar23 March 20:12

          OTOH those Avios points have a monetary value, as we all know.

          So I HAVE paid the APD, just not necessarily in cash.

        • harry says:

          23 Mar23 March 20:15

          I could even ‘backwards’ the cost of buying the Avios points from avios.com’s own site to show the monetary value.

        • Genghis says:

          23 Mar23 March 20:24

          But aren’t the avios just to cover the ‘fare’ component of the price?

        • harry says:

          23 Mar23 March 20:34

          Well, at times I wish I were a barrister lol

  • Kipto says:

    23 Mar23 March 21:41

    Wondered where you’d been. Welcome back Harry

  • Alan says:

    24 Mar24 March 08:58

    For LHR flights don’t passenger charges already cost most of the fee anyway? (part of the rubbish excuse BA gave for stopping free stopovers from the regions I believe)

• Sussex bantam says:

  23 Mar23 March 21:51

  Got it – it was the apd I was interested in. Thanks Harry/raffles

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