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

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• the real harry1 says:

  3 Feb3 February 15:01

  O/T thanks for that tip on splitting season tickets, whoever it was – several, istr :

  2 of my kids take the train to school, sticking 2 months into the fare calculator:
  A—>C = £163.60
  whereas
  A—>B = £54.55
  B—>C = £86.80
  Total = £141.35

  crazy

  • Graeme says:

    3 Feb3 February 15:17

    no more crazy than air fare pricing ex-EU … 🙂

  • the real harry1 says:

    3 Feb3 February 15:51

    with 2 of them, I think it’ll save me over £300 a year 🙂

    • the real harry1 says:

      3 Feb3 February 19:41

      it’s not as good

      next half term x2 season tickets option – cheaper not to pay for whole terms to include unused hols in the middle – shows a saving of c.£16 each

      so with 2 kids about £190-odd saving pa

      I’ll take it 🙂

      nice lady @ station confirmed my figures & said no need to get off train or leave seat etc

      • the real harry1 says:

        3 Feb3 February 21:25

        whenever I get dismal about paying £1200 train fares – & I guess my daughter has daily taxi & bus fares so £630 on top – I give myself a little pinch & say – hey! we’ve got 2 of the best schools in the country – some of the best GCSEs, best A-levels – we’re breeding doctors, dentists, scientists, professionals, god forbid City people – and the big plus is it’s state not Rafflesway Independent for another £20K 🙂

        • Lady London says:

          19 Feb19 February 16:25

          @harry was that Rafflesway mentioned deliberately? 🙂 Is that the school in Dubai you’re thinking of?

• Mark says:

  3 Feb3 February 15:44

  O/T – just received an email from Turkish Airlines to say you can now use miles to pay for taxes on reward tickets if you are an elite member of Miles and Smiles – they will truly become free! Calculating seems to give 0.02 TL per mile of value – so around 0.45p per mile. You can usually get around 1p per mile value booking flights in Business, so not a good way to use their miles – but if you are miles rich …

• Stu N says:

  3 Feb3 February 17:33

  Another OT – for Amex offers, do you have to spend the target in a single transaction, or does it add up separate transactions in the offer period?

  I have “spend £200, save £50” on AMEX travel but I can’t work out how to make it do two separate flights in a single transaction – one is £135 and the other about £80..

  Ts and Cs aren’t clear on this.

  • the real harry1 says:

    3 Feb3 February 17:54

    some Amex offers have worked cumulatively

    I don’t think anybody ever reported back on whether Amex Travel has been shown to work cumulatively

    I guess several of us would be interested to know…

    • Moktar says:

      3 Feb3 February 20:01

      I asked CS, and they confirmed it is cumulative

      • rick says:

        3 Feb3 February 20:11

        I thought it was non cumullative.
        Good if anyone can confirm that it is indeed cumulativ with real world experience, rather than CS response.

        • Stu_N says:

          3 Feb3 February 20:22

          No downside as the flights were same price on Amex as airlines sites so I gave it a go. Spend of £133.40 and £67.50 has got me the magic email.

          “Thank you for taking advantage of our American Express Travel offer with your Card (last five digits shown above). Credit should appear on your statement within 5 days from qualifying spend but may take up to 90 days from offer end date.”

        • the real harry1 says:

          3 Feb3 February 20:33

          well done that man 🙂

        • James67 says:

          3 Feb3 February 21:08

          @Stu, I’d happily have settled for just the magic offer, mine have been rubbish for months.

        • Stu_N says:

          3 Feb3 February 22:30

          It’s been sitting on my account for a while, so may have reached quota but you can try asking CS via secure messages to add it. That worked for me with a BA one before Christmas that my g/f had on her card but I didn’t. Full wording is as follows:

          AMERICAN EXPRESS TRAVEL£50 back
          Spend £200 or more, get £50 back
          Save to Card to get a £50 statement credit on eligible spend of £200+ online with American Express Travel by 28/02/2017. Valid once per Card for the first 24,000 Cardmembers to save. Terms and payment restrictions apply.

        • Brian W says:

          3 Feb3 February 23:03

          @Stu_N have you had the credit yet? I too had a split payment on this offer (total of £217) and got the email instantly. Doesn’t always mean the credit follows as others will testify. I have had issues with others like Naked Wines splitting the total and it causing the offer to fail. I think Harry experienced this also.

          Amex customer service usually fix it with a call though and did again for me in this case, their correspondence confirms its not cumulative:

          Dear Mr Webb,

          Thank you for your e-mail. I hope you are doing well.

          You will be delighted to know that I have immediately the credit of £50 for American Express Travel offer on your account. This credit shall appear on your account within 3-5 working days.

          I would like to inform you that the offer credit did not apply automatically on your account as the merchant had split the transaction into two (£123.42 and £93.75).

          Should you require any other assistance, then please respond to my e-mail and I will be happy to assist you.

          FYI – I received the credit but manually, not automatically.

• Neil says:

  3 Feb3 February 17:46

  O/T I have 3200 flying blue air miles! Does anyone know what’s the best way to get any value out of them? Cheers

  • James67 says:

    3 Feb3 February 21:05

    If another decent pointshound offer comes along and you need/want a 2 night hotel stay you could boost them to enough for a European flight (with stopover in Amsterdam or Paris I believe but I’m not bery familiar with FB).

• rick says:

  3 Feb3 February 19:18

  I am 11k miles short of AAdvantage Miles for a redemption.
  What is best option for me to get these miles?

  I have about 25k Amex MR

  • Louise says:

    3 Feb3 February 19:43

    Purchase them or SPG conversion

• the real harry1 says:

  3 Feb3 February 19:53

  O/T since it’s Friday night I have to confess to a possible failure lol

  I spent about an hour today racking my brains & inbox trying to remember which flight it was that the 3 kids & I wasted 3 hrs of our lives sitting around bored & tired & fractious about 10pm at night

  mostly a chase through 4-6 year old journeys in my emails that I still had details of – I think it probably was just inside 3 hrs but thought it worth checking again

  shame, could have been about £1000 🙂

• roger says:

  3 Feb3 February 21:59

  OT – SPG Points

  I need about 15K SPG points (to convert to Airline redemption), but do not have any account with SPG or Marriott. Spouse has 30K MR points in her account.

  I am right in assuming that each of us can open a new account for SPG and Marriott and then she transfers required MR to her new SPG account and then onward to Mariott then phones Mariott to transfer points to my new Mariott account. Once in my account I then transfer it to my new SPG account. Once there I then move to my preferred airline.

  Would this work?
  If it does what are the timeline involved.
  American Airlines can possibly hold reservation for 5 days.

  • James67 says:

    3 Feb3 February 22:29

    I was reading about this last night and also understood it just as you describe it. MR-SPG a few days if a new partner, SPG-Marriott is virtually instant, and I would guess the marriott-marriott is probably concluded during the call but that’s only a guess.

  • Rob says:

    3 Feb3 February 22:38

    This will be slow. SPG transfer could be 3-4 days, SPG transfers tend to take 4-5 days (they are manually checked). Transfer to Marriott is then immediate though. However, the Marriott to AA transfer could drag on too. I would want at least 3 weeks to be sure this would work.

    Transfers cannot be done to new SPG accounts either. You must have shared the address for at least 30 days I think.

• Jeff says:

  4 Feb4 February 16:54

  Yes, that article sums it up well and the huge number of comments – 989 largely seem to agree. BA management is obviously impervious to all criticism. They don’t think how all the service cuts affect customers. The cabin crew strikes are also symptomatic of a deeper problem with the new cheaper crew. It is only going one way as they won’t address the problem until it is too late when it will be much harder to regain lost passengers. I travel BA long haul in First about 4 times a year and now have my first non BA flight (to Australia) booked for the first time in about 15 years…

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