Bits: up to 30% discount when you buy SPG points, Singapore Airlines drops fuel surcharges

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• Charlie says:

  2 Mar2 March 06:25

  Can’t sleep in my Premier Inn room…

  I think the decimal place needs a shift Rob. 1.27p instead of 0.127p.

  • the real harry1 says:

    2 Mar2 March 07:59

    good night’s sleep money back guarantee

    • Worzel says:

      2 Mar2 March 08:29

      Would like to have the same guarantee where I’m staying as an insomniac with a wooden leg appears to have moved into the room above!

      Hopefully Rob will clarify the BA companion ticket situation later.

      • Rob says:

        2 Mar2 March 09:02

        Must …. stop ….. writing …. stuff …… late ….. at ….. night

    • Charlie says:

      2 Mar2 March 09:04

      Do you think they’ll give me the money instead of work? 🙂

• Genghis says:

  2 Mar2 March 06:55

  Buying SPGs could work out if you’re buying a Marriott package

  • Cate says:

    2 Mar2 March 11:21

    Was thinking the same…..

• Matthew says:

  2 Mar2 March 07:01

  Some price increases in miles are small, whereas others are quite considerable. Varies significantly with the route.

• avidsaver says:

  2 Mar2 March 07:04

  O/T Sorry but have I missed the outcome of the following? “UPDATE: BA has agreed to give me a legal opinion on Monday on whether it believes a BA Amex companion ticket qualifies for EU261 downgrade compensation.”

  • the real harry1 says:

    2 Mar2 March 07:11

    still in preparation

    • Genghis says:

      2 Mar2 March 07:14

      IIRC as written on FT, Raffles noted BA don’t want to put pen to paper

      • Tariq says:

        2 Mar2 March 15:16

        So essentially the legal opinion deviated from what they wished it to be…

        • Rob says:

          2 Mar2 March 16:19

          I have now got a response from BA, albeit not written by a lawyer. I can only hope that a lawyer has read it. I will run it tomorrow.

        • the real harry1 says:

          3 Mar3 March 00:00

          sounds worth the wait

          my guess is that they’ll say ‘241s are not first in line – claims for downgrading may or may not be met – depending on merit’ – so we should claim & hope for the best – BA won’t go to legal defence in most cases – they’ll hope most people are too idle to claim

  • Doug M says:

    2 Mar2 March 07:50

    Yeah he said on Flyertalk they offered the alternative of some statement he considered too insulting to readers intelligence to publish.

    • Lady London says:

      2 Mar2 March 08:56

      That’ll be business as usual with BA, then 🙂

    • Rob says:

      2 Mar2 March 09:03

      Indeed they did!

      But as our reader will be submitting his EU261 claim next week I can ‘live blog’ his progress!

      • Cate says:

        2 Mar2 March 11:25

        Oh how delicious 🙂

        It’s going to be handbags and vouchers at dawn. Can’t wait!!

• Genghis says:

  2 Mar2 March 08:13

  OT. I’ve recently used the ‘Yuff’ method of using an Amex 241 and would like to share my experience.
  1) I booked the outbound LHR-CPT at T-355 online a couple of weeks ago, applied the 241 voucher and paid 62,500 avios (off peak) and £700 or so in taxes
  2) Last night at T-355, I booked the return leg JNB-LHR online as a single and paid 125,000 (off peak) and £470 in taxes (but couldn’t get the earlier 388 flight that I wanted so had to settle for the later 744 – I guess someone on the phone had already reserved these considering I was there at prob 00.00.01)
  3) Called up this morning to cancel the return leg and get it added to the original booking. I was told that there is no guarantee that it would get readded to the inventory but I said to proceed and understand the risk. I was put on hold for five mins.
  4) The agent then came back on and said it was all done, the avios had been refunded, I’d receive a refund of the taxes paid last night and that I needed to pay 62,500 avios and some more tax to true up to the required taxes for the return. All sorted.

  Positives
  No need to stay on hold to US or Japan

  Negatives
  Potential risk of return legs not being returned to the inventory
  Risk of not getting the original flights you wanted as someone else has nabbed them on the phone

  • the real harry1 says:

    2 Mar2 March 08:16

    nicely done, good way to get round the agents abroad who won’t book your tickets on the phone at midnight UK

  • Kip says:

    2 Mar2 March 08:27

    Do the seats open up at the exact time every day or is it a general ‘some time between midnight and 1am’?

    • Genghis says:

      2 Mar2 March 08:44

      Midnight GMT, 1am BST.

  • AndyR says:

    2 Mar2 March 08:42

    What fees do you pay in total? Just the £35 each cancellation?

    • Genghis says:

      2 Mar2 March 08:46

      No fees. There are no fees to add the return leg of a companion voucher booking which was not available to book at the time of original booking.

  • Genghis says:

    2 Mar2 March 08:47

    Another negative – you need spare avios to book the higher cost of the return leg at midnight

    • Lawro says:

      2 Mar2 March 09:40

      Thanks for reporting back-good to know seats do seem to become available for redemption again immediately.

      Would just be immensely frustrating though if someone took the seats over the phone before I could navigate through to the payment page online.
      Don’t phone agents have the ability to ‘hold’/remove the seat from inventory once you tell them which seats you need and they have appeared at 00:01 and only then go through the necessary ‘paperwork’.
      If so there still may be an advantage to securing the seats by calling….

  • Grimz says:

    2 Mar2 March 09:40

    I can see by comments below that you had no cancelation fee – how does that work?

    • Genghis says:

      2 Mar2 March 09:46

      No cancellation fee for the flight I booked last night as you can cancel within 24 hours for a full refund. No change fee as like I said before, no change fee to add the return to a return leg of a companion voucher booking which was not available to book at the time of original booking

      • AndyR says:

        2 Mar2 March 09:57

        Ah it was the free cancellation within 24 hours that I was forgetting about. Clever 🙂 and well done for getting flights to South Africa!

        • rams1981 says:

          2 Mar2 March 10:17

          glad it worked for you as it did me @genghis. Let’s hope the 2 for 1s are honoured!

        • Genghis says:

          2 Mar2 March 11:03

          Cheers @rams1981. Already booked a few Protea and African Pride hotels on Marriott points – great use of SPGs.

      • Grimz says:

        2 Mar2 March 10:34

        Ah the 24hrs is what im missing! Great thanks for that information.

  • pauldb says:

    2 Mar2 March 15:57

    I played around something similar to this when trying to book a trip to NZ over Chirstmas: lots of iterations for lots of family members. My own experience is only a small sample but when 2 seats were made available they always reappear upon cancellation the next morning. However there were some cases when BA opened up multiple seats and they didn’t reappear: e.g. LON-SIN on the last offpeak Wednesday in December had 10 seats released to my surprise … they were all gone by morning and my cancellation did not reappear.
    So I would appear that without manual intervention from BA, 2 seats are opened and on a very rapid cancellation they come back, but just be aware on a bigger manual release it may not be the same.

    • Genghis says:

      3 Mar3 March 05:07

      Good info

• Roger says:

  2 Mar2 March 09:09

  Hope there is conversion bonus for other airlines too very soon from SPG.

• Mycity says:

  2 Mar2 March 09:56

  O/T based. On Genghis as above re using SPG for Marriott travel reward. I’m sure I’ve missed something but can I clarify two points?

  If I use say 270,000 rewards on aMarriott package do the do the miles posts straight away?

  Secondly am I correct in saying I get a voucher for 7 nights that sits on my account for use within a year, therefore I don’t need to book a hotel straight away?

  Thanks

  • Rob says:

    2 Mar2 March 12:17

    Yes and Yes.

    You can also top up the package later with more points if you eventually choose to redeem at a higher category hotel.

    • Mycity says:

      2 Mar2 March 12:37

      Thanks Rob

    • Keith M says:

      2 Mar2 March 12:53

      Does adding more points later then extend the one year validity?

      • Matthew says:

        2 Mar2 March 13:13

        I’m hoping that is the case as I have a cat 1-5 voucher at the mo and wish to boost it to a cat 9.

• Wally1976 says:

  2 Mar2 March 09:58

  Please correct me if my maths is wrong but to get best value out the SPG points promo (for avios), buy 20,000 at $490, this then (currently) converts to 25,000 x 1.35 = 33,750 avios giving a cost of (roughly) 1.19p per avios. Still not a great offer but might work for some people.

  • Rob says:

    2 Mar2 March 12:15

    Yes, that is a better deal. I was in two minds whether to do my example based on 30k or 20k.

    • Melvin says:

      2 Mar2 March 15:48

      I’m confused, how does 20,000 become 25,00 before the conversion?

      • Genghis says:

        2 Mar2 March 15:58

        Each increment of 20k SPGs converts to 25k airmiles. As there also a BA bonus on, the bonus goes on the 25k.

      • Rob says:

        2 Mar2 March 16:18

        What I meant was – my calculations assume you buy 30,000 points and convert to 35,000 miles. If you only bought 20,000 points – and converted to 25,000 miles – it is clearly a better deal on a ‘pence per mile’ basis because you’re getting a 25% bonus rather than a 16% bonus.

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