Bits: BA bacon roll news, get 1200 Avios with My Little Pony, win a trip to LA with Hilton

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• Boi says:

  30 Mar30 March 06:25

  Sorry to start with OT: got a new hilton cc. We have 6 stays booked and paid for already. If I charge something to the cc in the hotel will I get the 2500 bonus points? T&Cs say I have to pay for my stay with it but I can’t

  • Alan says:

    30 Mar30 March 07:11

    I’ve found it very variable, often never posts at all (although then got compensation from Barclaycard!). Definitely worth trying on just some token items.

    • The Original Nick. says:

      30 Mar30 March 10:30

      Alan, how did you get compensation from Barclaycard? Barclaycard have told me to get in contact with Hilton about the 2 x 2500 points in missing.

      • John says:

        30 Mar30 March 18:56

        (not Alan, but) barclaycard added the first 2 lots of 2500 points manually, but for the 3rd and 4th lots they said I’d have to contact Hilton – but they gave me £200 for the trouble

        • Alan says:

          31 Mar31 March 17:09

          Looks like you got a similar agent to me – I thought I was doing well at £110 too! 😉

      • Alan says:

        31 Mar31 March 17:08

        I think it depends a bit on the agent. They were saying they couldn’t add points so I proposed they paid me the cash equivalent value to buy the points from Hilton myself – they went for it! – amazing how much 10k points cost 😀

  • John says:

    30 Mar30 March 07:15

    Maybe. Get them to swipe the new card and make it your authorised card on check in.

• Aceman says:

  30 Mar30 March 07:08

  Slightly OT re Hilton, has anyone managed to get their free night voucher reinstated? Hilton said no chance it’s to do with Barclaycard. Got my dates wrong and it expired 4 days ago…

  • Gill says:

    30 Mar30 March 18:30

    No. Happened to me once. Lesson learned.

  • Lady London says:

    30 Mar30 March 22:24

    Nope. Nor any points. All I can say is that after I made a good case requesting some points back in exceptional circumstances nearly three years ago they refused. Since then IHG has benefited greatly and recently so has Accor. I am slowly giving them the odd night now but they are mostly 3rd choice.

• Hugo says:

  30 Mar30 March 07:11

  Mmmmmm bacon rolls! Like the ‘business case’ part, sheds a good deal of light on how BA is being run these days…think Willie Walsh might have gone on a 2 day management course and come back feeling like he had been enlightened, yet the company really needs to go back to hospitality school

  • Speedbird676 says:

    30 Mar30 March 08:54

    The business case will most likely reduce the size of the bacon roll by 1.16% to compensate for the extra hour.

    • guesswho2000 says:

      30 Mar30 March 10:21

      That’s ok, we can just have two bacon rolls, to compensate for the reduced size

  • Ben says:

    30 Mar30 March 09:42

    That same survey also suggested they were looking at putting on a full hot buffet breakfast in the GC lounge, similar to GF. Obviously the business case for that didn’t stack up.

  • Rob Davey says:

    30 Mar30 March 12:34

    Business cases are far from a bad thing, without them costs could run out of control and lead to even worse decisions.

    I see this as a good thing because a business case has presumably proved that improving lounge experience = more loyalty = more revenue. Not much evidence that recent business cases have been successfully proving that point so this is a good step forward….

    • Rob says:

      30 Mar30 March 14:05

      Yes, but what we are saying is that no-one at BA actually has enough authority to make what is actually a fairly trivial decision without writing a paper first. We are talking about an airline, a business that has serious safety-critical issues to worry about. Whether or not you can get a bacon roll in the lounge at 10.30am should not be taking up management time.

      Far better to wipe out the managerial layer that is only there to approve decisions such as this and put the savings back into letting staff authorise whatever changes they want, up to a certain point.

      A slightly different example – at Ritz-Carlton hotels, any member of staff can spend $2,000 of company money for the benefit of a guest without authorisation and without any risk of management recrimination afterwards. If something needs to be done, they get it done. Does any customer facing staff member at BA have the authority to spend $2,000 for the benefit of a customer with no sign-off required at all?

• Genghis says:

  30 Mar30 March 07:17

  The bacon rolls a couple of weeks ago had inedible almost uncooked, v doughy rolls. They really need to enhance to some nice baps.

  • Yuff says:

    30 Mar30 March 07:26

    Are we still talking about rolls 😉

    • Genghis says:

      30 Mar30 March 07:28

      🙂 I’m northern. Stottie anyone?

      • RussellH says:

        30 Mar30 March 11:37

        Wrong side of the Pennines!

        • Harpo says:

          30 Mar30 March 14:00

          Right side. Literally.

  • Oh! Matron! says:

    30 Mar30 March 08:23

    Came here to say this.

    I take three rolls, rip the fatty, uncooked bits off them, and then place the actual cooked bacon onto one roll, leaving the rest.

    Unbelievably wasteful, I’ll grant you, but if the *****&& &&**&’s at Baxter Story actually cooked the stuff in the first place, we wouldn’t be in this position in the first place

    Furthermore, BS (Funny!) do the catering at my place of work, and we run sweepstakes every day to see if the baked potatoes actually are…

  • David S says:

    30 Mar30 March 10:10

    Don’t give BA any more ideas about ‘enhancing’ their products Genghis

• AlanG says:

  30 Mar30 March 07:23

  Just had a bacon roll in T5B lounge earlier, I think I broke my tooth, they must microwave the bread to make them this solid, removed the best part left the brick roll behind.
  Now suffering a 1hour delay @ B32 for BA458 watching some passengers ask question and some very rude and abrasive gate staff shouting at them in reply.

• Rob says:

  30 Mar30 March 08:08

  I am very fond of the bacon rolls (similarly the Club Europe scones, RIP). That’s my poor Northern upbringing for you 🙂

  • James67 says:

    30 Mar30 March 08:30

    Agreed, although as others have suggested quality of both the rolls and bacon can vary. However, now that BA have saved our bacon (you should amend the title of this article) I hope they will reverse cutbacks on H2O onboard to offset the added salt in the lounge.

  • Anna says:

    30 Mar30 March 09:07

    Normally we miss the bacon rolls because of having to connect from Manchester (never worked out why they can’t serve them up here?!!), however we are staying over at Heathrow in August the night before our LH flight so I am really excited at the prospect of starting my holiday with bacon rolls and Taittinger!

  • Sam says:

    30 Mar30 March 11:58

    The scone was the best thing about CE.

    • Will says:

      30 Mar30 March 12:47

      Agreed

• Henry Larsen says:

  30 Mar30 March 08:12

  Re: Hilton trip

  > Only legal residents of UK, Ireland, Germany and the United Arab Emirates…

• James67 says:

  30 Mar30 March 08:36

  Does anybody really want to escape Brexit Britain to Trump America, even on a free gift? Talk about out the frying pan into the fire. If anybody from Hilton is reading this please have sympathy on us and change it to Rangali or Samui.

  • mark2 says:

    30 Mar30 March 08:54

    We are very pleased to be flying to Seattle in two months time. When we booked it looked as if Clinton was going to win and we still booked! And we are going on to Canada where Trudeau is in charge.
    Is it normal to ask whether you agree with a country’s government’s policies when deciding whether to go there on holiday?

    • James67 says:

      30 Mar30 March 09:26

      My comments were meant as a lighthearted plea to escape the neverending bickering of respective sides of both arguements fueled by overkill in the media, not a judgment on the outcomes. Would be great to relax someplace nice over Easter, pick up a newspaper that informed, as opposed to inflamed, with no mention of eithef Brexit or Trump in sight.

      • Anon says:

        30 Mar30 March 20:07

        I tried to deliberately steer away from any chat about politics when at the Rangali the other week.

        #FabHolidayNotPolitics 🙂

        • Trev says:

          1 Apr1 April 20:39

          Anon any reason your recent report is password protected? Can you share the password?!

      • Anon says:

        30 Mar30 March 20:08

        #NoNewsNoShoes

  • mark2 says:

    30 Mar30 March 08:55

    More importantly, does an economy flight to the other side of the world for three nights in a standard room tempt many people?

    • James67 says:

      30 Mar30 March 09:32

      For millions it might represent the holiday of a lifetime Mark, so yes. Even today I would guess more than half the population in the UK have never been overseas in their lives, but that does not necessarily mean tbey want to go.

      • Rob says:

        30 Mar30 March 14:11

        My experience is that these competitions are very popular with HFP readers irrespective of class of travel.

        • John says:

          30 Mar30 March 18:58

          But HFP readers have some people’s “holiday of a lifetime” once every few months.

      • the real harry1 says:

        30 Mar30 March 20:15

        It could be a generational thing though – so I doubt whether it really is half.

        First, to support your opinion, my father went to USA once (& maybe twice) but my mother never went abroad (unless I’m mis-remembering once to Italy but I don’t think so).

        Whereas the 5 of us (siblings) have wandered the globe a fair bit, a lot of Europe plus I remember bro 1 in Cuba, bro 2 in Trinidad & Tobago, sis 1 in Australia for a year, sis 2 mostly Europe. I’ve been all over the place.

        If it were really half, that proportion of not-willing-to-go-abroad will surely shift to 25% then 10% very soon/ next 20 years as the older generation dies off

        • James67 says:

          30 Mar30 March 21:43

          Your comment got me thinking Harry, a quick search found this:
          http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/leisureandtourism/articles/traveltrends/2015
          Probably an interesting read for some of us travel enthusiasts, I will have a look this weekend. I think your assertion is likely correct, firstly due to package tours and more recently to LCC. Air Asia’s advertising slogan is ‘Eveyone Can Fly’ and the impact it and otber LCC have had, particularly in developing countries, is amazing.

    • Nate1309 says:

      30 Mar30 March 14:28

      better than being at work!

    • D74 says:

      30 Mar30 March 23:28

      Surprisingly Mark2, there are people in the world who fly long haul economy. In fact i’d hazard a guess that more people fly economy than premium cabins

      In fact some people fly as purely a way to get from A to B. Crazy right?

      Guess what? They’re all fine at the end of it too!

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