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Why are some Lloyds Avios cardholders not receiving any points?

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Regular readers will know that I hold the Lloyds Bank credit card operation in contempt.  It regularly manages to achieve levels of incompetence which other banks simply couldn’t match if they tried.

Who else, for example, would take five days to send out ‘refer a friend’ emails after you request them?  Fewer than 1 in 3 people who I refer for the Lloyds Avios cards actually manage to receive the email and receive the bonus points (my Amex strike rate is 80%).  

Who else would freeze your credit card on suspicion of money laundering because your spouse paid your bill from their bank account (as happened to me)?

Unfortunately, the Lloyds Avios Rewards credit card remains an excellent product.  It is the only credit card in Britain to offer reward points (of any kind) alongside 0% foreign exchange fees.  The Avios upgrade voucher you receive for spending £7,000 – which can be across the Amex and the MasterCard – is also a great deal for a solo traveller who might find the British Airways American Express 2-4-1 voucher useless.

So, as I say, I keep recommending the card regardless.

And yet …..

There is a group of cardholders – it isn’t clear how large, but many are HfP readers – who have never received a single Avios point from their Lloyds Avios credit card.

I have been receiving these complaints from readers for well over a year.  To be honest I didn’t take them too seriously at first because IT cock-ups with data transfer of points are a fairly regular event.  And, in any event, how hard would it be for Lloyds to manually send Avios a list of accounts and the points due?

And yet, when pressurised, Lloyds can do it.  What a surprise.

This is what happened to a reader recently:

Opened a Lloyds Avios Rewards credit card account

Received no Avios at all after 10 weeks

Lodged a complaint, told it would take 12 weeks to resolve!

Waited 4 weeks, lodged another complaint threatening a referral to the Ombudsman

Missing Avios arrived 4 days later

So, pressure works.  This reader also referred his wife for her own card.  After two months, she had received no Avios.  She complained and was told by Lloyds that it would take 26 WEEKS for them to credit her the missing points.

The good news is that Lloyds is now offering a defined piece of compensation.

If you are missing Avios points, you should contact Lloyds and say that you need them for an imminent booking.  Magically, the Avios will appear.  Lloyds will also pay you £150 in compensation.

Don’t expect any missing Avios to appear without intervention.  What is interesting, from all of the different cases I have seen, is that no-one has ever been told what the problem actually is, and customers who question the bank are told that even they don’t know.

As I said, that’s Lloyds for you.

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Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (168)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Billy says:
    30 Apr30 April 10:23

    Hmmm… now they’ve got their hand on MBNA uk I hope they don’t break that.

    So far they’ve been really efficient.

    Mind you, nothing beats Amex – payments reflected instantly on the account, unlike another credit card I use (aqua : no overseas exchange fees but pay it off monthly!) who take three days!

    • Scallder says:
      30 Apr30 April 15:01

      My wife has the Lloyds card (with me as supplementary card holder) and we’ve Bern using this in the US over past couple of weeks and any payments to the card hit it immediately when she has done a bank transfer to clear some credit. Does seem odd you can’t pay the card online on the account though…

  • Vinz says:
    30 Apr30 April 10:25

    After a month and a half my amex still doesn’t work. The first pin they sent worked for the Mastercard not the amex, so the card was blocked. I can only use it with Apple pay and online transactions.
    So far they’ve compensated me for £116 for all the calls and the inconvenience caused, still waiting for a new card to be issued and be compensated for missing avios on instore transactions.

  • mark2 says:
    30 Apr30 April 10:41

    Unfortunately my Avios account has worked perfectly so no compensation. I only use it abroad and for Lloyds cash back or Amex ShopSmall, but make a good profit on the £24 fee plus the FX savings.
    My wife’s card on the other hand suddenly stopped receiving Avios or issuing a statement even electronically in Jan 16. She has had one lot of compensation but I have been negligent in not claiming several more times.

  • kens says:
    30 Apr30 April 11:07

    I had the same problem before when I first opened the card a couple of years ago. After many phone calls it happens to be that they opened new Avios account for me at account activation and the Avios account No I provided at application was simply ignored. One way to figure out if this is the sources of the issue is simply ask Lloyds to provide/confirm the your Avios account no. so that you know if all the Avios had migically gone to a “hidden account”, thereafter you can request a merge.

  • Grimz says:
    30 Apr30 April 11:11

    I have noticed that I have not received the 4500 referral bonus for me or my partner. Who do I contact avios or lloyds? Is it the referrer who calls or emails?

    • Rob says:
      30 Apr30 April 11:29

      You contact Avios – you need the name, email and Avios number of your referrer.

  • Andy says:
    30 Apr30 April 11:11

    OT but I have had to complain the the ombudsman about Barclays IHG card. Complained about not being able to reach the £10k for the voucher and wanted refund of the fee back in beginning of March. Sent recorded letter complaint, sent several secure messages and even phoned them on Saturday to tell them they had run out of time. Was told I would receive a letter saying they were busy and it would be a further 2 weeks. They have transferred the card over to the new one and haven’t even pro rate refunded the fee. Sod that, filled out the form on the FSO website and will let them deal with it.

    • Genghis says:
      30 Apr30 April 13:55

      Has it been eight weeks?

      • Andy says:
        30 Apr30 April 15:37

        Yes that was up yesterday. That’s why I phoned them and they agreed that the 56 days was up.

    • Scallder says:
      30 Apr30 April 15:08

      Andy – I’ll be doing the same shortly. My year started in January and have out at least £5k through it. I wrote to the executive office as it was mentioned on here that someone did that and got compensation.

      I got a reply saying they wouldn’t give me anything (I asked for full refund and £30 per £1k spend in line with the cost of the Paris Intercontinental where I was actually planning on using the voucher (noted that their helpline was giving £25k per £1k as reported by Rob).

      Their reply stated was their final position so ad I’ve been away the last 3 weeks I’ll be complaining to ombudsman when I’m back.

  • the_real_a says:
    30 Apr30 April 11:30

    As some other posters have said – AVIOS open second and third accounts quite regularly. What you should do is ask LLyods specifically what account number they are being sent to, and ask AVIOS to search for other accounts with your name and address.

    This MIGHT be more of an AVIOS issue.

    • mark2 says:
      30 Apr30 April 11:35

      When this happened to me I received an email with the new number.
      I kept both accounts; it can be useful at times.

    • Jono says:
      30 Apr30 April 15:59

      This 2nd account opening happened to me when I started the Lloyds Avios cards but already had an Avios account. Took about 4 or 5 months before they realised the problem.

      That was 2 years ago and have qualified for the upgrade voucher both years, however this year I qualified for it on 6th January and I’m still awaiting it to post to my avios account even after 3 phone calls and an investigation which is ongoing. They have confirmed I’ve qualified and the voucher has been generated, just it’s disappeared somewhere along the way :-/

  • Yuff says:
    30 Apr30 April 11:32

    I’ve not had too many problems with my Lloyds card apart from buying some Disney tickets, from undercover tourist a couple of years ago. Which eventually resolved.

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