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Bits: £100 off £500 BA spend, 4000 Miles & More miles with a hotel, Troy Warfield leaves BA

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News in brief:

£100 off a £500 British Airways spend deal with Amex

American Express is offering a very limited number of cardholders a £100 statement credit with their next £500 British Airways purchase.

If you are targetted, it will appear on your American Express online account under ‘Offers’.  It is limited to the first 7,000 people to save the offer to their card and the £500 transaction must be made by 12th June.

Neither my wife or I have this.  If you have put British Airways transactions through one of your Amex cards recently then you will probably be out of luck.   Some – but not all – HfP readers who have contacted Amex Customer Services have managed to get this offer added to their accounts even though they were not targetted.

Helpfully, £500 just covers the taxes and charges on a Club World or First Class long haul Avios redemption.

Get 4,000 Miles & More miles with any hotel booking

Lufthansa is again offering a generous bribe to encourage you to try its new hotel booking website.

It is only valid for first-time bookers via the Miles & More Hotels portal which you can find here.   There is no minimum stay and no minimum spend.  You need to book by 23rd May but the stay can be for a future date.  All bookings must be pre-paid.

The 4,000 miles is the minimum you will earn – this consists of a 3,000 miles bonus and 1,000 base miles.  You may receive more than 1,000 base miles based on the cost of your room.

British Airways BA 777X 777 9X

British Airways loses its second ‘Director of Customer Experience’

British Airways staff were told last week that Troy Warfield, BA’s ‘Director of Customer Experience’ is leaving the company after 18 months.

The announcement:

Troy Warfield, Director Customer Experience, has decided to leave British Airways.  Since joining the airline, Troy has led many customer improvements including the Gatwick and Boston Lounges, First Wing and forthcoming transformation of Club World catering, service and sleep proposition.  The process of finding a successor is now under way and an announcement will be made once an appointment is confirmed.

…. seems to be lacking the usual ‘leaves with our best wishes’, ‘we wish him success in his future career’, ‘I am sad to leave behind such a hard working group of colleagues’ etc platitudes normally found in such wording.

There were raised eyebrows when Warfield was hired, given that his previous employer (Avis Budget) is not exactly known for its outstanding customer service.  His job before Avis was running Andrex, Kleenex, Scottex and Velvet for Kimberley-Clark in Europe ….

That said, Warfield’s departure mirrors that of Frank van der Post.  van der Post was Warfield’s predecessor and the first person to have this role.  He came from a successful stint at Jumeirah Hotels – which does have a good reputation for customer experience – but he did not last too long either, albeit he went on to a senior role at KPM Royal Dutch Telecom.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

Comments (189)

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

  • Paul says:

    How he will spin his time at BA on his CV?
    “In my 18 months at BA I oversaw the redecoration of two lounges and helped build a corridor!”

    • AVM says:

      There was Arthur ‘Two Sheds’ Jackson, now we have Troy ‘Two Lounges and a Corridor’ …

    • Nick says:

      You left out ‘ruin the customer experience for the majority of customers’ with buy on board

      • Rob says:

        There are some stories about Troy’s departure floating around but I decided not to descend into tittle tattle (and at the same time remove all risk of a libel suit).

    • RTS says:

      LOL.

  • Amit says:

    New offer on amex spend £200 get £50 credit at Amex Travel

    • the real harry1 says:

      x2 on Gold for us – it’s cumulative

      shame Amex Travel don’t do T-355

      • Yuff says:

        Ditto for us plus BA added the £100 offer on my card this morning 🙂 after I emailed them

        • Klaus-Peter Dudas says:

          Onto your BA card or a non-BA card?

          • Rashad says:

            same here AmEx added the offer to my BA Amex, next day response and action. very impressed here

        • Charlie says:

          Same. They added it to my Gold card by email

        • Adam says:

          Did you email Amex or BA for this to be applied?

          • Mike says:

            I emailed them and they applied it to my gold rewards card as well as adding it to the BAPP. However, I need to email customer services when I make the payment via my gold rewards card and they will manually apply the £100 credit. The credit via the BAPP card will be added automatically. I have this in writing.

          • Joan says:

            I called Amex ( re my BA AMEX card )

          • Charlie says:

            Emailed used the secure message facility in my Amex account.

        • Oh! Matron! says:

          Not on my SPG but on the platinum chargecard

  • luke says:

    50£ off 200£ spent on Amex travel website appeared on my Amex gold..much better than BA offer

    • Peter K says:

      Depends on whether you are planning on spending more than £500 on a BA flight or not surely…

      • Stu N says:

        I sent Amex a secure message yesterday and they added the offer for me this morning to my BA card.

        Fully expect it will work with BA holidays too, a similar statement credit did at the back end of last year.

        Also got £50 off £200 with Amex travel but not sure I will actually use that.

  • Joan says:

    Funnily enough I am on the way to Heathrow right now for a companion voucher flight to Miami . I booked last October and used the same Amex offer of £100 back on a £500 BA spend . I hadn’t received the offer so I rang Amex and they gave it to me .
    We have managed to check in successfully for this flight – am hoping we won’t get downgraded from business . If we do , you might see me on the news kicking and screaming !

    • Barry cutters says:

      This literally happened a handful of times and was made a massive deal of. Hundreds fly on 241 every day without issue

  • Ah says:

    Miles & More.. comparison
    Munich Hotel Room
    Price per night £145
    + 10,000 miles

    Same hotel (Booked via travel republic), same room (same dates).
    £65 per night.

    • Ah says:

      sorry, forgot to say its for 2 nights
      £290 + 10k miles
      compared to £130

  • Nick M says:

    Do you think the BA offer will trigger with a combination of flight & hotels?

    • TGLoyalty says:

      It will trigger as long as the spend is with BA directly

  • Ben says:

    Called AMEX and offer was added to my card. I had to call twice as the first agent said they cannot physically able to do that 🙂

    • Joan says:

      Grr I just called Amex and they wouldn’t give me the offer this time – maybe I should try again !

  • rick says:

    Amex-Churning

    I know Amex T&C says one need to wait 6 months before reapplying in order to get signup bonus.
    Some readers have posted before theat they managed to get signup bonus before that period.
    Just looking to see if there are more evidences of how strictly Amex is imposing this rule.

    I have some 5k worth of spend and have already used up my SPG and Platinum cards.
    No interest for BAPP.I already have IHG Black and Virgin cards have just been churned too.

    • TGLoyalty says:

      You may get lucky but you’re much more likely to get very unlucky and have to reset the clock for another 6 months.

      Why not just get the BAPP for the sign up and drop it if you have no interest in the companion voucher? Or do you have no interest in Avios?

      • Genghis says:

        People have reported success but I wouldn’t risk it. BAPP for the sign up is a good shout. We do it occasionally when no need for a 241.

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

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