Bits: 3000 Virgin Atlantic miles with half price wine, Virgin FX deal at Moneycorp

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• AndyGWP says:

  19 Jul19 July 08:23

  OT: Avios redemptions and cancellations.

  Did some reading up on this last night. None the wiser!

  I plan to book an Open Jaw Avios (airberlin FWIW) redemption via. BA.com for 2 people. Obviously I can’t do this online in “one go” (I would have to do 2 x one ways)

  There is a high likelihood I may need to cancel it. With that in mind:
  1) If I book online (so 2 separate PNR’s), to cancel would it cost me 2x £35 (£35 for each PNR?)
  2) Or is the £35 charge per passenger (so 4 x £35)
  3) Could it be cancelled online?
  4) Do you still get the 24 hour free cancellation with airBerlin avios redemptions?
  5) Presumably the charge for making a call centre booking (1xPNR) would be waived if I had to go this route (and depending on the booking fee not being charged, would be cheaper)

  Trying to understand what the best route for booking it would be. If it was one booking I’d probably just call (if 5 didn’t apply) but I may have to make a fair few bookings :/

  • Rob says:

    19 Jul19 July 09:01

    Fee is per person BUT capped at the taxes you paid.

    Book 4 x oneways from JFK to Berlin, you pay £4 tax so the cancellation fee is £4.

    Ignoring that, there are 2 things to consider. On BA, long haul taxes are usually MORE if you book 2x one way (HK and Sao Paulo are a lot cheaper, though, for legal reasons.) You lose twice – more paid in taxes if you fly, more paid to cancel if you don’t.

    • AndyGWP says:

      19 Jul19 July 09:16

      Thanks Rob. Outgoing taxes are £60 per person. Inbound are £25 per person.

      Sounds like it’s best to get it priced over the phone and all on the same PNR then. Cheers

    • Han says:

      20 Jul20 July 08:49

      Hi Raffles,

      I’ve been looking at Brazil flights and one way tickets to Sao Paolo and back (or even Rio) is actually more expensive as stated than doing a full return? Am I missing something here as you’ve stated it’s cheaper for legal reasons.

      Thanks!!

• Alex W says:

  19 Jul19 July 08:43

  Rob I feel you often under value points – £40 = only 0.357p per IHG point! I have always got at least 0.5p per IHG point, usually more, sometimes over 0.6p. On average I would say 0.55p. So 11,200 points I would value at over £60.

  • Rob says:

    19 Jul19 July 08:58

    You can buy IHG points for 0.4p-ish in a 100% bonus promo so you can’t value them at more than that.

    • Alex W says:

      19 Jul19 July 09:03

      Fair point. I was only looking at the redemption value.

      • Alex W says:

        19 Jul19 July 09:16

        Sorry but I’m coming back again on this! According to the last sale the best price to purchase was $0.00575 per point. With current exchange rate at 1:1.3 that is just over 0.44p per point which is near as dammit £50 for your 11,200 points.
        Don’t mean to undermine your work, just to say that I think the points and miles game is even more lucrative than sometimes you give credit for.

        • Rob says:

          19 Jul19 July 10:31

          But if you’re getting really picky you could start offsetting the points earned if you paid cash for the room etc – which is ironic given where this discussion came from. If Kimpton is 50k points and a room is £250 then, yes, it is 0.5p per point but I earned 5k from the stay and (as per the ‘discussion’ with IHG) I’m 11k Accelerate points out as well ….

          At least no-one can ever accuse me of overselling the value of points!

        • Alex W says:

          19 Jul19 July 10:36

          That’s true and a good point again. There are so many ways of valuing points it’s difficult to be consistent.
          I keep meaning to do another spreadsheet but apparently I spend too long in front of the computer already!

  • Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:

    19 Jul19 July 12:01

    In part I’d say the value you can place on a point/mile depends on how diversified you are. For example, if you have a decent balance in four hotel programmes then you can cherry pick for the best value, if you are all-in with one programme then it’s harder to get good value.

• Marc says:

  19 Jul19 July 09:03

  OT I’m renting a car in the next few days in the US – I also hold the Platinum Amex card. Perhaps someone has more experience – when I rent a car, should I select any extra insurance or does Amex Platinum cover already these?
  Thank you!

  • Alan says:

    19 Jul19 July 22:20

    As always, read the policy to ensure you’re happy, but personally I decline all extras and go with Amex Plat cover.

• Stephen says:

  19 Jul19 July 09:25

  When singing up for virgin wines make sure sure you add your flying club number to your account if it does not prompt you when singing up for this deal, I got the 3000 bonus a few months back and had my account number added but had to chase them up for the points they eventually posted to my account around 6 to 7 weeks after a few emails. See if they would allow you to choose your own case of 12 I can recommend piza garnacha very smooth and fruity tastes great, Stevie

• Stephen says:

  19 Jul19 July 09:26

  That should read pizo garnacha 🙂

• N says:

  19 Jul19 July 09:36

  Data point:

  Asked for Gold to Plat upgrade over Secure Messaging – replied with a “Sorry, no offer for you”.

  Phoned, asked again and offered 15k for £1k spend in 3 months.

  Gold just renewed so I might be able to sneak in 11 months of Plat for free!

  • Alex W says:

    19 Jul19 July 09:46

    If you’ve renewed gold won’t you at least have to pay the £140 fee?

    • n says:

      19 Jul19 July 12:58

      Paid, but will be refunded as per phone conversation.

      • Genghis says:

        19 Jul19 July 13:05

        But you will only be refunded pro-rata, no? I.e. you’ve paid £450 but if you cancel in 6 months’ time you’ll only get £225 back?

        • n says:

          19 Jul19 July 18:21

          Yes, sorry forgot to put the pro-rata in there!

  • JP says:

    19 Jul19 July 10:24

    If you renewed Gold I believe what they will do is give a pro rata refund on the £140 annual fee for Gold, then charge you the £450 fee for the platinum. Just because you renewed gold doesn’t mean free platinum for 11 months.

    • mark2 says:

      19 Jul19 July 10:28

      My wife upgraded from Gold to Platinum, did the spend, referred me than cancelled with no charge.

      • JP says:

        19 Jul19 July 10:39

        You can sometimes if you get out fairly quickly say under a month. You will not get away with for 11 months.

        • Genghis says:

          19 Jul19 July 11:00

          It’s possible on a new Amex Gold

        • Alan says:

          19 Jul19 July 12:17

          Out of interest, Ghengis, how could you get away with upgrading to Platinum without paying the fee?

        • Genghis says:

          19 Jul19 July 12:59

          Take out Amex Gold, upgrade to Amex Plat and then you might not be charged a fee until your anniversary date. No guarantees though. This essentially has just happened to my colleague’s girlfriend.

        • Matt says:

          19 Jul19 July 15:32

          Yes this still seems to work. I haven’t been charged plat fee on my first 2 statements post upgrade. Going to cancel when I’m back from hols. Maybe a prorata fee will be added to final bill but that seems quite an unlikely way of doing things.

• mark2 says:

  19 Jul19 July 10:34

  OT
  On the subject of death of American Express cards issued by Lloyds, MBNA etc.
  When it has happened, this will mean a considerable reduction in the number of Avios, hotel points etc. issued. Rhetorical question: Will this make redemption easier or will the airlines reduce the number of seats available in proportion? They will be selling a lot fewer points so will they look for new channels?

  • JP says:

    19 Jul19 July 10:44

    I can’t see them reducing the number of points needed as they are global points schemes and in the US they will still have crazy high signup bonuses. Earning miles from flying has been going down as well (switching to revenue based and things like only getting 50% or 25% of the miles for different seat clashes), but the amounts of points needed has generally been going up.

    • JP says:

      19 Jul19 July 10:45

      Plus, this does not affect Gold/Platinum cards which are one of the best ways of getting points. It will likely effect the BA cards, likely less the premium one as it has a fee.

      • mark2 says:

        19 Jul19 July 11:53

        I said the number of seats available, not the points required.

  • Rob says:

    19 Jul19 July 11:19

    80% of Avios are still issued by BA, apparently!

    From my discussions with the Avios team, they are desperately keen on landing ‘landmark’ deals (something to equal Tesco or Amex) but the deals are not there. That is the problem when your main redemption partner has become totally London-centric and you have very little to offer people outside the M25. With the greatest respect to the companies involved, the Alan Boswell, Direct Ferries, Times Literary Supplement etc type deals don’t exactly cut it in terms of moving the needle.

    • mark2 says:

      19 Jul19 July 11:55

      Thanks for that information Rob. From inside the ‘collect via cards’ cocoon it looks different.

• Duncan says:

  19 Jul19 July 10:41

  Moneycorp – I’m only given the choice of pickup for currency. Tried different amounts but there doesn’t seem to be a threshold for home delivery. Since I’m flying from LHR on Sunday it looks like my last Supercard transaction will be ATM at the other end.

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