A change in how ‘Combine My Avios’ works, and a reminder of its quirks

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• JP says:

  28 Sep28 September 09:38

  I agree they must allow Irish addresses as well.

• wetboy1uk says:

  28 Sep28 September 09:52

  I still find the household account thing frustrating when trying to combine Avios and the inability to move avios from one account to another without splitting the household account.

• max f says:

  28 Sep28 September 10:47

  how can i change my household avios acc back to my name only so that i can use the combine option

  • Rob says:

    28 Sep28 September 11:32

    You can’t.

    The only way around this is to open an avios.com Household Account and then, in a few breaks, break it up. When you break up an avios.com HHA, YOU decide where the points go. So you tell them to give 100% to you and 0% to your husband.

• Isabel Friedlander says:

  28 Sep28 September 11:13

  Avios has a time limited 50% bonus on Avios purchases. Is it good value to get 9000 Avios for £111. I can never work out what this buys.

  • Rob says:

    28 Sep28 September 11:31

    I would only pay 1p+ per point if I had a very definite plan of what I was using them for, so I knew I was getting a good deal. Too expensive for me otherwise, unless you are just topping up the last few you need.

• BillB says:

  28 Sep28 September 11:35

  Not my work but too damn good….

  Ryanair is popular
  Spare a thought for poor ole Michael O’Leary, Chief Executive of Ryanair.
  After arriving in a hotel in Manchester, he went to the bar and asked for a pint of Guinness.
  The barman nodded and said, “That will be £1 please, Mr. O’Leary.”
  Somewhat taken aback, O’Leary replied, “That’s very cheap,” and handed over his money.
  “Well, we do try to stay ahead of the competition”, said the barman. “And we are serving free pints every Wednesday from 6 pm until 8 pm. We have the cheapest beer in England”.
  “That is remarkable value”, Michael comments.
  “I see you don’t seem to have a glass, so you’ll probably need one of ours. That will be £3 please.”
  O’Leary scowled, but paid up.
  He took his drink and walked towards a seat. “Ah, you want to sit down?” said the barman. “That’ll be an extra £2. You could have pre-booked the seat, and it would have only cost you £1.”
  “I think you may be too big for the seat sir, can I ask you to sit in this frame please”.
  Michael attempts to sit down but the frame is too small and when he can’t squeeze in, he complains “Nobody would fit in that little frame”.
  “I’m afraid if you can’t fit in the frame you’ll have to pay an extra surcharge of £4 for your seat sir”.
  O’Leary swore to himself, but paid up. “I see that you have brought your laptop with you” added the barman. “And since that wasn’t pre-booked either, that will be another £3.”
  O’Leary was so incensed that he walked back to the bar, slammed his drink on the counter, and yelled, “This is ridiculous, I want to speak to the manager”.
  “I see you want to use the counter,” says the barman, “that will be £2 please.”
  O’Leary’s face was red with rage. “Do you know who I am?”
  “Of course I do Mr. O’Leary.”
  “I’ve had enough! What sort of a Hotel is this? I come in for a quiet drink and you treat me like this. I insist on speaking to a manager!”
  “Here is his e-mail address, or if you wish, you can contact him between 9.00 am and 9.01am every morning, Monday to Tuesday at this free phone number. Calls are free, until they are answered, then there is a talking charge of only £1 per second, or part thereof”.
  “I will never use this bar again”.
  “OK sir, but do remember, we are the only hotel in England selling pints for £1.”
  Have a good weekend

• BigDave says:

  28 Sep28 September 11:48

  IT blunders: on the other hand with the recent Marriott 1000 avios for signing up after not receiving them for many months I emailed their support and got 2 lots of 1000 points creditied to my BA account. …. I will willingly return the extra if they email me and after the same time it took to get them

• George J says:

  28 Sep28 September 13:40

  Avios transfer seems to be the case, I can’t do a transfer since I have two accounts BAEC to my Austrian address and Avios to my UK one.
  Presumably no one at BA thought that many people have more than one house! Causing problems for the sake of it.

• Mark says:

  28 Sep28 September 14:18

  I’ve been wondering for a while now what happens to the respective expiry dates of Avios in different accounts when they are combined. Never been able to find that info anywhere.
  Do the transferred Avios acquire the same expiry date after the transfer as those already in the target account? Does it depend on whether the old expiry date of the transferred Avios falls before or after the expiry date that applies to the target account?
  I know that transferring-in Avios does not count as a transaction that resets the expiry date in the target account, that’s not what I’m asking – it’s about what happens to the expiry dates of the Avios from the source account(s).
  Thanks!

  • Genghis says:

    28 Sep28 September 14:23

    For BA HHA
    “18.1.17. The Avios points balance of individual Household Account Members shall expire in accordance with Clause 14.4 if the individual Household Account Member has not earned or redeemed Avios points or purchased or transferred Avios points in accordance with the Conditions of Use for 36 consecutive months. Notwithstanding Clause 3.12.1, in such circumstances, the membership of the individual Household Account Member and the Household Account shall continue in effect.

    18.1.18. Notwithstanding Clause 18.1.16, in the event a Household Account has a Gold, Silver or Bronze Tier Member who has earned or redeemed Avios points within the last 36 consecutive months then the Avios points balance of the other Household Account Members shall not be subject to expiry in accordance with Clause 14.4. In the event a Household Account ceases to have as a Household Account Member any such Gold, Silver or Bronze Tier Member then the provisions of Clause 18.1.16 shall apply.”
    https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/executive-club/terms-and-conditions#householdaccount

    • Mark says:

      28 Sep28 September 16:34

      Thanks, but if this was a reply to my comment I think there may have been a misunderstanding. My question had was not about Household Accounts but about the transfer of Avios between an individual’s accounts with BAEC, Avios.com and Iberia Plus.
      If, let’s say, my Iberia Avios expire in two year’s time and those in my BAEC in one year (or vice versa), what happens to the expiry dates of the Iberia Avios after transfer to the BAEC account? Will they now expire at the same time as those that were already in the BAEC account?

      • Rob says:

        28 Sep28 September 17:09

        Your Avios will never expire, realistically. ANY activity, earn or burn, resets the 3 years. The idea that you would not earn or spend a single point over 3 years is silly.

      • the real harry1 says:

        28 Sep28 September 17:14

        yes

        think of the a/c expiring, not the points?

        not exactly right, as the points in the a/c at the point the expiry kicks in will disappear, but the a/c should stay active & ready/ open to receive new points earned

        but all the points in the a/c at that point expire, through a/c inactivity – even if you only had 1 point in the inactive a/c for the last 3 years & transferred in a million points the day before expiry

      • the real harry1 says:

        28 Sep28 September 17:17

        that’s my guess, anyway! 🙂

      • the real harry1 says:

        28 Sep28 September 21:09

        well – to Raffles – it can happen

        we went NZ & back 3 times in the early noughties, 4 then 5 of us – I remember the BP strips sitting on top of the fridge for a few years, I never did much about them!

        saved my 100K company Amex, in Virgin quite by chance!

        lost a decent Tesco stash when I went to work abroad in 1997 & forgot about them

        failed to collect points on numerous company-paid mostly BA flights early days though I did make Silver for a few years thanks to secretary (or should I call her sexcretary supergirl?, she was an Olympian swimmer well fit!)

        so a lot of us might fall through the 3 yr expiry net being my point

  • neuromancer says:

    28 Sep28 September 20:03

    Expiry date for each account stays the same. They don’t change the expiry date after you move the points. If your BAEC account has 10000 Avios with expiry date 1.1.2020, if you do CMA and transfer another 10000 to it, all the 20000 will have the same expiry date of 1.1.2020, regardless of the expiry date of the origin of the new 10000.

    • Mark says:

      28 Sep28 September 22:34

      That’s exactly the info I was looking for, thanks.

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