An odd quirk when earning Virgin Flying Club miles from Virgin Trains

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• Alex W says:

  5 Feb5 February 05:19

  I didn’t realise the 2000/5000 Marriott points for a Hertz rental had ended on 31 Dec. It was a nightmare trying to get the points to credit though. They went missing every time and I’m still waiting for 5000 points from December.

  • Canuck says:

    6 Feb6 February 17:12

    Same, would never got the points to track after multple rentals. Have switched to another partner.

• Lumma says:

  5 Feb5 February 06:31

  OT but you can get 1500 Marriott points for answering 3 questions on twitter about the Superbowl before 6am EST.

  the answers are 14, 1992, and 1

  • Peter K says:

    5 Feb5 February 07:39

    Thanks Lumma. Would never have spotted those or got the points without your help 🙂

    • Louie says:

      5 Feb5 February 08:01

      Don’t really do Twitter. Can someone explain as if talking to an idiot whose never heard of Twitter what you need to do for these Marriott points please.

      • Jimmy says:

        5 Feb5 February 08:35

        1. Spend time learning English first. Particularly the difference between ‘who’s’ and ‘whose’. Fixing poor English skills is far more important in life than a high points balance.
        2. Find some way of using this new-fangled ‘internet’ thing.
        3. Join Twitter.
        4. Search for Marriott.
        5. Follow them.
        6. Answer the questions.

      • Louie says:

        5 Feb5 February 10:28

        Mark. Thank you very much for your help.

        Jimmy. No thanks at all to you.

  • AndyW says:

    5 Feb5 February 09:09

    Thanks for the heads up

    • Liz says:

      5 Feb5 February 12:53

      Has anyone had the points post yet?

      • Optimus Prime says:

        5 Feb5 February 13:06

        They said this time points could take up to 72 hours to post.

      • Liz says:

        5 Feb5 February 13:35

        OK – I didn’t see that – thanks !

• Amit says:

  5 Feb5 February 06:34

  Hilton points might be an ok deal for markets like dubai where cash rate doesn’t include a plethora or service charges & tax….

  • TripRep says:

    5 Feb5 February 07:19

    And the Conrad Rangali, 23.2% extra in taxes, ouch.

  • Rob says:

    5 Feb5 February 08:52

    You still pay the Dhs 20 tourist tax in Dubai. But of course not the 25% VAT, service and municipality taxes ….

• Tony says:

  5 Feb5 February 07:31

  OT – the Marriott Rewards twitter promo is back. Free points for answering Super Bowl related questions. This time you need to answer two questions to get 1000 points – this week’s answers are 1 and 14. Check out @MarriottRewards. You’ve got approx 3.5 hours to enter.

  • Peter K says:

    5 Feb5 February 07:40

    There’s three to gain 1500 points. See Lumma’s post above. Don’t forget to use #RewardsPoints

    • Tony says:

      5 Feb5 February 07:49

      Thanks. Blearly-eyed me missed both the 3rd question AND Lumma’s post on here.

• dundj says:

  5 Feb5 February 08:10

  I’m not 100% sure on this part of the article, “If you take Virgin Flying Club miles, you earn NOTHING if any part of your journey is on another train operators.” I use the VTWC line frequently and all my points post in full for the payment amount made with a connection at Haymarket from Scotrail, a connection at Preston/Wigan North Western with Northern and then a connection once in Liverpool for Merseyrail.

  I’m going to take a guess it is if you do not select a VTWC train for the majority of the journey and VTWC run along that line then you would have a reduction in points.

  • John says:

    5 Feb5 February 08:54

    T&Cs say:

    If you’re travelling with Virgin Trains on the West Coast Mainline, you can earn miles. So, a journey from London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly will earn miles, as will a journey from Glasgow to London. Cool, right?

    If you need to start or end your journey on another train operator, you’ll need to purchase the journeys separately to earn your miles on the Virgin Trains journey.

    • dundj says:

      5 Feb5 February 11:21

      In that case I have been receiving miles for the last 6 years in error.

• Andrew says:

  5 Feb5 February 08:51

  I suspect that the intention is only to give points for wholly VTWC operated services, but the UK ticketing system is so utterly ropey that it doesn’t always work like that.

  It’s like my employer has a near permanent arrangement for 20% off VTWC advance fares, and the Virgin Red App often has discounts on VTEC fares (always with T&Cs for services wholly and exclusively operated by Virgin) – but more often than not it will also give you the discount on VTWC+Connections or VTEC +Connections tickets anyway.

  • Save East Coast Rewards says:

    5 Feb5 February 11:24

    A hint for Virgin Red. The app has a near permanent 20% offer for ‘new’ customers as well as other offers (such as 30% off) for existing customers. The existing customer offers are generally better but less frequent than the new customer offers.

    If you have two phones (one could be an old phone or your partners phone) then set up one Virgin Red account which has links to all the companies you’re a customer of (so you get all the existing customer offers), but set up on the other phone an account with no links to Virgin companies.

    This way you’ll get both the new customer and existing customer offers.

    Note that if you usually travel with a railcard these offers are usually less than a railcard discount (although I have seen 50% before), these offers aren’t meant to stack with railcard discounts but sometimes on VTEC they do so it’s worth a try.

    • Rob says:

      5 Feb5 February 11:37

      I do this – each time I want a Virgin ticket to Manchester I reinstall it!

• David Butcher says:

  5 Feb5 February 08:55

  On the subject of Hilton Honors, as you know on my Amex Platinum Card one benefit should be Hilton Honors gold status. For some inexplicable reason Amex have a random Hilton number shown against my account and as a result I have not got the status I am entitled to. To me it seems a question of simply recording the correct number and taking away the wrong one. I raised this with Amex in September and it still hasn’t been done. Amex say it is a Hilton problem but Hilton have repeatedly told me they cannot amend Amex accounts. Amex then sent me a deadlock letter saying they could do no more and referred me to the Financial Services Ombudsman. Their response to him has been that I need to merge my two Hilton accounts – but I only have one!! I can’t do anything with the Hilton account they have registered against me in error because it’s not my account! And I’m paying £450 a year for this incompetence. And no-one will get hold of this and sort it. Anyone any idea who I should write to at Amex to get this resolved; I have gone through their executive complaints process whose only response was to bung me a few membership reward points as compensation for the delay but they haven’t addressed the problem – simply sent me a deadlock letter. I am at my wit’s end.

  • Rob says:

    5 Feb5 February 11:06

    You can merge 2 Hilton Honors accounts online. You have the number for the 2nd account – if you do a ‘forgotten password’ against that account, you may be emailed one. You could then access the 2nd account and merge them.

    • David Butcher says:

      5 Feb5 February 11:28

      Yes but the second account (the one which Amex have registered against me) is not in my name and so presumably belongs to someone else. And presumably has his/her email address recorded against it. I would not have given Amex that number – I have only ever had one Honors account. So I’d have though this was something they could fix fairly easily – originally I was told that their concierge dept could fix it in two weeks – that was back in September 2017! Now they refuse to do anything. I am so angry with them; it just strikes me as sheer bloody incompetence and apathy.

      • Rob says:

        5 Feb5 February 11:35

        Amex could well have opened a 2nd account for you.

    • Peter K says:

      5 Feb5 February 18:59

      It’s not Hilton I know but I had three different Avios.com accounts once:
      1) From Shell points they opened for me and did not give me the details
      2) From Tesco where they did the same
      3) One I had actually opened myself.

      Even though I only knew about one of them I guessed from reading here about the Tesco one and the passion I rang at Avios.com sorted all three into one in one phone call.

      I suggest you at least try this with Hilton. Start the conversation with something like this: “Hi, I have a Hilton account with number XXXX but I believe that American Express have opened another one for me by mistake. They don’t have the account number for it so I was hoping your might be able to check for me please.”
      Your name and address should match what Amex have for you so it shouldn’t be too much of a bind for them to find out.
      If no luck then your only other option might be to cancel the card and when you reapply later to add your real Hilton account number.

  • Peter K says:

    5 Feb5 February 19:06

    Just had a thought, if you go to the Amex Platinum page where your can transfer your MR points to Honor points and start to initialize a transfer it asks for your Hilton account number. Does it auto-populate with the Hilton account number that Amex has set up for you?

• Save East Coast Rewards says:

  5 Feb5 February 10:33

  It’s important to add that this off Virgin Trains rule only applies to the real Virgin Trains (i.e. west coast). Virgin Trains East Coast has the same rules for Flying Club as it does Nectar – you earn 2 miles per pound spent as long as your journey includes part of the trip on a Virgin Trains East Coast service.

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