No1 Lounges is bringing a Clubrooms lounge to Birmingham International Airport

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• nick says:

  18 Jun18 June 11:18

  My BA Premium Amex was just renewed and I was charged the £195. I would like to cancel asap, primarily to be able to get the 25k avios in 6 months time.

  I do have 2 companion vouchers in my BA account. I will continue to hold my Plat card.

  1) are my vouchers at risk? What if a book using the voucher, and then want to cancel and rebook at a later date?

  2) any instances of Amex “offering” me something to keep the card? Waived fee or increased avios?

  3) Anything else I should be aware of?

  • Kinkell says:

    18 Jun18 June 11:39

    I’m in same position, so would also welcome responses from ‘those who know’

  • the_real_a says:

    18 Jun18 June 12:26

    1) Although AMEX will tell you that you will lose the vouchers (provided they are showing at BA) i don’t think anyone has actually lost them.

    2) Yes retention offers can be very good, but depend on your spend history. I like the extra “point” for every £1 which is for 3 months as i can put some serious spend through the card at various points of the year. Typically your reason for leaving needs to fixed by the retention offer… you have to play the game a little.

  • Graham Walsh says:

    18 Jun18 June 12:46

    Cancelled my BAPP a few months ago and the 241 is in the “bank” still

• Geoff says:

  18 Jun18 June 11:33

  1) If you ask Amex they will tell you that the voucher becomes void if you cancel the card. However, experience here and on FT is that the vouchers is not voided once issued, and people report even cancelling a booking and the voucher returns to the BAEC account. However, you would of course have no grounds to complain if somehow the rule was enforced.

• AndyK says:

  18 Jun18 June 11:55

  OT. Does anybody know if there will be a fee to use new Virgin Atlantic CC to fund Revolute?

  • Geoff says:

    18 Jun18 June 13:33

    Yes

• Faithy says:

  18 Jun18 June 12:02

  OT. BAPP
  If I cancel with 241 voucher just received and want to reapply in 6 months. When would I be able to get new voucher? TY

  • Anna says:

    18 Jun18 June 12:25

    Once you’ve spent £10k in the new card year, I imagine.

  • VK says:

    18 Jun18 June 12:43

    yes.

• William Jones says:

  18 Jun18 June 13:08

  Hi All,

  This may have come up or been explained previously and if so apologies for missing this.

  Since the closure of the UK Avios program I am no longer able to log into avios.com. This means I am unable to see the points my Lloyds Avios card would be generating. My understanding was that these points should now automatically drop into my BAEC account instead. The points posted immediately on statement date before the closure of Avios, it has been 18 days since my statement and no sign of them appearing in my BAEC account.

  Have I got this wrong, is there somewhere else I should be checking or is this a problem? Has anyone else experienced this?

  • Mark2 says:

    18 Jun18 June 13:31

    I just logged into my Avios.com account with no problem.

    • Mark2 says:

      18 Jun18 June 13:40

      but could not with a different account.

  • Rob says:

    18 Jun18 June 13:42

    Yes, they should automatically be going across. I would ring Avios and check they are linking to the correct BA account.

  • William Jones says:

    18 Jun18 June 15:06

    Thanks for your comments guys. I spoke to Avios using online chat, apparently my account had been blocked. I can get in now and see my Avios. For reference in case anyone else get’s this, the non-descript error I was getting was “A Key system is unavailable” when trying to login.

• RussellH says:

  18 Jun18 June 13:57

  There was an interesting article in yesterday’s Observer Financial section about the impact of the interchange fee cap.
  The basic thrust was that by and large fees charged to retailers have **increased** since the imposition of the cap, because Visa and MasterCard have increased their “scheme fees” by around 100%.
  Shop prices have increased to cover these increases and further increases are expected, unless the regulator can be persuaded to insitute a proper review of card fees as a whole.

  • New Card says:

    18 Jun18 June 14:53

    I saw this too – looked very interesting and perhaps challenges the idea that meaningful reward cards can’t exist in a 0.3% world, if Visa/MC/Amex can earn the same amount by bumping up other fees.

    • RussellH says:

      18 Jun18 June 15:19

      Is it not the card issuer that issues the rewards, though??
      If Visa and MasterCard keep increasing their take, that puts pressure on the card issuer to **reduce** their ma\rgin, leaving less for us.
      But, as a vertically integrated operation, Amex surely should be clever enough to find ways around the problem, as however it is split up, it all goes to Amex in the end anyway!

      • New Card says:

        18 Jun18 June 16:06

        I guess i was thinking either VISA/MC/Amex might issue rewards cards directly, as Amex already do, or there might be some kind of rebate from Visa/MC (out of the increased scheme fee) to the card issuer (to put them in the position they would have been in pre-interchange fee cap)

  • Nick says:

    18 Jun18 June 18:09

    Yep, that’s definitely been the case at the (large) company I work for! We’ve gone to I++ and despite the breakdown we pay more overall. Visa and MC don’t tell you what they’re going to charge (or give you an itemised bill afterwards), they just hand you an invoice and demand their money. They are the real ‘demons’ now, and I would love for the next EU ‘investigation’ to focus on their duopoly.

    They’ll never issue cards themselves, it’s too risky and they make too much from the current structure to change that (unless forced).

• Mark2 says:

  18 Jun18 June 14:24

  OT
  Has anyone managed to connect a new Virgin Money card to Curve lease?

  • Mark2 says:

    18 Jun18 June 14:32

    please

  • Mark2 says:

    18 Jun18 June 14:37

    Yes, I have!

• Dave says:

  18 Jun18 June 14:41

  OT but is anyone having trouble paying for ‘business’ transactions with there Curve card? I cannot seem to make any.

  • Mark2 says:

    18 Jun18 June 15:04

    Almost all the payments that I have made have been classified by Curve as ‘business services’.
    I did have trouble at first, but found that lots of moderate payments, £300-400 do not cause a problem.

    • Dave says:

      18 Jun18 June 15:48

      I have had no problem, however over the weekend I have tried 5 times to put a payment through and it is not accepting them, not even the £200.00 ones…..

      • Peter K says:

        18 Jun18 June 19:35

        Is it the underlying card blocking it as potential fraud?

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