Five UK Marriott hotels, mainly country clubs, are to leave the chain

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• Clive Watts says:

  4 Jul4 July 09:30

  My 45k points arrived this morning. Immediately booked reward flight from Madrid to Johannesburg return for 42.5k. I took and small gamble and had already booked connecting flights from London to Madrid (earning 9k Avios in the process). Avoided the UK long haul departure tax and go the dtaes I wanted. Sweet.
  Don’t seem to be able to transfer the remaining Avios out to with BAEC or Avios.com at the moment?
  Anyone know how I can use my BA silver status to book seats on these Iberia bookings?

• JPV says:

  4 Jul4 July 09:39

  90k Arrived this morning. Booked one-way F ORD-EDI for £140 in taxes.

  I’m pretty happy 🙂

  • Ryan Forster says:

    4 Jul4 July 16:05

    Could I ask who with/how? The taxes seem rather low for BA and I know AA needs a round trip.

• the real harry1 says:

  4 Jul4 July 09:41

  My wife’s got her 90K. Just looking at the difference between redemption classes on BA direct LHR—> place in the sun (Europe) – and it seems that Blue Class is the same number of Avios and fee, but also allows changes for EUR25.

  So it would be quite feasible/ inexpensive to book flights and change the date later – which suits me as I could therefore get (say) Xmas 2019 and Easter 2020 (I’ve already got them for Xmas 2018/ Easter 2019).

  Therefore meaning I could easily redeem all 180K points by 1st December.

  Either that or I might have to buy Business class – much against my principles in Europe but I suppose the lounge access has a value & onboard drinks would be welcome…

  Anybody see any flaws in the Blue Class/ date change/ EUR25 scenario?

  Blue Class/ Business
  Change: Permitted before flight departure with a surcharge of €25. Only permitted on IB, YW, I2 and BA flights (except flight series 5xxx). [and small print says also not allowed for IB7XXX – what are these ticket codes???]

  Refund: Permitted with a surcharge of €25 up to 24 hours before the departure of the first flight on the ticket, as long as this does not include any IB5XXX flight. Refunds only permitted on flights with codes IB, YW, I2 and BA, unless the code for one leg is IB and the code for another leg belongs to another partner in the programme.

  • the real harry1 says:

    4 Jul4 July 09:44

    sorry I meant NOT Blue class but full Economy or Business, where change/ refund permitted

    • the real harry1 says:

      4 Jul4 July 10:12

      OR – the thought has just struck me (bit of a dimbo this morning after the football beer!) – I could cancel my existing RFS tickets to place in the sun – cost £17.50/ ticket I believe, is that right?

      Then re-book on IB. This works well for Easter 2018 outward, as IB is off-peak, I’d save 1000 Avios on economy redemption.

      Math –

      RFS cancellation £17.50, extra IB fee = £15 (£32.50 vs £17.50), saving 1000 Avios, net cost about £22.50

      Ticket cost: My IB points cost about 0.3p. so 6500x 0.3p = £19.50 + £32.50 + £17.50 = £69.50 BA—> place in the sun

      Not brilliant but if it means not losing the points 1st December…

      • pauldb says:

        4 Jul4 July 10:33

        Are you talking about a BA or IB flight? A BA flight booked through IB would still be peak, per BA’s calendar.
        Regarding date changes, you can switch date but in theory your pre-Dec ticket has only validity for 1 year: it’s a bit of a risk to think you can switch it to 2020.
        If you do switch your Easter booking to IB+, consider holding the BAEC booking until t-1ish. Always a chance they change flight times and you get a free refund.

      • Lyn says:

        4 Jul4 July 11:13

        I’d agree with pauldb – I think your ticket would nomally only be valid for a year from issue and you could probably only change to a date within the validity period.

      • the real harry1 says:

        4 Jul4 July 11:20

        yep I’d heard that booking redemption BA flight on IB portal gives same Avios pricing as on BA portal – but not so.

        For peak Easter 2019 – 7500 Avios @BA, IB is asking for 6500 points + fee

        good point @pauldb about holding for possible cancellation – but I might need to release my 4 RFS seats back into the system (Easter 2019) to let me re-book same 4 seats on IB (I know there’s no guarantee they’ll get re-released as redemption seats but that’s how it mostly works)

    • pauldb says:

      4 Jul4 July 12:07

      What Easter dates are you looking at? I’m trying VLC 6/10 April and IB+ gives me peak pricing (when that should be BA-peak / IB-offpeak).

      • the real harry1 says:

        4 Jul4 July 12:26

        Nailed it. I’ve been robbed! I booked Easter outward 6/4/2019 on T-355 and at the time it was peak 7500. Now the new peak period doesn’t start until 12 April, ie BA added in an extra period of off-peak (about a week extra), so the same redemption would be 6500. I just checked on both IB and BA sites and you’re right, but I was going on what I paid, which I double-checked and it was indeed 7500.

        Reckon I would stand a chance of getting 4x 1000 Avios refunded because of the change?

• PAL says:

  4 Jul4 July 09:52

  Nothing yet, booked Sat night, 4 year old account.

• Nick G says:

  4 Jul4 July 09:54

  Rob

  Any chance you can suggest some short haul redemptions when you put together you’re article….thanks

• the real harry1 says:

  4 Jul4 July 09:56

  …and I’ve also got my 90K! (as well as Mrs Harry)

  Worth sending claim to c/b site if yours didn’t track – 5/20 tracked OK for me, the others have already been sent to IB (by c/b site) to resolve

  I understand some blog links were getting c/b from this offer, so you might inadvertently have not used c/b site as your last link before buying, ie the commission went to blog not c/b site

  • marcw says:

    4 Jul4 July 10:39

    Also worth saying, you only get c/b on flights operated by Ib&Air Nostrum. If your flight is operated by Express, no c/b

• roberto says:

  4 Jul4 July 09:57

  A few days ago I took a moment to choose in advance what I would be doing with my miles and send over to Iberia via CMA the extra required for the redemption I wanted. Further to the miles hitting yesterday I was surprised to note that the miles required was 1000 less that when I checked. These spare 1000 were left over in my Iberia account and I have just managed to switch them back to BAEC via CMA through avios.com.

  There was come comment on LIFO etc but it appears from my experience that the spare 1000 avios were not ring fenced in any way and my redemption came from the promo airmiles first and my addition ones secondly.

• FlyingChris says:

  4 Jul4 July 10:04

  Nothing for me yet. Expecting the full 90k. Booked Saturday night. 1+ Year old account. Booking on UK site. Will wait a couple of days and hopefully will either a – sort itself out naturally or b – the right people to contact will emerge. Sure their CS is busy enough right now.

  • BigSi says:

    4 Jul4 July 10:16

    Same here, on mine and wife’s account. Did everything by the book, hope they post soon.

    • BigSi says:

      4 Jul4 July 10:48

      I sent a message to Iberia_En on twitter about an hour ago no reply yet but both sets of points just posted. Maybe it helped.

      • FlyingChris says:

        4 Jul4 July 11:03

        Mine just arrived in the last 10 minutes. They are clearly working their way through/doing them in batches. Hold tight, they’re probably on the way!

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