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The saga of the Iberia 9,000 Avios per flight booking promo rolls on

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The saga of the ‘9,000 Avios for booking any Iberia flight, however cheap, and you don’t need to fly it’ promotion (see our article here) continues to rumble on.

People with long-term Iberia Plus accounts have received their Avios, in the main.  However, anyone who opened a new Iberia Plus account over the four days of the promotion is in a different situation.

Most people who opened a new account have been contacted by Iberia and asked to provide a passport scan and copies of their ticket receipts.  It was assumed that this was for fraud verification purposes, to ensure that people had not been opening accounts under fake names.

Many (all?) people who do provide this data are now getting a follow-up email from Iberia saying that ‘inconsistencies’ have been seen in their bookings.  Due to these unspecified ‘inconsistencies’ no Avios will be awarded.  The flights booked can be cancelled but only by directly contacting Iberia to request it.

It seems that people who provide a passport copy but not ticket receipts are not getting this message – but I wouldn’t hold out much hope of getting a different end result.

This move is the first sign that Iberia may have messed up here and is desperately looking for a way out.  I admit that I was surprised that the Avios for long-term members dropped in so promptly, but given that Iberia had taken to the airwaves to encourage people to book I doubt they had a choice.

A view may have been taken that the airline has little to lose by telling people who only joined up in order to take advantage of this offer to take a hike …..


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (November 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

Get 5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

30,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 30,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

Huge 80,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

20,000 points (ONLY TO 9TH DECEMBER) Read our full review

There is also a British Airways American Express card for small businesses:

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

American Express Business Platinum

50,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

Comments (181)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • BJ says:

    Best wishes to all for the party tonight, and good luck with the raffle.

  • Paul says:

    Glad I’m not going then!

  • Owain says:

    Unfortunately (due to a change of work plans), I won’t be able to get to the party tonight, so would anybody be interested in my ticket?

  • Alistair says:

    Got 81000 instead of 90000. Emailed them with 10 bookings all showing my account number. No reply so far. Maybe because they’re very busy, maybe because this is just the sort of thing that happens in these kind of promos. Always some risk when it’s too good to be true, which is why I have no sympathy for people who hurriedly opened accounts, or multiple accounts, or thought their idea to beat the december deadline by transferring out was so very smart…

  • Mycity says:

    O/T. I received my Amex Plat card nearly 8 weeks ago now, this was from a referral so should have got 35000 bonus MR points when I hit the £2000 which I did six weeks ago, the referee has received their 18,000 points. Despite calling 3 times and being told I’m entitled to these points they have not appeared, they’ve opened a case for me. This has never happened before, anyone else had this issue? I don’t think you can chat now can you? Or has anyone an email address I can chase this through?

    Thanks
    .

    • Genghis says:

      I know it sounds old fashioned, but I would write a letter. Amex back office do not have an email address. Include any evidence that you have (previous cancellation letter, screen prints of offer etc). Recently I received a refund from a hotel to a cancelled Plat that I didn’t use to pay for the hotel but simply as a deposit card. Amex wouldn’t give me the refund as there was no corresponding debit to the credit. I then posted a letter with full explanation and all receipts etc and received the refund.

    • Steve says:

      Did you recieve the 30,000 (non-referral bonus) base points when you reached £2,000 spend?

      If yes to the above Amex should be able to sort out the extra 5,000pts easily. If no to the abovd have you had any other cards in the Amex membership rewards family?

      If no, was your £2,000 spend all card spend and not cash withdrawls, balance transfers etc?

      Chat feature should appear as a small button bottom right of your account page. Try a different browser if it doesnt appear.

      • the real harry1 says:

        Yep the £2000 MSR does not include your £450 Plat fee – so you may be wrong in thinking you have hit £2000, you’re probably on £1550 🙂

        • Mycity says:

          Thanks all, the £2000 spend was hit excluding the £450 membership fee, I’ve had no refunds and the only points I’ve had are 2014 for the spend and there was over 6 months between the card cancellation and reapplying again. This is about three times ive churned this card with no issues before.

    • JayG says:

      My Amex plat points took 3 weeks or so to post back in June. They arrived when my ‘statement due’ alert came through. The companion card points posted a week after I hit the spend target. I would give it another week or two before writing any letters.

    • Russell says:

      My wife had a very similar problem – She left 6 and a half months between gold card cancelling, and opening a new one. Yet spend bonus points never tracked or posted. Despite the online chat agents agreeing that she was entitled to the points, and a case being opened – it took about 2 months of online comms and telephone calls to chase until they were finally posted. We provided dated letters of the previous card cancellations, and date of opening of the new one as evidence.

      The most progress we made was on the phone to the Brighton office, as they seem to have more authority/ownership over the issue. Online chat merely referred to the somewhat mythical back office, who we could never speak to directly about our case.

      If you know you’re in the right, it’s just a case of keeping at it!

  • Bagoly says:

    First World Problem with long-haul Business redemption on Iberia (Mrs B and I are booked using our bonus 162k):
    I love champagne and similar wines from other countries, but Iberia serve cava which I do not like.
    Has anyone worked out a way to order (and pay for) a bottle on board?
    Could I buy a bottle of (chilled?) champagne at the airport and ask them to serve it to me?
    Or pour it myself?!

    • Anna says:

      Can’t you have your fill in the lounge and then try something else on board? There are also some very good canvas, what exactly do they serve on the flight? There are different cavas as there are different champagnes.

      • AndyR says:

        They were serving Segura Viudas Cava onboard when I flew them. The Iberia lounges in Madrid only have Cava also.

    • the real harry1 says:

      Yep – no problem at all in bringing your own Champagne on board and drinking it. You have to obey ‘ship’s orders’, of course – so there’s always the risk they say no esp if you look a bit the worse for wear or if it were (say) a bottle of Scotch and not wine.

      But it’s perfectly legal, permitted by BA – and BA cabin crew on FT have often said they have no problem in allowing it.

      • KevMc says:

        I was under the impression that the crew technically/legally have to serve it to you, so you have to hand it to them to open.

        In reality though, if you just ask for a couple of glasses and ask if they mind you drinking your own plonk, I doubt they will have any problem with you just opening it yourself.

        • the real harry1 says:

          yep I wouldn’t do it ‘secretly’, that’s inviting trouble – just asking nicely is the best way usually in these matters!

  • Thomas Howard says:

    Isn’t Iberia telling people to f-off a bit dangerous in a world where we now have laws allowing class action cases and brand damaging social media?

    • the real harry1 says:

      yes – but so far there’s remarkably little online about IB’s about-turn/ reneging on the promotion, except on specialist FF blogs. The Americans are muttering about initiating a class action vs IB but nothing concrete there so far.

      • Alan says:

        Although if they’re giving a full refund on the flights I’m not sure what basis they’d have to launch legal action (although I’ll admit that never seems to have stopped the class action lawyers before!).

        • Thomas Howard says:

          They’ve already not performed by not depositing the Avios within the stipulated 10 days and arguably by cancelling the booking they’ve breached the contract a second time.

    • Anna says:

      It does seem anomalous that they can honour the promo for established accounts but not for new ones as there was no reference to this in the Ts and Cs. It must also be possible to show that people who’ve had their avios have the same “inconsistencies” with their bookings as the new account holders!

      • EvilGazebo says:

        If (as seems likely but no news yet) they deny my wife’s bonus avios where they have given me mine in full, we will be in exactly this position. Same flights booked, she’s a real person, I’m a real person, only difference is age of account……..

  • Andy says:

    Unfortunately I cannot attend tonight but I hope it goes well and everyone has fun, gains new contacts and learns a trick or two. Thanks Rob and Anika for organising what will no doubt be another great event.

    • Rob says:

      We’re a bit nervy about 250 vs our usual 150 but we’ll see 🙂 Such is our level of delegation / trust that I have not actually seen the venue myself (but I never saw Melia before the night of the first Christmas party either!).

      • Lev441 says:

        It’s decent- have run a couple events there before…

        • Michael says:

          I agree it’s a good space, HOWEVER in the current weather I’m a little concerned we may be baked alive as the large windows mean it’s a little like being in a conservatory 🙂

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