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Has a 2nd Lloyds Avios Rewards upgrade voucher appeared in your Avios account?

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I’ve had numerous emails from readers in recent days who have found a new upgrade voucher appearing in their avios.com account courtesy of their Lloyds Avios Rewards credit card.  

If you didn’t get an email telling you it was there, it is worth checking anyway.  It will say:

Lloyds Bank Avios Rewards Upgrade Voucher
Valid from 29/09/2018
Expiry date 31/10/2019

It isn’t clear what is happening here, but it is a widespread situation.  My best guess is that this is part of the process of closing down the current cards.

Or, of course, it could be a mistake.

Lloyds was struggling to find a sensible plan which would allow them to close the cards.  They are being forcibly replaced with ‘next generation’ Mastercard-only Lloyds Avios Rewards credit cards which are substantially different from what you have now.

The new Lloyds Avios Rewards Mastercard will offer:

No annual fee

0.4 Avios per £1 you spend in the UK

0.8 Avios per £1 you spend outside the UK

0.4 Avios per £1 transferred on a balance transfer (this is a new benefit – Lloyds Duo Avios cardholders used to get Avios on balance transfers but Lloyds Avios Rewards cardholders did not)

….. plus an extra 25% bonus for Club Lloyds current account holders.

The bad news is:

There will no longer be a generous Amex card option

Overseas spending is no longer free – you will pay 2.99% on FX spend

There will no longer be an upgrade voucher

Because most cardholders will have their old card closed part-way through their membership year, it would be unfair to stop them getting a final upgrade voucher.

Lloyds may have decided that the cleanest thing to do is to give every cardholder their current year voucher.  It may also be a gesture towards Avios Rewards cardholders who are annoyed by the loss of 0% FX fees and the voucher.

Perhaps you should spend it quickly, though, just in case it is an error.

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Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (147)

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  • koroleon says:
    5 Oct5 October 10:02

    My wife and me now have 3 vouchers between us, we even got letters notifying us about the latest two.

    Has anyone managed to use these vouchers for difficult Avios destinations like MLE or MRU? Given that a phone call is required to use a voucher for two people traveling one-way, I worry it won’t be possible to book even a year out.

    • meta says:
      5 Oct5 October 10:43

      In April I used it to SEZ for two one-ways. I did it online in the morning (they didn’t load seats at 1am for some reason) and it threw an error saying to call. I called and they said that everything was processed. They just needed to finalise the booking. They gave me PNR and said tickets will be issued in a day or two. The next day I received an email with my tickets.

      • koroleon says:
        5 Oct5 October 11:30

        Yes we got SEZ as well. We booked about 6 months out – availability seemed to be much better than MRU and MLE. Going in November; if we have a good time and availability patterns remain the same we might look at going back again next year.

    • Anna says:
      5 Oct5 October 10:49

      If you use ba redemption finder you can see where availability is for these destinations. If you’re flexible with dates and can travel off peak you have a decent chance of getting MRU. MLE is much harder, possibly as it’s from Gatwick? I think MRU is Heathrow afaik.

      • koroleon says:
        5 Oct5 October 11:36

        Right now if I search for 2 business class tickets to MRU I can only see 4 dates on the outbound and nothing on the inbound. It’s even worse for MLE. That’s why I worry that calling at 1am as soon as availability opens is the only way to do it; but given that we need to use the Avios call centre (to use the voucher for 2 people) and they are not open at that time we are at a real disadvantage compared to people booking with BA.

        • meta says:
          5 Oct5 October 12:30

          I’d be tempted to do it online and then call first thing in the morning. Nothing to lose.

      • meta says:
        5 Oct5 October 12:28

        MRU is Gatwick direct.

  • Simon says:
    5 Oct5 October 10:04

    None for me. I think my spending is around 6.5k so far since card anniversary.

  • Matt says:
    5 Oct5 October 10:12

    I don’t have one. I’m guessing I’m looking inthr right place – Avios.com > My Account > Vouchers ?

    • Simon says:
      5 Oct5 October 10:20

      yep, I’ve just got one that expires at the end of this month. Eek!

    • Paul H says:
      5 Oct5 October 10:22

      Nor for me. Though did just get the one for passing 7k

      I thought the award year was calendar year on this? (Both what Lloyd’s told me and old articles on here)

      • Alan says:
        5 Oct5 October 14:37

        Nope, always been card anniversary.

        • New Card says:
          5 Oct5 October 14:46

          There is a chequered history to this where some of Lloyds’ materials implied calendar year and some people who complained managed to get it issued on a calendar year basis.

  • Richard G says:
    5 Oct5 October 10:30

    My wife has two. Just the one for me though.

  • Kiran says:
    5 Oct5 October 10:32

    No ‘free’ voucher for me – just hoping £7k of spend triggers it in a few months!

  • Richard G says:
    5 Oct5 October 10:38

    On topic… when are these new cards supposed to be coming?

  • Julian says:
    5 Oct5 October 11:03

    I only have one voucher issued on 28th April 2018 and valid until 31st May 2019 even though I got the paper letter from Avios in June and my membership year did not end until late August.

    They have taken payment for another year’s membership at £24 in late August but I won’t yet be anywhere close to hitting the £7,000 for another voucher, although I may be able to get there in one fell swoop shortly due to a large number of bills I am having to pay on my late mother’s estate and that I can sometime settle on my Lloyds Mastercard (usually the people in question don’t take Amex) before then recharging them to the estate bank account.

    • Julian says:
      5 Oct5 October 11:06

      P.S. I think they will end up having to give all of us another flight upgrade voucher (or at least those who have not yet qualified for one in the current year by the time of closure of the current product) if they still plan to close everything down and replace it with the fee free mastercard in mid November as originally scheduled…………..

      Otherwise they will be being demonstrably unfair in the opportunity to earn another voucher to different groups of cardholder depending on when their annual renewal date was.

      • fivebobbill says:
        5 Oct5 October 12:20

        Fair play to anyone who got an extra voucher, but to be perfectly honest I’m gonna be pretty miffed if I don’t get one too! When I heard of the Lloyds avios demise I pushed all my spend through the card to reach the £7k spend, frankly if I’d known they’d be giving me a voucher anyway I could have put that 7k through Hilton etc

  • What's the Point says:
    5 Oct5 October 11:08

    No vouchers in either of our accounts. Anniversary for both cards was July and Aug.
    I am currently halfway through spending £7k on one, so I will be quite annoyed if random accounts are getting vouchers but I don’t end up with one after spending the required amount!

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