Avios closing down its South African programme – what happens to your points?

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• Michael Fox says:

  1 Dec1 December 07:37

  O/T – apologies, need some quick advice and this is the best place for that. I have a multi night IHG rewards night stay coming up. If I cancel in advance, I get a refund of my points. What if I check out early, will I get a points refund for the remaining nights? I need to modify stay, the modify stay option not working and if I re-book from scratch, reward nights are no longer available. I have 5 nights booked, only now want the first two.

  • Genghis says:

    1 Dec1 December 07:48

    IME I’ve had more cancelled stays then return to inventory than not.

  • Alex W says:

    1 Dec1 December 08:06

    I don’t think you can cancel half way through a stay. Once you’ve checked in that’s it, the points are not refundable.

  • Lady London says:

    1 Dec1 December 11:29

    I think I saw somewhere that how this is handled can vary from hotel and the suggestion was just to call the hotel.

    I think your situation is about the simplest and easiest one for a hotel to accommodate if it wants to – as you are arriving on the day you said and using continuous adjacent nights. You just want to drop a few nights off the end.

    I’d give them a ring and ask if the can help and would they be willing to let you drop the last few nights off the booking and maintain the original rate for nights as booked. If they agree please let us know . Get an email or something from them in writing becuase you never know who you will get when you check in.

• C F Frost says:

  1 Dec1 December 07:42

  O/T Others may have noticed but not sure if mentioned here – Marriott Rewards More has bitten the dust. Always seemed moribund, and finally slipped away two weeks ago.

  • Lady London says:

    1 Dec1 December 11:30

    It kept my points alive once I think. So did have at least one use!

    Other ways of spending with hotel groups are always useful to have in case your stay pattern makes it difficult to use nights with them for awhile.

• Genghis says:

  1 Dec1 December 07:51

  I doubt there’d be an automated process in place. The Excel wiz-kid comes in at 11am CET…

  • xcalx says:

    1 Dec1 December 09:19

    IB sweep all accounts on the first of each month. That’s how I lost 42500 due to inactivity after I had cancelled a booking due to IB changing dates of flight.. I was able to retrieve the Avios when they accepted that removing the Avios within a few days of THEM cancelling part of the booking was unfair.

    • Lady London says:

      1 Dec1 December 11:46

      Iberia did precisely that to me. My booking was made with these miles back in July using up all the ones I had. Recently Iberia advised me the first flight on my booking (Air Nostrum deliberately chosen so as to avoid non-changeability of flight of Vueling) was cancelled. so the first flight on the version of rebooking they proposed, was 3 and a half hours later than the original flight I’d booked.

      The resulting itinerary they’d rebooked me on was scary in that it had 2 flight connections with no margin for any lateness at all on the incoming flight and far too long to walk to a remote bus gate at Heathrow T5 . It just made MCT at T5. Given distances in T5 with luggage and dodgy knee, even arriving on time incoming I was highly at risk of missing the one longhaul to my destination left that day. Other alternatives all involved arriving at the other end of the longhaul 1 day later. EU261 600 euros might have turned out to be claimable as delay would for sure have been 6 – 24 hours. But not necessrily and as it was a very short longhaul trip it would have meant coming back practically as soon as I had arrived. And not being able to achieve the purpose of the trip!

      When I requested a more sensible re-route that miraculously was available, that left a lot longer between flights to allow for late incoming planes etc., Iberia flatly refused to consider it. I mentioned this was an involuntary reroute caused by their 3 and a half hour change in timing but Iberia flatly refused to allow any suggestion for change to their new version of my booking that had high risk of missing 2 connections and arriving a day later wihch would have made the trip without purpose for me.

      In the end they forced me to refund the ticket by their intransigence. I am looking into whether I can make a complaint to the regulator about Iberia’s refusal to even consider a reasonable rerouting under EU involuntary rerouting provisions. The refund came back on 29th November 1 day before the miles had to be used. I did manage to move them to BA and, after speaking to one unskilled agent, found another agent that took 20min to rebook the whole thing onto an alternative itinerary that doesn’t have the risks Iberia tried to load onto me due to their rescheduling of my itinerary.

      All that stress and aggro was due to Iberia commercial reasons and not operational reasons, so far as I can tell, as I discovered American was still selling seats on my originally booked flight that Iberia told me was “cancelled”,

      Do you think I’m going to South America next year, as I had planned, with Iberia, now? !! Incompetent unhelpful agents, on 13 out of 14 calls trying to resolve this and retain the particularly hard to get bits of my original booking after they rescheduled.

• Yuff says:

  1 Dec1 December 07:58

  My wife’s have disappeared, I was going to spend them today😩

  • Shoestring says:

    1 Dec1 December 08:01

    Really! That’s what they said would happen but I assumed it would take a day or so.

    • Yuff says:

      1 Dec1 December 08:05

      I only had 29k left in my account and those have gone as well.
      It was only worth using them from Spain to London because the flights were more expensive departing London.

    • Shoestring says:

      1 Dec1 December 08:05

      Checked my wife’s – she redeemed about 89K, the rest are at BAEC – and it’s a zero balance (not minus 1K)

    • Shoestring says:

      1 Dec1 December 08:08

      @Yuff – didn’t fancy a few hotel nights then? I was finding it tough to burn 180K as my wife couldn’t get her act together on summer hols dates, but 3 nights in Sevilla burned up the difference.

      Was forced to book a couple of business redemptions for myself & the lad to get through a few more 🙂

      T3 lounge crawl here we come lol

    • Yuff says:

      1 Dec1 December 08:11

      I was trying to book lots of flights yesterday but couldn’t find the availability I needed or it was lots my expensive than BAEC LON – PMI
      I will email,saying they were due to expire today but I thought I would be able to spend them up until today.
      I’ve been trying to spend them all week, I didn’t think they’d be gone today😩

    • marcw says:

      1 Dec1 December 09:27

      It could be argued that by december 1 is december 1…. but in the reminder e-mail (sent one month ago?), they clearly said before december 1.

      And in this case, since it is Iberia Plus, Spanish T&C are above English T&C.

    • Lady London says:

      1 Dec1 December 11:54

      Don;t go by anything in Iberia’s so-called “reminder” emails they basically contained attempts to introduce new conditions/ restrictions on use of the avios that were NOT in the original promotion information provided by them at the time people used the promotion to purchase.

      IME they would for sure lose in a court of law if anyone challenged them and I believe the very fact that they tried illegally to introduce more restrictivie conditions on how the avios from tickets bought in the promo could be used, would particularly make a judge award against them.

      Apart from being illegal it was scabby and dishonourable of Iberia to try to do this which matters even more.

    • marcw says:

      1 Dec1 December 14:25

      With love:

      “Special offer of an extra 9,000 Avios for each ticket purchased between 21 and 24 June 2018 (maximum of 90,000 promotional Avios per member) on iberia.com for a flight operated by Iberia, Iberia Express or Air Nostrum. The Avios will be added within 10 days of the purchase to the Iberia Plus account of all customers identified as members of the Iberia Plus programme during the purchase process.

      If the customer requests a refund, either because it is permitted by the fare or for any other reason, the promotional Avios will be withdrawn from their account. The extra promotional Avios not redeemed by 1 December 2018 will be withdrawn from the customer’s account. The redemption terms and conditions are subject to the general terms and conditions of the Iberia Plus programme.

      For example, if a customer purchases tickets on Iberia.com for three people to fly from Seville to Madrid and two of the people are identified as Iberia Plus members during the purchase process, 9,000 Avios will be credited to both of these people within 10 days of the purchase. These two people must have redeemed at least 9,000 Avios by 1 December 2018, or this same amount of Avios will be withdrawn from their account.”

      Read this sentence again: “The redemption terms and conditions are subject to the general terms and conditions of the Iberia Plus programme.” If you didn’t bother to read the IbPlus T&C I can tell you that explicitly hey say “Transfers to BAEC, Avios,…” are not considered redemption.

    • Shoestring says:

      1 Dec1 December 19:43

      @Yuff – your second argument could be that you wanted to redeem the points last night before midnight – ie you had an extra hour before Spanish time cutoff.

      They robbed you of 1hr.

      More if you were in USA as IB didn’t specify they were using midnight in Spain, 30th November as the cutoff point.

  • marcw says:

    1 Dec1 December 09:23

    I mean,,, this is s*t*u*p*i*d…. shoestring has, many many many many times reminded that yesterday (Nov 30) was the last day.

    • Russ says:

      1 Dec1 December 14:34

      More to it perhaps. Maybe some people didn’t leave it too late, rather not everyone bought the cheapest tickets they could find on the first day of the promotion. Then some people had a delay in having them credited whilst those who had them credited were snapping up the popular routes/hotels etc. Then there’s how far in advance bookings were open, how long it took to get through to Iberia’s CS for a useful response to missing points, difficulty logging in tripped many people up.

  • Dale says:

    1 Dec1 December 09:26

    Just checked my wife and she’s still here 🙁

    • Alan says:

      1 Dec1 December 10:35

      LMFAO!

• Shoestring says:

  1 Dec1 December 07:59

  Likelihood = excellent. Highly unlikely to claw it back.

  • Jovanna says:

    1 Dec1 December 09:29

    It didn’t stick when a pre-authorisation hit my account. However, it did trigger following the next rental when the cumulative spend for the two went over the £150 target.

• Steve says:

  1 Dec1 December 08:12

  All 90k currently still in my BAEC account after moving over using combine my avios, so far so good.

  • Shoestring says:

    1 Dec1 December 08:24

    Yep I think they’re highly unlikely to get clawed back from BAEC. Might happen if the planned combining of BAEC & Iberia Avios platforms ever happens.

    If people start running a -90K balance in IB, I’d think about closing the account, you can always open a new one when you renew your passport (or use a different passport number if 2 passports).

    • Margaret says:

      1 Dec1 December 09:58

      Lost 28K unspent avios too, and it looks like they weren’t ‘tagged’. I transferred avios in and out a few times to Avios.com, and I can’t believe that only the Iberia ones moved from a relatively large pot in my Avios account.

      I reckon I’ve had about £800 value for a £260 spend, which is great. I’ve two teenagers sitting exams next year, we have to be home for two consecutive weeks in August for results days, so pinned down to early August as an option. Feb. and Easter holidays will have to be for revision, and the idea of a holiday in the busiest and most expensive summer week didn’t appeal!

    • Russ says:

      1 Dec1 December 14:48

      It’s not clear that closing the Iberia account will make the debt go away forever. It could always raise it’s ugly head later and without notice through another channel.

• Benylin says:

  1 Dec1 December 08:15

  OT: At Terminal 4 LHR, used the Plaza Lounge at 7am, empty and very nice, halal food as well! Then went to SkyTeam lounge, not as nice, bit more busy, but wife getting spa treatment done so not too bad!

  Overall would recommend Plaza Lounge if you want to relax.

  • Rob says:

    1 Dec1 December 08:42

    Was spa chargeable?

    • Benylin says:

      1 Dec1 December 09:14

      No was complimentary for a 20 minute session. Wife just got out of spa, she said 6/10. It was ok but the person wasn’t putting in much effort 😂

  • Mark2 says:

    1 Dec1 December 09:00

    Have they got humanely slaughtered meat as well?

    • Charlieface says:

      1 Dec1 December 20:19

      I love the self-righteous indignation going on here where people don’t know all the facts.
      It so happens that prestunning animals often causes them agony (it’s basically either tasering or clubbing by captive-bolt and often doesn’t work properly, I’ll leave you to think about that).
      Non-halal/kosher meat is usually slaughtered by either a more powerful taser or captive-bolt, gassing or gunshot. Halal and kosher slaughter is only done on the types of animals where the carotid arteries join in the centre of the neck and therefore cutting the throat induces almost instant fainting. Kosher slaughtering also mandates a very sharp knife, almost like a surgeon’s scalpel, which can barely be felt if done correctly.
      A side benefit is obviously no horse-meat mixed in!

      • Shoestring says:

        1 Dec1 December 20:30

        Done properly, both halal & non-halal usually means the animal is slaughtered (brain dead) or senseless/ unconscious in 15 seconds.

  • Nick C says:

    1 Dec1 December 09:58

    Halal food? Will boycott in that case.

    • Rob says:

      1 Dec1 December 10:26

      Quite a lot of meat in the catering trade in the UK now is halal, just not openly labelled as such.

      • Shoestring says:

        1 Dec1 December 10:33

        ISTR all NZ lamb is halal

      • marcw says:

        1 Dec1 December 11:28

        A lot in the UK is halal. When I moved to London, the first year I worked at different food outlets… and 99.9% was halal. Nevertheless, we were instructed to say “it wasn’t halal”.

      • Nick C says:

        1 Dec1 December 11:55

        I think it’s wide open for a large prosecution then. The law clearly states that kosher and halal slaughter is only only permitted where ‘the meat must be intended for consumption by Jews or Muslims‘ – which you are saying is not the case? https://www.gov.uk/guidance/halal-and-kosher-slaughter

      • Shoestring says:

        1 Dec1 December 13:24

        Slaughtered in NZ wouldn’t count

      • Anna says:

        1 Dec1 December 14:23

        Some halal meat is actually pre-stunned. There is a school of thought which holds that animals which are pre-stunned can still be ritually pure as long as other rituals are carried out.

        All animal suffering is deplorable, however if we all became vegans tomorrow most livestock would end up being slaughtered anyway because it would not be economically viable to care for it.

      • Nick_C says:

        1 Dec1 December 14:49

        My meat comes from 3 miles away. Smallholding with a shop run by a lovely couple who started off keeping chickens and grew a small business from selling spare eggs to neighbours. I know the animals are treated well. The butcher/farmer can even tell you the name of the beast the meat comes from, as they usually kill one of everything each week. They breed Dexters and Gloucester Old Spots, and the meat tastes delicious. Well hung beef and definitely not Halal. Shame he can’t slaughter on site and avoid the stress and CO2 emissions of transporting the animals to the abattoir.

        Best of all, he takes Amex and is in Shop Small. Two years today since I started shopping with him, and I spend about half my food budget there.

    • Shawn C says:

      1 Dec1 December 13:00

      Nothing humane about killing animals.

      • Mike says:

        1 Dec1 December 17:13

        Shawn the sheep ?

    • Ben says:

      2 Dec2 December 10:11

      I guess you dont fly any of the middle eastern airlines or visit those countries or perhaps you turn vegetarian when you do? The steak on EK first is very good for plane food.

• Sussex bantam says:

  1 Dec1 December 08:31

  Rob – just a heads up – I’m still getting frequent occurnaces of the web page rather than the mobile page on iOS

  • Rob says:

    1 Dec1 December 09:07

    We are trying to fix this but it is taking longer than I would have liked.

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