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

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• Craig says:

  1 Dec1 December 08:47

  OT: At a HI last night, no charges to room permitted because of a ‘cyber attack’ that was affecting 21 sites!

• Mikeact says:

  1 Dec1 December 09:27

  Sorry to have received notice from Avios SA that they are pulling the plug. At least I can now move my pile over to my BA account, which you weren’t able to do.

  • signol says:

    1 Dec1 December 14:32

    I tried this, but failed, probably due to different addresses. However Avios SA moved easily to my UK based Iberia Plus account.

• Rich says:

  1 Dec1 December 09:50

  I’ll report back. Don’t think I’ll hit the spend target with real spend.

  Either way I’m happy, because I got an upgrade from C to a F! if only I actually needed a car this weekend…

• Kevin says:

  1 Dec1 December 10:23

  I transferred all £90k to BAEC. My Iberia account is now showing -90 000. Not really fazed. I quickly used the Avios and my 2 4 1 voucher last night just as precautionary measure!

  • Shoestring says:

    1 Dec1 December 10:25

    Interesting. Sounds like they might have applied a ‘grace’ limit as my wife’s a/c isn’t showing -1K and somebody else said they didn’t get the 6K removed that were sitting there that they couldn’t use.

    • Shoestring says:

      1 Dec1 December 10:31

      Somebody on FT has got -750 showing, so maybe they just haven’t ‘swept’ our a/cs yet?

    • Doug M says:

      1 Dec1 December 10:43

      I moved 90K to BAEC, and then back to IB when I wanted to use them. I used 89,600, and today my IB account is -400. I’m actually quite impressed they where so organised about it.

    • Kevin says:

      1 Dec1 December 10:47

      Yeah it’s impressive! Seems they were far more organised about cancelling unused avios than they were about awarding them.

      No idea how they’re going to claw them back – can’t see any logical way of doing this. Will definitely try close my Iberia account, but I imagine they’ll say I can’t do that until I have a balance of 0 Avios.

      Will be interesting to see what transpires over the next few months! But for now, I bagged 2 x CW Off Peak tickets to Cancun thanks mostly to those miles. Great value!

    • Doug M says:

      1 Dec1 December 11:06

      I was happy with the promo, stupid the way they did it, all those booked seats with no one flying, but good from the customer perspective. If you do lose the unspent ones you can hardly complain, it was clear use or lose by 1st Dec.

    • Ed says:

      1 Dec1 December 11:16

      As a data point. I have had 100 points removed (couldn’t find a use for the last 100) so it seems that no amount is too small.

    • Russ says:

      1 Dec1 December 14:55

      Shoestring, which hotel in Seville did you go for? Thinking of going spring next year and would be interested to hear how it went.

    • Shoestring says:

      1 Dec1 December 15:33

      Can’t report back until October! Went for 2 different places – the Hilton as they arrive late then one of the Green Apartments close to the historic centre, you get a proper apartment with full kitchen for the same price as the Hilton plus no need to faff around, all within walking distance.

    • Russ says:

      1 Dec1 December 15:58

      @Shoestring – LOL October may be a little out of my time line. I’ll take a look at Green Apartments thanks.

  • Carlos says:

    1 Dec1 December 23:05

    The amount I transferred to BAEC still seems safe for now. Iberia account has updated to show – 88,000 which I thought was odd. Turns out the 2,000 avios Groupon offer finally made it into my account but it had taken so long that I’d forgotten and lost them with the -90,000. Shows how easy it is to flush money down the toilet. I guess it’s insignificant if the avios transferred to BA stay put.

• Simon says:

  1 Dec1 December 10:26

  I flew out from Oakland once after staying in San Francisco, didn’t find it any more difficult to get to than SFO using public transport. I guess people would automatically put San Francisco airport into a search engine rather than Oakland.

  Frankfurt Weeze still seems to be going, I’ve managed to avoid it on all visits so far.

  • RussellH says:

    1 Dec1 December 11:14

    I am sad to see OAK being dropped – much better situated for my purposes, northern California, than SFO. A much more civilised, because smaller, airport, with by US standards, very pleasant and polite immigration staff. They seemed to have missed out on the removal of sense of humour training that I had thought was compulsory.

    BTW “Frankfurt Weeze” is confused. Frankfurt is Hahn, Weeze is north of Düsseldorf, quite close to the Dutch border. When I was last there it clearly aimed a lot of its marketting across the border.

    HHN has been owned by FRA for some years – I doubt if they would have bought it if they did not think they could make it pay. A quick look at the Ryanair site shows that much of their traffic is to Spanish holiday resorts, though they still serve EDI, STN and NQY[1], plus DUB and Kerry in Ireland. There is some wonderful countryside for walking etc immediately around HHN, and the Mosel Valley, for cycling and wine tasting is only a short distance away.

    [1] Shoestring could do us a nice review!

    • Shoestring says:

      1 Dec1 December 11:19

      We got one the other week
      https://headforpoints.com/2018/10/14/review-executive-lounge-cornwall-airport-newquay/

      • RussellH says:

        2 Dec2 December 10:58

        I meant a review of HHN, not NQY
        🙂

  • Rob says:

    1 Dec1 December 11:27

    That was the BA problem I think. A search for SF did not return Oakland options.

• DMX says:

  1 Dec1 December 12:01

  Data point 2: -89,999 points (I had left 1 in my account after moving the rest to BAEC). Had transferred in a stash to redeem on Iberia flights, but after losing a few hours (and a piece of my soul) navigating the CAPTCHAs and website crashes over the past few days, gave up. A shame.

  • Genghis says:

    1 Dec1 December 13:42

    Yep. I spent 89,450 on hotels. Moved 550 to BAEC to bring my IB+ acct to zero. Ran AW just now and my balance is -550.

    • Anna says:

      1 Dec1 December 14:05

      So what are people going to do with their IB accounts? Presumably those who have a big deficit aren’t going to want to earn any IB avios to have them just disappear into the hole!

    • tom1 says:

      1 Dec1 December 15:04

      Anna – I closed my IB account a month or so ago. I am due a new passport soon, so will open a new IB account when that arrives, and start the 90 day ticker going so I am ready for their next trick!

    • Anna says:

      1 Dec1 December 17:48

      I love reading about what you hardcore HFP-ers manage to achieve!

• Russ says:

  1 Dec1 December 13:12

  OT as bits, my 2000 points for staying two nights at another Marriott brand have started to be credited.

• Nick_C says:

  1 Dec1 December 13:35

  OT. I’m off to Japan next week for the first time. Any tips on drawing cash from ATMs?

  I understand the ones at the airport and in Seven Eleven take foreign cards.

  I was planning to use Halifax Clarity MC, Monzo, and Curve linked to my Lloyds Avios MC with the currency set to Yen.

  Are these all likely to work?

  • Zana711 says:

    1 Dec1 December 13:54

    Assuming that you’re flying into Narita? My experience was that all the foreign banks ATM worked with no issues plus Seven Bank. (I used a Citibank one at Narita). Around Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and most large Tokyo towns, I used Japan Post bank more, as I found that their ATMs will allow you to withdraw in smaller denominations, which was really handy if I needed smaller bills. Seven Bank (inside Seven Eleven stores) typically only allow you to withdraw 10,000 yen increments, as those machines seem to only store 10,000 yen bills. Only ever tried Monzo and HSBC cards.

    https://www.jp-bank.japanpost.jp/en/ias/en_ias_index.html

    • Nick_C says:

      1 Dec1 December 14:36

      Many thanks. Yes, flying to NRT (in First 🙂 thanks to Rob and others) and then taking the train down to Osaka same day. Good to know that Monzo works. Also good to know about JP for small bills.

      If anyone knows about Curve would be good to hear.

      I assume that places that don’t take credit cards won’t take Curve either, but it could be useful for drawing some cash against my Lloyds MC. I guess I’m going to need to carry a fair bit of cash.

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