British Airways drops the Financial Times from its lounges

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• Grant says:

  17 Apr17 April 10:26

  I used a £10 off £20 spend sucessfully on two cards when the last offer was on (18 beers for £20). As others reported a few days ago, I only got 16 beers in the box and no snacks or magazine that was promised. I had a moan at them and they confirmed it was wrong and said they would refund £7 to my account because they can’t sort replacements. It hasn’t been credited yet but if / when it does it’ll probably end up costing me more if / when Amex claw back the £10 offer.

  • Sussex Bantam says:

    17 Apr17 April 12:07

    Yes – that happened to me too. One of my bottles was broken. They said they couldn’t replace but then automatically refunded without asking. The refund took me under the spend threshold. I was not happy but they refused to do anything about it. I ended up with less beer that cost me more money !

    If the purpose of these offers is to encourage me to try their services in the hope that I will keep using then I’m afraid this has been pretty counter-productive for them…

  • Alan says:

    17 Apr17 April 21:42

    Interesting – defo don’t want credit unless they can do it to another card!

• Liam says:

  17 Apr17 April 10:28

  OT — Anyone use the Amex Platinum concierge service much? I thought I’d give it a go for the first time on Saturday when I was in Lyon but was pretty disappointed. The lady I spoke to was unable to find a table anywhere for dinner and when I was looking for some wine tasting or tours over the following couple of days she basically told me to go to Viator (which I’d already checked).

  • Stephan says:

    17 Apr17 April 12:57

    Stopped trying Amex Plat concierge years ago; they’re not much help even in London so I don’t see it as a card benefit at all. Wonder if anyone has had a different experience…

  • Alan says:

    17 Apr17 April 21:43

    I’ve always found them pretty useless whenever I’ve tried. I think they’re for folks that don’t care about their money.

• Zed says:

  17 Apr17 April 10:33

  The French Open offer for the lesser rounds looks fair. The points for the later rounds, even though hospitality is included, is very high. Emirates Skywards offers hospitality football matches from 10k to about 30k for better matches, so 90k is too much. Set it at 50k max would be fair…

  • Rob says:

    17 Apr17 April 11:36

    I have Centre Court Wimbledon Debentures and I sell the Men’s Final tickets for £5,000 per pair each year. This is seat only, and they are re-sold by hospitality companies with a meal thrown in for £10,000 per pair. 90k Emirates miles for the same package per person would look like a steal on that basis.

    (A few years ago, I bought a Wimbledon Centre Court package from SPG Moments which allowed to me sell on my own tickets for the same day – it was probably the best value SPG redemption I did. And I got to hang out with Stan Smith, who was hosting the SPG event.)

    • AndyF says:

      17 Apr17 April 13:10

      where did you resell them/how out of interest?

      • Rob says:

        17 Apr17 April 13:34

        Stan Smith buys mine now. He is always looking for reliable partners and we got talking when I did his SPG event. If Marriott Moments do their Wimbledon packages again this year, which are hosted by Stan Smith Events, you may be in my seats.

        The biggest public market is wimbledondebentureholders.com which is very reputable. Note they take a 20% cut.

        The debenture holders register is a public document so you are constantly contacted by the big hospitality companies looking to buy.

    • Shoestring says:

      17 Apr17 April 17:42

      You are pricing them too low this year, by a big factor. Just saying.

      Wimbledon will ask double for the next set compared to what you paid.

      • Ken says:

        17 Apr17 April 17:59

        2020 Centre Court debentures are £80k
        Great investment, but you have to be an existing holder to buy them.
        Golden area for men’s tennis coming to an end though.

        • Rob says:

          17 Apr17 April 21:37

          Existing holders have priority. Quite a few may choose not to go back in – but I had an offer from a broker this week offering me £50,000 if I was going to not renew and would simply sign over my rights to him ….

      • Rob says:

        17 Apr17 April 17:59

        I’ve been doing this for 15 years, trust me. I know every major buyer in the market. There is a bit of flexibility if you want to sit on them until the last minute in the hope someone interesting does well, but it is difficult. You only need to mess up once and be stuck with the tickets to lose out heavily. Don’t believe the stories you read in the press about what some people ask for tickets – there is no proof those prices are ever achieved. There are also 2,500 potential sellers.

        wimbledondebentureholders will sell you all you want for the Men’s Final at £8,650 per pair if you think you can do better!

        Wimbledon wants £80k each for the next set. The maths still works, even if prices don’t move further, although it clearly isn’t as cushy as it was when they were £25k!

      • Shoestring says:

        17 Apr17 April 18:09

        OK 1 step ahead 🙂

      • rams1981 says:

        18 Apr18 April 00:47

        Market value of Wimbledon debentures is going to fall heavily once Murray/Djokovic/nadal/Federer are done playing. Next gen very weak and no obvious stars from one after that either hence why the old guard still mop up the slams.

        • Rob says:

          18 Apr18 April 08:39

          Oddly enough, probably not. Wimbledon is THE classiest event, of any sort, you will ever attend. The appeal to the corporate market is huge. I mean, look at the volume of hospitality packages sold for Henley. No-one gives a monkeys about the rowing but the class of the event (in the right spots) means it is hugely popular with companies.

• BJ says:

  17 Apr17 April 10:48

  OT1: Good premium fares exUK from LH at the moment. For example Singapore £677 in premium economy and Rio £1409 in business.

  OT2: Emirates are now operating an a380 daily from Glasgow through October. Might be a good opportunity to pick up reward seats.

  • AndyGWP says:

    17 Apr17 April 21:19

    I bought the LH fare last year for £602 (from BHX, 1 stop in FRA)

    Bought on Amex Travel using the £200 off £600 Amex spend (made two bookings using two separate cards) so £400p/p – quite chuffed with that as it was for peak time (school hols)

    • AndyGWP says:

      17 Apr17 April 21:24

      BTW – not a criticism of the post / deal you’ve mentioned – just me trying to find another opportunity to gloat! haha 😉

• Craig says:

  17 Apr17 April 10:52

  OT: I got a bit worried when I booked return Avios flights last night from Hong Kong because on the initial page it said the taxes were £700! All was normal on the next page of just under £70 and phone call made this morning to link to an outbound Singapore booked using a 241 voucher. 120k Avios refunded and no mention of tax recalculation, F here we come again.

  With all the changes it’s going to be more difficult in the future but thanks Rob and everyone for the guidance, I’d never have been able to do this sort of thing without it.

  • Alan says:

    17 Apr17 April 21:47

    First page often has issues (esp for connecting flights) although haven’t heard it being that far off before.

• Curbe says:

  17 Apr17 April 12:22

  Given the sort of people flying with BA these days it makes sense to dump the FT and keep The Sun.

  • Peter K says:

    17 Apr17 April 13:35

    If your view is that it is to reduce those “sort of people”, (maybe those less literate?) it might be worth mentioning that that is not how you spell curb….

    • BJ says:

      17 Apr17 April 14:01

      No, I think your first thoughts were correct Peter, he’s obviously the sort of person who likes to add an ‘e’, use a hyphen or pronounce Lamont like he’s from Paris not Glasgow.

• ADS says:

  17 Apr17 April 13:08

  “Historically, publishers paid to have their magazines put into airport lounges – I’m not sure about newspapers. BA, to be fair, always seems to have imposed a quality threshold as well, something which many other airlines would do well to learn from.”

  looking at some of the advertorial magazines (Watch / Investing / holidays) in the BA Galleries lounges, i really don’t think your “quality” claim is valid !
  Maybe BA don’t put them in the First lounges that you visit, but sadly they really do send detritus into the Galleries lounges

  • Rob says:

    17 Apr17 April 13:35

    Watches / investing / holidays mags are what you’d expect for a wealthy BA crowd. I recommend you pop into the American Airlines lounge in T3 to see what nonsense turns up when money is the ONLY deciding factor.

• AndyF says:

  17 Apr17 April 13:15

  Bits: Awards Wallet. I am a premium user does anyone else have the exceptionally annoying Hilton Caption login, when you are updating your profile?! You have to spend a few minutes clicking pictures aimlessly, its very annoying as the chat box is in the way of the submit button. Can this be changed it’s only happening with Hilton!

  • Rob says:

    17 Apr17 April 13:33

    I get it on my account but my wife does not. Very weird.

    • Liz says:

      17 Apr17 April 13:57

      I took Hilton off Award Wallet a long time ago because of this.

  • xcalx says:

    17 Apr17 April 15:24

    Hilton always times out for me even when I go through the traffic light, shopfront and buses scenario. Hasn’t updated in months.

  • AndyGWP says:

    17 Apr17 April 16:58

    Happens on my phone but not my computer (if that helps)

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