Finnair restricts Avios flight reward bookings in business class

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• Adam says:

  24 Jan24 January 08:55

  OT regarding Virgin Atlantic Rewards+ CC. Do you get the upgrade or 2-for-1 voucher immediately after you spend 10.000 or on the anniversary date (like IHG Creation)? If on anniversary date is there a way to bag it and close the account without the fee for the upcoming year?

  • Grant says:

    24 Jan24 January 09:01

    It arrvies as soon as you meet the spend requirements.

    • Adam says:

      24 Jan24 January 09:12

      Thanks!

  • Craig says:

    24 Jan24 January 09:17

    I though I’d got my calculations wrong and put £500 extra spend through the card, it turns out I didn’t need to because the voucher appeared about a week after the points for the relevant statement.

• Boi says:

  24 Jan24 January 08:55

  OT: if the Amex IT Gods align for you is it usually just for 1 card or for all cards? Hubby Just had bonus 26K on BAPP after cancelling one in July.Now wondering if its worth him trying SPG which he cancelled at same time

  • Shoestring says:

    24 Jan24 January 09:04

    SPG is still only £1000 spend requirement —> going up to £3K

    reason enough to go for it without delay

    • Neil Donoghue says:

      24 Jan24 January 10:08

      I got the SPG card yesterday after not having held the card for 2 years. My online account is showing the bonus if I spend £1,000 so it was worth the random application.

  • Anna says:

    24 Jan24 January 09:22

    We’ve had an extra, erroneous sign up bonus on SPG, but didn’t get one on BA blue.

• Tony says:

  24 Jan24 January 09:13

  Man alive, IHG would have to give me 50,000 points to see Morrissey.

  • TripRep says:

    24 Jan24 January 09:27

    I’m wondering when Question Time will have him on as a guest lol :-p

• Frankie says:

  24 Jan24 January 09:20

  OT. Does anyone know what the start and end date was for the BA amex avios offer of spend £4 and get a bonus avios? I’ve only had a trickle of avios and want to work out how many I’m owed. But I don’t know when the offer started and ended. And it WAS an extra avios for each multiple of £4 wasn’t it? Not each transaction over £4? The T&Cs weren’t clear but I’m sure I read that Rob check with Amex and it was the former. Thanks in advance

  • Rob says:

    24 Jan24 January 09:59

    Amex confirmed to me it was the former but if you call the agents seem to read back the original script which implies, due to bad drafting, it was the latter.

  • MarkZ says:

    24 Jan24 January 10:01

    Here’s the best I can do. It started sometime after 5th December 2019, and ended on the 27th. Your Amex statement will show a breakdown of the extra Avios awarded as “AviosOffer” entries, but you will have to try and match those entries against the individual transactions to see if you have received your full entitlement. Depending on your statement date, the extra Avios could span two statements. Finally, it was 1 bonus Avios for every £4, so 1 for £4, 1 for £7.99, 2 for £8, etc. Hope this helps.

    • Stu_N says:

      24 Jan24 January 10:22

      Definitely £1 for every full £4 spent. I had a couple of large transactions in the period, £800 gave a BonusAvios entry of 200 a few weeks later.

  • AJA says:

    24 Jan24 January 11:34

    MarkZ got the dates correct 5 – 27 Dec as that was my experience too. It is definitely 1 bonus Avios for every £4 spent rounded down. My last bonus of 16 Avios posted on to my Avios tab on the Amex account on 15 Jan 2020 for a spend of £65 on 17 Dec 2019 although I did also get 3 Avios posting to my account on 1 Jan 2020 for spend on 27 Dec 2019 and 74 Avios posting on 10 Jan 2020 for spend of £297 on 23 Dec 2019. The larger the spend the more random the posting date. It shows up as Amex Offers. I have received all the bonus Avios I was expecting.

• LST says:

  24 Jan24 January 09:23

  Hi all,

  OT, but needed some advice re my card collection strategy going forwards.

  I currently have Amex SPG, HSBC prem rewards and Amex gold.

  The SPG was my primary card as hotel points are more useful for a young family and I have a decent balance built up (600k) but this is already ear marked for some redemptions next year.

  I started collecting Avios pre Christmas as the Christmas shopping racked up a huge number of points via the portal – as part of that I upgraded the HSBC card to take advantage of the higher earn rate and the welcome bonus. The avios is just a sideline and some extra points for not doing much, but I suspect I will apply for BAPP and 2-4-1 at some stage, to get good value.

  I am just about to get the annual bonus on the gold and need to decide what to do next. I will keep the HSBC card for the next 10 months to pick up the 12 month bonus (the kid’s school accepts MasterCard/visa credit cards 😊) but will probably downgrade at that point and maybe look at another Mastercard/Visa with a better earn rate.

  Just wanted some advice, should I keep the gold (2.5 Bonvoy per £ when the annual bonus is included, but annual fee of £140), keep the gold and the SPG (with its lower earn rate, but lower annual fee and gold status) or do something different?

  The IHG offering looks good, but I am concerned that creation don’t have the best reputation and would say £30k be better spent on SPG/Gold/IHG to get the most bang for my buck/points?

  We are about to renovate our house so there is a lot of spending on the horizon in the next 12-18 months and I would like to try to get this decision right!

  I don’t do manufactured spend and don’t want to pay HMRC via some convoluted fashion or incurring a fee that may be more than the cost of the points themselves, so not worried about that side of things.

  Sorry for the long, rambling, post!

  Thanks in advance

  LST

  • Anna says:

    24 Jan24 January 12:09

    IHG is actually excellent as long as you don’t need to do any complex dealings with Creation. If you have a reasonable amount of non-Amex spend to do it’s easy to trigger the free night voucher. I’ve only ever had to send one simple query to Creation and they got back to me within a week.

    • LST says:

      24 Jan24 January 21:38

      Thanks Shoestring and Anna
      LST

• DK says:

  24 Jan24 January 10:30

  OT re ANA redemptions through virgin. Are mixed cabin redemptions possible? J one way, F the other? Couldn’t see anything on the virgin site about it

• junana lumaley says:

  24 Jan24 January 10:59

  in light of rev top ups being coded as cash advances.
  what about paying for business services using all your cards in one?

  • jc says:

    24 Jan24 January 11:02

    There might be one code too many in here. Which business services…! See yesterday’s article & comments?

    • junana lumaley says:

      24 Jan24 January 11:07

      not HMRC. business services about 47 miles south of London as the crow (or rather, seagull?) flies

      • Grant says:

        24 Jan24 January 11:18

        Curve to Brighton seems fine for now. For me at least.

• Sam says:

  24 Jan24 January 11:52

  Any recommendations for hotels in Valencia?

  I’m there for a week on a semi-work trip in March, but taking the wife and baby.

  • Adam says:

    24 Jan24 January 13:52

    MARQUÉS HOUSE 4* SUP is my favourite.

  • Tilly says:

    24 Jan24 January 15:41

    Hospes Palau De La Mar was lovely when we went. 10 mins walk into the city centre but suited us and some nice restaurants close by.

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