Norwegian decides against launching flights from Heathrow Airport

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• Jon says:

  7 Feb7 February 08:34

  Congrats Rob and HfP team!

  OT question: re BA companion voucher, and booking the outbound then adding the return segment later – must the return be added before the outbound is flown?

  • memesweeper says:

    7 Feb7 February 09:05

    Yes

    • Jon says:

      7 Feb7 February 14:12

      Righto. Thanks 🙂

• Alastair says:

  7 Feb7 February 08:43

  OT: Looking to book the Melia White House in London for 4 nights in June – any good promotions, points opportunities or booking recommendations to follow? I’m not too familiar with them (apart from the HFP parties a few years back) so don’t want to miss out if there’s something I’m not aware of. I collect Finnair and Avios and have a chunk of Amex MR points available…

  • memesweeper says:

    7 Feb7 February 09:07

    I got a surprisingly good rate via Hotels.com … definitely worth a look as 4 nights is 40% of a free night.

  • Stu N says:

    7 Feb7 February 09:13

    Sign up for Melia Rewards and you get 1,000 points free usually.

    If you have Amex platinum, you get Melia Gold as a benefit. This gives you 2X 20% off vouchers and free breakfast for a second guest (essentially 2-4-1), amongst other benefits.
    I’ve had about a 75% hit rate on upgrades though this is at a business hotel where most people are probably booking cheapest rooms.

    Melia points transfer out to Avios at 10:3 ratio so earning rate isn’t terrible if you cash out. You can transfer to Iberia (it’s a good way to activate an IB account) or BA.

    Also you often get very good deals if you use 2,000 points to part-pay so if you’re going to stay in a Melia again it’s worth leaving 2k points in your account – you won’t be able to transfer out the 1k signup points anyway.

    It’s a decent scheme, HFP covers it fairly well given limited presence in UK market and all the hotels we have stayed in have been of a high standard.

    • Secret Squirrel says:

      7 Feb7 February 09:42

      If you sign up a partner to bag the intro 2k points, you can transfer between accounts so an Instant 4k.

      • meta says:

        7 Feb7 February 11:38

        My partner tried transferring his to mine and it didn’t work. I think you can’t transfer out the sign up points.

    • Alastair says:

      9 Feb9 February 10:10

      Thanks very much for this info. No Amex platinum I’m afraid – and I’ve moved abroad to Finland where the amex offerings are a bit underwhelming, but that’s another story…
      Looks like Melia rewards is a decent sceme, and if this becomes our go-to London hotel it could be valuable…

  • Lady London says:

    7 Feb7 February 11:15

    Have the Meliá hotel vouchers disappeared off Amazon?

    • Rob says:

      7 Feb7 February 11:18

      Still there last time I checked.

    • marcw says:

      7 Feb7 February 13:23

      Cheaper to buy directly from the web.

      • Secret Squirrel says:

        7 Feb7 February 14:01

        Not if you use various offers on Amazon GC’s like Morries Amex!

• David says:

  7 Feb7 February 08:51

  OT – have never downgraded BAPP to Blue before. Can I just check:

  1) If I get referred to the Blue as part of the downgrade will the referrer get the referral points? Assume not.
  2) Downgrading still means that you receive a pro rata refund of the unused BAPP fee?

  • BJ says:

    7 Feb7 February 09:07

    1 No (but I would still ho via a referral anyway, you never know for sure with amex. I wouldn’t self-regard though.)
    2. Yes

    • David says:

      7 Feb7 February 09:43

      Thanks

  • TGLoyalty says:

    7 Feb7 February 09:48

    If you cancel the referrer will get points the next time you sign up.

    If you need an AMEX still apply for a different AMEX instead Gold is a good 0 fee choice.

• Grainne says:

  7 Feb7 February 09:01

  This is brilliant. I can think of one flashy points site that looks good on the surface, but almost never gets any comments. Apart from the excellent content, I love Head for Points for the community and the many, many nuggets of useful information from the commenters. Not to mention Rob et al actually answering questions we ask!

  • BJ says:

    7 Feb7 February 09:12

    A big plus is that Rob/Rhys usually wait until the dust settles before reporting anything that is not time urgent. By that time they can usually give reliable analysis and avoid errors and misinformation sometimes found on other blogs.

    • Secret Squirrel says:

      7 Feb7 February 09:33

      The comments section for me is its biggest draw this site has & the community it has brought together. Other UK blogs are lucky to get 3-4 comments a day so long may it continue, congrats Rob & the team.

  • Lady London says:

    7 Feb7 February 12:31

    Also any trolls / snowflakes / excessively pc people get roundly stamped on. At least one other UK site has a terrible pet troll.

• Brian says:

  7 Feb7 February 09:37

  I wonder how many of the comments were postcodes…

• mr_jetlag says:

  7 Feb7 February 09:50

  Rob, any thoughts on a suitable prize for 500,000th comment? A weekend in a quiet dark hotel room perhaps? 🙂

  • Lady London says:

    7 Feb7 February 11:19

    Good idea. The prize, not the darkened hotel room. IC Paris would be lovely next month or two. Would IC like to sponsor?

  • memesweeper says:

    7 Feb7 February 13:01

    If you exclude Rob we haven’t actually hit 400,000 yet! If I might be cheeky I’d suggest a prize draw on the day that the ‘real’ 400,000th comment is made. One entry per commenter only (so no incentive to carpet bomb the site with rubbish comments to increase your chances).

    • Rob says:

      7 Feb7 February 13:58

      Actually we have, because the counting only started when we went to self-hosted WordPress 9 months in!

• Gulz says:

  7 Feb7 February 10:02

  Since clubcard is on this article, I’ll share my recent experience. Hopefully someone here will have had the same or a similar experience and can advise.
  I had about £350+ clubcard vouchers up until second week of Jan and 5326 points. Then all of a sudden one day (about 20th Jan) I try to login and the website takes me to an activation page – for me to enter my clubcard number, name and email as if I was registering for clubcard the very first time. Tried putting my details in, but didn’t work. Called them up and they reset my password – didn’t work. Sent them an email, and after a lot of back and forth, now they are investigating it as an IT issue for over 10 days now. In the meantime, when I login using mobile browser, it shows a summary that I have £5 worth of vouchers and 0 points!

  Not sure if its related, but as a prelude to all this, I had my £350 worth of clubcard vouchers expire in Nov, and after a lot of pleading over the phone, they added 35000 points to my account – which I converted to £300 worth of fast vouchers in the first week of Jan.

  • Shoestring says:

    7 Feb7 February 11:44

    cautionary tale! cheers

    I went into our Tesco Clubcards a/cs this morning to switch off auto conversion to Virgin (to be switched on again in a few days) and noticed that my wife & I both had quite a few points expiring in May, funny how 2 years creeps up on you

    I’ve diarised to send a few over to BAEC or Virgin in April & will collect the change/ another 2 years’ expiry

    • xcalx says:

      7 Feb7 February 12:38

      Are stored vouchers safe from the Auto transfer to Virgin. I am thinking of doing the transfer for the first time, so just checking first.
      Thanks.

      • Shoestring says:

        7 Feb7 February 12:44

        yes

    • Polly says:

      7 Feb7 February 13:30

      Be careful if doing a few transfers the same day. Our August statement was missing change from 4 transactions, in other words 4 x 47.50 in change that was just missing. Took Tesco about 2 months to “find” them and admit a glitch if you change too many in one day. A manager finally ran with it and phoned every couple of weeks until it was sorted. This then prompted me to check the change from previous statements. They only go back two years. Luckily l had the pics of the statements which showed even more change not returned. Ended up owing me just over 350 in vouchers.
      They then proceeded to post the vouchers to me, which l did not request. Have had vouchers stolen before. They couldn’t understand why l was not spending them on avios. Was waiting for a conversion bonus, but none forthcoming.
      Think l will transfer them before any more go missing. They admitted there were several cases like mine being handled. Am owed more in change this statement so will be checking it closely.

      • xcalx says:

        7 Feb7 February 14:09

        It’s worth noting that any Tesco faster voucher you request will show as received form the previous collection period. I found this out last week when I queried a “missing” £12.50 faster voucher from January. I was informed it had been added to my other vouchers as £5/£5/£2.50 and dated as issued in Nov 2019

  • Ralph says:

    7 Feb7 February 11:47

    At the end of the Tesco quarterly periods (last was to up to 24 Jan) they reset the points back to zero while they prepare your statement and send out vouchers or transfer to Avios. The points you are seeing should just be the current ones, after 24/01. They seem to have taken slightly longer than usual this quarter, but should now be OK. In the Clubcard app, if you go to ‘points’ at the bottom of the page, on the next page there is ‘expecting points but can’t see them’ which takes you to the old quarter and the current one. While they are preparing the statements (which they now have), you can’t see a total for that quarter, but you can see all the underlying transactions to reassure you!

    • Gulz says:

      7 Feb7 February 13:53

      Like I said, can’t login!

• DaveL says:

  7 Feb7 February 10:14

  Any cheap Avios purchase opps at the moment? I managed to leave it and just missed the aer Lingus Groupon deal after Christmas. I’m needing around 25k to top off account for a large redemption. Haven’t seen any c.1p deals emerge since. Thanks.

  • Grant says:

    7 Feb7 February 11:08

    Depending on how quickly you need them, do you / your partner / adult children / menagerie of pets all have life insurance? Life insurance for two adults via Harry’s favourite site and Tesco pet insurance for two pets would net you at least 25,000 Avios but you’d need to wait a few months to get them.

    • Jay H says:

      7 Feb7 February 13:15

      Thought they changed those offers to be BACS withdrawals only?

    • Anna says:

      7 Feb7 February 13:24

      I wouldn’t rely on this anyway, I’m still waiting for my cash back after 10 months!

      • xcalx says:

        7 Feb7 February 14:19

        11 month on. Just had an Argos £30 declined, was told I should have had a ten digit order number not the nine digit number thats on the receipt.

        • Fenny says:

          8 Feb8 February 01:05

          I’m getting a lot more transactions declined recently, especially the larger amounts. 10% offer from Curry’s only tracked at normal 1% in July and still chasing. 10%on a large Superdrug purchase before Chritmad tracked then declined, no explanation. Getting very frustrated. I can get discounts through other routes, but the cash back as points is more valuable.

  • Rob says:

    7 Feb7 February 11:21

    I agree, I’ve not seen anything around 1p for a few weeks.

  • DaveL says:

    7 Feb7 February 12:29

    Thanks both. I’m definitely in need of speed here.

    • Anna says:

      7 Feb7 February 13:25

      Can you do avios plus cash (effectively buying the extra avios, this can be a decent option depending on the cash price of your flights)? I don’t think it works with the 2 4 1 though.

      • Lady London says:

        7 Feb7 February 17:11

        Wouldn’t it be better to do cash+avios instead? That way you’d still earn avios and tier points

        • Genghis says:

          7 Feb7 February 20:10

          “ That way you’d still earn avios and tier points”
          To earn avios and TPs it needs to be a cash ticket.
          One could then part pay with avios but this is in effect selling avios, not buying them.

  • Lady London says:

    7 Feb7 February 18:50

    Could you do avios+money to do your booking if you’re short?

    • DaveL says:

      7 Feb7 February 19:15

      Thanks. It is a 2 4 1 voucher redemption, so not possible in this case.

      • Shoestring says:

        7 Feb7 February 19:25

        DaveL – you won’t thank me for this lol – but here is a classic example where buying £1000 of Avios at or close to 1p/ point opens up lots of opportunities and instead of scrabbling around at the last minute, you know you have Avios in the bank when the need arises

        I mentioned buying Avios at *under* 1p/ point just 5 or 6 weeks ago (the Iberia offer)

        too many people (IMV) pop up and say/ warn: earn and burn, what about devaluation, only buy what you need etc etc

        yet have no great ideas for quick, cheap Avios when somebody asks for suggestions

        • Anna says:

          7 Feb7 February 19:29

          You’ll be pleased to hear that I have earmarked £1000 of my pension lump sum for the next 50% Avios bonus offer. I get such outstanding value from them at peak periods it’s well worth it. In fact I might buy the maximum for my OH as well.

        • Genghis says:

          7 Feb7 February 20:12

          If you’re sensible with your earning and do some planning, no need to buy.

        • Polly says:

          7 Feb7 February 23:16

          Anna, BA usually do a 100% extra offer once a year…worth buying then perhaps.

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