We have given a lot of coverage on Head for Points recently to airlines and hotel companies who are doing their best to avoid paying refunds.
We aren’t seeing much love from service providers either.
A steady trickle of complaints about airport lounge club Priority Pass and coronavirus refunds has been landing in my inbox.
One reader, who has been a very happy Priority Pass customer, had – mistakenly, he admits – set up his Priority Pass account to auto renew. His new subscription was taken on schedule, with no attempt to either reduce the fee or extend his membership period for the fact that he won’t be able to use his card for a number of months.
After numerous discussions with the company yielded no deal, he ended up cancelling his card. He received a refund of the fee that had just been taken, given that the new membership year had not yet kicked in.
In the face of this – and similar feedback from others – I strongly suggest turning off auto-renew in your Priority Pass account. Obviously this only applies if you pay directly for a Priority Pass and not get it free from American Express Platinum.
Letting your membership lapse may be the best way of getting the company to offer you an equitable deal going forward. If you are currently part-way through your subscription, there seems little hope at the moment of getting a free membership extension.
EDIT: A couple of days after we published this article, Priority Pass announced a three month extension for all cardholders.
OptionTown isn’t being very helpful either
We have covered the British Airways Flight Pass on a few occasions.
A British Airways Flight Pass can be an excellent deal. It is effectively a carnet, allowing you to prepay for a number of short-haul flights on either a particular route or to a particular country. Once you have bought your Flight Pass, you are guaranteed a seat when you want one as long as tickets are still being sold for cash.
Flight Pass is run by a company called OptionTown on behalf of British Airways.
According to reader feedback, OptionTown is not offering refunds on unused Flight Pass tickets. This is – to be fair – in their terms and conditions, but clearly it is against the spirit of the scheme when British Airways is not flying to the destination covered by the pass.
If you have any personal feedback from talking to Priority Pass or OptionTown in recent days, please let me know.
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About Head for Points
It’s that last line of the Emirates ad that raises the questions: “…when the whole world came together and said ‘Enough, no more’.”
It will take a very brave government to stand up and say that it’s time to let vulnerable people die again so that the rest of us can all crack on with our lives and fly Emirates…
After 3-6 months of lockdown it’s going to take a very brave government to not let life get back to ‘normal’ for the very large proportion of individuals able to fight off an infection.
Domestic lockdowns are likely to be relaxed long before international travel returns to “normal”.
Vulnerable people are going to die no matter what happens. Lockdowns aim to delay these deaths.
But killing the economy for too long will create more vulnerable people and cause deaths for other reasons. Furthermore, a poorer economy and borrowing more to spend on the NHS now, means less tax received and less money to spend on the NHS in the future, bringing forward the deaths of people in the future.
Enough already with this myth that only vulnerable people die. Young healthy people area ending up in ICU, too, and some are dying. If there were no NHS beds available, a lot more would be dying.
Tiny percentage for under 40s
But still happening. I’m not sure how old you are, but it could happen. Look at the PM. Anyone could get it!
I hate being on lockdown as much as the next person. But healthy people are going to die. Look at that nurse in her 30’s who sadly passed away from Covid19.
You just proved the dangers of anecdotal evidence.
First, the PM is not 60 either. But he definitely isn’t among the population with the least risk of dying from Covid-19.
Second, while tragic from a personal perspective that a number of individuals who are outside the at-risk segments of population have been fatally impacted by Covid-19, diseases have to be analysed at a macro level for these purposes. Otherwise we’d never be allowed out, considering the contagion and fatality rates of plenty of other viral and infectious diseases.
I’d like to see some evidence to support a tiny hospitalisation rate for under 40s, as I don’t believe it. These statistics suggest that the hospitalisation rate for the 20-44 age group is greater than 15%. I repeat, the death rate is only low if the health service can cope. Why do you think “Protect the NHS” is the mantra?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105402/covid-hospitalization-rates-us-by-age-group/
None of the comments have propagated the myth you refer to.
Individuals who think they are not at high risk so it won’t hurt them are making unnecessary journeys and flouting lockdown rules.
In doing that they may be wrong as there is still a level of vulnerability for lots of people you wouldn’t identify as being at much risk.
More importantly they are able to pass the virus around other people even if they themselves are not affected. Selfish, selfish, selfish.
And who’s to say that if we don’t succeed in stopping it transmitting,it won’t come back next year and kill young fit people in masses like the Spanish flu did? Like my great-grandfather who left two children that were later abandoned and at least one of them was abused in an orphanage blighting our family for two generations.
With a bit of luck in the case of any even more dangerous epidemic in the future, our police will finally be able to use ‘stop and shoot’ powers against oeope who break lockdowns and put life as we know it at risk.
Wow. For someone with the nickname Lady London, this is the least London (indeed the least British) attitude towards the lockdown I’ve seen yet. Not only are you saying we should all renounce freedom in the name of not propagating this particular disease (no dissent allowed), you’re championing that the police should be allowed to shoot (!!) whoever goes out – for whatever reason.
Where do you draw the line, by the way? Which other deadly diseases would you apply this policy to whenever there’s an outbreak? The seasonal flu (up to 650,000 dead globally each year)? Pneumonia (3 *million* dead worldwide in 2016)? Rotavirus (215,000 children under 5 dead each year around the world)?
You are right Mike this is very unusual for me. I just can’t stand the level of “me, me” focus that seems to have become fashionable.
I saw a statistic that said each infected person even symptomless infects 10,000. At 4% in most countries right now that means they kill 40.
H*** it’s even worse they are currently killing 400
@Lady London:
I’m afraid it’s more like 1-3 people per infected person, some ‘super-spreaders’ can do 10 or more
@Lady London: The number of people that each infected person passes it on to is called the reproduction number,, R. It is approximately 3.5 in the absense of social distancing.
No one knows what triggers the cytokine storm that results in the severe form of COVID-19. It’s not at all clear it’s due to any underlying vulnerability. At the moment, I think we have to assume that all adults are at risk of developing the severe form.
I think your numbers are directly. The 10,000 is the chain extent of infections from that one person. The incubation period and how long it is live outside the human body seems to be why this number gets so big so quick. If 1 person’s infection eventually infects 10,000 then at current rates of 4%.then 1 infected person’s chain is killing 400.
There’d also be more dying without a lockdown etc which people seem to forget when looking at number of deaths etc
The lockdown raises some seriously moral questions.
The average age of those dying from Corona is 79. The average age a person dies in the UK is 81. So people are having on average two years’ extra life, supposedly at a cost of £750k a year per person in terms of the economic cost now. That’s well above the £30k that NICE uses as a threshold for drug development.
We’ve not even yet got to the cost to life of economic recession and increased inflation (increase in poverty, suicide rates etc). With all the talk of “everyone should be saved”, the question should be at what cost to lives in the future. However, governments are elected based on the TODAY, so it’d be political suicide to not do what they’re doing.
I agree with Genghis. We appear to have collectively ignored any of the ethical arguments involved in the tacit decision to make enormous economic and social sacrifices for the benefit of a minority of the population. I’m not arguing we shouldn’t protect the vulnerable but simply stating that we haven’t weighed this up properly as a nation and made a conscious decision. From a utilitarian perspective, it can be argued that the needs of the many should be prioritised over prolonging the lives of people who will die soon (this isn’t my own argument but I think it’s helpful to play devils advocate). At some point, we need to consider these ethical questions mindfully.
Regarding young people dying – the media seldom reports or is privy to all the relevant medical information, so these cases are rarely as clear cut as they appear. Health workers appear to be at a higher risk due to exposure to a higher viral load. However, the overwhelming majority of younger, healthy healthcare professionals will not die.
Boris is a 55 year old, obese man who may have underlying health problems. He isn’t high risk but he is much higher risk than many people may think.
@Ghengis – Not to get into the underlying merits but there are a couple of major flaws to your calculations. Firstly, you need to look at the average age someone who is 79 is expected to survive to in order to judge how much coronavirus is affecting it by. Secondly, the mortality rate would be considerably higher if hospital facilities and medical staff are overloaded for all patients so the financial impact can’t be divided up that tidily. Thirdly, the economic impact would at least partly relate to decisions outside the control of our government so even if we decided on different policy it can’t be assumed that everything would return to the previous position.
Fully agree.
Something no government has seriously contemplated (judging by the fact no country has implemented it) is locking down only the segments of population that are at a high risk of dying, i.e. over 60s and people with an underlying heart or respiratory condition. This would protect those that are most vulnerable, thereby delaying the strain on NHS resources (i.e. it’d flatten the curve), and allow the economy to get on better than it is now.
It will happen like this, without a doubt. Look at the numbers today. Almost 800 dead, of which only 29 have no underlying health conditions – and many of those 29 were 75+.
The only caveat is that I’ve never seen a list of ‘underlying health conditions’. Are they listing obese people as having underlying health issues, for example? Or is it only people with actual medical conditions for which they had received treatment?
Oddly I am finding the current lockdown very manageable. I am sleeping an extra 10 hours a week. I get up at 8am rather than 6.30am. No commuting. I play with my kids every day. Many of the local restaurants and coffee shops are still open for takeaway, or we do a decent cooked lunch instead which never happens midweek normally. The house has never been tidier and we’ve finally dealt with a few niggles we’d never fixed before. I get more exercise than before. If I had a lot of HFP meetings it would be a mess but clearly we don’t.
My wife, on the other hand, has a far more collaborative job and is finding it a nightmare at home.
Life expectancy is for a newborn today bearing in mind a certain amount of infant and teenage mortality, a 79 year old now would have a higher LE
It seems that Shoestring got there about 4 weeks ahead of the rest of you, only phrased it what some might call undiplomatically.
Some people are able to fight off the infection successfully. Others are not. Some people who appear to have no underlying health conditions turn out to have abnormal immune systems which go into overdrive and kill them. It’s natural selection.
Covid 19 may well kill me or members of my family, but I do wonder about the wisdom of destroying the economy to save the lives of half a million vulnerable people, many of whom should be dying soon anyway.
I grew up at a time when live expectancy was three score years and ten. People are living too long, and spending too much of their lives being economically unproductive.
Apologies that I’ve beaten three score years and ten. You’re right, I am also economically unproductive….after 47 years of continuous employment. I feel that I’ve earned my retirement if that’s OK.
I’ve just checked the Death Clock App, and apparently, I have another 7 years, 3 months and 6 days to go.
Enough time for a few more trips, I hope, and a few more pension payments.
Your spending is productive Mike. It contributes to GDP.
It’s sad reality that we live on a planet whereby people value money more over lives. This is nothing new of course.
Answer this question. If one person dies every 10 years at a road junction near you, but the cost of remodelling it is £50 million, would you authorise it?
It depends if the crossing is in Brompton Road opposite Harrods and a concerned group of local Kensington & Chelsea residents has mounted a campaign…! 🙂
Half a million might be a rather conservative estimate for the “do nothing” case. It all depends on the death rate when there is essentially no hospital care for most people that need it. Not to mention the number of people who die needlessly from all sorts of other conditions because the NHS is paralysed. Or the long term consequences on the NHS itself.
No one knows what triggers the cytokine storm. I don’t think it’s in any way established that it’s *caused by* an abnormal immune system.
Our Prime Minister Boris is in intensive care since yesterday evening 11 days after he reported symptoms. I wouldn’t regard him as in a particular risk group.
I wouldn’t either and I really hope he makes a full recovery. If doesn’t change my view though. The need of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
Not in a humane society. Do we want to move towards a more American model of ‘everyone for himself’ and ‘survival of the wealthy only’
What would be an acceptable number of deaths for you for a lockdown to be the right decision?
There is ALREADY a price on your life. It is built into Government modelling. You just don’t like to think about it.
If a badly designed road junction kills 2 people per year but would cost £50m to redesign, it doesn’t happen. More fire stations would save a handful of lives per year currently lost due to engines having to travel so far, but not enough lives to justify the money. There are plenty of expensive drugs the NHS won’t give you because they cost too much even though they are proven to extend the lives of those who get them.
Good question. What do others think?
He’s overweight which is high risk. We’re not privy to his full health history of course. None of which, of course, lessons the gravity of it especially as he’s only 6 years older than me.
Did you know …. David Cameron would STILL be PM if he hadn’t called the referendum. Under the Fixed Term Parliaments act the next election would be in May 2020.
I didn’t like Cameron but everything would all ha be been so much better if he had carried on as you said Rob.
As I mentioned in a previous thread I called Priority Pass last week to enquire if they were extending membership beyond the expiry date, as virtually all airport lounges worldwide were on lockdown. I had purchased my pass last November having seen the HfP Black Friday article. The PP representative was none too helpful. After checking to see if there were any policy changes all he could inform me was that they were currently only extending memberships by ONE month for those passes due to expire in May! He advised that I should check their website periodically for any updates.
In other words “we’ve got your money so tough!”
People have long memories so treatment like this has the potential to backfire in the long run. However, it is notable that some of the worst are companies that enjoy a certain (protected?) market dominance and/or corporate business so they consider it worth the risk as customers will have little choice but return to them at the end of the day. I’m not sure what HFP and others will do about their annual awards at the end of this year but those going ahead will likely see a strong reflection of how the travel industry treated its customers in the results.
Yeah, I’m never going to India or Peru again! That will teach them to not impose lockdowns with no notice!
I feel sorry for the unfortunate souls who have been in lockdown within Indian occupied Kashmir – they have been suffering the lockdown for months.
Yes – please see my post below!
Priority Pass (run by Collinson Group) suck big time when it comes to customer services. I’ve had several memberships that I’ve only bought at discount, normally via Groupon or Black Friday deals. The rigmarole in having to call to cancel is a method employed to gather sleeping revenue when people forget to cancel direct debits.
This year, they failed to respond to 2 emails I sent asking exactly when my membership expired and not to have it renew. I eventually called to be told that the DD had been cancelled.
I am glad I took part in the Dragon Pass deal late last year. Not only did I get cheap access (and lets face it, not many lounges are worth the £20-£45 some charge) but they seem to have extended the life of those passes by 6 months. Kudos to Dragon Pass.
As soon as I take our any contract – including
Priority Pass, car insurance, car breakdown, mobile phone – I contact the provider shortly after and tell them to set it not to automatically renew. You have the right to do that in the UK even if it’s in your contract that it auto renews. But you must do it explicitly
I keep a note if the date and time of the call and would ask for their email to send them notice of this if I did not feel comfortable they had made a note.
I forgot to do this with my last mobile phone contract as the network claimed they could not accept this instruction until nearly the end of the contract and not in 3rd month or so when I phoned them. No such requirement was in the contract and I fell for it, got entangled with them refusing to provide their own market rates for renewal, forgot about it and ended up paying 5 extra months I didn’t use.
I haven’t let them get away with it this year. Priority Pass is definitely relying on an inertia sell. Anyone that finds out how poor most of their non-Asia lounges are and then keeps being rejected for entry into lounges in the UK – where Priority Pass appears to be the last reason anyone will let you into a lounge, is going to be doubly annoyed and receive nothing from Priority Pass if they let the default option of autorenewal stand.
So call Priority Pass as soon as youve signed up and them to remove the auto renewal. Send an email as well in their case.
My annual Priority Pass was set to auto renewal and I remembered that they’d taken the payment about a month early in March 2019. I called up to ask about pausing membership during the last week of March and was told that a response to the crisis was under discussion at management level but that no policy was likely to be decided for several weeks. During the call it became clear that they were going to take the payment later that evening. With no other flexibility on offer I cancelled on the spot. If I hadn’t specifically stated “when will the payment be taken” then they weren’t going to tell me.
I’ve just had a statement from Platinum Amex with another year’s subscription due. Is there any word that they will extend the “year” due to not getting any benefits, or should I just cancel the card ?
If you are not travelling, not using any lounges, have no need for taxis, and are not hiring cars, and already have your hotel statuses, is there any reason to keep it?
I cancelled and switched to Gold. Amex is a lumbering lump. What do they think clients get for their enormous fee? Priority Pass dead. Hotel status useless. Travel Insurances not required for holidays in my back garden. 1 MR point for my online groceries…..But the good news is Brighton Council now takes Amex for online Council Tax payments so my trips to the Coop paypoint have stopped. I suppose someone suited and booted suggested the council ought to take their card payments given the enormous contribution the company gives to our city life.
PS You always could use Amex for Brighton&Hove via PayPal (which is worth checking for other such organisations)..
Amex would do nothing when I contacted them about the renewal apart from suggest changing to a free card.
I recommend you seriously consider cancelling. The longer you leave it, the more of the £575 you will have to pay.
It also sends a message. You can always reapply but if people keep giving them their business what is the driver for change?
I’ve just resubscribed for the year and will reassess in 2/3 months time. If the global situation or AMEX policy doesn’t change I’ll look at downgrading.
No harm in cancelling IF you have another MR card and so your points are protected and don’t need transferring immediately. ARCC is an option – https://www.headforpoints.com/2020/03/31/amex-rewards-credit-card-arcc-membership-rewards/
Thanks Rob, I originally had the Gold MR card which I upgraded to platinum. so I guess to keep points I will have to apply for a new one first, then cancel this one.
Unless you are relying on the insurance for a future holiday, I’d just cancel.
Even if domestic lockdown finishes, I’m struggling to see international travel normalising before end of June at absolute earliest – and unless it’s work related, I won’t risk taking family abroad this summer purely in case there is a local lock down and we end up stuck in a hotel for 2 weeks.
Binned mine at beginning of March and will wait 6 months and get the Business Platinum and at least get the bonus on that.
They missed one…
“Do you remember when we cancelled your flights with 2 hours notice, refused to answer the phone for days, did not fulfil our legal obligations to re-route you, and left you stranded on the other side of the world?”
yup, because they did all of that for the fun of it didn’t they. They actually sent in house memos stating:
‘dont answer the phones for a few days’,
‘lets cancel flights for the fun of it and great expense’,
‘lets not fly people back from the other side of the world’.
Or was it something to do with a global pandemic and governments refusing to accept international flights, social distancing etc. etc.
Legal obligations remain
How do you expect an airline to meet its contractual obligation (as opposed to legal obligation) when numerous countries ban International air travel? The contract goes out the window and you’re stuck – its why the government has been forced to intervene and organise repatriation flights. What good is it trying to remind an airline about legal obligations?! CAA advised in March that Covid could be considered as ‘extraordinary circumstances’.
Also, worth checking airlines terms and conditions, does it include a cause for force majeure/act of god?
btw, forgot to say, the inference from the original post was that Emirates behaviour was/is deliberate, which is clearly not the case.
Extraordinary circumstances is a specific part of EU261 that lets airlines not have to pay compensation of around 300-600 euros when they cancel or change things without proper notice of 14 days it is intended to limit the abuse of little customers by big airlines.
No doubt taking into account how often the airlines try to get out of paying the legally required compensation by constantly trying to say they cancelled flights due to exceptional circumstances beyond their control, when over and over again that’s not true at all, the EC Transport Commissioner felt it necessary to state that in these times of CV any flight cancellation is considered exceptional circumstances and so is not eligible for compensation. Otherwise we’d all have thought it was just the airlines lying again I suppose.
Being officially spared from paying out 00’s of Euros compensation up each passenger is fine.
Everyone sympathises with any business in these circumstances.
However in the same announcement the EU commissioner also reminded airlines they must give their customers their cash back if they are not providing the flight the customer paid for. Also perfectly reasonable. Customer did not receive what he paid for. Customer did not sign up to provide the airline a bridging loan – as @Brighton Belle said yesterday – if the airline business encountered some difficulty. This risk should not be transferred to the customer.
*so as @charlieface said legal obligations still apply.
Flight pass are being difficult. Trying to get 6 cancelled flights re-credited, and 2 different passes extended (unfortunately had already purchased one to start later this month following the last one finishing). They say they are offering date extensions of up to two months, but has taken about 10 emails so far to try to make sense of their confused and changing answers.
I am not too worried about it though – I should probably still get to use the flights, and if not will raise a credit card claim.
We cancelled our Platinum Amex as we felt the fee could not be justified in normal times, let a lone now and the card has just renewed.
I wrote to Priority Pass to see if they would do some deal as the arrangement with Platinum Amex was very good, not that we use the card that often and have Lounge Key through our HSBC credit card.
This is the response:
“We regret to inform you that we currently do not have any discounted deals/rates available on Membership Plans.
We do suggest to keep an eye on the website for any future specials and to follow the available links to apply the online discounts”.
Don’t think I will bother. With Lounge Key and cash for the many pay as you go Lounges on the rare time I need it, I will be fine!
I won’t even buy Priority Pass on specials now. Unless you’re doing constant travel to places around the world you don’t know, especially in Asia, it’s just not worth it. Annoyingly low coverage at mostly pathetic lounges in the USA as well. I used to buy only the top end one as lower down the price for each entry works out too high compared to alternative ways to cope lat an airport.
@Lady London. Did I read on here a while back you were considering or had cancelled your Plat.
Moving away from Plat and having PP plus your own insurance would be cheaper as they are the 2 big pluses for Plat. Are you now working that route or do you have another plan. Watched you advice over a period of time and has been very positive as with a few others
Funnily enough I never had Plat. Used to have Green a very long time ago before I got into this game. Would only consider Plat Business or the Green now. But no strong reason to unless I find I need a sign-up bonus.
I know Amex because I used lots of their services when they used to basically have a bank in the Haymarket in London which I worked in a travel agency next door to. You could go into any Amex office all over the world and write out a personal cheque on your personal account at, say, NatWest in the UK and they would cash it for you into local currency free of charge. There was an excellent.famous Amex office that did everything in the rue Scribe next to the Opera in Paris. All you needed was an Amex to get all sorts of help. I heard their offices were helpful in exotic locations too. So although it’s changed over the decades the Amex differentiator has been service for people of a certain level of income especially when travelling. As reflected by most comments on here.
Plat Business because I can, and because insurance on it is slightly better than regular Plat. Priority Pass I value at zero now. Annoyed that Business Plat does not get into Eurostar lounges whereas ordinary Plat does. Can’t understand why not.
If I qualified would do HSBC card as covered here by Rob – instead of Amex. @Genghis did a great comment today about his switch. He also points out the travel insurance on that one is attached to the underlying Premier account not the card. I’m a big fan of HKSB who turned Midland round when they bought it.
Right now today I think the IHG card is ok with its free night. I’m thinking do I need the John Lewis card. I’m getting the impression it may have some useful undocumented features. I like to support Waitrose and John Lewis where I can.
Other than that I am not card focused but have a very retentive memory of comments I’ve seen.
Thank you @Lady London. Informative and honest. Kindest Regards
Kudos to United.
I think the FOS newsletter case 86/3 is relevant in the case of Option Town, case was upheld in where a ferry company went bust and they’d bought a carnet, although the argument there was whether to divide the cost between the tickets and therefore less than £100:
https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/files/2921/86.pdf
Option Town tickets are also less than £100 each in the vast majority of cases though ….
But with OptionTown you’re not buying 10 x one way tickets say, you’re buying an entitlement to receive 10 one way tickets, i.e. should be over £100.
Even a BA booking for 4 people travelling together is covered by s.75 provided the total for the 4 is over £100. On MSE relatively recently.
Not quite.
I buy 18 domestic singles for approximately £1200. However, the tickets cannot be redeemed as single, but only as a pair of singles to make a return journey.
It’s a bit like buying a 9 pack of KitKats and claiming it’s 18 single biscuits.
I currently have Amex Plat and am relying on it to pay a travel insurance claim. If I cancel the card will it invalidate my claim?
Clearly yes if you haven’t submitted the claim. If you have submitted then you need to get the small print out and see if you need to be a cardholder on the day you claim or the day they agree to pay (or indeed the day they actually pay).
Technically if the liability arose before you cancel do you actually need to submit it before cancelling. I don’t think so, but obvs would be stupid not to.
Over the last 2 weeks i did have 2 BA flights booked, one reward and one full price, and one emirates/flydubai reward/cash hybrid (for want of a better word). All flights were cancelled, BA rewards points were refunded within 24 hours and the cash followed about 3 weeks later. BA full price was refunded in full within 48 hours. Emirates/Flydubai have gone through a whole range of full refund, partial refund and have now settled on a voucher system, now discussion. This was announced 2 weeks ago, to date the voucher has appeared for roughly one third of the cash i paid and no refund or reward miles on the horizon. I have lived in the middle east on and off since 99 and am leaving for good in June (hopefully) and this behaviour by Emirates has typified their shocking decline in customer service and care from this end. Every time i try to contact them either by phone, FB message or email, it takes days (min 5) for anyone to get back to me, the phone option is the worst by far, im still waiting, 19 days and counting. Emirates has also already started flying again, I do not know if that has been reported in the UK, but their comments suggest that the passengers can continue to socially distance on the flights while they are being repatriated ( I assume that is what they are for, but no formal details have been given yet)