News: British Airways reroutes Buenos Aires, get airport takeaway via Priority Pass

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• S says:

  14 Apr14 April 08:46

  I managed to extract 110k of value from my Barclays voucher so I’m surprised people would consider taking the 7k.

  Is there a compelling reason why you would put 10/20k spend through one of these cards if you weren’t shooting for the voucher? Especially if you’re paying for the premium??

  • rob keane says:

    14 Apr14 April 10:12

    “Is there a compelling reason why you would put 10/20k spend through one of these cards if you weren’t shooting for the voucher?”

    yes, I suspect many take out the card without knowing the actual details of the costs/restrictions or using the voucher until they actually come to book. i.e. must start in the UK, still have to pay x2 big taxes and fees, must have availability in biz redemptions. Not everyone knows the ins and outs. And so they find it unuseable or too expensive and decide might as well put it towards a cheapie shorthaul than get nothing out of it.

  • kevinchoi says:

    14 Apr14 April 10:23

    A number of retailers I use don’t accept Amex and for me that can add up to over 15k or so annually where I have to use a Visa/Mastercard. And because Barclaycard offers the highest Avios per £ spent, I just inadvertently get the voucher.

    As I tend to go on one long-haul flight per year and I rather use the 2-4-1 from my BAPP for that trip, then that means I either use the Barclayard voucher on a short haul flight (which won’t necessarily save me that much), or now I can take the option of 7000 Avios

    • Rob says:

      14 Apr14 April 10:26

      The free Barclaycard is a total no-brainer for every BA Amex cardholder, irrespective of whether you trigger the voucher or not.

      If anything, I think Barclaycard could have arranged their marketing better to focus on this element. I understand why they want to take on Amex head-on but – short term – the ‘quick win’ is getting the 750,000 BA Amex cardholders in Britain to add the free Barclaycard Avios as their back up. I would have been running ads which played on the lack of Amex acceptance everywhere. This isn’t even a hard sell – you are kicking at an open door of existing Avios credit card collectors who are frustrated every time they can’t use Amex.

      • Steve says:

        17 Apr17 April 08:22

        Yes, this is the main benefit for our household as well. Since we got kicked out from IHG this is the best option for non-Amex payments.

  • ML11 says:

    14 Apr14 April 12:54

    For me the voucher is useless because I do not value the cabin upgrade at all. I travel multiple weekends every month with budget airlines and I am fine with it. I am not willing to pay anything extra for the business class. And I get the voucher as a bonus for the avios rewards program.

• Steve says:

  14 Apr14 April 08:46

  Why is a third of my screen now taken over by a quick links bar at the top? Happening on all desktop browsers. Surely that should disappear when I scroll down?

  • Rob says:

    14 Apr14 April 10:19

    Apologies Steve. We updated the software behind the scenes and it threw a wobbly with something in the site design. Now fixed.

• George K says:

  14 Apr14 April 08:55

  In terms of value, 7k avios have such a wide gap between those and the upgrade voucher that it makes such little sense. I get it that it’s better than nothing, but it should have been at least double.

  A few years ago, when the Lloyds voucher was still going strong, I had a decent offer from them to get that or… 20k avios. I thought that was very good!

  • JDB says:

    14 Apr14 April 09:12

    @GeorgeK – it doesn’t sound as though you own or a run a business! How could Barclays possibly justify giving out 14k or c. £140 to a free card holder or refunding over ½ the Plus card fee? And that’s on top of any initial SUBs paid and the ongoing Avios earning that has a large cost to the bank. Barclays is offering an Avios alternative that is close to the cost of the voucher to them which is the only sensible level at which to pitch the offer which nobody is obliged to accept.

    • Clare Cheney says:

      14 Apr14 April 09:27

      I would love to swap my first voucher for 7000 avios because unable to use it before expiry and I have 2 others. Pity that Barclays won’t trade. 7000 is better than nothing.

    • George K says:

      14 Apr14 April 09:39

      I’d say whether I ran a business or not is irrelevant as I judge from the point of a consumer/customer. If we were to do it the other way around, then Barclays could offer a big fat zero on that basis and have no costs at all.

      However, I am not oblivious to the intricacies of business, hence why my point was simply that the gap between the two options is quite wide. Nothing more, nothing less.

      Admittedly, when I made the point about the 14k avios, I didn’t have the fee-free barclaycard in mind, but rather the full fat (£240pa) one. Not sure if that’s more amenable to you, but that’s all I’ve got 🙂

    • S says:

      14 Apr14 April 09:45

      Don’t they theoretically have to dish out far far more than that anyway if someone makes a particular expensive redemption with the voucher?

      • JDB says:

        14 Apr14 April 09:55

        No, it makes no difference to Barclays how the voucher is used/spent.

  • Max says:

    14 Apr14 April 11:28

    7000 is not a lot but it’s better than nothing. I guess many people like me just don’t earn enough Avios to use the upgrade voucher every year.

    • Rob says:

      14 Apr14 April 11:32

      I think, for the ‘average’ Avios collector who also has an Amex 241 to burn, they will only be generating enough Avios each year for one long haul premium cabin trip. The Barclays voucher would either go to waste or just be used on short haul so 7,000 is a fair trade off.

      • Jonathan says:

        14 Apr14 April 12:42

        Depends where the ‘average’ Avios collector lives, and what’s available to them based on that, people who live in Spain can get hold of a credit card that gives BA Bronze equivalent status after spending I think you’ve said it’s approximately £9k per year, ROI residents don’t have very good options at all, no idea about what’s on offer in Qatar, and then there’s loads of Avios collectors across the pond, who will’ve probably never heard of the 241 vouchers, but they get a lot more Avios (or whichever their preference) from their day to day credit card spending, as well as many of their cards offering no FX fees when they’re not charged in USD

        There’s a lot of Avios collectors around !

        • Nick says:

          14 Apr14 April 12:51

          Chase (US) issues vouchers too.

        • Rob says:

          14 Apr14 April 14:48

          By definition the average Avios collector will live in the UK, whether that be a mean, modal or median average 🙂

• Dace says:

  14 Apr14 April 09:12

  I got 95k Avios value for my Barclays Voucher owing to a CPT flight. 7k isn’t worth it in my book.

• Clare Cheney says:

  14 Apr14 April 09:13

  Our 2 for 1 flight back from Buenos Aires has been caught by this. First email from BA said our prebooked sests had been changed but no way to check seat layout at that point. Only later were we told about change of departure and arrival but no mention of stop in Rio and you had to agree to change of flight before looking at seat plan. Only found out about Rio by digging on BA website for an explanation as to why the new flight was leaving 2 hours earlier but arriving 1 hour later than the original flight. Another example of BA’s appalling customer relations. Good news is the the flight has CLUB seats, so the stop in Rio seems less of a bore. BA’s email could have presented this as an incentive to swap to the new flight rather than another airline.

• mzb says:

  14 Apr14 April 09:25

  The other consequence of the EZE switch, is that the Rio flight moves to be a night flight in both directions. The current flight is a (long) day flight on the outbound. With a small timezone difference, that’s great for sleeping.

  • Michael C says:

    14 Apr14 April 21:48

    Grr…that’s a bit of a boo from me – prefer the daytime, a few films with drinks to start the hols!

• Alex G says:

  14 Apr14 April 10:33

  27000 Avios for spending £20k a year on a free card is brilliant.

  Does anyone know of a free UK card that lets you earn more than 1.35 Avios/£?

• jjoohhnn says:

  14 Apr14 April 10:49

  Took me a while to realise that the Priority Pass order wasn’t delivered to you! Shame really, that would be a good service!

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