A positive change to the British Airways American Express 2-4-1 companion voucher rules

Without giving cardholders any notification (I think), American Express has made a positive change to the small print of the British Airways American Express 2-4-1 companion voucher.

(Presumably the reason for the lack of notification is that the change is positive!)

The rules can be found on this page of ba.com.

Finally …. one of the most common question in my inbox can be put to bed.

Let’s go to Clause 17.

It used to say:

17. The Cardmember is responsible for paying any Taxes, Fees and Charges relating to their Companion Voucher booking. Taxes, Fees and Charges apply per person. All Taxes, Fees and Charges must be paid for using the British Airways American Express Card.

and it now says

17. The Cardmember is responsible for paying any Taxes, Fees and Charges relating to their Companion Voucher booking. Taxes, Fees and Charges apply per person. All Taxes, Fees and Charges must be paid for using an American Express Card.

It is important to note that nothing, in practice, changed.

It was ALWAYS the case that:

• you could use any type of American Express card to pay the taxes and charges on your 2-4-1 companion voucher redemption, as ba.com could not discriminate between different types of personal American Express cards, and

• you could use an American Express in any name (Amex does not do name verification as part of its security checks, so this was never an issue – payments go through if you say you are the cardholder, even if you are not)

However, it was very common – when redeeming a 2-4-1 companion voucher by telephone – for the call centre to insist that you had to pay the taxes with your British Airways American Express card. This was true according to the T&C but was not true in reality and was not imposed for online bookings. Some people did come to verbal blows with the call centre about it.

Anyway …. this is no longer an issue.

It also means that there is no longer any requirement to still hold your British Airways American Express card when you redeem your voucher. This was never a stated rule in the first place (unless you interpret clause 32 to mean this) but was of course implied by the rule saying that you needed to pay with your BA Amex.

It’s not clear if this change is just American Express / British Airways being nice, or if there was some regulatory pushback (you were being forced to keep a financial product to utilise a benefit you had already earned) or if this is linked to the ending of pro-rata refunds on cancelled American Express credit cards from 2nd October.

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