Reply To: BA Avios eStore – A scam? Every transaction declined!

[Points Hound]

Personally, the eStore bags me a very large haul of Avios annually booking all of our business accommodation through the hotel sites, IHG, Marriott, Hilton, and until the change to OneKey, Hotels.com. I do use it for other bits like Deliveroo and some shopping sites and have no issues. I have had the odd claw back after lengthy time periods but following the claim process has them re-awarded 90% of the time.

The only issues I have had this year have been Hilton although I did manage to get 6 months worth of un-awarded transaction awarded manually by the eStore team to the tune of 15k Avios a few months back. For the last year, all of my Hilton transactions have been awarded fine but then remain pending past the 120 days and now many are being incorrectly cancelled so I have initiated another mass claim of 44 transactions which have been acknowledged and are ‘being investigated’. Hopefully I will get the same result.

Often the reason given is ‘eStore was not the last click through’ insinuating I have gone via another affiliate which I know is not the case. On the many times I’ve asked for details of the final click, the response is an apology and the Avios awarded so there is a certain element of them just chancing their arm. Whether this is the eStore or the affiliate I don’t know.

Use a separate browser for all eStore transactions that you use for nothing else is my advice, this solved most of my problems with tracking and successful awarding.