70k or 35k Amex BA offer

[mrcrsearle]

Spent £3k & now showing bonus of 70k Avios.
Can I downgrade my card straight away? Ive not even had my first statement? Ive got a VA Mastercard which I use more.

[polly]

@mrcrsearle

You have to wait til they are transferred out to your BA account. Which will happen a few days before your 1st statement is due. Only after you see them in your baec, should you cancel or downgrade to the free bacc.
Nice to give them a month or so of fees, after all, you have a nice clutch of avios now in your baec.
Don’t you want to push for the very lucrative 241 voucher at 10k spend?

[mrcrsearle]

@polly

Thanks for your reply. Ive got a lot of Virgin airmiles to use up & got a large purchase coming up too but they wont accept Amex.
I keep for another month & see what my spends like.

[AndyGWP]

Just applied… wish me luck (especially with a credit limit of £1800 😂)

[JamesR_AMEX]

New member here – signed up to post my similar experience.

Signed up through the HFP link. Already a member of BA Executive Club. Redirected to AMEX sign up page – took a screenshot and continued on.
AMEX app says 35,000 points bonus on the tracker. Chat completely useless.
Call AMEX – first caller completely useless and tells me the BA portion of the offer (the 70,000) is not up to them and will be paid by BA and I’d have to check with them.
Call BA – again completely useless and they just read what was on on the sign up page.
Finally called 08009178047 and spoke to an American.
She said they’ve received a number of calls about this, but the good news is that I am eligible for the 70,000 bonus because I signed up in time and I was a BA executive member. She told me the app will continue to display 35,000 but once I spend the £3,000 and get paid the 35,000 I should call them back up and they will add the remaining 35,000 to my account. She gave me a reference number and her name. I asked for written confirmation for my records – she said she couldn’t do that but all calls are recorded.

I’ll see what happens when I ring them back up. I’m slightly concerned they couldn’t confirm in writing and I’m half expecting them to turn around saying ‘what call?’ judging by how hostile they’re being to other members of this forum. Would be interested to hear if others have been told the same.

Thanks,
James

[tominoz]

Thanks for this James….a great post with some good info. Keep us informed on how you get on. I currently have a complaint in with Amex, but it looks to me like all complaints to them are going to be buck passed to BA.
Where di you get the number from btw?

[ianwardz]

ianwardz wrote:

@Harrier25, I appreciate that he will find out which reward he will get once he hits the spend requirement, but the OP implied that he found out at application time (or that’s how I read it).
Also, they will know you are a BA member because during the application process you are asked if you are a member and if you say yes, it asks for your membership number.

My son did get the 70k offer, now showing on his dashboard. He wasn’t logged in to his BA account at registration, but did enter his BA number during the application.

[iamlost]

I applied and was instantly approved on Wed AM. Card received Thu AM. Progress counter to 70k showing by Fri AM. Flawless Amex as usual.

[alig4th]

iamlost wrote:

I applied and was instantly approved on Wed AM. Card received Thu AM. Progress counter to 70k showing by Fri AM. Flawless Amex as usual.

This is impressive, although I think the phrase “flawless Amex AS USUAL” is very much contradicted by many posts on this forum.

[BuildBackBetter]

alig4th wrote:

iamlost wrote:

I applied and was instantly approved on Wed AM. Card received Thu AM. Progress counter to 70k showing by Fri AM. Flawless Amex as usual.

This is impressive, although I think the phrase “flawless Amex AS USUAL” is very much contradicted by many posts on this forum.

As some others have pointed out, a lot of that is from users who applied through amex link directly by mistake or were unaware of 70k bonus and now screaming at amex.

[alig4th]

BuildBackBetter wrote:

alig4th wrote:

iamlost wrote:

I applied and was instantly approved on Wed AM. Card received Thu AM. Progress counter to 70k showing by Fri AM. Flawless Amex as usual.

This is impressive, although I think the phrase “flawless Amex AS USUAL” is very much contradicted by many posts on this forum.

As some others have pointed out, a lot of that is from users who applied through amex link directly by mistake or were unaware of 70k bonus and now screaming at amex.

I’m not just meaning this offer, I’m thinking IT glitches that think you’ve already got an application in when you don’t, or cashback offers that don’t post within 90 days and require lots of chasing, or supplementary card bonus points not posting, or overseas chat agents who give out incorrect information, or… The list goes on.

I’m not expecting AMEX to be perfect (none of us are), but flawless they are not.

[RTS]

Rob Burgess wrote:

Comments close automatically on articles after 21 (I think) days.

We are going to dig into this but Sinead runs the Amex account and anyone on our Insta feed will know that she is on a review trip to The Maldives, albeit back Monday. Hopefully we can get somewhere next week.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, this offer has cost us a five figure sum in terms of lost commission (we’ve not sold any BA Amex cards for the last few weeks, won’t sell any until 22nd February and the level will remain depressed for some time after – all other Amex card sales are also well down).

You’ll need to blame amex for the depressed commission, their fault for closing down the churn and burn gravy train. :'(

[iamlost]

alig4th wrote:

I’m not expecting AMEX to be perfect (none of us are), but flawless they are not.

Maybe it was hyperbole, but no other FS firm comes close. In over a decade of holding multiple Amex products with heavy use, the worst I can say is I’ve had a few temperamental offer/SS redemptions. Even those cases are easily resolved in my favour – meanwhile, good luck wrangling with Barclays, HSBC etc.

[davet]

reckon its worth raising a complaint with BA for the missing avios as i clicked through them but amex saying its not their problem?

[AndyGWP]

AndyGWP wrote:

Just applied… wish me luck (especially with a credit limit of £1800 😂)

card received today… very quick!

Got the 70k on tracker

Applied for via. Main BA site in incognito mode

Added existing BA account number to application

[JamesR_AMEX]

tominoz wrote:

Thanks for this James….a great post with some good info. Keep us informed on how you get on. I currently have a complaint in with Amex, but it looks to me like all complaints to them are going to be buck passed to BA.
Where di you get the number from btw?

Will do – although it will likely take me the three months to get to the required spend. I saw someone post the number in this thread earlier on. It’s listed as the number for other AMEX cards on AMEX’s website – but the main point is that it seems to get to a native English speaker. When I called I answered the automated machine with the words ‘speak to a human’ and then ‘lodge a complaint’. Seemed to get me through.

Good luck.

[joe martin]

Hi- sorry new to this forum. It seems the 70k offer is still on, but I was put off by the fact that Rob does not have this offer in his TOP CREDIT CARD BONUSES link at the top of HFP. I would guess this should be the best offer by far, so was wondering if there are issues with the promotion and it is not worth applying of getting my hopes up? Can anyone, or Rob confirm this? Thank you in advance, Joe

[Rob]

Amex has told us that we cannot promote this offer on the site except in the context of news articles.

As, under UK credit card marketing laws, we effectively have to do what they tell us, it’s not there.

Offer is fine but you need to go to BA.com to apply.

[iamlost]

Rob Burgess wrote:

Amex has told us that we cannot promote this offer on the site except in the context of news articles.

They’re really not happy with it, are they…

[Carlos]

iamlost wrote:

Rob Burgess wrote:

Amex has told us that we cannot promote this offer on the site except in the context of news articles.

They’re really not happy with it, are they…

It suits amex very well. It essentially means they dish out fewer points to new customers for example via their marketing partners who promoted a lesser SUB bonus at the same time as their 75k offer

[VALittleRed]

Carlos wrote:

It suits amex very well. It essentially means they dish out fewer points to new customers for example via their marketing partners who promoted a lesser SUB bonus at the same time as their 75k offer

It’s just frustrating to those that applied via BA.com, did it right but due to some stupid IT bug/issue they’re only down for 35k. They’ve not got much recourse. Would be good of Amex to just give the 70k to everyone that applied during this BA promotional period.

[Harrier25]

VALittleRed wrote:

Would be good of Amex to just give the 70k to everyone that applied during this BA promotional period.

That won’t happen because then they’d be awarding the double bonus to applicants that didn’t follow the correct route, and they’ll be thousands of those.

[Jasdev]

Rob Burgess wrote:

Amex has told us that we cannot promote this offer on the site except in the context of news articles.

As, under UK credit card marketing laws, we effectively have to do what they tell us, it’s not there.

Offer is fine but you need to go to BA.com to apply.

That is super intriguing! I had wondered why the only site I’d seen it mentioned thus far was here (not including reddit) and why it wasn’t being publicised more on the main page here too.

[MBA1413]

Does anybody know when do the BA Amex Avios transfer to your BA account?

[JDB]

MBA1413 wrote:

Does anybody know when do the BA Amex Avios transfer to your BA account?

They usually transfer monthly, a few days before your statement date, so the effective cut off date is about a week before the statement date.