BA Executive Club to Qatar Privilege Club transfer issues

[givemethebeach]

Hi,
My husband has enough Amex points to upgrade of our flights for 3 of us. We want to transfer to BA EC Avios. I have linked my QA BA account with no problem. His will not link due to ‘not matching’ and contact QA. The customer service is non existent so the issue has not been solved.

I am aware the points can only be transferred to a BA EC account in his name as we have tried this. If he adds me as a supplementary card holder, would it then be possible to transfer points to my BA account? Does anybody know about this?

Thanks in advance.

[Peter K]

By QA BA account do you mean Qatar (abbreviation QR) account? I’m not sure what you mean.

Being a supplementary card holder will make no difference as the points are in his name.

If you mean Amex customer services as non-existant has he tried ringing and asking to be put through to Brighton?

If it is a QR and BA different names issues then see here:
https://www.headforpoints.com/forums/topic/qatar-privilege-ba-exec-club-name-mismatch/

[givemethebeach]

I apologise. New to this forum.
Qr and ba ec is what I meant.

QR customer service is terrible. We just want to link his QR to BA EC account and the details and from what we can gather – it matches – but we get the message it doesn’t match and contact the team. Any advice on this?

Thanks for letting me know about the supplementary card holder though – that’s what I wanted to know.

[givemethebeach]

I mean if transferring his amex points to my British Airways Executive account will not work then the only solution is getting his British airways Exec Club and Qatar airways accounts to link which is proving to be such an issue.

I call up Qatar and they direct me to live chat. I go on the live chat and they direct me to providing feedback page. Where I have not heard a response. I use twitter they direct me to live chat. A never ending circle of no responses. I fly out in May. Want to get this sorted asap

[yonasl]

Hello. I don’t know others but I am very confused.

– your husband, another persona en you have a BA flight
– your husband has an Amex with plenty of reward points
– you want to use those as avios to upgrade

Usually your husband will transfer to his account on BA and then spend them

I don’t see where Qatar fits in all this unless you read the article that allows family accounts to transfer avios from a person to another using that. But I don’t see why you would need that in this case.

Regardless of who did the booking, just get the Avios to your husband BE account and use them. They don’t need to be at your name.

[Peter K]

Do the Avios need to be in a Qatar account to book the upgrades? If it can be done from a BAEC account then you can make a BA family account and do it from there when he transfers the Amex MR (membership rewards) points to BAEC.

Another option surely is to link his Amex account directly to Qatar and move the points directly to there, avoiding the extra transfer? This is assuming he has a MR card (eg gold, platinum) and not an avios card (eg BA premium plus).

[givemethebeach]

Ah i thought I mentioned in my initial post. We have flights booked Man-Nrt via Qatar.

I thought we could do amex uk (gold) to Qatar directly too but when I reached out to headforpoints on Twitter they advised the way to do it is linking BA executive and Qatar accounts together and then transferring amex points to BA EC.

If Qatar airways would just fix up their customer service and allow his 2 accounts to link then we wouldn’t have a problem at all.

In regards to setting up a a family account, as we can’t link his BA EC to qatar account as mentioned above – would it be a possibility to add him onto my account (as I was able to link successfully) and then transfer the points to this account or will the account still remain in my name.

Sorry for the confusion – as I said it is our first experience with points and going forward want to start being more avid point users and make use of whats available. Just our first time is proving to be a bit confusing!

[NorthernLass]

You can pay to transfer avios between BAEC accounts – transfers from BA to QR have to be from the named account holder.

How do you plan to upgrade your QR flights if the customer service is so terrible, or can it be done online? Is it the same as upgrading BA flights where there had to be award availability – have you checked this?

Have to say that QR chat has worked twice for me recently (when I wanted to select seats), I had to be quite persistent but they eventually did what I asked. I think they passed my query to another department, but they did get back to me.

[Peter K]

I’m not sure why Headforpoints on Twitter said not to send to Qatar directly. My guess is because they also misunderstood the issue. There is no disadvantage to sending the MR directly to QR that I can think of, especially in this situation!

[RK228]

For what it’s worth, last summer I transferred Avios to QR to upgrade to business for three of us and despite the app saying there was availability, trying three times (and my Amex card being charged three times), and talking to QR customer service, I could never actually get the upgrade to go through, so had to give up in the end and transferred points back to BAEC.

[givemethebeach]

There is availability yes. It can be done online – does not need to be done over phone.

We can try doing it directly, what is the process? – when I check on
then Qatar does not even come up. And when searching it doesn’t come either.

I am aware its possible from US site – and its not 1:1 ratio for amex to avios its a 3:2 as opposed to the UK site.

[givemethebeach]

RK228 wrote:

For what it’s worth, last summer I transferred Avios to QR to upgrade to business for three of us and despite the app saying there was availability, trying three times (and my Amex card being charged three times), and talking to QR customer service, I could never actually get the upgrade to go through, so had to give up in the end and transferred points back to BAEC.

Well thats interesting to note. Thank you for letting us know.

[louie]

Peter K wrote:

Another option surely is to link his Amex account directly to Qatar and move the points directly to there, avoiding the extra transfer? This is assuming he has a MR card (eg gold, platinum) and not an avios card (eg BA premium plus).

I don’t think that Qatar and Amex are partners so that won’t work.

[Peter K]

My bad. I thought Qatar could be transferred from a UK amex, but you are correct, they can’t, sorry. You can’t transfer via the US website as your card is a UK one.

The only thing I can think of is to see if you can find an email address for Qatar, and to go through the details on both accounts with a fine tooth comb to make sure every letter, space, email address etc is exactly the same.

Or be a bit pushy like Northern Lass was.

[givemethebeach]

Shame there’s no other ways. Thank you for your time and help though.

[Luca M]

Both my wife and I have had issues in the recent past with accounts previously linked (BA-QR) and suddenly not linked anymore, but eventually, without me doing anything, it all started working again.

I think part of the issues could be due to spelling of names, presence of middle name in one and not the other, email addresses and so on. Worth checking all this and then trying to link again.