BA Premium Plus American Express – downgrade or cancel?

[Ragman]

A few questions on the logistics…
If I downgrade to the basic BA Amex will my current unused Companion tickets also get down graded to only be used on Economy and have a shorter expiration date?
If I cancel then I assume I lose the Companion tickets completely
Do we still get a prorated refund either way?
If all of this is true why shouldn’t I spend like mad on my PP card at the beginning of my membership year, get the Companion ticket ( Two Years and Business Class) and then downgrade until my membership year starts again?

[Reney]

1. if earn and in your BA account no changes from downgrading
2. nop, it will stay in your account
3. yes pro rata refund if cancel or downgrade

Sure you can do that and some people do. Assuming Amex allow upgrade and downgrades, I read some people say amex are occasionally being difficult about them. I just spend till I hit my voucher cancel and come back in 2 years. In the mean time hit up the Plat, Barclaycard, Virgin bonus.

[points_worrier]

I would cancel. Switch to Barclaycard with the SUB. Start the 24 month clock for the Amex SUB.

[Luca M]

On balance of things, I find the Barclays/Barclaycard voucher much less useful then the update 2-4-1 voucher issued via Amex, so my own take is that I will keep the card and just aim of retention offer every year (recently 10,000 for £3000 spend in 3 months)

[kempc23]

I have earnt my premium companion voucher, and phoned to cancel the card.

The lady said that-

1) If you cancel, you lose the companion voucher. Is this true?

2) If I downgrade instead, I can only book standard class redemptions. Is this true?

I was sure I had read somewhere that you just need any Amex card to be able to use the companion voucher (I also have a platinum). And I think point 2 is just totally wrong isnt it?

I dont really want to be paying £20 a month for the card, and I not ready to book anything yet.

Please help!

[Guernsey Globetrotter]

1) No
2) No
3) Yes

When redeeming a 2-4-1 you just need to pay the fees & taxes using ANY Amex (could even belong to family or friend).

BA / Amex IT absolutely does NOT enable them to do any of the things that the agent told you.

[kempc23]

Thank you. I phoned to cancel, they offered me 5000 Avios for a £1k spend, so might as well get that first.

[JDB]

Guernsey Globetrotter wrote:

1) No
2) No
3) Yes

When redeeming a 2-4-1 you just need to pay the fees & taxes using ANY Amex (could even belong to family or friend).

BA / Amex IT absolutely does NOT enable them to do any of the things that the agent told you.

You may ultimately be right for the time being, but I’m not sure what evidence you have to be quite so definitive. BA’s IT around the vouchers shows us that they can extend vouchers individually or in bulk, they can distinguish between old vouchers, new vouchers with extra availability and new vouchers Y only which is mostly new and relatively complex functionality done quite quickly. There was also an interesting article recently about the cost to BA of providing the extra club availability; you can be sure if that gets too great/not enough people pay the full fee, they will do something about it. Amex may be very free splashing about points for SUBs, retentions etc but BA is not. I suspect BA will also start to clamp down on ex Dublin low surcharge 241 bookings as well; even call centre agents are noticing and it is big revenue vanishing.

There are also very simple manual processes BA can do, perhaps downgrading a few vouchers or asking to see a BA Amex card at check in ‘pour encourager les autres’. This is what BA did in the 1980’s when they got upset about cross border ticketing – they stopped a few carefully selected important passengers at First and Concorde check in, and got some trade and newspaper publicity before the days of social media/HfP. It didn’t stop the problem, but it drastically reduced it.

All of the above can be done without notice.

[memesweeper]

JDB wrote:

asking to see a BA Amex card at check i

Do the BA T&Cs allow this? I know some airlines do require you to present the card use to pay at check in, and bake the requirement into their T&Cs. Applying this retroactively (and denying boarding) is going to result in a very quick appearance for a distraught family on the front page of the Daily Mail, and there’s a very good chance they *will* still hold the card, they just left it at home for the very good reason it’s useless abroad.

My view is BA have little incentive to fix this, which is why they haven’t. Amex have the incentive, and they can’t, without a lot of IT heavy lifting at BA’s end. The recent renegotiation around bulk advance purchase of Avios, and new voucher terms, didn’t cause the change required to materialise. I’d not be concerned about it happening any time soon, whilst acknowledging it could.

Other things that could happen:
– Avios devaluation makes the voucher useless
– Change in personal circumstances makes the voucher useless
– Further increase in taxes/fees/charges makes the voucher useless
– an infectious pandemic makes the voucher useless

… all a good deal more like IMHO. Nothing in life is certain. If you want to downgrade or cancel (and in the same circumstances I’d cancel) just go right ahead with the risks noted.

[JDB]

@memesweeper the terms already require you to present the card – “If the payment cardholder is travelling, you must bring the card used to pay for this booking to the airport with you, for verification, before you can travel.”. I think people are in a better position if they downgrade rather than cancel to reset the two year clock. You will recall someone here who had cancelled their BAPP, then needed to make a change, paid for the change with MasterCard which was picked up on re ticketing and pax then debited with an extra 120,000 Avios.

It is the additional club availability on the PP 241 and the increased fee that change the dynamics and make enforcement more likely as the unfair treatment of those who pay the full fee is not new, but getting costlier.

I don’t think BA would be too worried about the Daily Mail reporting on people or a ‘distraught family’ who had fiddled the system simply being asked to pay the same as everyone else. In the 1980’s BA elected to publicise passengers being denied boarding or having to pay up when using the cross border ticket dodge. There was not much sympathy.

[Rob]

I have been asked for my payment card exactly once by BA, and when I said I didn’t have it on me (which I didn’t) they just went ‘oh, ok then’ and we moved on.

[memesweeper]

JDB wrote:

@memesweeper the terms already require you to present the card – “If the payment cardholder is travelling, you must bring the card used to pay for this booking to the airport with you, for verification, before you can travel.”.

Wow. News to me. I almost never carry the card I booked with. Unless it was a companion voucher Avios booking it is vanishingly unlikely I’d remember which card it was, never mind remembering bring it to the airport[1]. In the case of virtual cards, how is one supposed to comply anyway? I carry a couple of physical cards for backup, but everything is Apple Pay (or Bitwarden wallet copies of card details) for me. The plastic cards stay locked away, permanently — they’re just a liability as far as I’m concerned.

And if that statement is in the terms, it simply isn’t true: you do not need the card … before you can travel. I know this as I’ve travelled hundreds of flights with BA without the payment card.

BA are paid, presumably, by Amex every time a companion voucher is issued. BA surely have done the maths on the loss of 50% of flight Avios, and the extended availability in Club, being worth it for BA in terms of the payment from Amex on issuance of the voucher, plus the revenue from YQ and maybe seat selection that will follow if/when it is used. I remain of the view that I don’t think BA need to close this loophole, Amex do. That’s not to say it can’t or won’t be done, but really, there are far bigger risks in my view.

[1] I’ve had this problem on calls before: please tell us the last four digits of the card used to make the booking… it can take a dozen guesses before we land with the right one!