BA refund – negative Membership Rewards balance

[Harriers]

I have both a BA Amex and a Platinum Amex. Using the Platinum Amex I booked a recent holiday and this met the criteria so that I received 56 000 membership rewards points. I transferred them over to my BA Avios balance. On the day of my holiday BA cancelled the outgoing flight and was only able to offer me a flight two days later. As the holiday was just for a week I rebooked via Jet2 and flew out later that day.

BA paid the compensation and refunded the outgoing flight money to my BA Platinum. As an unintended consequence of this credit I now have a -46000 balance for rewards points. I have within a couple of weeks used the credit on my Amex. I contacted Amex and they tell me that there is nothing that they can do and that I should speak to BA. I’m at a loss as to what BA can do if I can manage to get hold of them. I would have thought that Amex would have been able to zero my balance as this issue was out of my control and I have spent the positive balance. Thoughts ?

[Swiss Jim]

I don’t get the point you are trying to make.

You spent money on your Amex card. You got the points – and used them.

Some of the money spent to earn those points was refunded. Amex have correctly put your membership rewards balance into negative. This simply cancels the membership points in truth you never earned.

You have now spent the credit balance. That would have earned membership points that would have moved your membership points back positive.

What’s the issue? If it’s that you qualified for a signing up bonus, that that has been reversed, and you ‘re-spent’ the money after the bonus earnings period came to an end that is bad luck. Except your points balance will presumably still then be negative. In which case simply cancel the card and they won’t be able to claw back those points – ie you’ll be up.