Claiming the 7000 Avios instead of upgrade voucher

[666mur]

Has anyone been successful in obtaining the avios instead of the voucher. We’ve spent hours on this. Email from barclaycard to say earned voucher or avios. No one in Barclaycard know how to do this. They suggested speak to executive club. They don’t know either and suggested speaking to Barclaycard. We are time limited to claim avios as it reverts to voucher if not claimed. Anyone experience this. Avios suits us better than the voucher.

[stevenhp1987]

The Barclaycard app has the option to choose your spend reward accessible from the “View your Avios” page. The options are the voucher or 7,000 Avios.

Once you have obtained the voucher you cannot swap it for the Avios.

I received my 7,000 Avios this year just fine.

[666mur]

Thank you you’ve just answered our query that no one in barclaycard could answer on how to claim it….. 👏👏👏👏

[FatherOfFour]

@666mur was the answer that you found how to do it in the app? Or that you’d already been issued a voucher and therefore you can’t swap it. (Just curious)

I come across this often in my own line of work – people we have supporting system users, have a different interface to the end user and find it really difficult tell someone exactly how to do something.

[666mur]

Answer above told us where to look in the app. Avios requested hopefully applied to our account in due course. Voucher had not been issued but we were given a time limit in that if we hadn’t claimed avios a voucher would have been issued and we would be stuck with it. We have one from our first year of the card membership which is just sitting in our account until it expires as we won’t be using it.

[NorthernLass]

That’s a shame – you know you can use it for anyone?

[executiveclubber]

Upgrade voucher can be worth so much more than 7k Avios. RE the one that you’re going to leave to expire… perhaps if you left your email somebody from this forum would strike a deal to book a flight for them?

[NorthernLass]

I meant more like OP treating a member of their family! Not sure it’s a great idea to potentially fall foul of BA’s rules on bartering avios, especially if you’re relatively new to all this.

[executiveclubber]

Fair enough. I would offer mine up if I found no way of using it myself, so pop back circa this time next year to see how I’m getting on with mine…

[stevenhp1987]

Both myself and my wife are having our first ones expire soon!

Useless short haul (£1 option only) and we use Amex 241s long haul!

Not everyone will find the Barclays voucher useful. Would be great if the £1 option wasn’t forced.

Definitely do not “sell” it though like executiveclubber suggests!

[NorthernLass]

If cash fares are very expensive, there’s value to be had from using the upgrade voucher in CE – I used one which would have expired to AGP at half term next month, cash price is currently £893!

[Birdy]

But cash prices are not relevant, a better comparison is the cost of using Avios with or without the upgrade voucher.

For example on a return flight to ALC you can pay 24500 Avios and £1 with the voucher or 29250 Avios and £50 without. The voucher saves 4250 Avios and £49 which is around £91.50 using a valuation of 1p per Avios, so not that much difference from 7000 Avios worth £70.

For long haul there is definitely value to be had using the voucher for CW at PE Avios but for short haul the forced £1 option means I don’t think it’s that useful. I’ve just chosen 7000 Avios for my Premier Account voucher.

[NorthernLass]

Of course cash prices are relevant, otherwise there would be no point to avios at all!

[Birdy]

I didn’t mean that cash prices are not relevant against using Avios just that you would still have saved £893 whether or not you used the voucher. The voucher saves the difference between ET Avios and CE Avios forced at the £1 option, regardless of the cash price.

[executiveclubber]

Not sure why people are having trouble getting value out of these vouchers, they’re brill for saving on shorthaul flights (you can always buy the Avios after) whereas Amex 2-4-1 is a long haul voucher IMO.

And RE giving the voucher away — booking for someone else on your account raises no alarms and just allowing them to expire seems pretty wasteful to me. Offer to help out friends / family. Not suggesting flogging them on eBay.

[marks7389]

We’ve earned a couple so far.

One used for two one-way seats to Singapore in Club World on a trip where we are returning with Qatar. We could have used an Amex 2for1 for this, but it would have wasted half the voucher which we subsequently used for another trip. Long Haul is where the real value is, even with the upgrade vouchers, if you can use them in that way.

I opted not to use the other for 2x one-way CE upgrade to Ibiza this year, even though it was a redemption and we had to fly outbound in CE as no ET availability. We booked it with min Avios/max cash and the voucher saving would have been minimal due to the enforced use of the £1 RFS rate for the upgraded flight.

I suspect we will use it for 2x one way CE upgrades to Greece next year. At 1p/Avios that will get £124 worth of value for the voucher against a straight redemption at min Avios/max cash, assuming that we book the return separately at the min Avios/max cash rate.

I don’t consider it a saving of the Avios difference between the ET Avios and CE Avios at the £1 rate (which in this case would be 22,500 Avios / £225) as I wouldn’t otherwise book at that rate. But it is still better value than if we’d taken the 7000 Avios instead, and we’re getting hugely better value on the one we have been able to use for Long Haul.

The other way of looking at it is that will effectively cost us £38 each extra plus the voucher to fly CE to Greece instead of ET (assuming both are available for redemption on our chosen flight). Using the 7000 Avios alternative as a benchmark (and a 1p/Avios valuation) that works out at a premium of £73 each to fly CE instead of ET which I’d consider decent value (especially considering we’re unlikely to still have Silver status by then) whereas based on normal cash price differential we’d choose to fly economy for short haul.

[tonykj]

executiveclubber wrote:

Not sure why people are having trouble getting value out of these vouchers, they’re brill for saving on shorthaul flights (you can always buy the Avios after) whereas Amex 2-4-1 is a long haul voucher IMO.

And RE giving the voucher away — booking for someone else on your account raises no alarms and just allowing them to expire seems pretty wasteful to me. Offer to help out friends / family. Not suggesting flogging them on eBay.

If I book for a friend I’d have to use up my Avios wouldn’t I?
The reason the vouchers are almost useless for me is that you have to book using all Avios. Can buying them be worthwhile?