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I hit the £10,000 spend target for the Barclaycard Avios Plus in March 2023 and receieved an email confirming this. I stupidly did not check the voucher was in my BA account at the time.
I was trying to book flights several months ago when I realised the Barclaycard upgrade voucher wasn’t there but my anniversary voucher from my Barclays Avios Rewards account was there. During this time I’d cancelled my Barclaycard.
Fast forward to now and Barclays is offering me £125 as this is equivalent to the 7000 points they offer instead of the upgrade voucher. British Airways have been unhelpful and I am not sure how to escalate things further. I feel that the upgrade voucher is worth more than the £125 is offering me.
Anyone had this problem or have any suggestions for the next step I can take?
You were entitled to the upgrade voucher so I would push for this. I’m not sure if (at the last resort) court action would help as it may be very difficult to put a monetary value on the voucher.
Did you select the voucher as your choice – I can’t remember when this facility was introduced? If not, this may be why the voucher didn’t appear- did you check back over your transactions to see if they actually awarded you the 7k avios option by default?
Article here – it’s from March 2024 but I think this was more a “reminder article” and the change came in long before this year.
https://www.headforpoints.com/2024/03/09/barclays-7000-avios-alternative-to-upgrade-voucher/
It was definitely in place when I triggered my last voucher about 12 months ago, but I can’t remember how much earlier it was.
If OP got an email saying they’d been awarded a voucher, this is good support for the case that they should indeed be given a voucher.
Barclays are difficult to engage with but I would try to push it higher – has any explanation been given for the non-awarding of the voucher?
Does/did the app actually show a voucher available?
It should show:
* Open the app
* Tap “Barclaycard Avios Plus” where your balance shows
* Tap “view your avios”At the top of the screen your BAEC balance (if lucky and the integration is working…), pending and total-lifetime avios numbers should show, with a “see your activity” button. Under this should be your spending target, date, and progress towards it. If you’ve hit the target there should be a button there to tap to select between avios and voucher.
Anyway, if this isn’t present, I would call and ask to make a complaint. The complaints handlers are empowered to actually fix stuff, and are onshore UK and (in my fortunate experience) calm, polite, and competent. I expect they mostly get angry punters and a reasonable (if persistent and thorough) one is a joy.
Ask the complaint handler for what you actually want – whether it’s the voucher, or the cash or Avios you had to spend due to not having it.
I don’t know for a fact that they can manually issue vouchers but I know that they can issue Avios.If you remain nice throughout they will probably credit you some cash as well. I have a strong suspicion that you get more if you’re nice to them; I have unfortunately had to use the complaints process several times due to BC admin cockups.
OP has cancelled the BC though, so may no longer have access to the account.
But in any case, if they earned the voucher in March last year, the spend counter will have reset some time ago.
Thanks all.
NorthernLass yes I did select the upgrade voucher and got a confirmation email when I hit the spend threshold. Also yes I have since cancelled my BC so I can’t see the avios information.
No clear explanation was given to why the upgrade voucher was not issued in my BA account. Unfortunately BC and BA keep on blaming each other. BC say the voucher was issued in March 2023 and it is upto BA to credit the voucher. BA say they can’t access BC information so I don’t know where the problem was.
Your right TooPoorToBeHere they can’t apply the voucher in retrospect. I will give Barclays another call and push to see if they’ll offer me more cash or avios. I don’t think I’ll get anywhere further with BA. I’ll update when I here back from BC.
Were your details exactly the same on your Barclaycard and BA Executive Club? A colleague at work recently got married and so there was a differing surname which has delayed her receiving her upgrade voucher
The £125 proposed in lieu of 7000 Avios (the official alternative offer) sounds rather a generous offer. It’s harder to suggest some great theoretical value for the missing voucher when its absence hasn’t been noticed. There was an HfP reader who claimed £15,000 at the FOS for a missing Amex premium 241! Awarded nothing.
Maybe yours is the xtra one I think I have in my account!
Thanks both, my details are the same. My thinking was that if I was using cash or Avios to upgrade it would be more than the £125 offered. I suppose I can try for more and see what BC say. Also thanks for letting me know about FOS if I may need to escalate any further.
I’ve since learnt my lesson to check the vouchers are actually in my BAEC account when I’ve hit the spend threshold rather than assuming they will be there!
Hi, same problem, here. I chose the voucher last year and didn’t check. There are no vouchers at all in my BAEC page. Where exactly do you see the evouchers ? I can’t even find evouchers anywhere! Now I got another email fro Bc to chose my new reward and I don’t even know where my last reward went ! Thanks
If you go to your BA exec club account overview page on ba.com, scroll down to the Dashboard section, and that will show how many eVouchers you have on the right hand side. Click on that and it will show you the details
There’s a tile at the top of the BAEC ‘My account’ homepage, alongside Avios, Household account Avios (if you have one) and Tier Points. The Vouchers tile may not appear if you don’t have any.
Alternatively go to Book a flight with Avios, Book and upgrade, and any vouchers available are there to be selected.
I think I’ve made this mistake too.
Got the email a few months ago about the Barclaycard voucher being triggered. I didn’t realise it needed to be requested into my BAEC account (and stupidly didn’t check).
Downgraded the Barclaycard a few weeks after that, as it wasn’t being used.
Jump to now and I would actually like to use the Barclaycard voucher, but don’t know how to do it as no longer a Barclaycard Avios Plus customer – got a different Barclaycard on the same account instead.
Anybody had any luck with this?
Looks like it added to the account automatically. That was lucky!
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