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In all honesty, his *first* sentence is:
“ New user so please be gentle. ”This! Sorry to anyone who seemed to get annoyed by my lack of knowledge or vague questions. Wasn’t my intention. I’m not a forum user (for any subject) and somehow this one came across my radar and I thought I’d join and ask for some advice. Granted, I didn’t spend time reading any guides etc in the forum, but blundered straight in and asked what I thought was an ok question. But now I can see it was lacking detail and may have come across as a bit daft. I shouldn’t have mentioned the 4m Avios as that’s not even relevant to the help I was seeking.
Anyways, there have been some very helpful replies which is much appreciated. I will try to be less annoying if I post again. Thanks to everyone who took the time to reply. Even the ones who though I was trolling.
If you book 354 days in advance at midnight / 1 am, you will find availability. As to not planning in advance, £35 pp per leg is the cancellation fee which is a small price to pay for “flexibility”.
Wonderful! You’ve just reminded me that I used to know that number (the 354 days). Have done the midnight calls in the past (years ago) but forgot the magic number of days.
This has to be a wind up. Absolutely no flexibility on dates, not even months in advance?
Why does having no flexibility make it a wind up? I work. My wife works. We have 2 kids in school. There’s a million things that kill flexibility in busy lives.
In your circumstances flexibility in destination might be required.
I went to Marriott event at Old Trafford 2 years ago, and when discussing the redemption with fellow attendees, one was telling me in a nonchalant way how he had over 4 million Bonvoy points and didn’t know what to do with them as work kept paying for his hotel stays.
To be fair, this does seem rational. If you travel to and stay in Marriott group hotels near constantly for work, there’s surely a point at which the very very last thing you’d want to do when you finally get some time off is …. travel to and stay in a Marriott group hotel. 😀
It would have been really helpful to mention the wife and 2 kids earlier! So you need 4 seats for your planned trip? Though this could be 2 award seats and 2 cash ones, there are several ways to book a family holiday.
Does your wife know you have 4 million avios and what you can get with them? These would have been made good use of long ago in our house 😂
Does your wife know you have 4 million avios and what you can get with them? These would have been made good use of long ago in our house 😂
🤫
I’m not questioning this because 4m is ridiculous I’m sitting on 5-6m points across the diff schemes inc 1m Avios I find all the other claims ridiculous.
I just don’t claim it’s too difficult to use them and there are never any flights pick any random week to a popular destination with a 2-4-1 and seats just appear. Inc peak holiday dates next year
I’ll repeat Seat spy is a great tool too it doesn’t get much easier.
Tbh missed out on 50k per month to nectar in exchange for £400 shopping as a person with a family of 4 them that should have been easy to spend if Avios was useless for flights for OPs personal circumstances … they’re worth a mere £250 as nectar not unfortunately
Also a gold for life has access to double priced rewards so not sure why that’s disappeared now you’re not GGL
So in summary.
(1) Get a subscription to Seatspy which isn’t perfect but is very helpful. Use the where can I go feature and punch in dates that work for you in a class of travel you are happy with and see where grabs.
(2) If you think e.g. you maybe, possibly, might like to go away next Easter then book something now. If you decide that you no longer wish to go away then you only need to pay £35 cancellation fee per person (up to 24 hours prior to your flight) which is a fairly small amount to have the option of long haul flights in Club that would otherwise cost thousands.
(3) If all else fails, use your gold priority reward capability. Book more than 30 days before you wish to travel for double the Avios points (albeit the mostest amount of Avios option that is offered) and if there is a seat left on the plane it is yours. This is the way for half term skiing and Christmas in Barbados if you’d rather not be on the phone at midnight to BA at T-355. And I believe these can be cancelled for no charge up to 24 hours prior to your flight.
(4) My family (and many other posters on here) is your family. We will happily use them if you would only be so kind as to add us as a nominee to your account. My preferred password is “bouncy bouncy”.
(5) When redeeming, most on here manage to get 1 penny of value or greater for an Avios. When using them in a cash like manner you get more like 0.5p. So you have £40,000+ value for flights and £20,000 or so for hotels, wine, car hire etc. This is quite a lot hence the somewhat grrrrr reaction from some people. It’s a wee bit like going into a pub, opening a wallet stuffed full of twenties and saying “I’ve got all this money but I can’t see any Babycham behind the bar – oh woe is me.”
I love you, @Froggee.
All reminds me of an ex-boss who had accumulated (in his words) millions of air miles and hotel points after years of transatlantic travel and had no plans to get rid.
He asked his wife what she’d like for their 30th wedding anniversary.
“You can choose anywhere on planet earth, dear. The travel and accommodation will be covered, dear. Hawaii, Oz, French Polynesia..?”
And she responded: “a lovely cottage for a long weekend in Cornwall, please darling.”
All reminds me of an ex-boss who had accumulated (in his words) millions of air miles and hotel points after years of transatlantic travel and had no plans to get rid.
He asked his wife what she’d like for their 30th wedding anniversary.
“You can choose anywhere on planet earth, dear. The travel and accommodation will be covered, dear. Hawaii, Oz, French Polynesia..?”
And she responded: “a lovely cottage for a long weekend in Cornwall, please darling.”
And how did his mistress like Hawaii?
I’d just cash out about 2 million of them on ebay. By the time you get through the rest of them a devaluation will probably have happened.
4m isn’t exactly stratospheric. I only joined game late 2022 and have amassed 3/4 of a million without taking a single cash flight and all through card sign ups/deals/offers. (All thanks to Rob).
Btw didn’t Rob mention before of some heavy A lister with half a billion Avios untouched (imagine those numbers!!).
Good luck and may the OP enjoy the 4m. I wouldn’t necessarily spend on 2x anytime QR flights as I wouldn’t want the rainbow to end.
I’d just cash out about 2 million of them on ebay. By the time you get through the rest of them a devaluation will probably have happened.
Read the Ts & Cs thoroughly before deciding to cash out on ebay.
I too, was in a similar position to the OP, with a massive, I thought, seven figure sum of Avios. But, if you have the time and resources to spend time and expense travelling, then it’s dead easy to get through a few million, particularly if you only insist on turning left and are flexible.The most ridiculous thing I did, was a day return to Seattle to pick up some Christmas shopping before the red eye back to London, followed by a further day trip to Minneapolis, Mall of America,…more shopping. Too old to do that anymore, but more than enough left for us to enjoy a few more long hauls.
Courier services charged too much for overnight?
Single then, and all pretty exciting at the time. No luggage problems at Heathrow first time or Gatwick on the second from MSP via KLM.
Would I do it again ? No way !Courier services charged too much for overnight?
Yeah actually the Mikeact way would have worked out a lot cheaper than courier…overall. Used to do something similar myself and so does someone else on here. Though in my case it might have been SEA MSP rather than SEA UK or it might still have worked out cheaper …overall to do SEA UK in between…perhaps with a longer gap than Mikeact 🙂
Single then, and all pretty exciting at the time. No luggage problems at Heathrow first time or Gatwick on the second from MSP via KLM.
Would I do it again ? No way !In those days, one could have flown in First with Northwest Orient from MSP to LGW, a very civilised way to travel.
According to Wiki, Northwest Orient operated until 1986!!!
What wasn’t civilised then…
Single then, and all pretty exciting at the time. No luggage problems at Heathrow first time or Gatwick on the second from MSP via KLM.
Would I do it again ? No way !In those days, one could have flown in First with Northwest Orient from MSP to LGW, a very civilised way to travel.
@can2 – Northwest actually continued long beyond 1986, but dropped the Orient from its name and ultimately merged with Delta. But you are right about travel in those days! On the ground and inflight service and food/drink were just so much better than today, even if the seats weren’t quite as good. Lounges too were incomparably better plus of course we had Concorde. Premium passengers were properly recognised/looked after. My father speaks very fondly of regularly flying to Hong Kong in the 50s and 60s although it was a very long journey! No security to go through and all much less stressful. The downside was that travel was relatively much more expensive until some years into this century.
Can you donate them to charity??? If you’ve amassed 4m Avios without trying or being bothered, chances are:
A. You don’t really need them
B. Time is more important than money, so the “inflexibility” of reward flights may not appealOr just use them at the new 2x rate (as a Gold member).
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