How do you find out the start of your membership year?

[masaccio]

Looks like OH’s BAPP membership year is around the same time as an upcoming BA Holidays final payment so looking to use her card if it falls in a new membership year.

How do I find out when the membership year starts such that new transactions start counting towards the next companion voucher?

[NorthernLass]

In the app there’s a link to “membership” and “account” and it tells you in one of those. Or on the website it’s usually to the right hand side of the page. It will give the date that you have to spend the £10k by.

[masaccio]

NorthernLass wrote:

In the app there’s a link to “membership” and “account” and it tells you in one of those. Or on the website it’s usually to the right hand side of the page. It will give the date that you have to spend the £10k by.

That seems to disappear once you have spent the £10k so I just can’t see anywhere where it tells me when my her next year starts.

• This reply was modified 54 years, 4 months ago by .

[NorthernLass]

I’m sure mine says “start spending again from ….” when we’ve hit the £10k.

[masaccio]

So I ended up using live chat and eventually got an answer. The agent also claimed it was not visible online. I thought it was there myself but I could not find it.

[NorthernLass]

Have to say I haven’t checked recently, it may be something that’s disappeared along with the bloody spend trackers on the gold cards!

[Pumatwin]

Bumping, this. Checking, you still need to contact Amex to find out when the new collection period starts? Does, not appear to be available on the app.

[Carlos]

Ask live chat cs

[JDB]

Live chat is highly unlikely to give a reliable answer. You will find the relevant date on your PDF statements.

[ed_fly]

My BAPP membership year is displayed on the app. In the membership tab, where the voucher tracker usually is. Mine says ‘you have qualified for your voucher this year, start earning towards next year’s voucher from 10 Aug 2024’.

[CarpalTravel]

Carlos wrote:

Ask live chat cs

Please, do not do this. It has been repeatadly proven that the live chat team and the dates they provide are not reliable.

[Pumatwin]

JDB wrote:

Live chat is highly unlikely to give a reliable answer. You will find the relevant date on your PDF statements.

.
Thanks, will have a look.

[Pumatwin]

ed_fly wrote:

My BAPP membership year is displayed on the app. In the membership tab, where the voucher tracker usually is. Mine says ‘you have qualified for your voucher this year, start earning towards next year’s voucher from 10 Aug 2024’.

Can’t see it. On the membership tab from the top, I have ‘Track Your Earnings’, Invite a Friend & ‘Travel and Experience’.

[BBbetter]

ed_fly wrote:

My BAPP membership year is displayed on the app. In the membership tab, where the voucher tracker usually is. Mine says ‘you have qualified for your voucher this year, start earning towards next year’s voucher from 10 Aug 2024’.

That message disappears after some time.

[Carlos]

Try trawling through emails with keywords like like “You have been approved” or look at your first transaction and get some clues as to when you first signed up to Amex.

A credit check might even pop up when you got approved

[robato]

Thought I’d add my observations as my membership just renewed but I must admit it’s a little confusing.

– When logged in to AMEX on my laptop, I can’t find anywhere that tells me my companion voucher status/membership year. All I see is my Avios balance to be transferred. There used to be a dedicated Avios/reward page but they’ve either buried the link somewhere or removed it. I can’t find it anyway.

– In the AMEX app, on the membership tab it says “Start earning towards next year’s voucher from 12 Jan 2024”, despite today being the 12th of January already. I assume it will reset overnight or in two days, as the Avios counter usually lags the spend by a day or two.

– My first PDF statement period started “from” 11 January 2023.

– My credit report says my account start date was 12 Jan 2023.

– My first email with “Congratulations, your application has been successful.” was on 13 January 2023. It might have been a manual approval as AMEX usually refer my applications but I’ve always been approved with a healthy credit limit.

Interestingly, I had several large purchases that I’ve put off until today, which I’ve assumed is my membership year restart date. When the clock hit 00:01 this morning, I started to put those through. However, the “Pending” transactions (Home tab both the app and web browser) it shows them booked for “11 Jan”?!?! I thought the AMEX app might run on New York time or something but even for the transactions I put through at 6am GMT, they still show as pending for 11th Jan. But on the “Statements and Activity” pages (both app + web), the same pending transactions show under 12 Jan, so am assuming they will indeed count towards the new £10k spending target.

[AJA]

As @JDB says the most reliable way is to download a pdf statement. If you go to the page which tells you how many Avios you’ve earned in that statement there is a paragraph titled Companion Voucher.

It will either tell you how much you still have to spend or if you’ve earned the Voucher you will see text as follows:
Earn more Avios to go further with your Companion Voucher* As you have qualified for your Companion Voucher, all spend** on your Card between now and your next Card anniversary on xx-xx-2024

I have always assumed that spend on that date counts as the old year and that you need to start spending on the next calendar day to have it count in the new year.

[NorthernLass]

My spend counter on the right-hand side of the account page on laptop suddenly reappeared when the year re-started mid-December. Prior to that it was missing for a good couple of years!

[aq.1988]

Quick question, I’ve recently downgraded my BAPP to the free one. My renewal is on 30th Jan, but strangely in the app, its saying spend £1,500 more by 30th Jan 2024 to earn a companion voucher. I couldn’t really earn another voucher, could I? Albeit, the basic one.

I assume it’s a glitch, but surely Amex are opening themselves up to complaints?

[NorthernLass]

It’s a long-standing glitch. As Ts and Cs are quite clear about voucher earning, I doubt a complaint would get very far.

[AJA]

aq.1988 wrote:

Quick question, I’ve recently downgraded my BAPP to the free one. My renewal is on 30th Jan, but strangely in the app, its saying spend £1,500 more by 30th Jan 2024 to earn a companion voucher. I couldn’t really earn another voucher, could I? Albeit, the basic one.

I assume it’s a glitch, but surely Amex are opening themselves up to complaints?

I assume you downgraded after you got a Voucher on the BAPP so spent around £10.5k?

If you now have the free card the spend to earn a voucher is £12k hence Amex saying how much you still need to earn one. That’s consiatent with the T&Cs of the free card. Amex IT isn’t clever enough to work out you’d downgraded first

But to be clear you won’t earn another voucher as you already got it on the BAPP.

[aq.1988]

Thanks both NL and AJA. I assumed it was a glitch, but with it plainly written in the app that you could earn a voucher, someone who took screenshots might get something as a GOGW for the error if they made an escalated complaint.

Yes, I hit the voucher spend in September, and then stopped using the BAPP, but only downgraded last week. I’m unlikely to put any spend on the free card this year, before (hopefully), upgrading back to the BAPP next year to earn another voucher. Not going to try to game the system by spending £9.5k before upgrading, but will rather wait until 2025 to upgrade, and start spending then.

[robato]

robato wrote:

– In the AMEX app, on the membership tab it says “Start earning towards next year’s voucher from 12 Jan 2024”, despite today being the 12th of January already. I assume it will reset overnight or in two days, as the Avios counter usually lags the spend by a day or two.

– My first PDF statement period started “from” 11 January 2023.

– My credit report says my account start date was 12 Jan 2023.

– My first email with “Congratulations, your application has been successful.” was on 13 January 2023. It might have been a manual approval as AMEX usually refer my applications but I’ve always been approved with a healthy credit limit.

To avoid any doubt, I found my voucher spend period started on 13 Jan. So at least my PDF statements and credit report don’t match up. My advice is to simply ask AMEX via chat.

Since the counter has reset, the message now says “Spend £10,000 by 12 Jan 2025 to receive your Companion Voucher” which includes 12 Jan itself!

I reported the in-app message “Start earning towards next year’s voucher from 12 Jan 2024” as misleading, since to me it included 12 Jan itself. (cf. “the new year starts from 1st January”, obviously includes 1st January.)

[Rob]

It is a pain. I now have all my start dates written down so I know when to move spending across.