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I got a Amex Premium Plus card a few years back,
Always struggles to get flights booked using my companion voucher or upgrades using avios.
I know perhaps I could try harder & earlier but had some of the subscription services & still struggled, busy man.anyway I have had at least 3 expire, think only ever used two & they were relatively short haul.
Really think they should not expire or at least last a longer time. Or perhaps gift to someone.Had plenty of flights & tried to pick BA destinations & times but just never work so full price & no benefit
Now its even harder to get the companion voucher, which seems to be the best way to get value back on the cost of the card subscription.
My old Lloyds card stopped given avios a while back, less points per £ but at least something if not take amex.
It is just me or does it have to be a full times job to get the benefit.
The point of the subscription services is that you don’t do any work!
Bung in where you want to go, wait for the notification, book immediately. Repent / change / cancel later.
I thought it was easier to book with a companion voucher now you can use it EX EU, which is what I did on IB MAD-BOG, if you were talking about the Barclays upgrade voucher id agree with you. I was struggling to use two BUV’s before expiry, and decided to book a trip to Brazil for March 25.
The voucher is valid for 2 years, it shouldn’t be that difficult to use it!
Do you have one currently? Where/when would you like to go? Are your expectations realistic with regard to what you’re likely to be able to use it for?
Is this a trolling attempt? Even the Avios app allows you to look at reward seat availability a year ahead. Yet 3 vouchers for an annual fee credit card have gone unused? I’m afraid this doesn’t pass a rationality test.
@Bignose2 – Not sure how to take this comment, seriously or not? As with that name it should not be difficult to sniff out a destination to use a 2-4-1!
School nickname, have no idea why.
No genuinely struggled, over a few years but to be fair sometimes only 3 or 4 months notice and perhaps too choosy.
Fairly sure in the early days I did not have 2 years to use up, 18 months at best but can’t quite remember.
Flying off next week & did want to go to a Greek island & could not use but that really was short notice, I think 2 months & did not try extremely hard as know I will want a good flight next year and save it for that although should have spent 10 or most likely £15k by then.
Same for the canaries a few months but think limited BA flights & again short’ish notice, ended up EasyJet.I am probably bit hung up as got card 5’ish years ago and tried everything to use, anywhere anytime and just could not, lots of comments at the time saying was near impossible as they released perhaps 2 or 3 seats per flight & you had to be the first. Is better know as have used a couple of times & think 4 or 5 months notice.
Sounds like your problem is not booking ahead far enough,
If you look at some hfp articles, and there are also threads in the archives that cover this topic. You should get some decent ideas and advise, on popular destinations, I always book 355 days ahead just to make sure. If your leaving it later, your reducing your chances of getting what you want. There are even more seats available now then there were for redemption bookings. Also are you aware you can use the companion voucher EX EU, for example IB to many destinations including South America from MAD for example. And a lot less in taxes etc than flying from UK.https://www.headforpoints.com/2024/01/08/where-does-iberia-fly-long-haul/
You’ve got to be prepared to book well in advance if you’re fussy about where you go, or be prepared to be much more flexible if booking nearer the time! Booking for places like Greek islands 2 months before peak school holiday period is likely to result in disappointment, although there would be reasonable availability to places which are less popular and have have more flights per day.
For the past few years BA has released a minimum of 4 business class and 8 economy award seats (plus 2 premium economy where applicable) on every flight so there’s plenty of opportunity to book something.
Remember the voucher tickets are refundable too. I book somewhere/anywhere 11 months in advance; then if availability changes later I’ll change it. I’ve just this week cancelled New York for Easter 2025 as the stay was longer than ideal and sweet FA value in IHG points at present for Easter in New York
The companion voucher opens up additional seats which the subscription services can’t see and so the only way to find them is to log on to BA.com and search for them. If you are prepared to do this daily then availability often does crop up even on impossible routes. I was recently able to book 2 pairs of Club return seats to Sydney and then actually upgrade one pair to First on the way out. Personally I hope the subscription services never find a way of seeing these extra seats as I am very happy to spend 2 minutes a day checking the BA site for availability but I know
most people would see this as far too much effort!Do the extra seats get released at a certain time in that 24 period then (say midnight for example) as if they are randomly allocated during the day, you would need to be constantly checking more frequently than 2 minutes a day for FOMO!
I find the most annoying bit of searching is constantly getting a message saying the website is busy, try later ! Even got it when 95% through making a holiday booking earlier in the week
It’s a valid point that checking once a day is not frequent enough to guarantee spotting availability before it goes! I would do this as well as having an alert set up with a subscription service, not instead of!
If tickets are released because someone else has cancelled then this could happen at any time. I have cancelled tickets in the past and seen them
become available almost instantaneously. I have no idea about the release of extra availability tickets but would guess it could also happen at any time.The whole premise of this thread seems quite odd! The OP says three vouchers have lapsed and two could only be or were used on short haul. If these vouchers are so annoying and/or of no use, why keep paying for them? It does appear to be a user issue rather than provider issue…
We have been earning two vouchers a year for over twenty years (and if I recall they started with a shorter validity) and found them pleasingly un-annoying and have never found the need to book at T-355 or anywhere near. We used one for short haul in the covid era.
Yes very strange. Is this bit of a trolling post, or is the OP of the usage mindset of a cash ticket, so picking an EXACT location and EXACT time and EXACT date they wish to travel then seeing if 2-for-1 is available and if it wasn’t then giving up as “impossible”?
For example even if we use their mentioned (poor) time period of just two months out (so flying around 13/9) for a week away – with just an ultra-restrictive 1 day window either side of that – then you can still fly to various points in the US, Caribbean, Middle East, India, China, all over Europe and even … a Greek Island (Mikonos 14-20 Sept since you ask)! and that’s just what’s available for at least 2 people in Club cabins from London, with no extra availability for connections factored in.
I do think there are a lot of people who don’t realise just how flexible you have to be prepared to be with avios/241. So if you’re only looking for a specific date/destination, as you say, you may well get “no availability”. Some of our best holidays have been when we’ve needed 3 CW seats in school holidays and booked what was available rather than having a specific starting point for a trip.
You can see this by the number of posts on here and the wider internet where people say that they’ve started collecting avios and got the BAPP so they can go to a specific place (and often want 4 seats in school holidays to boot!) – usually somewhere like Tokyo or Maldives.
Yes very strange. Is this bit of a trolling post, or is the OP of the usage mindset of a cash ticket, so picking an EXACT location and EXACT time and EXACT date they wish to travel then seeing if 2-for-1 is available and if it wasn’t then giving up as “impossible”?
This is the model of a whole host of similar posts across various travel sites like here, Flkyer talk, V-flyer and facebook groups
Use of vouchers (and points in general) should always be predicated on being flexible not only on date, cabin and flight but also splittign large parties up.
I remember once on V-flyer someone sying vouchers were useless because they weren’t available on the exact flight they wanted yet if they flew a couple of hours earlier or later there was loads of availability. But no it was the vouchers fault.
Another was because they wanted 4 rewards but only 2 available per flight. They didn’t take the suggestion of sending Dad and Kid A on one flight and Mum and Kid B on a flight an hour or so later too well but it would have meant they would have used their points.
Couple of weeks ago I was using a GUF1 to book for next year to JFK. Of course I had a prefereed flight but there wasn’t any avios availability on it in my prefereed cabin so I just chose the next best flight and will either have a couple of extra hours in bed or some more lounge time before the flight.
Exactly as others have posted. Even in peak periods, I have found good availability to, eg, North America. Sure, the perfectly timed flight to SFO or LAX may not be available on the desired date, but does another US gateway work? Ans I struggle to believe that the OP can’t at least find CE availability in Europe to somewhere interesting.
My last three 2-4-1 redemptions have all been to the US in CW, less than 2 months advance pirchase, including over UK school holidays and Christmas/New Years. Since 2018 I can only recall letting one voucher expire, as between covid and other demands I just couldn’t make use of it. Some went for CE in Europe, but it was still good value even if I would have been happy in ET for those routes.
Glad I wasn’t the only one to have wondered ‘why do you keep earning vouchers if you can’t use them?’
Assuming this is not trolling but genuine. It’s 100% your choice for not putting in the time and effort to make use of your vouchers, not the fault of the vouchers or BA or anyone else. The conditions are clearly stated and just a few minutes research would have identified what you need to do to make best use of them. Most people on here are very busy people, it’s just we prioritise what’s important to us, the effective use of the vouchers being one those priorities.
Well, I think companion vouchers are near useless to anyone who needs flights to popular destinations at popular times of the year.
So for example teaching staff wanting to go to Tokyo in the Easter holidays will have a very bad time of it.
The nonsense of having to phone or be as quick as possible with an online booking at midnight / 1am at t-355 is not for everyone.However, they’re great if you are completely flexible with where and when you can go.
They really aren’t “near useless” at popular times, Tokyo at Easter is an extreme example and, as already noted, likely to end in disappointment.
If people can’t be a bit more imaginative about planning their trips, they need to give up now!
What a strange post, why would you continue to collect them over a period of years if they were of no use to you?
Surely you could switch to a card that gave you benefits you and your family could use and enjoy, even a cashback card would be better, to pay for all those easyjet flights that seem to be preferred, plus you could add the £300 fee into the equation as well.
@Aston100 I don’t see phoning ahead T355 days ahead, to be a nonsense, be it 12am or 1am depending on the time of year, I have gained very lucrative seats doing this, it’s no different than a sale, first come first served. If you’re prepared to put yourself out a little, you can get what you want. But I agree being flexible is the key.
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