Trigger Welcome Bonus then refund

[ekposh]

Hi

This is a genuine question and not me trying to cheat the system. I am about to put down an approx £800 deposit on a hotel for skiing next winter. This is cancellable up until November.

This will trigger my £3k spend to get my 70000 on BAPP. What happens if I decide to get this refunded say in October? I appreciate they will reclaim the Avios on spend but what about the bonus?

As it happens, this might be irrelevant as I’ll likely spend the 3k independent of this but I’m curious.

Thanks

Alex

[SteveJ]

If you have other spend that will BEFORE YOUR SUB DEADLINE take you over the target spend even without this £800 you’ll be fine, all that will be clawed back is the points on this particular £800 transaction.

That’s a very important caveat, if the refund means that without that spend your total spend PRE SUB DEADLINE becomes under the target amount the whole SUB will be reversed and there’s nothing you’ll then be able to do to get it back.

In such a situation an unscrupulous card user may ensure all their points have transferred over to BA before any such refund hits, points will then go negative 70k, but it’s entirely possible to close a card account with a negative points balance (negative balances aren’t sent over to BA and points can’t be clawed back from BA once sent)…

[BJ]

@ekposh, I think you could benefit a lot from some advice from @JDB on this matter.