Voucher upgrade when Upper is cheaper

[HornetBrad]

I’m planning on using my (actually OH’s!) voucher to upgrade flight to India.

But strangely, a lot of the Upper seats are points priced lower than PE or Economy and if you time it right, can get Upper seats for around 23,000 points.

So am I right in thinking there’s no benefit whatsoever in using the voucher in these circumstances? Or can the voucher still be used somehow to obtain benefit?

Just to clarify, this is a 100% points booking for 1 person. Will be a return but from a different Indian airport, so may be easier to book as 2 one-way tix?

[kiwibrit62]

Absolutely correct – no benefit at all from the useless voucher. I was likely on the phone to them with same issue and double confirmed this. Very pleasant but it just shows how useless the system is – I also asked them to put in a complaint to management on our behalf (we are both gold) and told them that we would no longer chase gold renewal or any further vouchers.

Your other way to get further value (£s, not points) is to book the flight from AMS/CDG/DUB via VS LHR. This avoids the crazy UK taxes and on average reduces ticket cost by about £200 each in J/UC. Might not be worth it, depending where you live etc but you do get a nice champagne on flights and lounge if using AF. In fact, I ended up booking all AF instead of VS earlier today, in the end!

[HornetBrad]

kiwibrit62 wrote:

Absolutely correct – no benefit at all from the useless voucher. I was likely on the phone to them with same issue and double confirmed this. Very pleasant but it just shows how useless the system is – I also asked them to put in a complaint to management on our behalf (we are both gold) and told them that we would no longer chase gold renewal or any further vouchers.

Your other way to get further value (£s, not points) is to book the flight from AMS/CDG/DUB via VS LHR. This avoids the crazy UK taxes and on average reduces ticket cost by about £200 each in J/UC. Might not be worth it, depending where you live etc but you do get a nice champagne on flights and lounge if using AF. In fact, I ended up booking all AF instead of VS earlier today, in the end!

Thanks, that’s very useful and as I suspected.

I like the idea of routing via CDG (always prefer AF over VS!) but unfortunately points required for that is substantially higher.

So I’ll redeem on VS and throw away the voucher I guess (red tier so can’t transfer) – such a shame though.