[MKB]

We had a six-sector booking where the double tier points unexpectedly posted after the fifth flight and before the sixth, and covered the first five flights only.

A month after the sixth flight had been credited with no subsequent doubling up of the tier points, our request for the missing points resulted in a response asking for more booking details, all of which had already been provided but which nevertheless I duly and politely provided again. That was over two months ago, and, despite chasing a couple of times, there has been no response at all from BA, not even any acknowledgements of receipt.

What is the quickest way to reach someone who can resolve this?

[MKB]

I replied with the requested documents three days ago and have heard nothing. Same on my partner’s account. Has the match offer been pulled?

[MKB]

Thanks for response, and apologies – I can see that I mis-clicked on the wrong thread.

[MKB]

I notice that the Hilton “spend £200, get £50 back” offer has automatically extended the expiry date from 1 July 2024 to 13 September 2024.

If the offer was previously used, does the new expiry date constitute a new offer that can be used again? I’d ask Amex but I don’t have any faith their agents would give me an accurate answer, so was wondering if anyone had real-life experience of putting another £200 through after already triggering the cashback and after the expiry date had updated?

[MKB]

Ok, thanks.

[MKB]

Is charging that leg separately correct?

[MKB]

It was with an Amex 2-for-1 voucher, so, yes, this is the max Avios, min cash option with cash at £450 each.

It’s Club throughout and all dates are off-preak.

So, in total for two passengers, booking online LHR-NAS-GCM-NAS-LHR with no stopovers would have been a total of 180,000 Avios plus £900.

Booking over the phone with a four-day stopover in NAS on the outbound, I’ve been charged 195,000 Avios and £901 No idea where the extra £1 came from.

[MKB]

OP here. BA have given 10,000 Avios between myself and my partner, which is fair. Maddeningly, they have focused on recompense rather than fixing this lounge operator’s denial-of-entry policy.

[MKB]

I notice that the t&c’s for some of the offers now include:

“Some payments made through certain “payment facilitators” will not be eligible and will not count towards your spend for the purposes of the Offer. A payment facilitator is an intermediary that accepts payments on behalf of the seller of the goods/services. Payment facilitators can include some online payment platforms/marketplaces, and entities that provide certain card acceptance products (such as mobile card readers) to sellers of goods/services
Please ask prior to making a purchase as the merchant will be able to tell you if they use a payment facilitator which does not count towards spend for this Offer.”

I may have been partly responsible for this as earlier in the year, I had to escalate a complaint with Amex because one online pre-paid booking at marriott.com at a specific hotel was processed correctly and triggered £100 cashback, but a second pre-paid booking made the following day on marriott.com for a different date at the same hotel and using a different Amex card was processed using a payment facilitator. The complaint resolution was to award the missing £100 cashback and (unasked for) compensation.

Nevertheless, I am of the view that the new text constitutes an unfair contract term. The cardholder has no control over how a business processes a payment, and trying to ask a hotel agent whether an online system will use a payment facilitator and expecting them to know is rather silly. (Similarly, the person behind the counter in a shop or a waiter in a restaurant is not going to know.) It’s up to Amex to determine the terms of business that control how retailers must use their services, not pass the onus on to cardholders who have no control over this.

[MKB]

My first Hilton offer (spend £200, get 9,000 MR points) triggered a “You just used your Hilton offer” email but has only posted the regular spend points. Anyone have any data points yet for how long the additional 9,000 points take to post?

[MKB]

On four short-haul legs in two weeks, we’ve been moved out of the exit row three times and lost the Gold blocked-middle-seat despite the flight not being full.

Equipment switch was from A319 to A320 in one case and A320 to A321 in the others. I don’t understand why BA can’t map the exit rows across when they do a switch and then map the other rows. Particularly when the new aircraft has more rows than the old, it should not be hard to do.

Of course, there was no courtesy notification of the changes from BA, and Award Wallet seems to have stopped telling me about such things.

[MKB]

NorthernLass wrote:

I’ve had a lot of problems getting BA holidays to price up recently, I think the IT is just really bad! You may just have to call to get this done.

Indeed. I was having errors, especially the yyyy-MM-dd invalid date one, all over the place.

But I did manage to get the flights (which include six nights at destination) plus the two hotels totalling three nights followed by two nights and a one-night unbooked gap, all correctly priced, in my shopping basket. It’s weird that it then does not give the usual BA Holidays payment options. The worry is that if I make full payment, it will somehow process as though I made a flight-only booking to which I later added hotels.

Calling up is what I may have to do, but that means forgoing about £50 of money back from TCB, so I was hoping the experts on here could reassure me that it will definitely qualify for double tier points, even if I have to put in a restrospective claim for them.

[MKB]

Skywalker wrote:

@MKB – When is the trip due to start? It could be it is not giving you the option to pay a deposit because it is in the near future

It’s next April.

[MKB]

MKB wrote:

I am trying to book BHX-BKK using BA codeshares on Qatar with a first hotel for 3 nights and a second hotel for 2 nights.

Taking the “Customise your trip” option will not work because BHX-BKK is not seen as a valid route when you enter flight criteria.

Taking “Book flights” and then selecting “Flight + hotel”, I can get the flights and the first hotel for 3 nights, and at the end of the booking add the second hotel for the other two nights. However, when I then get to the payment screen with the flights and both hotels in the basket, I have only the option to pay the full amount, not just a deposit. Does this mean I am not booking through BA Holidays and won’t qualify?

(I’ve also tried the Flight+Hotel with Multiple Hotels option, but that keeps switching the return flight back to non-codeshare and economy, and when you try to re-select alternative flights, I get an error that the flight date is not in a valid yyyy-MM-dd format.)

… just to add, when I click on the “Terms and Conditions” link on the shopping basket for the booking, I am taken to https://www.britishairways.com/en-GB/information/legal/package-booking-terms-and-conditions which is the page labelled “British Airways Holidays Booking Terms and Conditions”.

So it would appear to be BA Holidays, but there is no option to pay just the deposit.

I am happy to pay the full balance now, but only if this is a qualifying booking for the double tier points. Any BA experts know whether this will still qualify?

[MKB]

I am trying to book BHX-BKK using BA codeshares on Qatar with a first hotel for 3 nights and a second hotel for 2 nights.

Taking the “Customise your trip” option will not work because BHX-BKK is not seen as a valid route when you enter flight criteria.

Taking “Book flights” and then selecting “Flight + hotel”, I can get the flights and the first hotel for 3 nights, and at the end of the booking add the second hotel for the other two nights. However, when I then get to the payment screen with the flights and both hotels in the basket, I have only the option to pay the full amount, not just a deposit. Does this mean I am not booking through BA Holidays and won’t qualify?

(I’ve also tried the Flight+Hotel with Multiple Hotels option, but that keeps switching the return flight back to non-codeshare and economy, and when you try to re-select alternative flights, I get an error that the flight date is not in a valid yyyy-MM-dd format.)

[MKB]

Points Hound wrote:

MKB wrote:

On a Split-Heathrow flight a couple of weeks ago, the plastic mounting that holds the separator curtain on the left side of the plane detached on landing and hit the passengers in the last row of Club on their heads.

I saw head rubbing, but I don’t think anyone was more seriously injured than minor bruising. This confirmed my long-held suspicion that these devices are not safe.

What has fuelled your long-held suspicion that these devices are not safe @MKB? I’ve flown twice a week (give or take holidays etc) on BA for business for nearly 7 years now and have never once seen this, nor anything remotely similar or likely. What are you basing this on, one instance where a curtain rail fell down?

It’s based on the fact that, while they usually seem secure, on occasions I’ve seen them rattle and shake a lot more than you’d expect, which makes me think that there may be some reliance on the user attaching them in place properly. They seem to be only clipped in place rather than securely screwed on. Is that the case?

[MKB]

On a Split-Heathrow flight a couple of weeks ago, the plastic mounting that holds the separator curtain on the left side of the plane detached on landing and hit the passengers in the last row of Club on their heads.

I saw head rubbing, but I don’t think anyone was more seriously injured than minor bruising. This confirmed my long-held suspicion that these devices are not safe.

[MKB]

Anonymous wrote:

…Oh, and the cabin crew’s primary role is your safety, so after a 10 hr working day already with another 90 or so minutes to go, why should they start cleaning…

This is factually inaccurate.

The crew disembark at St Lucia. A fresh crew does the 30-minute flight to Grenada and the 30-minute flight back, before a third crew operate the flight to the UK.

I see no reason why the crew for the short hop can’t do some basic tidying of the small number of seats that are about to be occupied.

Safety being a crew’s primary role seems often used to justify a reluctance to carry out other necessary roles.

[MKB]

I saw the cockroach thing earlier. Made me LOL. But even the best run catering will sometimes suffer from contaminants. Depends if it’s a one-off or part of a pattern.

[MKB]

BJ wrote:

I haven’t had an upgrade from BA in 44 years unless we’re counting F cabin with J service. By contrast in *A days I got them frequently on both UA and TG. Had a decent record on LH and QF too. Any imorovenent to my comfort always gratefully received 🙂

Same here. I’m a BA Gold who has never had an upgrade on BA apart from the one time I was travelling on a booking with someone who “knew someone” in BA and magically got us both upgraded from J to F.

To be fair, 75% of my BA flights are long haul in Club with no First.

[MKB]

BuildBackBetter wrote:

MKB wrote:

Annoyingly, Amex keep sending me personalised emails to encourage me to sign up for offers that (a) the card is not eligible for, and (b) they cannot manually override to add the offer but which they confirm is not yet oversubscribed.

Are you checking all your cards, including supplementary ones?

The emails tell you which specific credit card they each relate to. They include the last few digits of the card number.

The latest example was last week when they invited me to sign up for the 12% LNER offer on my BA Amex primary card. I don’t have that offer on any of my cards, but I do have the 7% LNER on a different Amex. Fortunately, my partner has the 12% offer on two of his cards, so the email was just an annoyance in this case, but Amex do these wrongly personalised emails on a regular basis.

[MKB]

DarrenS wrote:

I have Melia spend £300 get £75 credit. Does anyone have experience as to whether cumulative spend will trigger the offer, a la Hilton and IHG?

The terms specifically allow cumulative spend:
“Save to Card to get a £75 statement credit when you make one or more transactions up to £300+ in participating hotel(s) at Meliá Hotels & Resorts by 30/6/2023.”

Beware that there are very few participating properties. ME London is the only UK one.
https://www.americanexpress.com/content/dam/amex/uk/merchant/Melia_participating_list_Q2_23.pdf

[MKB]

Annoyingly, Amex keep sending me personalised emails to encourage me to sign up for offers that (a) the card is not eligible for, and (b) they cannot manually override to add the offer but which they confirm is not yet oversubscribed.

[MKB]

I’ve had the Amex rebates in the past month by booking a pre-paid rate. Although the Hyatt website said the room would be charged immediately, it wasn’t, and I had to call the hotel to have them post the charge before the end of the Amex promotion (for a stay after that date).

In the past, I’ve also had some Hyatt hotels charge me in advance on cancellable rates. They send you a secure link to make the payment, and it credits against your account.

[MKB]

I’ve had it happen to me a few times. From what I can gather, checking in online is no barrier to the front desk reassigning the room to someone else if the system shows that you haven’t used the digital key yet.