Can Air Miles expire?

Maidenover

Hi
First off my apologies if this is wrong place for this post but I did look everywhere else and couldn't find anywhere obvious for it to go.

We used to get Air Miles when using our Nat West credit card - this ceased a while ago and so no Air Miles have been credited to our account for a while.

We have 10,880 air miles accumulated and usually 'donate' them to our daughter for flights when she is hard up (always).

However, in June we received a letter from Airmiles telling us they are about to expire if we don't continue adding to them....is this allowed?

They very kindly :mad: tell us we only have to add 1 more airmile to the account to avoid losing them. I feel this is like blackmail and very offensive practice. Surely they can't just take away the miles we have spent years collecting just because our Bank chose to stop offering the facility.

Anyone know if they are within their rights to do this?

Any

I am not sure about this, it will be in their T&C.

BUT, I think you can ask for Airmiles loyalty card as such, you can collect them in many stores accross the UK and just collect Airmiles when you are shopping. I think even Shell (might be different one) fuel station offers them...

Give them a ring.

mrmajika

You can earn them at Shell stations and by getting a LTSB credit card.

They probably can legally do it as it will be within their T&Cs, but morally? ... different story. It's a bit out of order if you ask me.

Any

Many banks and other organisations have that rule though...
TBF from business point of view you cannot drag "liability" (which is what it is, the same as for example salesman commission) for years and years. Because some people might not act on it, some might, but your balance sheet is not looking great... (No idea whether it works like this, but I can imagine so).

OP, do you shop at Tesco? You can exchange some of your Tesco vouchers for few Airmiles and therefore put the expiry off for another year or whatever the T&C say...

anna42hmr

it was either on the airmiles site or my lloyds amex info, but there is definatly terms that state they can exprire, and to keep them valid you have to earn at least 1 air mile every 12 months (or could have been 11) but it didnt matter which source earned from

Maidenover

We used to earn quite a few airmiles with Natwest as we paid for just about everything on our CC and then cleared the balance monthly by DD. We do have a very basic Lloyds bank account but only a Debit card with them and that doesn't accrue miles as I understand it. We have never - ever - been told this by them in the past. It seems to me to be quite a new thing.

I suppose we could go to a Shell garage - that would probably be the easiest way out of it - just so very annoying. It is a form of blackmail. Earn more miles by spending money with who we nominate or lose everything....I don't like being pushed around.

AND....have you ever tried to spend the damn things? We can never find flights using just miles these days (it was brilliant when it first started). We flew to Jersey & Dublin regularly just using the miles to cover the fares but not now. You can actually buy cheap flights for less that the offers on Airmiles as they now all have add on costs. I do usually give them to my daughter who is mad enough to chase around UK & Europe following her football team but even that is not always possible so we are left with all these miles and it's getting harder and harder to use them.

Sorry......didn't mean to go into a rant, just having a bad day :-(
Still trying to get Blo*dy Magnet to refund us our £500 deposit on a kitchen we decided not to go with. Paid it to them in April and still waiting for the "fully refundable deposit". Soooo frustrating.

Any

Sorry OP, I don't find it such a hard blackmail. Especially because you are not requested to spend at one source, the choice of shops is quite wide and you can add airmiles by paying for every day items.

I do agree with you on the spending the points side though...

I do not collect airmiles exactly for this reason. Even though otherwise I have every loyalty card going!!

If at least they issued you with a list of flights... Choose one of these... But they don't. You chase around dates and flights and prices and amount of airmiles and can you do it, can't you do it... Oh god. Forget it...

Maidenover

Have just been on the Airmiles website and there is a notice on there which states that this is a 'change' to their Terms & Conditions. So basically you agree to one set of T & C and then they can come along and change them whenever they like. Would have been nice to have been notified that there was going to be a change and what the changes were first instead we just get a letter with the words "YOUR AIRMILES ARE ABOUT TO EXPIRE" in red printed right across the page.

I will probably just give them away and not bother in future. It really has become a farce anyway.

cdixon1041k

I had some that went unused for about 5 years with a company. When I checked later they had expired, but I think it had something to do with a company merger.

Chris

Heath84

My mum had the same thing where she had a letter saying they would expire. She just converted one of her tesco clubcard vouchers to airmiles. Gave her 60 I think and was only way she was able to add any really and has kept air miles happy. Hope that helps

NonGeographicalMan

Just to continue this thread with some more bad news for Air Miles (the sort that let you fly mainly on BA) collectors unfortunately the sneaky directors of Air Miles (led by Mr Andrew Swaffield) have now announced a date for the permanent expiration of the validity of any paper Air Miles that any of you may still have tucked away in a drawer somewhere.

No doubt some tight fisted accountant at BA paid a million pounds a year in salary has told them that this is an unquantifiable liability and therefore must be quantified and/or I suspect they simply hope that loads of people with paper Air Miles will lose them altogether since they quite deliberately have not bothered to write to or email Air Miles collectors to tell them of the upcoming paper miles expiration but only posted the information in the very bottom right corner of their website at https://www.airmiles.co.uk that you would have to scroll all the way down to in order to even notice as follows:-

Got any paper Airmiles?

1. British Airways Cabin Crew Strikes - latest news
2. Flight disruption due to volcanic ash
3. Latest travel advice for Thailand

They’re expiring - so you’ll need to send them to us by
30 November 2011.

Check out our FAQs

There are fuller details on this at https://www.airmiles.co.uk/spend/paper-airmiles-expiry?from=homepage

However to my mind this is a disgrace on the part of Air Miles and BA (the parent company of Air Miles) as these vouchers were specifically issued with no expiry date and making them expire on less than a year's notice with no means to redeem them in to electronic miles after 30th November 2011 is equivalent to declaring a £10 note worthless after a certain date instead of in fact allowing to always be redeemed forever for a new one as is always the case with currency issued by the Bank of England.

So to my mind the directors of Air Miles are behaving far more like the directors of a banana republic with hyper inflation where one of the favourite tricks they usually pull is to declare all the existing currency worthless after a certain date unless you convert your old notes by that date.:eek::eek::eek::mad::mad::mad: