Boost Your Airmiles Discussion Area

NonGeographicalMan

This is just to remind people firstly that the cut off date for the double Tesco Clubcard points conversion in to Air Miles is 21st March 2010 and to also ask if anyone has had any success so far with raising a complaint with Tesco at high level (eg such as emailing Sir Terry Leahy himself) about their new policy of refusing to reinstate Tesco Clubcard vouchers more than two years old that have expired due to old age. In my opinion this new policy of Tesco of letting Clubcard vouchers expire and refusing to renew them amounts to theft since their whole Tesco Clubcard deal setup is specifically focused on requiring you to collect huge numbers of Clubcard points but they have introduced the new policy of refusing to re-issue vouchers more than two years old by stealth because in the past they were always willing to do so. Does anyone else feel the same as me and have they had any luck with trying to make a high level escalated complaint to Tesco about the refusal to reinstate expired Clubcard points?

Here are the terms and conditions from the AirMiles website (at www.tesco.com/clubcard/deals/product.aspx?R=236) about the double clubcard point conversion in to Air Miles.

Terms and conditions

**Twice the Airmiles offer is available for customers who have not previously exchanged Clubcard vouchers for Airmiles and is valid on one transaction only for vouchers exchanged between 02/11/09 and 21/03/10. Bonus miles will be awarded in a separate transaction within 28 days of standard Airmiles being awarded, standard Airmiles take up to 28 days.

Andy_cf

I've been saving airmiles/tesco vouchers for what seems like forever to get enough to go to Sydney. I will be using the 1500 free airmiles for opening a duo card so must fly out before december 31st 2010, but I haven't yet reached my 10,000, and probably won't until the summer. Until I started reading this thread I always assumed it was just a case of collecting the airmiles and then just book a flight, but posters have repeatedly mentioned availability issues.

Does anybody know how far in advance you realistically need to book ahead? I assumed Sydney (although a popular choice in theory) would never be highly booked up as it takes so many airmiles to get there. I'm likely looking at mid summer to be able to have enough miles to book for flights in November/december. Is that going to be too late?

NonGeographicalMan

Andy_cf wrote: »

I will be using the 1500 free airmiles for opening a duo card so must fly out before december 31st 2010, but I haven't yet reached my 10,000, and probably won't until the summer. Until I started reading this thread I always assumed it was just a case of collecting the airmiles and then just book a flight, but posters have repeatedly mentioned availability issues.

Does anybody know how far in advance you realistically need to book ahead?

Its not exactly difficult to input a search for this at www.airmiles.co.uk/travel/searchCriteria.do?searchType=searchFlights and if you do so at the moment for travel going out to Sydney on 15th November and back on 12th December for one person from any London airport (hence allowing other long haul carrier routings from Gatwick to also be considered as well as BA and Virgin from Heathrow) you will find no air miles flights at all available (even with "my dates are flexible" ticked). So this is with 9 months to go before the flights depart. I then tried the same search going out on the 8th November and back on 5th December and precisely the same problem arises. This is even though I am avoiding selecting 15th December to about 10th January as this can be expected to be hopeless for fairly obvious seasonal reasons.

By contrast search London to Cape Town (South Africa) for the same dates and you will be shown a table indicating that you can fly on any BA flight you want during the whole month of November outbound and any BA flight you want (they are daily) in the whole month of December for the return. If you check London to Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) then there are about 10 dates in November outbound and 10 dates in December for the return offered to you. The bottom line is that there are large numbers of people in the UK who have relatives living in Australia and this seems to make the Air Miles demands for flights there to visit them in our darkest days of the year and their longest days overwhelming. Of course there are plenty of cash fares available on every single day of November and December, although I note the cheapest price booking now for November is £890 return (Cathay Pacific through opodo.co.uk) whereas when I was looking for fares to go out in November 09 and return in December 09 there were cash fares of £690 on offer with various airlines. So the cash value of the Air Miles flights is rising, no doubt making the availability problem worse. Although you say you think 10,000 miles is a lot for people to manage to collect unfortunately it isn't in the context of how long the Air Miles scheme has been going (nearly 20 years) and the large number of people who have been racking up miles for all those years without spending any or many of them with just the same idea as you of eventually going to Australia or New Zealand in mind.

On top of all this you will find that incredibly the tight fisted accountants at BA who run the Air Miles scheme refuse to let you have any form of stopover in Singapore (surely an outrageous to do in view of all the established problems with DVT on very long flights, especially in World Traveller/Economy) on the way out or back and also will not let you do an open jaw flight outbond to say Perth and return from Sydney or Melbourne, Auckland etc. This is even though all these options are available to BA Miles collectors. There is also no round the world ticket option with say five stops allowed with Air Miles, whereas in my opinion this should be available for about 13,000 miles at the most.

In short if you are hoping to travel to Australia in November or December then Air Miles availability is very poor indeed and you are very, very likely to not be able to go either at all or certainly not on the dates you wanted to go on and you will have to end up returning to the same point of entry that you arrived at Australia through in order to catch your return flight. For all these reasons collecting Air Miles to go to Australia either at all or especially between November to March is really not a very good idea.

By contrast if you want a cheap return flight up to Scotland at the last minute with all taxes paid then its only 750 miles and a large number of dates and flights are usually available, even when booking near to the departure date............

willinwales

I do not have an airmile acc. but am tempted to trade in my approx £97 worth of Tesco vouchers to airmiles.It LOOKS a good deal ??

1 ) are airmiles tied to use with specific airlines? e.g BA

2) Before finding the 'use your tesco vouchers for airmiles' article on MSE I had booked a Delta flight from Uk to usa....who are offering me 'Sky Miles' earned from this return flight. I ASSUME that these are NOt interchangeable with Airmiles and can only be used on Delta??

Please forgive me if these are STUPID questions...but it is all new to me.

thanks in advance

blindman

willinwales wrote: »

who are offering me 'Sky Miles' earned from this return flight. I ASSUME that these are NOt interchangeable with Airmiles and can only be used on Delta??

Please forgive me if these are STUPID questions...but it is all new to me.

thanks in advance

Completely different. These are "frequent flyer" miles and have their own smoke and mirror :eek: schemes.

They can be used for Delta flights.

stuzhunter

This also apply to BA miles

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

This is just to remind people firstly that the cut off date for the double Tesco Clubcard points conversion in to Air Miles is 21st March 2010 and to also ask if anyone has had any success so far with raising a complaint with Tesco at high level (eg such as emailing Sir Terry Leahy himself) about their new policy of refusing to reinstate Tesco Clubcard vouchers more than two years old that have expired due to old age. In my opinion this new policy of Tesco of letting Clubcard vouchers expire and refusing to renew them amounts to theft since their whole Tesco Clubcard deal setup is specifically focused on requiring you to collect huge numbers of Clubcard points but they have introduced the new policy of refusing to re-issue vouchers more than two years old by stealth because in the past they were always willing to do so. Does anyone else feel the same as me and have they had any luck with trying to make a high level escalated complaint to Tesco about the refusal to reinstate expired Clubcard points?

Here are the terms and conditions from the AirMiles website (at www.tesco.com/clubcard/deals/product.aspx?R=236) about the double clubcard point conversion in to Air Miles.

stuzhunter

Using the BA Miles/Air Miles double points offer I found out that BA miles is a better deal for 2 return flights from UK to Mauritus:


A typical return ticket to Mauritius this summer is about £720 but for an equivalent cost of £658 BA miles I get 2 return tickets!

-the price of 2 return tickets is 100, 000 miles
-Taxes/surcharge on the 2 tickets is £450
-This would be equivalent to £867 for the 2 tickets interms of BA miles conversion
-With double miles conversions this is equivalent to £658

meinnit

stuzhunter wrote: »

Using the BA Miles/Air Miles double points offer I found out that BA miles is a better deal for 2 return flights from UK to Mauritus:


A typical return ticket to Mauritius this summer is about £720 but for an equivalent cost of £658 BA miles I get 2 return tickets!

-the price of 2 return tickets is 100, 000 miles
-Taxes/surcharge on the 2 tickets is £450
-This would be equivalent to £867 for the 2 tickets interms of BA miles conversion
-With double miles conversions this is equivalent to £658

What makes you think you can get double BA Miles?

EDIT: Just noticed that you can get double BA Miles too...thought it was just Airmiles!

Andy_cf

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

Its not exactly difficult to input a search for this...

Thanks for that info, it hadn't even crossed my mind to look already for nine/ten months away. As I had said, before I'd read this forum it had never crossed my mind that availability would be such an issue. Doesn't seem a particularly fair scheme to allow some many people to spend so long saving up and then having to chase so few seats. Many more people than prizes. Will have to use my free 1500 points on a short haul this year and carry on saving and waiting for that trip to Aus!

jackieblack

stuzhunter wrote: »

Using the BA Miles/Air Miles double points offer I found out that BA miles is a better deal for 2 return flights from UK to Mauritus:


A typical return ticket to Mauritius this summer is about £720 but for an equivalent cost of £658 BA miles I get 2 return tickets!

-the price of 2 return tickets is 100, 000 miles
-Taxes/surcharge on the 2 tickets is £450
-This would be equivalent to £867 for the 2 tickets interms of BA miles conversion
-With double miles conversions this is equivalent to £658

Aren't taxes/surcharges included in Airmiles?