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NonGeographicalMan

I have had some interesting discussions over the last 24 hours with Lloyds TSB and with American Express itself over problems with certain retailers accepting either their Amex or Mastercard Duo cards over the last couple of days. These discussions have been triggered by the current Lloyds TSB get 3000 bonus Avios for spending £500 or get 9000 bonus Avios for spending £1200 on the Duo Amex card between Nov 16th and Feb 16th promotions. Also as I unfortunately no longer have access to their original email (due to a computer hard drive crash) I have a feeling that the offer was only honoured for spend on the Amex card and not on the Duo Mastercard?

These discussions have been both about merchants who do not accept one or both Duo cards at all or more intriguingly about merchants like Vodafone and BUPA who do accept the Amex card from a part of their customer base but not from other parts or more disgracefully still from the same customer in one situation one day but not in another situation on another day or even on the same day. Vodafone and BUPA seem to lead the way in these dodgy Amex acceptance practices that quite clearly contravene their underlying merchant agreements with American Express to accept cards from all cardholders with currently valid Amex cards who have not exceeded their credit limits.

These discussions initially revolved around a £500 laptop purchase and my complaint that the cheapest retailer for the item would only accept debit cards or Visa and Mastercard credit cards (but only with a 3% card surcharge for use of the latter) and that the next cheapest retailer who took Amex cards charged £50 more for precisely the same laptop. After escalation to Customer Relations I received a commitment from Lloyds TSB that where I in future encountered a large purchase I could only make with the Mastercard and not with the Amex card that if I informed them about this purchase after making it and they were able to confirm that the merchant did indeed not take the Amex card that they would arrange for the difference in Avios between the Mastercard and Amex Avios accrual rate to be allocated to my card. It remains to be seen whether this will always be the case in practice or if it may in fact depend on who in customer relations ends up handling your call.

We then went on to the much more difficult areas of the deplorably unscrupulous behaviour of BUPA and Vodafone in being clearly listed as firms that take the Amex card on this website's own list of Amex retailers but who then turn round and selectively decline certain transactions from certain customers when they feel those transactions are not profitable enough for them in relation to the extra Amex card commission paid.

In the case of BUPA they yesterday allowed me to pay them three months of back subscriptions for a total of £158 on my Amex card that had accrued after my Egg Money Mastercard was shut down and turned in to a Barclays Mastercard but when then they asked me what card I wanted to use to go on using to pay the future monthly subs with and I said the same Amex card they refused to take it for these future regular continuous credit card payments. Their only excuse seems to be that these lower value monthly payments do not generate enough income to defray perhaps a 1% additional merchant charge by Amex but this is quite clearly a deliberate violation of the card acceptance agreement they will have signed with Amex in order to be allowed to take it.

With Vodafone their behaviour is slightly more structured and may have some possible basis for a lawyer defence in that they accept the Amex card for customers who pay on a regular monthly contract but refuse to take it as a means of top up for their Pay As You Go customers either on Vodafone's own Pay As You Go brand or their MVNO brands like Asda Mobile (for which they still operate the call centre and payment systems unlike some of their rival mobile operators who run MVNO products). I still believe however that this discrimination by Vodafone between different customer types in accepting the Amex card is a straightforward violation of their Amex merchant agreement. This should however perhaps come as no surprise from an organisation so large arrogant and/or downright incompetent that over three months after Barclaycard issued a new card number block for Barclaycard World Mastercards issued to former Egg Money Mastercard customers Vodafone is still refusing to take these cards as being valid payment. This despite the fact that their prolonged incompetence has been extensively documented in threads on both this forum at http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=3717617 and on the Vodafone Eforum at http://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/New-Vodafone-Customers/How-to-get-valid-UK-credit-card-recognised-by-on-line-service/m-p/1013889 and reported to them by many thousands of customers week in and week out.

My conversations on the phone with Amex Customer Services and Merchant Services in Brighton were not very helpful as each department tried to take the line that I did not have an Amex card at all (despite the clear blue Amex box appearing on the Lloyds TSB Duo card) and that my problems with gaining acceptance on my Amex card just because it was an Amex card were not a matter for them, even though precisely the same issue would also be affecting all of their own customers. However I will shortly be emailing the CEOs of Amex, Vodafone, BUPA and Barclays about these various quite outrageous card non acceptance issues and if they still refuse to budge and then issue me with deadlock letters I will then be pursuing these card non acceptance issues further with the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Mr_Jones

"Also as I unfortunately no longer have access to their original email (due to a computer hard drive crash) I have a feeling that the offer was only honoured for spend on the Amex card and not on the Duo Mastercard"

I printed the email - it states
"We'll add 9000 Avios voucher to your account if you spend £1200 on everyday things using your Lloyds TSB Duo Avios Amercian Express Card by 16 Feb 2012

I assumed therefore that use of the Mastercard would not trigger the promotion

NonGeographicalMan

Mr_Jones wrote: »

I printed the email - it states
"We'll add 9000 Avios voucher to your account if you spend £1200 on everyday things using your Lloyds TSB Duo Avios Amercian Express Card by 16 Feb 2012

I assumed therefore that use of the Mastercard would not trigger the promotion

I thought that was what I read. It does seem quite extraordinary that they were not also willing to honour the 3000/9000 Avios offer for spend on the Mastercard given that this was originally supposed to be a Duo card with the one statement for either card type and that they have to allocate 80% less ordinary Avios points for the spend to reach the £1200 target.

The whole thing was therefore reliant on promotion of the big blue Amex brand yet when I call up Amex itself to complain that BUPA and Vodafone are arbitrarily refusing to honour Amex payment systems cards from some holders in some circumstances they claim it is not their problem but a problem for Lloyds TSB. Yet quite clearly merchant agreements to accept payments on all Amex payment system cards are with Amex and are not with Lloyds TSB.

adoreholidays

Thanks jackieblack for your good advice help and time:A:A:A

Exchanged tonight as follows

£330 CC Vouchers Avios Exec = 132000
£35 CC Vouchers in Avios = 14000 (which should cover 2 top price tickets to wicked for Birthday treat end of Mar) assuming offer still available by the time extra miles added.

Also exchanged £12.50 CC Vouchers for Browns restaurant as a new one haven't tried before and they do steaks:j£4 dobbies garden centre (2 free teas a month) then left £40 can use for restaurant if need during the Easter Hols.

BTW your hol last year sounded FAB especially whale and bear watching DS3 would have loved that sort of Hol his dream is to go to Yellowstone but somehow think it won't be with us .

NonGeographicalMan

Today Avios sent me a Deals Of The Week email with a "Star Deal" of 3 nights at the Flamingo Beach Hotel in Barbados for only £60 + 2500 Avios (250 Air Miles) including flights and taxes (it was a package holiday)

The precise text of the email was:-

Deals of the Week –
book by 15 Mar 2012

This week's star deal – Barbados
Flamingo Beach
All inclusive
3 nights from –
2,500 Avios +
£60 pp inc flights

Sunswept Beach Hotel
Room Only
7 nights –
6,000 Avios + £210 pp
Return flight to Zone 6:
50,000 Avios pp + taxes, fees and charges

Call us now to book on 0844 49 333 99
Travel must be completed between 1/6/12 and 31/10/12. Subject to availability. Other price options are available.

I phoned Avios within 20 minutes of them sending the email and spoke to a very helpful and experienced package holiday sales person. She could easily find the much less attractive hotel only deal for the Sunswept Beach Hotel at £210pp for the week on which you have to also book your own flight for 50,000 Avios and then pay taxes and charges on that flight (may be another £325 or so pp) but she could find no trace at all of the amazing offer for 3 nights at the Flamingo Beach hotel for only £60 and 2500 Avios all inclusive.

She asked me to email her the Deals of the Week email I had received which I duly did. She said she would call me back and she did so half an hour or so later and said she had made enquiries at pretty high level in the marketing department and elsewhere at Astral Towers in Crawley (where all the senior Avios staff work) but could find no one who knew anything about this deal. She said she would ring me back if she could find it but she hasn't rung me back.

I was sufficiently upset about this deliberately misleading promotion (clearly violating a large number of ASA rules) that I felt moved to forward a copy of the email to Avios CEO, Andrew Swaffield with a CC to a number of the other senior Avios directors as listed at http://www.themileagecompany.com/the-team.html including Lesley Corner, Director of Travel and Pricing, and Sharon Dobson, Director of Customer Service. I also cc'ed my email to Willie Walsh, CEO of BA/IAG and Ian Romanis of BA who was featured in a BBC News documentary on Air Miles schemes at the end of 2011 (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/fast_track/9672711.stm for the BBC News video with the Ian Romanis interview).

I asked Mr Swaffield for an explanation as to how his company could be sending out a Deal of The Week at an utterly fantastic price that did not actually exist and then highlighted how I felt such behaviour indicated the cynical mentality towards customers exhibited on numerous recent occasions by he and his fellow directors.

I sent this email at 3.57pm today (Thursday 8th March 2012) but so far I have not had a read receipt from one of the people I sent it or cc'ed it to. I also cc'ed it to Simon Calder of The Independent newspaper.

It appears that the directors of Avios now believe in an approach of having absolutely teflon coated backsides against their now numerous unhappy customers by refusing to even give customers who email them the satisfaction of having a read receipt and also in general hiding behind the Customer Relations department who send out suitably unhelpful and evasive responses to a customer's complaint.

I will also be filing a formal complaint about this highly misleading promotional email with the Advertising Standards Authority and demanding compensation from Avios in the form of Avios points for their inability to fulfil the advertised promotion since it quite clearly never existed or at least not at this price and on these terms.:eek::mad::mad::mad:

zippy08

I just tried to book a flight on BA.com, which cost £552 straight up. I then looked up the same flight to be paid for in Avios - 50,000 Avios + £370 (taxes and surcharges)!
So if I went the latter route, I could be paying £340 worth of Avios (cf. LoyaltyChecker) on top of the £370 (or whicever way round you prefer).

Am I about the last person to realise this is a bit of a mug's game? If I pay cash for the booking and get another 20k Avios, anytime I come to use them, I'd be paying more again in T&S.
Has anyone found a way to use Avios for flights that means you get the flights for less than 65% of their 'rack rate' cost? Otherwise, I can't see the point of accumulating any more Avios as I do through the BAEC.
BTW, I also tried upgrading the cabin for flights I've already booked, with Avios - nada!
Opinions?

imposter

zippy08 wrote: »

Has anyone found a way to use Avios for flights that means you get the flights for less than 65% of their 'rack rate' cost? Otherwise, I can't see the point of accumulating any more Avios as I do through the BAEC.

Yes - Rio de Janeiro to London, one-way. IIRC 30,000 airmiles and £25 in taxes.

zippy08

Nice! So is there any pattern here, or just a case of pumping the BA website with different routes until I strike gold?

imposter

I found it by chance - I think it's something to do with the Brazilian laws on airport tax?

NonGeographicalMan

imposter wrote: »

I found it by chance - I think it's something to do with the Brazilian laws on airport tax?

Presumably the Brazilians only allow actual government airport taxes to be quoted as a separate charge. Therefore the hundreds of pounds of bogus fuel surcharges and passenger departure service charge fees (fees paid by BA to the airport to cover the cost of a passenger passing through it but not government air taxes) that BA have dreamed up to make Avios near totally worthless on many long haul routes in Economy cannot be charged to Brazil.

You might also want to look at travelling to St Petersburg last minute if you have a valid Russian visa. It costs £27 return on the Reward Saver but about £700 in flight cost if booked with BA a couple of days before departure.

Anyone who only has a BA Exec Club account should also now set up an Avios account and shovel miles over to it as the Avios Reward Saver charges are far lower than the BA Exec club charges and taxes in Zones 1 to 3. Of course you need to start making the odd petrol purchase at Shell on a Drivers Club card so you collect at least 1 Avios point per year and thus Avios consider you to be a "regular collector" who is entitled to the discounted Reward Saver fares.

Avios can be transferred between a BA Exec Club account and an Avios account at will almost instantly.