MSE News: Avios vs its detractors - read the opposing views

theexplorer

malkie76 wrote: »

Not really, the 'same' flight is £1200, so you 40k is worth about £900 on that occasion.

What?

malkie76 wrote: »

Only for economy to economy plus; less so on economy plus to business. However that's a government thing, so if you dont like it then write to your MP.

The tax may only go up once, but then economy plus to club, the fuel surcharge goes up and you are paying in excess of £400 on top of the points. I, and I belive many others would rather have another return flight or more than have an upgrade

malkie76 wrote: »

Miles for upgrade is something which wasn't available under airmiles, and it's a fantastic use of your points with BA

Actually, it used to be, but i chose not to use it as I preffered to take more flights.

malkie76 wrote: »

Depends on your view. I used 150k BA miles in the summer for two returns in First worth £10,000

It does depend on your view, and i don't see the point of sacraficing a few flights just so I can travel first. in addition to the 150k BA miles, you will have had to pay not much short of £1000 in taxes and fees. Had that been Airmiles, that would have been worth about 6 returnn flights to the US. That would have been 3 flights with the equivalent airmiles of 150k ba miles and 3 from the £1000 cash.

Before the demise of concorde, i had a deal with airmiles that was 1000 airmiles plus £1000. That was a one off and worth doing.

theexplorer

malkie76 wrote: »

You are actually only 25k to upgrade from PE to business. No increase in tax (I believe).

No increase in Tax, but an increase in fuel surcharge.

theexplorer

tomjonesrules wrote: »

The people that don't like the new scheme have little or no value to Avios/ BA etc. Like it or not, BA wish to focus on those that, as well as benefiting from the scheme, also bring in revenue. Sounds like a good business decision to me.

I guess you must be on the board then to be able to come out with statements like that. The ones that dont like the scheme are those that were Airmles collectorsas opposed to BA miles collectors. being as we had to pay for our Airmiles, i am sure that we must have had some value to them, perhaps it is a case of greed and short sightedness.

theexplorer

rachelandgromit wrote: »

Yes I agree it will be good to upgrade with Avios, something I could never have dreamed of before, however for those of us who aren't frequent flyers and were saving all of our points for a particular 'free flight', the new system is not good. I personally would rather a free flight with no taxes or fees.

Airmiles said an upgrade would only cost 50,000 Avios, they didn't mention any fees to pay. Also you can only use Avios to upgrade one class, e.g. Economy to Prem Economy, PE to Business, etc...

Well said, i also would prefer a 'free flight'with no taxes etc

victor2

We're planning to use up the avios our airmiles have been turned into, then cancel the credit card that earns them and get a cashback one.

To get any decent airmiles, you had to use the Amex card, which is a pain as quite a few places don't take it anyway. Won't miss it.

thelawnet

theexplorer wrote: »

When you say we, i assume you mean 4 people as below when you say we, you mean one person. Also going by your calculations, it appears you were on the Tesco preserved rate of 60 miles per £2.50.

No, 4 people @ 2,500 = 10,000. The new rate is 15,000 miles (1,500 miles) plus £27 in cash, so called 'reward saver'. Nothing to do with Tesco.

Which UK airport is that flying from?

LGW

Yes then you have beneifted from the change on the Tunis route, you have saved £14.50,(per person) but that is at the cost of not being able to get your US flight for a mere £208 which equates to the exchange rate you were getting your airmiles for. Instead, you have paid £330 for it which is £122 more expensive.

Er, no. It was never 'a mere £208'. The cost was 6500 miles. Under the most conservative valuation, an airmile was worth 6p, as you could use them for cash-like redemptions such as hotels at this rate. This comes to £390. If you use the common 1p/Avios/10p/Airmile valuation, the cost comes to £650.

So when i say I doubt that you could get it cheaper than £250, I dont get why you say you got it for £330. Actually it would have only been £208 worth of vouchers at the exchange rate you got the Airmiles for. To me £208 is a big saving over £330.

Your £208 rate is based on flying to New York, at 5,000 miles and valuing the Tesco vouchers at face value. Considering the deals go for at least double face on ebay, and in theory are worth 4x, saying it cost you £208 is just crazy. They are worth at least £400.

Yes relativley few, you have to fly with BA or Iberia to get the £27 saver and there is only a few airports in the UK that are serviced by them. The majority are not, therefore if you fly from one of the majority of airports, it is going to be a lot more expensive, in some cases in excess of £100 on top of the avios points.

That's not a very good argument. Firstly you ignore the 500 cut off regional redemptions.

Secondly the majority of UK airports never had Avios availability in the first place, so it's not a very good point.

Thirdly, you can't just argue abstractly about airports without considering passengers and actual usage. The largest airports, Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Manchester, Luton and Edinburgh either never had any Airmiles service or now have a better deal under Avios.

I had made the calculations based on the base rate that the majority of airmiles collectors get from Tescos as opposed to the preserved rate which you appear to be on.

Baseless supposition.

Going on your collection rate, it would have cost you £83.33 in tesco vouchers, now it will cost you £37.50 in tesco vouchers plus £64, which is £101.50. The increase for your collection rate is £18, so even worse than the people on the base collection rate.

I agree with you that the vouchers have deals which can be worth up to 4 times the value of the voucher, however that is using Tesco's reward scheme. Many people chose not to use that as they wanted airmiles to book flights with. So in the context of airmiles changing to avios, it is not really relevant as the vouchers have already been converted to airmiles.

Eh? Totally faulty reasoning.

Firstly: when you convert the vouchers to airmiles you are losing other opportunities. The value of the Tesco Vouchers is NOT face, because anyone can find a better deal than that, even if it is not as much as the advertised 4x. So that valuation is faulty.

Secondly: once you have the airmiles/avios in your account there is no converting them back to Tesco vouchers, so you must consider what they are worth as Airmiles. The valuation in this context is 6p or more under Airmiles and 0.6p or more as Avios (as they've been multiplied by 10. Nothing less than this is rational given that they can be used for cash-like bookings such as hotels. I have argued for 1p/Avios, some people will go higher.

At least we agree on one thing . To extend that further though, there never was great value in using Airmiles for any short haul flight as most could be bought cheaper elsewhere. The flights that really benefited were the longhaul flights. £208 to the US is good value. Now the taxes and fuel surcharges added to the avios cost makes it actually cheaper to by the same flight directly from BA for cash. Even cheaper from elsewhere.

Nonsense. The £208 argument is faulty as discussed above. The vouchers are worth at least £416 (as cash), and perhaps as much as £832 (at 4x). And the BA sale fare is just £378 to New York, so paying £416 is a poor deal.

Long-haul flights were never the best deal.

Zone 1 at 750 miles gives you 6.67 flights for the price of one ticket to New York. As discussed, a flight to the US starts at just under £400 under BA, whereas BA's cheapest return flight, London-Amsterdam is £78, which is obviously therefore a better deal at 750 miles than flying to New York at 5000 miles for a ticket worth £378.

The other thing is that £78 is the starting from price. We paid £150 to fly Easyjet LGW-AMS in August 2009. BA no doubt cost more. Had we had Airmiles then we could have found availability for 750 miles, so we'd have got a flight worth at least £150 for 750 miles (in reality more, because BA is better than Easyjet, and worth at least a few pounds more).

The best deal on Airmiles was ALWAYS Zone 1 750 miles redemptions. Now you might say 'but Zone 1 is now more expensive at 900 miles + £27'. My answer is yes - but now it includes Germany, the rest of France, Switzerland, Gothenburg, etc. I went to Oktoberfest (Munich) on Airmiles a couple of month ago. Very expensive flights as you might imagine - at least £200, but I got on Airmiles for 150. The reduced 9000 + £27 is a better deal.

It's sad that Amsterdam (or New York indeed) is no longer such a good deal, but unlike you, I am not whining, because I don't say 'glass half empty', but rather look at all the deals that are now BETTER, Tunis and Munich to use two examples that I have booked on Airmiles recently.

I, like many people saved airmiles just for the long haul flights, and i think you will find that the people fighting against this are those ones that have saved 1000's of miles over the years for a special holiday or occasion. Under the new scheme, they are pratically worthless as in many cases it is cheaper just to buy the flight for cash.

That's a pity yes, but they have given people a chance to book their trips, they have to change it at some point. I believe most people take short-haul breaks as well as long-haul, and I would suggest that the saving by booking multiple short-haul trips at a cheap rate offsets the loss from the few long-haul trips.

The good deals are not that good, being able to save a few pounds here or there compared to the original price dosn't make me want to tie into a scheme that can change without any thought to its customers. I am now free to look for real deals without being tied in, don't feel the need to shop in tescos or use a lloyds credit card. In fact have stopped my tesco shop and cancelled my card. My change in shopping habits has saved me on avergae about £15 per week and am getting cash back on a differant card. Over a year i will have saved in the region of £1000. Enough to buy 3 return flights to the US or using your example of Southampton to Bergerac, 12 return flights. I think that is a quicker return than saving with avios plus I am not tied to thier availability, rules or airlines

Well actually I agree with you here. Tesco points are a bit of a pain tbh, I switched to cashback a few months ago.

No argument there, BUT I still have a sizeable cache of Avios and I'm not at all upset about the change, and I don't perceive as having been particularly capricious in changing the scheme so I'm not particularly concerned about any (ineveitable) future changes as I see this one as having been very fair, firstly re-balancing a BA-owned scheme onto BA aircraft and secondly in reducing many mileage costs even as they have introduced fees.

It is not about how facebook works, when Airmiles used facebook, it was a lot more open, but now that Avios have taken over, it is not as open and a lot more restrictions.

Well in a period of change it's understandable that there is a bit more oversight as some unhappy people can be unacceptable rude.

markandkate

Cashed in all my airmiles and will now stop saving. have altered my Tesco club card account to receive the cash vouchers instead. I do have a Natwest Mastercard and they have points and although not as good as airmiles seem to be better than Avios. No longer using airmiles Amex Card either

theexplorer

@thelawnet I dont have the time or inclination to carry on any long drawn out discussions, but i will just finish of by saying, that my assupmtion was correct that you were talking about 4 people going to Tunis.

I was refferiing ot the conversion rate you were on at Tescos which is 60 miles per £2.50 voucher.

The valuation I gave for Airmiles was the £2.50 voucher used to buy airmiles with, as from reading through many forums etc, that appears to have been one of the most common collecting methods, so therefore it is a reasonable valuation. You can't comapre it to the value of the other rewards as if people did not want them, then they are worthless. As you correctly say, once put into the scheme, they can't be taken out so therfore the value of other rewards cannot be brought into it. Therefore if someone exchanged their £2.50 voucher for airmiles at the 60 miles rate, the flight to NY would have cost £208 all in, or at the 50 miles rate, £250 all in.

You say that i missed of the cut off redemptions, good point! So you save 500 miles and pay £27. great until you realise that the 500 miles would only have cost £25 (as per the above valuation) But as pointed out, this is only from the minority of UK airports, flights from other airports will incur fees, taxes in some cases of in excess of £100 and guess what, in some case, you will need to pay to check baggage in !

You are wrong, some of those airports you mentioned did have airmiles service at an additional 500 airmiles.

You say that my calculations based on the airmiles base rate was a baseless supposition. How can it be if that is the actual base exchange rate.

How do you figure that vouchers used to buy 5000 airmiles are worth £416 cash? £2.50 bought you either 50 or 60 Airmiles depending on what rate you were on. 5000 divided by 50 = 100. That means you would have to have exchanged 100 £2.50 vouchers to recieve 5000 Airmiles. 100 x £2.50 = £250 or if someone was on the 60 miles per voucher exchange rate then 5000 divided by 60 = 83.33 rounded up to 84 vouchers to be exchanged for 5000 Airmiles. 84 x £2.50 = £210. Therfore a flight was cheaper than even the sale price of £378 and way cheaper than a peak season flight of £700+ now the flight will cost £300+ in taxes and fees plus the cost of the Avios vouchers (£200) so now paying £500+ as opposed to £210.

Your comparisons with easyjet and BA prices, and the fact that zone 1 is the best deal because the prices with many airlines within europe are so changeable that it is quite often one can find deals cheaper than BA. In fact the saver deals are not availale to bearly as many destinations in Europe as the other carriers serve. I quite ofetn fly with Ryanair and have found that thire prices are a lot cheaper than BA on many occasion, would never dream of useing Airmiles for them.

It may have escaped your attention, but i am not whining about it, i am pointing out the facts that many people dont seem to be aware of, you included.

You say they have given people a chance to use thier airmiles up! that is laughable as some people have not even been made aware yet, they gave 3 months to make a booking up to 11 months in advance, some people dont know thier work commintments until the new yearwhich is too late and some people had too many airmiles to be able to use in that time scale.

I and many others disagree with this as being fair. I think most people accepted that there had to be change, but it is the way they went about it. They have not notified everybody as they should have. They should have ringfenced the airmiles in the system to be used under the old scheme to enable people to use them as per the terms & conditions or if nothing else, should have given people a realistic amount of time to use them. They should have had all the contract signed and agreed before launching a scheme so that people can make informed choices.

tomjonesrules

theexplorer wrote: »

I guess you must be on the board then to be able to come out with statements like that. The ones that dont like the scheme are those that were Airmles collectorsas opposed to BA miles collectors. being as we had to pay for our Airmiles, i am sure that we must have had some value to them, perhaps it is a case of greed and short sightedness.

No, I am someone that actually spends money with BA. If you equate greed to making a profit then I agree, but if that is the case, you have clearly missed the fact that BA are a business not a charity. The move is far from short sighted, quite the opposite, they are simply getting rid of the hangers on that brought no revenue to the company.

You are very bitter. Perhaps time to accept that, however much you moan, things are not going to change in your favour?

malkie76

It does depend on your view, and i don't see the point of sacraficing a few flights just so I can travel first. in addition to the 150k BA miles, you will have had to pay not much short of £1000 in taxes and fees.

Really depends on your mileage balance - I'm not sacrificing anything. I do enough work travel to keep me in miles, and as others have suggested; once you've been down the front it's hard to imagine going back.

Taxes were £350 each, but seeing as we'd have to pat taxes on any flight we took I don't exactly get your point.