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

theexplorer

tomjonesrules wrote: »

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?

Good for you, but so what? what is the relavance of that? you spend money with BA, they give you points. We spent money with Lloyds, Tesco etc, they give BA money on our behalf and give us a differant type of point to you, so yes they were making money out of us. They only made £10 million out of us last year. The fact that thye want more, does that not make them greedy as they are doing it at the expense of a lot of loyal customers?

Calling airmiles collectors hangers on? as i dont want to get banned from the forum, I wont say what I would want to say to you.

Bitter, noooo what makes you think that? I guess you wouldnt be bitter either if you had spent tens of 1000's of pound over the years saving up for somthing just to have it taken away from you would you?

hehe, i agree with you moaning dosnt always work, sometimes does though, but court action does work

You know what i think, I thin that you are just jealous of the fact that you subscirbed to a lesser scheme and did not reap the benefits that we did benfits such as i have had in the last 20 years for example about 10 return flights to the US, 2 to bermuda, 1 to Inda, 2 to South Africa oh and 1 on Concorde. The majority for absolutltey nothing, and some when taxes had to be paid in the old days, but they were cheap back then. Admititadley concorde was a bit more expensive, it cost me £999.

But you know what, I paid for them by shopping in places at a higher cost than I would do normally, by useing a credut card i wouldn't use normally.

No, I am not bitter, i am satisfied with what i have had, i have used up all my airmiles and cancelled cards. I am only commenting on here as there seems to be come people who do not fully undersatnd the situation. You for one clearly dont!

tomjonesrules

theexplorer wrote: »

Good for you, but so what? what is the relavance of that? you spend money with BA, they give you points. We spent money with Lloyds, Tesco etc, they give BA money on our behalf and give us a differant type of point to you, so yes they were making money out of us. They only made £10 million out of us last year. The fact that thye want more, does that not make them greedy as they are doing it at the expense of a lot of loyal customers?

Calling airmiles collectors hangers on? as i dont want to get banned from the forum, I wont say what I would want to say to you.

Bitter, noooo what makes you think that? I guess you wouldnt be bitter either if you had spent tens of 1000's of pound over the years saving up for somthing just to have it taken away from you would you?

hehe, i agree with you moaning dosnt always work, sometimes does though, but court action does work

You know what i think, I thin that you are just jealous of the fact that you subscirbed to a lesser scheme and did not reap the benefits that we did benfits such as i have had in the last 20 years for example about 10 return flights to the US, 2 to bermuda, 1 to Inda, 2 to South Africa oh and 1 on Concorde. The majority for absolutltey nothing, and some when taxes had to be paid in the old days, but they were cheap back then. Admititadley concorde was a bit more expensive, it cost me £999.

But you know what, I paid for them by shopping in places at a higher cost than I would do normally, by useing a credut card i wouldn't use normally.

No, I am not bitter, i am satisfied with what i have had, i have used up all my airmiles and cancelled cards. I am only commenting on here as there seems to be come people who do not fully undersatnd the situation. You for one clearly dont!

So if you are not bitter why are you still wittering on?

I travel a great deal, always in Club or First. I understand the situation completely. I understand that BA et al are businesses, and in the habit of making profit. I have no problem with whether you have travelled more or less than me (if I answer, it will no doubt wind you up even more than you already are).

Please elaborate on what court action you intend to take!

malkie76

I'm personally very jealous that you've been on Concorde I'll never get the chance

It's always dangerous to change spending habits to earn loyalty rewards because they can move the goalposts at any point.
I'm happy at all the benefits I've had, but most importantly because they didn't cost me anything at all.

theexplorer

malkie76 wrote: »

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.

I agree, if your balance is always going to be topped up, then you're not sacrificing anything. not everyone is in that position though.

They must have put the fees up then as they are currentley £441.73 for first to NY. It's just my opinion, i would rather use get more flights for my money and airmiles rather than travel 1st.

I have been down the front, but at the end of the, it only averages out at a 7 hour flight. if i could get another flight out of it, i would fly in the cargo hold I am one for quantity, not quality.

theexplorer

malkie76 wrote: »

I'm personally very jealous that you've been on Concorde I'll never get the chance

It's always dangerous to change spending habits to earn loyalty rewards because they can move the goalposts at any point.
I'm happy at all the benefits I've had, but most importantly because they didn't cost me anything at all.

getting rid of Concorede was a travesty, it should never have been allowed to happen. I guess there is always hope one day it might be revived.

I agree with the dangers of spending habits to get rewards. Whilst i agree they can move the goalposts at anytime, it depends on how far before it becomes a breach of consumer law.

malkie76

£727.26 was the tax for two of us in F - just checked the eticket.

theexplorer

tomjonesrules wrote: »

So if you are not bitter why are you still wittering on?

I travel a great deal, always in Club or First. I understand the situation completely. I understand that BA et al are businesses, and in the habit of making profit. I have no problem with whether you have travelled more or less than me (if I answer, it will no doubt wind you up even more than you already are).

Please elaborate on what court action you intend to take!

One could turn the question round to you as well. you still dont get it do you, Airmiles was a business as well, a profit making business at that.

Did I say i was taking court action ? no, did i say i ahd already taken court action? no. If i was going to take court action, would i put the details in a public forum? no. If i had taken court action and had signed a gagging order, would i put the details in a forum? no

Going by your stuck up attitude, i am guessing you are one of those people that get thier flights paid for by thier companies, which in turn comes from thier shareholders or even worse, tax payers.

Wound up? me? nope, i just find you amusing :rotfl:

theexplorer

malkie76 wrote: »

£727.26 was the tax for two of us in F - just checked the eticket.

They have prob increased the fule surcharge or something since then

malkie76

No doubt. These things only tend to go one way.

For transparency, I'm one of those who gets to travel paid for by my company, and company policy is business class in long haul. Keeps me fresh (particularly over night) and on the ball in meetings at the other end. Shareholders do very well, so I guess everyone is happy.

thelawnet

theexplorer wrote: »

@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.

Utter nonsense. Do you read this site at all? Over on the right is a feature on Tesco points, it mentions 3x on train tickets, 2x on many Tesco items, and 4x on many other items. That's the first problem. It's utterly improbable that you couldn't use them at LEAST 2x - e.g., for wine, toys, bikes, there is something for everyone. So the cost was actually AT LEAST £416.

Second point is no matter what you paid for your airmiles, the fact is that you could convert them at 6p/0.6p (old/new money), so if you had 5,000 airmiles, that was worth AT LEAST £300 for something like car rental or a hotel in New York.

So to say it cost £208 is wrong on every possible level. It cost MORE than that, substantially more.

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

Name one.

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.

Nope.

You could not buy 50/60 Airmiles for £2.50.

I actually bought Airmiles from Airmiles in May, it cost me £30 for 200, so £7.50 for 50/60 airmiles.

It's really very silly to say that you were 'buying' 50/60 Airmiles for £2.50. The '£2.50' vouchers are not sold by Tesco, they are a reward for activity which invariably costs FAR MORE than £2.50.

For instance, if I spend £500 on my Tesco Finest mastercard, I will get a '£2.50' voucher. So 60 airmiles cost me £500. Right?

Ok, no not really because I was going to buy all that stuff anyway. But, the supply of airmiles was always limited by your ability to spend FAR MORE, on other things, be it shopping in Tesco, using their credit card or indeed one of the Airmiles credit cards.

And of course instead of spending £500 on my Tesco mastercard I can spend £500 on my Amex cash back card and get £5. So 60 airmiles ACTUALLY costs me £5. So the 5,000 miles to New York actually costs, as I said, £416.....

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.

Utterly specious, given as I have conclusively shown the '£2.50 vouchers' are no more '£2.50' than this coin:


is twenty dollars.

Your comparisons with easyjet and BA prices, and the fact that zone 1 is the best deal because the prices with many airl tines within europe are so changeable that it is quite often one can find deals cheaper than BA.

I can assure you that I spend many hours finding the best price before I book flights. What I might not do is either book in advance or travel off-peak. But what I ALWAYS do is get the best price.

So when I tell you that I paid £150 to fly to Amsterdam on Easyjet I can assure you that was the cheapest available option, and comparatively that 900 airmiles to AMS was a much better deal than 5000 airmiles to New York ever was, given that availability for shorthaul is much better than longhaul.

In fact the saver deals are not availale to bearly as many destinations in Europe as the other carriers serve.

Well of course not, BA are one carrier among dozens. Again however why complain when there are so many places you CAN fly? For example, you can't fly BA to Dalaman but they DO fly to Antalya, and the Avios 'cost' is often going to be lower than the best available cash fare.

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.

Eh? You could never use Airmiles on Ryanair.

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.

Mileage schemes change radically every few years. So be it.

The miles are not now worthless, in fact I would suggest they are worth more than before. You can sell them on ebay for example: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/19-000-British-Airways-BA-Miles-Airmiles-Avios-/300622895760

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.

Again, these were never 'cash'. You held an artificial currency with only the backing of a private company. They can do largely what they like, particularly as Airmiles customers were essentially liabilities to BA (unlike the BA miles members who were very often valued customers generating tens of thousands of pounds per year in REVENUE, flying BA), only reedeeming miles and never booking for cash, and therefore they had good reason to get rid of you.

Airmiles customers were bucketshop leisure customers travelling on economy as opposed to valuable business customers flying premium cabins, the miles were not earned through flying, but through buying tins of baked beans or other things BA don't profit from; the BA brand was effectively dissociated from Airmiles itself through the separate branding - the reality is BA could have killed off the scheme more-or-less entirely. That they haven't, but have merged it with the business-critical + valuable BA Executive Club scheme shows that Airmiles customers are valued by BA even if perhaps they shouldn't be, since they are being treated as well as BA customers who actually (shock!) spent money with BA....