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

theexplorer

@thelawnet never heard so much rubbish in my life as what you spout. The fact that people chose to use them for Airmiles compared to wine or anything else demostrates that they put more vaue on the 50/60 airmiles than the wine. It may be of course that most of the tesco rewards can be bought cheaper elsewhere.

Wrong, if you looked through some of the old airmiles t&c's, you will see that even Airmiles reffered to them as being bought. Someone exchanong the tesco vouchers for 50/60 airmiles was buying them for errrr ... £2.50. yes again i sat £2.50 because they could have used that to buy products they actually wanted, ie food etc from the tesco store. They may not have wanted to buy a train ticket or any other tesco offers as they may not have beem good value to that person or they may not have wanted it. I have looked at tesco rewards and anything that i would have considered, i would have been able to get cheaper elsewhere.

Your arguement of having to spend x number of pounds is a complete waste of time as in spending, they have recieved the goods or services they paid for.

Name one, ok Manchester, i have flown from Manchester on several occasions useing Airmiles.

I research prices as well before i fly and always i have found it cheaper to pay cash fro shorthaul flights.

Re read, never said I used airmiles for ryanair, i said i found thier prices in most cases cheaper than BA

Re the auction, if you want to break avios T&C's then i guess you can seel them for more, however unless i am missing something, I fail to understand why anyone would pay £300 for 19,000 avios points ? you are the expert, could you give me an idea as to what someone would use those for that they could not buy for less than £300. i would suggest tht the buyer has possibly got mixed up with airmiles and ba miles as there does seem to be a lot of confusion with the two schemes.

How can customers be a liability to a company if they generate a profit of £10 million ? You (and others) seem to miss somthing here, although we didnt pay cash for the flights, do you think tesco, lloyds etc got the airmiles for free to give us? no, they had an affiliation with airmiles and had to pay for them. Therfore airmiles had the paymenst up front, they also beneifted by that fact as they could invest the money before they had to pay out for the actual flight which would also have netted them a return.

I agree, most of airmiles customers are probabley leisure customers unlike the company paid business passengers. That actually gives us more right to defend what WE have paid for as opposed to company travel. It is the people that have saved up for many years and dosnt have company travel paid for that are getting stitched up.

Haha airmiles customers valued by ba, your taking the p arn't you? by transferring us into a differant scheme is not because they are being nice to us, its because we do contribute to thier profits, remember the £10 million. and once again, the majority of the business customers flying premium were paid for by their companys, not by the individuals, so the majortiy of them got it totally for free, we had to pay.

As much as you amuse me with the rubbish you spout, as i said before, i an not going to engage with you anymore, especially as you have just proved yourself to be a snob. Personally, i cannnot stand snobs

thelawnet

theexplorer wrote: »

@thelawnet never heard so much rubbish in my life as what you spout. The fact that people chose to use them for Airmiles compared to wine or anything else demostrates that they put more vaue on the 50/60 airmiles than the wine. It may be of course that most of the tesco rewards can be bought cheaper elsewhere.

Wrong, if you looked through some of the old airmiles t&c's, you will see that even Airmiles reffered to them as being bought. Someone exchanong the tesco vouchers for 50/60 airmiles was buying them for errrr ... £2.50. yes again i sat £2.50 because they could have used that to buy products they actually wanted, ie food etc from the tesco store. They may not have wanted to buy a train ticket or any other tesco offers as they may not have beem good value to that person or they may not have wanted it. I have looked at tesco rewards and anything that i would have considered, i would have been able to get cheaper elsewhere.

Eh?????

Major logic fail again.

You are trying to say that a £2.50 Tesco voucher is worth just that - £2.50. But in the same breath you are arguing that the 'deals' are not worth that they are charging for them. The problem with that is that for the deals Tesco give you not '£2.50' but 4x that much - '£10'!

So yes, they are available for less than £10, but not for less than £2.50

Your arguement of having to spend x number of pounds is a complete waste of time as in spending, they have recieved the goods or services they paid for.

Nonsense. You cannot buy a Tesco voucher. They are not sold. Any person can only earn a limited number through methods either inconvenient or expensive or both. Let's say I have £100k in the bank. Can I buy £100k of Tesco vouchers? No, I cannot. If I spend £30k in a year on my Tesco Credit Card I will earn £150 of Tesco vouchers.

Can I easily increase that? No I cannot. I can start shopping in Tesco or buying their bonus items, but I don't want to as I would find that unpleasant/inconvenient.

Given that this is so, that the £150 of face value Tesco vouchers is basically all I can acquire in a year it's nonsense to suggest that they are the same as £150 in cash. Total nonsense.

By your logic the Tesco vouchers are free and therefore so are the flights.

Name one, ok Manchester, i have flown from Manchester on several occasions useing Airmiles.

BA fly from Manchester, so you can fly from there on Avios, and it will be cheaper than under Airmiles for short-haul flights.

Re read, never said I used airmiles for ryanair, i said i found thier prices in most cases cheaper than BA

That's not the point. It's not whether Ryanair are cheaper than BA at all. It's whether Avios is cheaper/better than cash fares on other airlines.

The answer, very often is YES. Avios has availability around Christmas, school holidays, and for these dates faress are HIGH on all airlines.

Re the auction, if you want to break avios T&C's then i guess you can seel them for more, however unless i am missing something, I fail to understand why anyone would pay £300 for 19,000 avios points ? you are the expert, could you give me an idea as to what someone would use those for that they could not buy for less than £300. i would suggest tht the buyer has possibly got mixed up with airmiles and ba miles as there does seem to be a lot of confusion with the two schemes.

Well for example London-Dubai costs £823 in Premium Economy, £2065 in Club. This is £1242 difference.

The miles to upgrade required is 20,000 miles. So if you bought the miles for £300, your total cost would be £1123, saving £942.

I checked on Expedia and you can fly 'Business' on Royal Brunei for £1642, but for Emirates you are looking at £1988.

So clearly this is a £2k ticket for £1123. So £300 is a good deal in this case.

How can customers be a liability to a company if they generate a profit of £10 million ? You (and others) seem to miss somthing here, although we didnt pay cash for the flights, do you think tesco, lloyds etc got the airmiles for free to give us? no, they had an affiliation with airmiles and had to pay for them. Therfore airmiles had the paymenst up front, they also beneifted by that fact as they could invest the money before they had to pay out for the actual flight which would also have netted them a return.

I don't think you understand what a liability is.

If BA sell corporate bonds to raise money, they will receive cash from buyers, BUT they acquire a liability in that that bond has to be repaid.

Likewise, although BA receive money for your miles, once they have received your money your miles don't benefit them at all, they are a pure liability, representing cash that might have to be paid out (for hotel rooms, etc.) or airline seats that can't be sold to others.

The miles are liability and whereas BA can do very little to its bondholders, because they are protected by the market, basically airline miles are completely unsecured.

On the other hand, while top-level BA Executive Club customers have balances of millions of miles - a liability for BA - the customers are still assets because these guys are flying sometimes hundreds of BA flights PER YEAR.

BA could completely void Airmiles without hurting its core business, but if they did that to their Executive Club members they'd go bust.

That's the difference. Given that distinction, you have been treated very well.

I agree, most of airmiles customers are probabley leisure customers unlike the company paid business passengers. That actually gives us more right to defend what WE have paid for as opposed to company travel. It is the people that have saved up for many years and dosnt have company travel paid for that are getting stitched up.

No it doesn't. Companies spend that millions on travel matter to BA. You having bought some beans from Tesco do not.

Haha airmiles customers valued by ba, your taking the p arn't you? by transferring us into a differant scheme is not because they are being nice to us, its because we do contribute to thier profits, remember the £10 million. and once again, the majority of the business customers flying premium were paid for by their companys, not by the individuals, so the majortiy of them got it totally for free, we had to pay.

Eh? Totally free? Are you completely clueless?

The travel is PAID FOR. BA receive money in return for their service. It is not anything close to free.

Airmiles is less than 1% of BA's revenue, yes it contributes a few million to the bottom line profit, but it doesn't sustain the airline. BA makes profit on its £12 BILLION revenue by attracting high-value customers, not Tesco points collectors.

As much as you amuse me with the rubbish you spout, as i said before, i an not going to engage with you anymore, especially as you have just proved yourself to be a snob. Personally, i cannnot stand snobs

Hahahahahahaha.

theexplorer

@lawnet, once again you are spouting rubbish and completely miss all points. Bye

malkie76

e the auction, if you want to break avios T&C's then i guess you can seel them for more, however unless i am missing something, I fail to understand why anyone would pay £300 for 19,000 avios points ? you are the expert, could you give me an idea as to what someone would use those for that they could not buy for less than £300.

If you were 19,000 short of a business or first class reward you'd quickly buy the missing points for £300 as it would instantly save you thousands.

You might also consider buying them for last minute short haul or domestic flights.

I remember pricing up a domestic flight recently last minute - straight cash price with BA was £360 (obviously a last minute fare), but the reward flight was 9000 miles and £70 (roughly). You'd easily be tempted to buy the miles rather than pay for the last minute fare.

theexplorer

malkie76 wrote: »

If you were 19,000 short of a business or first class reward you'd quickly buy the missing points for £300 as it would instantly save you thousands.

You might also consider buying them for last minute short haul or domestic flights.

I remember pricing up a domestic flight recently last minute - straight cash price with BA was £360 (obviously a last minute fare), but the reward flight was 9000 miles and £70 (roughly). You'd easily be tempted to buy the miles rather than pay for the last minute fare.

Thank you for clearing that one up for me.

zerolight

My father flies a lot on business. Japan, Australia, Thailand, USA, Canada, France. Regularly. As a result he has always had plenty of airmiles and likes to use them to help my family and I visit my parents.

With Airmiles they ALWAYS had to pay taxes. And in many cases it worked out cheaper to NOT use air miles. Last time we flew down on airmiles from Glasgow to London and back it cost around £400 in taxes. Was even more when we went to Spain.

With Avios, they just booken for 5 of us to fly down for Christmas. Cost for all 5 was a mere £120 return.

In my experience Avios are vastly cheaper than Airmiles. I don't understand the fuss.

isplumm

zerolight wrote: »

My father flies a lot on business. Japan, Australia, Thailand, USA, Canada, France. Regularly. As a result he has always had plenty of airmiles and likes to use them to help my family and I visit my parents.

With Airmiles they ALWAYS had to pay taxes. And in many cases it worked out cheaper to NOT use air miles. Last time we flew down on airmiles from Glasgow to London and back it cost around £400 in taxes. Was even more when we went to Spain.

With Avios, they just booken for 5 of us to fly down for Christmas. Cost for all 5 was a mere £120 return.

In my experience Avios are vastly cheaper than Airmiles. I don't understand the fuss.

you sure your father did not have ba miles?

Mark

bobvfr

Isn't this just another case of big businesses treating customers without respect? We hear a lot these days about 'corporate social responsibility' and ethical behaviour. It seems to me high time that businesses began to treat their customers ethically. And yes, this comment doesn't just apply to Airmiles!!

delboy321

I phoned them up to book a flight to Malta, i had been told i could book under the old scheme providing it was done before the 15 Dec, well never guess what happened, they dont fly to malta no more nor do they fly from Gatwick Airport, I can hire a car or book a hotel but not much good if you cant get there. In view of the 30 plus minute conversation with them i decided to book independently, the change over is a complete waste of time, deceiving and totally irresponsible to the customers. Well hey hoy. just think if no one can get where they want the whole system will collapse so dont exchange any more tesco vouchers unless you have checked to see if they go where you want to first, £55 worth exchange would of been better buyin food

richardw

Anything on Air Malta with airmiles delboy321?