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

theexplorer

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.

It must have been BA Exec points he got if he had to pay taxes on the flights as with Airmiles, which is differant, there was no taxes to pay at all, you just exchanged your airmiles and got a free flight, now people with very little notice find that they have to pay taxes up to as much as £500 for what was once free.

thelawnet

delboy321 wrote: »

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

Not since 2009.

nor do they fly from Gatwick Airport,

BA fly to lots of places from Gatwick.

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

Is there really nowhere you would like to go besides Malta???

dmardoc

callum9999 wrote: »

You're assuming every recognises they have a cash value - I personally don't. All my airmiles are from flying or from Tesco and I don't see them as cash in the same way as I would for actual money. Mainly because those points don't actually cost me anything whereas having to pay for taxes does.

And as the taxes on long haul flights are often the majority of the ticket price, how have they become better value? My gripe with them - particularly flights to America - is that I can generally find a flight for only a couple of pounds more than the cost of all the taxes and surcharges BA demand you pay on their reward flights - so I've never seen the point in actually using them.

I would like to make the point that if you collect airmiles from tesco it does cost money as you would have been using a voucher worth money off your shopping, this is what is converted into airmiles, so it does cost

jab627

I now have 38,000 BA airmiles, accumulated from flights over the past 3 years. I have never really understood how to 'spend' them. I tried to use them for a flight upgrade but was told I couldn't because my flights were booked through Trailfinders & the grade of my ticket (or something like that) wasn't high enough!
I then tried to use them for a flight to Malaga from London but was told there was no availability & that I needed to book them as soon as they were released onto the scheme (don't know how I'm supposed to know that!).
When the new Avios scheme was announced (& I realised it was a worse scheme) & my miles would be devalued, I tried again to use them. This time I tried for a flight to Malaga again. I would have needed to use 19,000 of my miles for the flight & still have to pay taxes etc of approx £70. The flight would have been from London City Airport (not a lot of use!). I ended up booking a scheduled flight from Gatwick to Malaga for £90. This put the supposed 'value' of 19,000 of my miles at £20.
What a total load of rubbish & a waste of time.............
I read somewhere that it will be possible to spend the new Avios points on 'things'. Maybe I'll be able to buy a few bags of sweets!!

richardw

jab627 wrote: »

I now have 38,000 BA airmiles

Do you mean airmiles or BA miles?

malkie76

If they were earned from flying it's likely they were BA Miles - sounds a sensible balance for a few years flying.

jab627 - your miles were not devalued by the switch to Avios, they've actually improved in value for certain flights. 38k is a decent balance and actually worth a significant amount (ie over a thousand) if used properly. It's worth browsing through the T&C to understand how to use them for maximum return.

SaveTheEuro

delboy321 wrote: »

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

Before the launch Avios said "Avios will offer flights with British Airways, Iberia, Flybe, Monarch, Air Malta and lots of other airlines. See Avios.com for full details." Of course, if you go to the website you will find no details at all. It sounds like the phone service is equally useless.

kippygirl

Another disgruntled customer here. Signed up for a Lloyds TSB credit card to get an extra 500 airmiles in the hope of getting enough to pay for flights to Paris before the new scheme came in.

Just been told I can't have the extra miles because I didn't spend £10 in the first 30 days on the right card (you get two different cards) - they say this was in the small print (where?) but they never send you a copy of this (by email or post) and they've mysteriously lost all record of my last conversation with them when they said to spend on the Amex card before my next statement in order to get the 500 miles.

It's definitely time to stop collecting Airmiles/Avios and buy something quick (wine?) before they change/devalue/rip off their customers any more...

pdl33

Hi,
I booked a flight with Avios a few weeks ago to fly for the weekend to the South of France. Next day I decided to change the returning flight to a day later. I paid them £50 to change our flight. During the weekend I tried to check in online for the return flight. The British Airways site said that online checkin was unavailable. I spent the whole weekend trying to check in online and emailing British Airways and calling them with expensive call costs. All the replies from British Airways said that there was no trouble with their site. We decided to go the the airport extremely early using an expensive taxi. When we arrived at the airport we found that the reason for the problem was not the fault of British Airways, it was because Avios had not revalidated our tickets. and that we were not booked on that last flight home. We just managed to get the last two most awful seats on the plane. What would have happened if there were no seats available? Sleep on the airport floor!
After a ruined weekend and complaining to Avios their customer service was appalling and we were offered a paltry compensation.

richardw

pdl33 wrote: »

....we were offered a paltry compensation.

Ask for more.