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

Baz101

I am very annoyed,
I have used airmiles each year to book flights to malta for my wife and me to have a one month winter break.
We are disabled pensioners and have saved all year through Tescos etc to collect enough Airmiles for Free Flights.
NOW i am told that they do not fly to Malta anymore.
I have wasted a years saving. And have been deprived of my flights.
I thought that Avios was meant to be an improvement, NOT SO.
I will no longer collect with Avios, I think it will be better to try another Loyalty Scheme.
Tescos wil not be happy either.:mad::mad::(

SCROOGE

Just to contribute to the on-going debate....

The first point to make is that my negative comments of yesterday have been removed from the Avios Facebook page (as you reported as having happened previously).

The first problem I encountered was in trying to transfer my BA Avios points to Avios proper: I kept getting a message to the effect that my DOB wasn't recorded on the Avios site, yet when I tried to supply it, there was no means of doing so. That problem was solved by calling the Avios Customer centre this morning.

Secondly, I tried yesterday to book a flight Manchester-Malaga on the BA site (using Avios) and was astounded to discover that they would charge the 15,000 Avios points PLUS taxes etc of approx. £145. It seems that the £27 cap only applies to flights booked directly with Avios and not via BA or Iberia.

The big disaster for me is the fact that it is no longer possible to fly direct from regional airports (including Manchester) to Europe - Malaga specifically in our case. Whereas in the past, if I entered Man-Malaga in the old Air Miles search box, literally scores of options came up, some direct, others with a range of European airlines e.g. Swissair, Air France etc via their European hubs. The only option under the new scheme is to fly with BA via London.

When I investigated this, both on the Avios site and over the phone, a catalogue of woes came to light. We wanted flights in May/June, but discovered very limited availability, and would either have to change London airports (at our own expense if you please!) and/or overnight in London. This represents a massive downgrading of the Air Miles scheme. It also discriminates massively against those of us living outside the London area. It's clear that BA isn't interested in the regions any more and frankly doesn't deserve our loyalty.

The website is still a disaster. I got as far as selecting 'available' dates on a monthly view calendar, only to find when I clicked on continue that there were 'no flights available for the selected dates'. What an abomination!

My attempt to book over the phone was equally unsuccessful. The agent seemed unable to view availability over several weeks, and so we had to proceed by attempting 'dummy' bookings over a range of specific dates. She also tried to tell me that, overall, availability had been increased! Ha! Ha!

The cynical view is of course that they are hoping people will just give up and that the scheme will be wound up. I myself am seriously re-considering my membership of the various flight reward schemes, as the benefits generally have been substantially eroded in recent years. I am also a member of the Nat West Your Points scheme, and again the number of points required to purchase a flight with Easyjet has increased dramatically. I am now considering simply using a cash-back card in future.

SaveTheEuro

Baz101 wrote: »

I am very annoyed,
I have used airmiles each year to book flights to malta for my wife and me to have a one month winter break.
We are disabled pensioners and have saved all year through Tescos etc to collect enough Airmiles for Free Flights.
NOW i am told that they do not fly to Malta anymore.
I have wasted a years saving. And have been deprived of my flights.
I thought that Avios was meant to be an improvement, NOT SO.
I will no longer collect with Avios, I think it will be better to try another Loyalty Scheme.
Tescos wil not be happy either.:mad::mad::(

Did you know you can book Air Malta flights with Avios but only with cash, not points? Bonkers but true.

If you switch your shopping to Sainsbury's you can get easyjet flights to Malta through the Nectar loyalty scheme. There's a booking fee of £8.

Danr2210

My view on Avios is that we now have replaced a simple system (Airmiles) for a complex more expensive system. Airmiles was excellent apart from one thing - availibility. If you are retired and want to go somewhere, then it was perfect. If you work and are tied in to certain dates (like school holidays) then forget it.

Avios promises that issue will be solved and to be fair the dummy orders i have put in do seem to have more availibility in general than airmiles ever did.

But that is where the positives end as far as i am concerened.

we (faily of 4) planned to go to Orlando and we saved for years to get there only to see the change in the final stretch. we couldn't book as the flights we wanted were not even released so we now have automatically converted to avios and by doing dummy orders, the value of my 140,000 avios is about £224 based on the Ba.com price and the avios miles price for the same flight. It has probably cost me a over thousand pounds in Tesco vouchers for £224!!!

I also have had issues with the call centre staff not knowing what was going on as I called them today and wa sput on hold every few seconds as the poor guy had to keep going off line to find out my answers to simple questions.

One of which was - if I buy economy flights through BA.com can I upgrade using avios to Wrld Traveller (or PE). After vanishing for ages he said no, unless i pay cash through the avios site. Yet the BA.com site suggests that i can upgrade using avios via "manage my booking"

so i am still none the wiser....

But one thing I do know is that I am going to use up my points and get a cash back card as soon as possible.

malkie76

To price up the same flights you need to compare fully flexible ecomony tickets with Avios points tickets - your 140k is then worth about ~£4k

You'd need to book expensive economy tickets to upgrade to world traveller plus - it might be cheaper buying world traveller plus tickets in the first place.

Far better use for your points is upgrading world traveller plus to club world (business). Sale tickets will go for £650 pp + 20k Avios to upgrade to business.

isplumm

Malkie76

Just about to write the same thing - this is how I have used my miles previously pay for e+ tickets & then use miles to get upgrade to bc.

Mark

Grayhammy

I have £60 worth of Tesco Clubcard vouchers, £2.50 = 600 Avios points. So, 60/2.5 = 24*600 = 14,400 Avios points.

An average return flight to my destination is about £200.

Avios calculator says 14,000 points will give me a return journey for £50 + taxes and surcharges, which when checking the flight = £102 ish. Total flight cost then is £152 return, + £60 of my clubcard vouchers = £212.

So I would lose money if I change them for Avios points.

I expect it is different depending on exactly how you are using them, but you definitely want to do the math carefully to establish whether or not it is worth it.

In my case, it definitely is not.

budgetflyer

Grayhammy
Shorthaul the charge is only £27. Zone 3 you would pay 20000 Avios +£27 or in your case 14000 avios + £50 + £27

It depends what site you look at.
If its BA EXEC ,if you have a 0 balance it shows the full taxes. Transfer your avios onto there to see an accurate costing. Remember also if flying from a regional airport you get free London connecting flights/stop overs if reqd, + 23KG luggage + fed + watered + choose your seats