difference between AVIOS and BA AVIOS

pete333

Hi,

I have Llyods TSB Amex and Credit Card and use tesco club card points, both converted in AVIOS points on AVIOS.com

I am considering getting a BA Premium Plus AMEX Card - Gives you AVIOS points at a higher rate than Llyods TSB (although BA card has a £150 yearly fee) and gives you a free companion ticket for airmiles flights if you spend £10,000 on the card in a year. If my wife and I share one card for all spending, we will be able to put £10,000 on the card.

My initial thought was that all the points earned on the BA card would appear in my main AVIOS account and the points would be grouped together with my Llyods and Tesco Clubcard points. However, on the Tesco site, you have the option to exchange clubcard points to AVIOS or British Airways Executive Club - Avios.

Do you get a separate account for BA Avios points or do you have one AVIOS account where all points go into. Are BA Avios different to Avios?

Thanks,
Peter

OllyM

You get a separate BA Executive Club with the same currency (Avios), and you can freely move Avios between your BAEC account and your avios.com account.

If you do apply for the BA card, don't forget to go via Quidco - they are currently offering £45 which offsets some of the fee in the first year!

jackieblack

OllyM wrote: »

You get a separate BA Executive Club with the same currency (Avios), and you can freely move Avios between your BAEC account and your avios.com account.

Just spent the best part of 2 days trying to move all our BAEC miles to Avios - not as simple as I was led to believe.

Transferring from an individual account to an individual account is fine, however, if you have a household account with either BAEC or Avios you can't transfer in or out of a household account with either.
We have now been told we will have to 'un-combine' our Avios household account back to individual accounts to then be able to transfer from both my and hubby's individual BAEC accounts to our individual Avios accounts. Daughter's BAEC points cannot be transferred at all as she is under 18.
Once the transfer has been done we will need to re-combine the individual Avios accounts into a household account again and repeat this process any/every time we want to transfer points again in the future.

It really shouldn't be this complicated, surely? :wall:

Fruit_and_Nut_Case

jackieblack wrote: »

It really shouldn't be this complicated, surely? :wall:

Not when you consider that there are probably thousands of families in the same position.

OllyM

jackieblack wrote: »

Just spent the best part of 2 days trying to move all our BAEC miles to Avios - not as simple as I was led to believe.

Transferring from an individual account to an individual account is fine, however, if you have a household account with either BAEC or Avios you can't transfer in or out of a household account with either.
We have now been told we will have to 'un-combine' our Avios household account back to individual accounts to then be able to transfer from both my and hubby's individual BAEC accounts to our individual Avios accounts. Daughter's BAEC points cannot be transferred at all as she is under 18.
Once the transfer has been done we will need to re-combine the individual Avios accounts into a household account again and repeat this process any/every time we want to transfer points again in the future.

It really shouldn't be this complicated, surely? :wall:

You can transfer miles in/out of BAEC even if you have a household account, because each member has their own pool of miles. You can't transfer miles out of an Avios household account because it's just one big pool of miles - I agree that it is a bit stupid but that's the way it works!

jackieblack

OllyM wrote: »

You can transfer miles in/out of BAEC even if you have a household account, because each member has their own pool of miles.

Yes, but each member has to individually transfer their own pool of miles from their own account, ie, I can only transfer the points I have earned individually, I cannot transfer any of the other points in the household account, my husband has to transfer his own pool of points. No-one can transfer my daughter's because she is under 18.

OllyM wrote: »

You can't transfer miles out of an Avios household account because it's just one big pool of miles

You also can't transfer into an Avios household account, only into individual accounts.

OllyM wrote: »

I agree that it is a bit stupid but that's the way it works!

Or doesn't work, in my case

pete333

Thanks for the info regarding BA miles being held in a separate account and for the quidco tip :-)

I have a household AVIOS account too so thanks for the warning on transferring from separate accounts. I would want to transfer these to the BA Avios account.

Thanks for the advice.

Peter

jackieblack

pete333 wrote: »

I have a household AVIOS account too so thanks for the warning on transferring from separate accounts. I would want to transfer these to the BA Avios account.

Just to add, when you 'split' your Avios household account it will split all the points equally, irrelevant of who the points originally belonged to, which doesn't matter if all parties are transferring their points but may do if only one party wants to.

eg Person A has 5000 Avios, Person B has 10000 they combine to make a household account which has total 15000.

Person B wants to transfer points to BA.

When Avios 'split' the household account, A & B will both have 7500 points in their account and this is the maximum they will be able to transfer.

I guess you could continue to remerge and re-split the accounts in order to transfer the rest of the points, but it does all seem to be unneccessarily convoluted for a scheme which proclaims that points can be 'freely' transferred