Avios Purchase - A cautionary Tale

Team_Sovereign

Hope this is the right place to share my naivety with folks who might avoid the same trap I did.

TLDR: do NOT purchase a large amount of Avios with cash - you will be left out of pocket.

I've been a member with Qatar Airways for some time using them very frequently because I worked in the region. I've accrued and used plenty of Avios during my time flying with them. On many occasions when redeeming Avios they equated to a significant saving, more so when booking Business Class.

So in April this year when they sent out their latest email shot on their "deal" to purchase Avios I figured this would be a good time to see if making a purchase really was worth it. Particularly as I was planning on making a Business Class booking for my family later in the year.

With that I made the silly decision to purchase 125,000 Avios with a 75,000 bonus bringing it to 200,000 points - at a cost of 3,527.32USD.

Great I thought, when booking later in the year the Avios will (hopefully) at least be worth something close to what I paid for them - at least previous experience suggested this to be the case.

However, on redemption to book the Business Class ticket for me and my family the 200,000 points calculated by Qatar Airways at the checkout to be worth 1,400USD - a loss of 2,127USD.

I'm disappointed, furious and feel scammed by Qatar Airways. I learned a very hard and costly lesson by playing this game.

Do feel free to laugh at my misfortune, if you have any guidance on how I could tackle Qatar Airways over this I'd be even more grateful.

I hope my bad experience will put others off the idea to ever purchase Avios with cash. Better to earn them on flights or through cards where these seemingly worthless points are free to gain.

Cheers

Leavemealone

I feel your pain. Just prior to Covid I had a terrible experience on a flight and during latter investigation was told the airline had broken international law with respect to disabled passengers. I was offered club member points sufficient to 2x return flights in business equal to the flight in question for self and carer. I accepted. Then -Covid- no flights and by time able and ready to fly points had expired. No help or offers made and expected to pay full price now and ‘hope’ the same did not happen again. No reassurance as seat allocation for special needs only confirms 24 hours prior to flight!  

mdann52

Have you tried using the Avios for redemption seats, rather than to discount a cash fare?

Typically, using them to discount a cash fare is one of the worst possible way to use avios

Voyager2002

Articles on this site suggest that when Avios are used for upgrades they have a value of roughly 1 penny each. Having said that, for my recent flights (I am typing this from Cuba) I found to my surprise that I got a far better deal by using Avios almost completely to get Award flights rather than only for the upgrade.

There is a dark art to using them in ways that maximise the benefit to you, one that involves tricks such as using code-shares and moving your Avios between accounts with Qatar, Iberia and BA. (My flights were on Iberia, but booked on the BA website despite error messages telling me that what I was trying to do was impossible.)

If you are unwilling to invest a significant amount of time into learning how to play the system, it is best not to spend money or effort on getting hold of Avios, and simply use them as a small and unearned discount when available.

bagand96

A great resource for all things Avios is https://www.headforpoints.com/ (others are available, but HfP is the most UK focussed)

There's loads of articles on there on the best way to collect, keep, and spend Avios. For example, one great benefit of holding your Avios in BA is that they don't expire as long as there is activity on the Avios account every 36 months.  Activity can be as little as converting a handful of Nectar points.

DullGreyGuy

Team_Sovereign said:

Hope this is the right place to share my naivety with folks who might avoid the same trap I did.

TLDR: do NOT purchase a large amount of Avios with cash - you will be left out of pocket.

I've been a member with Qatar Airways for some time using them very frequently because I worked in the region. I've accrued and used plenty of Avios during my time flying with them. On many occasions when redeeming Avios they equated to a significant saving, more so when booking Business Class.

So in April this year when they sent out their latest email shot on their "deal" to purchase Avios I figured this would be a good time to see if making a purchase really was worth it. Particularly as I was planning on making a Business Class booking for my family later in the year.

With that I made the silly decision to purchase 125,000 Avios with a 75,000 bonus bringing it to 200,000 points - at a cost of 3,527.32USD.

Great I thought, when booking later in the year the Avios will (hopefully) at least be worth something close to what I paid for them - at least previous experience suggested this to be the case.

However, on redemption to book the Business Class ticket for me and my family the 200,000 points calculated by Qatar Airways at the checkout to be worth 1,400USD - a loss of 2,127USD.

I'm disappointed, furious and feel scammed by Qatar Airways. I learned a very hard and costly lesson by playing this game.

Do feel free to laugh at my misfortune, if you have any guidance on how I could tackle Qatar Airways over this I'd be even more grateful.

I hope my bad experience will put others off the idea to ever purchase Avios with cash. Better to earn them on flights or through cards where these seemingly worthless points are free to gain.

Using Avios for a cost reduction is always bad value, you are much better off using the points to redeem on seats or booking a lower class and using the points to upgrade the class. 

jimi_man

Hi. Could you give us more detail on what you redeemed them for and how you did it? 

You paid 1.3p per Avios which isn’t fantastic but isn’t awful either. Most airlines have their sweet spot for redemptions and QR is no exception. For example LHR to SYD is 90,000 each way off peak in business which equates to a return fare of £2300 plus taxes for you which is very good. At 1p per Avios then it’s even better at £1800. 

But other fares aren’t that great so you need to look at the value you’re getting. 

Also, as said, cash plus Avios is usually a stunningly poor deal. 

Team_Sovereign

Thanks for all the replies and knowledge shared, certainly have learned the consequences the hard that way using points as cash redemption is a very costly way to do it. Just absolutely appalled they are worth less than half at redemption. If anyone has had a good chuckle at my misfortune then that is a bonus too

Because I'm traveling with an infant under 2 on a 24hr trip each way via Qatar I wanted to make sure we had use of the Business Class facilities. When I've redeemed avios in the past for the occasional upgrade ticket it's normally without use of the Business Class lounge and associated family rooms which I really needed. The trip itself is 2 adults +1 infant MNL-MAN on QR. I figured there last enticing email shot offering bonus avios made sense to give it a try. Consider me better educated now.

The only reason I have continued using QR is my status with them and the points gained when I worked in the region. Their prices are far inflated above the other ME3. Who, in future I will try when making future trips into Europe from Asia.

Grateful for the insight from everyone

silvercar

There is a big difference between using Avios to buy reward tickets and using Avios to reduce the price of cash tickets. The latter is never good value.

We generally redeem on BA, and always have lounge access when buying a reward or cash business class ticket, but had the same benefit when on Qatar Airways and using the lounge at Doha. So I don’t know what type of business ticket you were buying that didn’t include lounge access.

mdann52

On BA, the only difference between a cash and reward ticket is the cancellation terms (much more generous on a reward booking), and the fact you don't earn Tier Points or avios .

Other airlines don't grant lounge access on rewards flights, but that's not the BA way!

jimi_man

silvercar said:

There is a big difference between using Avios to buy reward tickets and using Avios to reduce the price of cash tickets. The latter is never good value.

We generally redeem on BA, and always have lounge access when buying a reward or cash business class ticket, but had the same benefit when on Qatar Airways and using the lounge at Doha. So I don’t know what type of business ticket you were buying that didn’t include lounge access.

Just to explain this. Qatar offer a Business Lite fare (P class) which does not offer lounge access, however the seats are normal business seats (Qsuite or whatever) and the rest of the experience is more or less the same. If you have status (BA silver/sapphire and above) then you can use the FF lounge at Doha and any other OneWorld Lounges. But you do get the anomaly of a business class passenger without status not being able to use the lounge and an economy passenger with status who can. 

You can avoid it by booking through BA rather than QR (but flying on a QR plane as a codeshare) and you’ll get a normal fare as BA don’t offer Lite fares in Business.