Avios - another thread!

fedupwithcheaters

Hello.  First time poster here.  I'll try to keep brief.  A few months ago, in response to an email from BA, I bought 40,000 avios which included free bonus avios.  Perhaps naively I assumed they would mirror a spend value based on what one paid for them.  I shortly after booked a flight and opted to use a pre-determined number (there was an option of around 6 redemption charges if I remember correctly.)  To my alarm, it soon became clear that the redemption value nowhere nears the actual cost of buying them.  I check all the information I could find about the Avios "reward" scheme on the BA website.  Nowhere does it advise that you do not get the value back. I wrote to BA a month ago, and not surprisingly, they have not answered yet.  This seems to me to be an example of daylight robbery.  I know Avios is meant to be a reward scheme, so buying avios is a punishment scheme!  I maybe wrong, but in the absence of a reply from BA, I am none the wiser.  Has anyone had a similar experience? 

DullGreyGuy

fedupwithcheaters said:

Hello.  First time poster here.  I'll try to keep brief.  A few months ago, in response to an email from BA, I bought 40,000 avios which included free bonus avios.  Perhaps naively I assumed they would mirror a spend value based on what one paid for them.  I shortly after booked a flight and opted to use a pre-determined number (there was an option of around 6 redemption charges if I remember correctly.)  To my alarm, it soon became clear that the redemption value nowhere nears the actual cost of buying them.  I check all the information I could find about the Avios "reward" scheme on the BA website.  Nowhere does it advise that you do not get the value back. I wrote to BA a month ago, and not surprisingly, they have not answered yet.  This seems to me to be an example of daylight robbery.  I know Avios is meant to be a reward scheme, so buying avios is a punishment scheme!  I maybe wrong, but in the absence of a reply from BA, I am none the wiser.  Has anyone had a similar experience? 

Sounds like you were using them for a discount rather than reward flight? If so then it's generally a bad value mechanism to use them and would be worse still if you had bought them. 

Most people will target getting 1p value per Avios, some use a lower 0.5p others a little higher. Dont know how much per Avios you paid but it tends to be about 1.5-2p per Avios which means generally its bad value as your paying more than they are worth. 

HOWEVER... let's say you wanted to go on a Business class trip, you need 100,000 Avois and the avois will be worth 1.7p per point so good value. Problem, you only have 90,000 avios. To buy 10,000 additional Avios is 1.9p per point so in principle a bad idea to then spend them at 1.7p per point but the purchase enables you to hit the 100,000 you need and so the blended value remains above the threshold and its better to spend the £195 to buy the points to then save the £1,700 on the flights as its still a net £1,505 saving.

Even if you did buy a ton of miles there are flights that are better value, had an over £10,000 return flight for 200,000 avios + $5 so 5p per point which would be over doubling the value of even the worst sale price avios 


Avios can be good, especially if you prefer higher class flights and can be flexible on dates. It requires you to understand them. HeadForPoints is a good website to read to understand how to best leverage them.

Aylesbury_Duck

How is it daylight robbery?  Have you got the original email text so we can see if you've been misled?  It sounds more likely that you've misunderstood/miscalculated.

Jumblebumble

 fedupwithcheaters said:

Hello.  First time poster here.  I'll try to keep brief.  A few months ago, in response to an email from BA, I bought 40,000 avios which included free bonus avios.  Perhaps naively I assumed they would mirror a spend value based on what one paid for them.  I shortly after booked a flight and opted to use a pre-determined number (there was an option of around 6 redemption charges if I remember correctly.)  To my alarm, it soon became clear that the redemption value nowhere nears the actual cost of buying them.  I check all the information I could find about the Avios "reward" scheme on the BA website.  Nowhere does it advise that you do not get the value back. I wrote to BA a month ago, and not surprisingly, they have not answered yet.  This seems to me to be an example of daylight robbery.  I know Avios is meant to be a reward scheme, so buying avios is a punishment scheme!  I maybe wrong, but in the absence of a reply from BA, I am none the wiser.  Has anyone had a similar experience? 

DullGreyGuy  excellent summary  Avios flights are cancelable for £35.00 or less penalty within 24 hours of flight or less so cannot be compared with a non refundable flight.
If you earn Avios via business spend then the flight costs are effectively  out of untaxed income
It is not difficult to buy Avios cheaper by following head for points
Eg recent  Amex deal £70,00 odd for 15000 as well as various sign up bonuses 
We too have had some great Avios flights on club /First