Why is British Airways trashing the value of Avios in its own emails?

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• Iona says:

  31 Dec31 December 08:15

  I was given different pricing options to that in my email:
  New York £342 or £302 and 6,100 Avios
  Chicago £399 or £359 and 6,100 Avios
  San Francisco £399 or £359 and 6,100 Avios
  Dubai £429 or £339 and 17,100 Avios

  My Avios balance is low at the moment so I wonder if they’re tailoring accordingly.

  • meta says:

    31 Dec31 December 09:27

    Mine has the Avios pricing uniformly as £302/309/309/278 + 17,100 Avios across the board for New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Dubai with cash only respectively as £342/399/399/429.

    So San Francisco/Chicago is cheaper for cash only than Duba…

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    31 Dec31 December 09:28

    For me the straight cash prices are the same as yours but the avios are

    NYC – 17,100 + £ 242

    ORD – 17,100 + £ 309

    SFO – 17,100 + £ 309

    DXB – 17,100 + £ 279

    I have just over 22k avios.

    • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

      31 Dec31 December 10:05

      Sorry DXB is 33k avios

• Save East Coast Rewards says:

  31 Dec31 December 08:22

  The first BA Prepaid Mastercard which I received had an expiry date of just 12/22 which most of us thought it would be a way for them to quietly kill it at the end of the year if it wasn’t a success. Well when I returned to the UK for Christmas a new card was waiting for me with expiry 12/25 so BA must have considered this launch successful enough to continue with it.

  Does anybody with insider knowledge know if they plan on improving the product going forward. It would be useful for me if you could top it up with a Euro bank account as well as a UK one

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    31 Dec31 December 09:21

    Improvements?

    Unlikely with anything connected to BA!

  • Nick says:

    31 Dec31 December 10:33

    There isn’t a single person at BA who has anything to do with the prepaid Mastercard, it’s entirely an AGL thing. You’re right they’ve decided to keep it going. I’d expect a marketing push in the new year to encourage take-up.

    It’s very unlikely it’ll be cross-currency, it would be a huge amount of work for very little gain. The target market is very unlikely to have an account in another currency.

    • Rob says:

      31 Dec31 December 10:47

      My feeling is that AGL is not happy with it (unsurprisingly) and of course they will soon see what the churn rate is once the six months free period starts to end for most people. I know what the sign-up volumes are and it’s not game changing – I would expect that HfP, with a similar but better product, could achieve the same daily numbers.

      In general, my view (which we practice on HfP) is that you are basically judged by your weakest link and you shouldn’t put out products if they are likely to drag down your overall brand.

      • Save East Coast Rewards says:

        31 Dec31 December 16:53

        Any idea who actually issues the card for AGL or how to find out? I thought it would be Monese (because IAG invested in them and they did do some half arsed Avios integration in their app) but there’s no evidence of that

        • Rob says:

          31 Dec31 December 17:24

          It’s in the T&C and on the website – Prepaid Financial Services IIRC. No way would Monese back a product with so many fees.

    • Save East Coast Rewards says:

      31 Dec31 December 13:58

      Would there really be much work needed to make it cross currency. Currently it supports GBP, EUR and USD. But you can only top up with GBP using a debit card.

      I’ve not checked to see if it accepts overseas debit cards but I don’t see why it wouldn’t. However it would be inefficient using a EUR card, topping up in GBP and then back to EUR to do transactions in Italy. It would not be worth the small amount of Avios.

      If you could choose to top up directly in EUR or USD and then it added automatically to the correct pot doesn’t seem much more effort.

      I assume Brexit makes it awkward for them to offer a version of this card in Spain with Iberia branding, they’d not be able to offer the UK issues cards there

  • Alex G says:

    31 Dec31 December 12:24

    “when I returned to the UK for Christmas a new card was waiting for me with expiry 12/25 ”

    Good luck trying to activate it!

    • Save East Coast Rewards says:

      31 Dec31 December 14:02

      I hadn’t bothered activating it but your message made me give it a go and it worked, even the Apple Pay card refreshed automatically! 😳 I hope this doesn’t trigger the monthly fee. I got the card ages ago and as yet the fee hasn’t been charged.

      • Alex G says:

        31 Dec31 December 16:35

        You’re lucky. Every time I try I get “We’re sorry! There was a problem activating your card. Please try again.” Spent half an hour on the phone to them on Wednesday, only to be told it’s a known fault and they are working to fix it urgently. So as of tomorrow, I have a new card that I cannot use. I do plan to keep the card though, even when the fee kicks in. 1300 Avios a month for £2.99 is worth it while it lasts.

        • Save East Coast Rewards says:

          31 Dec31 December 16:57

          Is that earned mostly on UK or overseas spend?

  • Alan says:

    31 Dec31 December 17:20

    I’m still awaiting a refund of the fee they charged me 3 months after closing it!

• vol says:

  31 Dec31 December 08:35

  We’re a pretty numerate bunch on this site and see straight through it, but many ”out there” will look at BA’s marketing and gravitate straight to the cash aspect of the message:

  “£209 < £399, and therefore better”.

  If they are casual everyday shoppers/ collectors via Sainsbury’s or eBay, they will perhaps perceive that the points didn’t cost anything extra to gain in the first place and so using them in this way to get £190 off the cash price is a great deal, giving little (if any) thought to how much a point is or could be worth.

  • Rich says:

    31 Dec31 December 09:04

    Spot on. BA’s and plenty of other company’s marketing people take consumers for fools…and plenty are where numeracy and true value are concerned.

  • AJA says:

    31 Dec31 December 11:09

    Except that ignores the Avios you have to spend as well. In that example you need to pay 42800 Avios as well. Given that I value Avios at 1p that means you are spending £428 in Avios plus the £209 cash, £637 in total versus £399 for a straight cash fare which is easier to book as it doesn’t need reward seat availability. Who on earth thinks that’s good value?

    • Mr Sound says:

      31 Dec31 December 16:54

      I think that was entirely vol’s point, everyone (hopefully) on here will assign a value to each Avios point they spend whereas the general public won’t. I have a friend who recently booked a trip to Berlin and jumped at the ‘X’ number of Avios plus £2 as he sees no value in them, as far as he’s concerned the flights were £2, nothing more. I have another friend who uses his for Laithwaites wine, not that he can anymore. Again, he sees it as free wine and my efforts to educate them both fall on deaf ears. As long as they’re happy…

      • Londonsteve says:

        31 Dec31 December 22:24

        I’ve had the same with numerous people. There’s a fascinating pyschology involved here, people feel they’ve got a ‘good deal’ and are resistant to the idea that they could have done much better so fingers in the ears are the best solution.

• Tony says:

  31 Dec31 December 08:38

  The end of Avios and BA? Collect Avios but don’t spend them on BA…but change them to Nectar and buy petrol at Sainsburys in the UK! Even after the devaluation…. Then get better value flights with other airlines.

  • Rich says:

    31 Dec31 December 09:07

    Re your first sentence, no, the end is not in sight, in fact the opposite is true. Remember we readers of HfP are not truly representative of BA’s or Avios’s typical customers.

    • Ryan says:

      31 Dec31 December 10:58

      Absolutely. There is possibly an assumption here that ‘new’ customers to Avios/BA are all avid readers of HFP and know that Avios can be worth > ‘X’ when evidently this won’t be the case.

  • Londonsteve says:

    31 Dec31 December 22:27

    Whilst I have bought petrol at Sainsbury’s at 0.8p per Avios, I’m not a buyer at 0.67p. It’s easy to achieve better value buying flights, even in Economy.

• AndyS says:

  31 Dec31 December 09:40

  I think the thing we’re forgetting is that buying flights with avios they are flexible/refundable, whereas the cash only headline price is not. With this comparison avios will always look like a bad deal. You are not just using 40k avois to save 150 quid, you are also making it a lot more flexible.

  • lumma says:

    31 Dec31 December 10:42

    This email is about part payment with avios, so there is no increased flexibility.

  • Rob says:

    31 Dec31 December 10:48

    I’m not forgetting that but I don’t think for the majority of people that it is a deciding factor (although it is for me).

• J says:

  31 Dec31 December 10:29

  Common question, but I can’t remember the answer: if cancelling a 241 RFS flight, does 241 voucher redeposit immediately to account?

  • Rob says:

    31 Dec31 December 10:47

    Yes, should do.

• Super Secret Stuff says:

  31 Dec31 December 12:37

  This is why I nearly always delete there emails without reading 🙄

• smblcklck says:

  31 Dec31 December 12:51

  “The maximum purchase is doubled to 160,000 points. This would double up to 320,000 points with the 100% bonus.”

  Is the maximum purchase being doubled also a targeted offer? I’ve only got the +80% and 80k so 144k max purchase

  • Rob says:

    31 Dec31 December 13:42

    Some get 80%, yes

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.