Will British Airways ever tell people that the Nectar conversion rate is devaluing?

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• john says:

  8 Mar8 March 09:15

  Nationwide offer good products which are useful for the traveller though. HFP constantly ignore them!

  The £13/mo FlexPlus bank account gets you fee-free ATM withdrawals abroad, household travel insurance (from Aviva) and UK/European breakdown cover (from the AA) amongst other non-travel perks. It then also opens up the Nationwide credit card which gets you worldwide fee-free card transactions also. I only use that cc when travelling.

  Granted there are no ‘points’ benefits to gain or game, but as a pure product that is useful for travellers, it’s great!

  • Jonathan says:

    8 Mar8 March 09:28

    In not denying what you’ve said, although there’s many credit cards and current accounts that’re ideal for many, but as they’re not relevant to HfP, there’s no point (- literally !) talking about them at all on this website

  • RussellH says:

    8 Mar8 March 11:10

    Why pay Nationwide for a bank a/c to get a fee-free credit card when you can get worldwide fee-free credit card transactions from Halifax Clarity.
    If necessary, you can also use this in an ATM without FX fees, and you can transfer cash from your bank to your card a/c online to meet the bill as soon as the payment hits the a/c.
    In practice, though, since covid, there seems to be little need for cash in most places.

    • JDB says:

      8 Mar8 March 11:45

      One has a paid NW a/c for only £156/pa because it offers the travel insurance and UK/Europe AA cover which comfortably justify the fee. Their FX free credit card isn’t a product I use but it costs no extra and I’m not sure you need a paid account to have it at all. More importantly, NW is just so much better to deal with than any of the mainstream banks.

      • Londonsteve says:

        10 Mar10 March 13:21

        Agreed.

  • lumma says:

    8 Mar8 March 12:26

    £13 per month would be better if you could pick and choose relevant benefits. I don’t drive so the breakdown cover is useless, there’s various ways to withdraw cash abroad for free, so it’s essentially £13 a month for travel insurance which would pay separately for a pretty substantial travel insurance policy.

  • cin4 says:

    9 Mar9 March 18:53

    Unfortunately the travel insurance is absolutely useless for many because of ridiculously short trip length restrictions.

• Matarredonda says:

  8 Mar8 March 09:40

  Think you will find Clydesdale Bank purchased Virgin Bank with the object of using the Virgin name.
  Subsequently the Clydesdale/Yorkshire Bank credit card was amalgamated into the Virgin money credit card set up

• Nick says:

  8 Mar8 March 10:03

  I appreciate that this is HfP, but, just for information, if this is finalised, and you maybe hold money in accounts with Nationwide and Virgin Money/Clydesdale Bank/Yorkshire Bank, you’ll only have a maximum FSCS protection of £85,000, in total, across all accounts you hold within any/all of those.

  • BBbetter says:

    8 Mar8 March 10:26

    FCA and FSCS need to work together to put end this hidden rule. Innocent public wouldnt be aware of this legal gap and could be caught out. Even if an event is extremely unlikely, either treat them as different banks or give a 5 year deadline to merge the brands.

  • NorthernDave says:

    8 Mar8 March 17:10

    They intend to hold 2 licences – it’s on their FAQs – so 85k in each

    • Nick says:

      8 Mar8 March 18:42

      OK, many thanks for clarifying that ND & CJD. I hadn’t noticed the FAQ’s until now.

  • CJD says:

    8 Mar8 March 17:29

    Except they will. Virgin Money is the trading name of Clydesdale Bank PLC, which holds a separate banking license and would still remain a separate legal entity.

    Same way if you hold NatWest and RBS accounts, or Lloyds Bank and Bank of Scotland accounts. While both pairs of banks belong within the same banking group, all 4 banks hold separate banking licenses so you get £85,000 with each.

• Tariq says:

  8 Mar8 March 11:02

  Could be a quick and dirty way for Chase to get into credit cards if Nationwide want to offload it cheap.

  • RussellH says:

    8 Mar8 March 11:13

    Chase had a UK credit card (Visa) in the early 1980s – in the days when all Visa cards had to look like Visa cards.

    I had one, but it did not last long. They sold it all to National Girobank (which dates it).

    • Alex G says:

      8 Mar8 March 12:32

      Chase Manhattan. I had their UK credit card for a while. I don’t remember it looking like the original Barclaycard/BankAmericard though. It came with good perks, but I forget what they were. It will be interesting to see what Chase come up with.

      • RussellH says:

        8 Mar8 March 13:58

        I do not remember any perks at all, but I am sure that it was the early 1980s. I got it specifically because I felt that it would be easy to use in the USA and back then I had had shops refuse to accept a Barclaycard, because they did not recognise the name.
        Equally, I had had a BankAmericard rejected in this country in the later 1970s for the same reason. I was told that they only accepted Barclaycard + Trustcard.

      • Ziggy says:

        8 Mar8 March 20:25

        Speaking as a modern day fan of Chase, I remember Chase Manhattan as a bank I truly detested. Its charges were outrageous.

  • BBbetter says:

    8 Mar8 March 11:52

    Doubt it. The VS cards are all about the Virgin branding and everything such as points, vouchers are tied to it. Chase will have little bandwidth to change anything.

    • Tariq says:

      8 Mar8 March 13:08

      Like when MBNA migrated all the airline and affiliate cards to their own product?

      • BBbetter says:

        8 Mar8 March 17:36

        How did that end?

• ADS says:

  8 Mar8 March 11:31

  I still find it funny that Avios people went into the Nectar agreement assuming everybody would want to convert TO avios … only to find out that their amazing product wasn’t nearly as good as they thought it was!

  I wonder if Avios people are a little less cocky about their product these days?!

  • Rob says:

    8 Mar8 March 12:09

    I suspect this is true.

    • daveinitalia says:

      8 Mar8 March 14:30

      The main issue was the partnership started at the worst time for BA. It was during covid and so it provided a great was for people to cash out points they weren’t expecting to be able to use in the near future (plus the more cautious might have been worried about the airline collapsing or a massive devaluation)

      • ADS says:

        8 Mar8 March 23:41

        I don’t doubt that the timing was unfortunate … but the fact that Avios are now trashing the conversion rate suggests that the flight from Avios to Nectar still hasn’t stopped !

  • Rob H not Rob says:

    8 Mar8 March 13:28

    I had a healthy seven figure sum of nectar points via their DHL tie up that were doing nothing so the Avios option coupled with Qatar adopting avios proved fantastic, so it’s been great for us.

  • Lady London says:

    8 Mar8 March 14:04

    And I am wondering if Avios is trying to terminate their multiyear contract with Nectar through the back door.

    Like, there is no exit clause yet activateable yet perhaps Nectar’s lawyers forgot to put in clauses that stopped Avios unilaterally devaluing the conversion rate.

    Is the Nectar-Avios conversion enough of a quasi cash one to fall under one of the financial regulators? If this is a financial product then it would be referrable to the FOS as a financial product being managed in a way that’s unfair to consumers

    • Rob says:

      8 Mar8 March 15:04

      I understand there is a renegotiation clause if too much money goes in one direction.

    • Londonsteve says:

      10 Mar10 March 13:35

      Avios wants a supermarket tie-up. Where else would they go? Back to Tesco? To my knowledge Waitrose doesn’t have a loyalty scheme and they don’t do the volume that Avios would want. Perhaps Aldi would be a swerveball option? They’re always looking to grow market share and are flexible, I’m sure they’d be open to cooking up a loyalty app to track purchases in order to award Avios.

• jeremy i says:

  8 Mar8 March 12:07

  hi guys – on virgin points any chance of a virgin cruises flash sale again soon? What are the other virgin points sweet spots – can’t remember whether delta 50k ex-eu is still available. thanks jeremy

  • Andy says:

    8 Mar8 March 16:08

    It seems unlikely. VV needs cash. Brilliant Lady still hasn’t been delivered; they’ve had to cancel next year’s Australia/NZ season due to issues repositioning Resilient Lady via The Red Sea, booking discounts and ship credit have been reduced and cash prices for all their voyages have soared. The cash and points bargains that were available during their launch seasons were fun whilst they were available, but alas – no more.

    • jeremy i says:

      8 Mar8 March 16:27

      Thanks Andy that’s kind of you to reply.

      Anyone know whether you can still redeem virgin points for ex-EU Delta flights for 50k and low taxes?

      • Rob says:

        8 Mar8 March 16:29

        Into the EU (not UK) yes – if you can find availability.

• Alastair says:

  8 Mar8 March 12:19

  I have auto-conversion set up for Nectar/Avios and still haven’t been informed of the devaluation.

  • Rob says:

    8 Mar8 March 13:22

    Nothing changes in that direction though.

• Absolute wally says:

  8 Mar8 March 17:36

  Aggghhhh I was trying to convert Nectar TO Avios for a redemption and I don’t know what brain fog went on but I realised when the next day when my Avios balance reduced that I’d converted From Avios to Nectar. I thought that’s ok, it’s before March 11th I’ll just convert them back but they’ve not appeared and when I called I was told it’s a 10 day wait ( I feel they should tell you this before you convert) so now it will be after Avios has put in their devaluation. I’m feeling very silly and I’m very dubious the 4 avios seats currently available will still exist by the time this 10 day purgatory ends. I’m presuming it’s another 10 days for the conversion from Nectar to Avios as well. Booo. Is there any point in ringing BA or Nectar about is?

  • John says:

    8 Mar8 March 23:26

    No it should be instant converting back, and you should get the old rate but you’ll still lose 17% as you’ll have converted 300 avios to 250 avios

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