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No seats from Sydney to London even in Economy in early Jan 26. Not seen that before

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tiberius wrote:

I’m looking to buy a £200 Ikea gift card at the store checkout this week in order to use the spend £200 get £20 off offer. I assume, as this will be done via the usual Ikea checkout this will go through fine and I can store the saving for spending in late January but has anyone done this succesfully?

this has worked for me previously

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phantomchickenz wrote:

That does sound annoying. Let us know how you get on with the SQ redemptions. How many are you trying to get? Interested to know if you need the Krisflyer points to enable searching, or you can look speculatively.

Can look speculatively. Just need a membership account. Got my 3 seats last night. 2 adults plus 1 kid leaving on Thurs 11th Dec

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phantomchickenz wrote:

rams wrote:

Looks like 2x90k seats to Aus were available all the way up to 13th. Not that it mattered for me as I’m locked out of BA and they don’t know what the issue is so can’t book any seats. Incredibly frustrating.

Luckily I have lots of MR points so hoping to book Singapore Airlines in next few days. Seems like they have 3 seats most days which is ideal. Hopefully BA account is fixed soon so can book Qatar return. Seems like JAL has some availability on dates too per my BA checks.

Don’t use your BA account, book direct with Qatar.

Singapore only offer economy redemption seats to/from London.

unfortunately my Qatar account isn’t linked to BA and that’s where my miles are. My Ba account has had this issue for over 6 weeks and they’ve not bothered to look into it/slow to resolve.

On Singapore you can get business flights to Aus via Singapore all on business. Costs 130,500 points one way

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Looks like 2x90k seats to Aus were available all the way up to 13th. Not that it mattered for me as I’m locked out of BA and they don’t know what the issue is so can’t book any seats. Incredibly frustrating.

Luckily I have lots of MR points so hoping to book Singapore Airlines in next few days. Seems like they have 3 seats most days which is ideal. Hopefully BA account is fixed soon so can book Qatar return. Seems like JAL has some availability on dates too per my BA checks.

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I’m trying for Aus mid-Dec 2015 for 3 of us (including 2 year old). From what I can see Melbourne is easier than Sydney. 2 seats are available at normal 90k rate but 3 are not. So it may be better to buy 2 and then get the 3rd separately. That presumes the 6th Dec availability is similar in a week or so’s time for 12th Dec departure.

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@jdb thanks for your message. I should correct my point to say investigators and not the ombudsmen themselves. I have not had many dealings with them. Investigators on the other hand (are they junior ombudsman in training?) are fairly hopeless and don’t understand many basic things.

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Ombudsman staff in my experience are fairly clueless people. Take ages to “review” things and tend to side with the business even when they’ve behaved poorly. Waste of time referring cases to them.

One notable exception is Creation-gate I guess

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wonderful thread!

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travelersolo wrote:

A few seconds after entering her PIN number on ticket machine she got a notification from her bank advising of transaction. The merchant name is just a load of random letters.

As I mentioned the staff at station did absolutely nothing to help and refused to believe anything had happened. Other than her bank investigating in Ireland and report to action fraud we did not contact police but will contact BTP

Also have sent an email to tfl as advised by customer support line.

That sounds rather quick. Had she used it anywhere else earlier?

And with contactless cards now no need to really use a ticket machine and just touch in and touch out and avoid this risk.

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Thanks @bigsi. Good tip. Gives time to think of an alternative perhaps. I don’t collect as many hotel points now anyway with lack of IHG card or Hilton card so maybe an incentive to spend what I have and move on. Airlines it’s just BA and Virgin unless I do a one off transfer to Singapore

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Received 2 confirmation emails. And 2 vouchers. Both with mid Nov expiry. Despite being triggered at end of Oct. Bizarre

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MrWhite wrote:

I’ve previously managed to select seats as bronze through the Iberia app. It did show charges, but closing down the app before payment made the selection “stick”.

Just wanted to confirm this worked. Great tip @mrwhite

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R2 wrote:

Sudz74 wrote:

dcfc67 wrote:

Same issue also, went onto nectar chat but they were about as much use as a chocolate teapot.

Basically said i can move them manually and contact BA about the 25% bonus avios.

Complete waste of 30 minutes on webchat from a representive from nectar who couls only tell me about the current promo which has nothing to do with free avios

Ok I’m confused now. I thought the recent promotion was 350 Avios (which I received last week). Was the 25% bonus in addition or a different offer? (Mine didn’t autoconvert on 14th either.)

https://hfp2026mar.kinsta.cloud/2024/07/28/350-avios-when-auto-convert-nectar-points/

It was the next and different offer. https://hfp2026mar.kinsta.cloud/2024/10/02/nectar-avios-transfer-bonus/

has this bonus paid yet for anyone? 15%/25% depending on manual auto convert transfer

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Times Square – strong weed smell these days, avoid.

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andiron wrote:

Anything interesting there that cannot be found on TopCash/Quidco/PerksAtWork?
Other than £3 sign up bonus..

Amex acceptance is the big thing. Works easily with apple pay. Though note headline rates are for bank transfer so rates drop for credit card payments. Rates vary compared to say TCB – e.g. Tesco is less (3.8% vs 5%) but AirBnB is more (4.9% vs 4.5%).

For example JamDoughnut has B&Q/Nandos whereas TCB doesn’t. But largely retailers look the same. Anything you have on mind?

My referral code is HPKN

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Update – although I had booked flight, I saw my Exec number wasn’t associated with the booking but my partner’s was. How bizarre. Added it and now can select seats for free.

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MrWhite wrote:

I’ve previously managed to select seats as bronze through the Iberia app. It did show charges, but closing down the app before payment made the selection “stick”.

Thanks for this tip @MrWhite. Have done this and seats show as selected when I go back to app with payment amount at bottom. Maybe it will hold, fingers crossed.

Separately my return flight is with BA and less than a week out and I can’t select my seats for free. This is so odd. Complaint time.

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Thanks for the intel. Annoying. Could have selected a BA flight, will do next time

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Skywalker wrote:

BA Bronze status holders can choose seats free of charge in most cases 7 days in advance and BA’s rules on Bronze seat selection:

Bronze/oneworld Ruby
Free seat selection for you and everyone on your booking from seven days before the time of departure on British Airways flights, excluding group rate bookings and exit row seats. You must be travelling on the booking for the benefit to apply.

Exit row seats can be selected for free from 24 hours before departure.

However even as BA Silver, I found that some seats were chargeable, and this is highlighted at the bottom of the web page before BA transfers the data to Iberia for seat choice

“Some seats may require an additional fee. Seat reservation will take place on Iberia website”

Is it a busy flight? Could it be that all the free seats are gone and you are simply left with the paid ones?

Lots of seats left. Even seats in the back rows carry a charge if I wish to book

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This works well with iPhone. Have used for Tesco and M&S and both gave code immediately. Just watch out as some retailers are in store only and some are online only, majority though are a combo. Make sure you check before buying as says non-refundable.

My referral code is HPKN

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Bill wrote:

Once i had purchased the Tesco gift voucher I was able to add it to Google Wallet

My referral code is ZWTB

Just used yours. My referral code is HPKN

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Don’t think it has a fee unless you do fronted transactions and go over the monthly allowance. The 1.5k monthly limit is for personal curve with corporate card

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NorthernLass wrote:

I suspect a lot of these cases are inside jobs – there should really be a facility to voluntarily lock your account in some way so that any changes or transfers have to be verified by a phone call. For me, that extra level of security would be worth not going through the rigmarole that everyone seems to endure in these circumstances!

I appreciate that investigations take time, but as the old (pre-metric) saying goes, “an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure”.

Kind of related but Nectar – they emailed me a few weeks ago to say my points balance is at such a level that I need to call to use the points. Not had a use for them yet so won’t know how inconvenient it is, but thought that was an interesting step by them

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@northernlass I asked the hotel who said speak to IHG. Emailed the Ambassador team who said no dice, try and have someone else use the room if possible. They apologised and rewarded each of us 5k points