Proceed With Caution When Transferring to British Airways Avios
Majored in Miles had a piece earlier this week about an issue he ran into with the Iberia promotion. Iberia recently allowed their promo miles to be transfer to BA Avios. That wasn’t originally possible per the promo’s terms. He decided to take them up on the offer which ended up being a mistake. He was shocked when a few days later BA wiped out his entire 90,000 Avios balance.
Why?
British Airways said that since he had no account activity since 2015 the miles immediately expired. I guess transferring points in (Membership Rewards, Ultimate Rewards, or Iberia Avios) does not reset the clock. (Reader Alex pointed out that the terms say this should work so the agent must have been misinformed) Basically his account was inactive so they immediately confiscated his miles.
Be careful when transferring miles between Iberia and Avios, especially with the 90K in promo miles. Best sure that you have had recent activity first.
Conclusion
I can see miles that have been sitting in the account for 36 months getting confiscated but to pull newly transferred miles out of an account is overly punitive in my opinion. Regardless, take this as a word of caution when transferring to British Airways. Make sure your account has recent activity first.
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As I commented on in that linked post:
The Executive Club “Terms and Conditions” put the transferring from a “Service Partner” i.e. Amex/Chase points under “Earning Avios points” (section 14.13) which, by definition under the same section, does extend the 36-month clock.
But the Executive Club “Conditions of Use” (different than Terms, I guess?) under “Combine My Avios” number 11 state “Moving Avios using ‘Combine my Avios’ will not count as earning or redeeming Avios; and will not prevent the expiry of your Avios balance under the Programmes terms and conditions.”
On the one hand, I sort of get it since Combine transfers are reversible and you could easily extend your Avios indefinitely that way. On the other hand, ouch that really sucks and they should REALLY make that a lot clearer because I basically had to read the whole Terms/Conditions to figure that out. Like maybe put a warning on the Combine page that your points will be immediately removed. Because who thinks of that???
TLDR; Chase/Amex transfers extend 36-months, Combine Avios does not
Thanks Alex – I was a little surprised they had led him to believe that then. Maybe just a misinformed agent. I still think yanking miles that were just transferred without notification is a bad policy…they could have just refused the transfer.
I will update the post.
This is very strange..a few months ago I transferred in 1k UR points to prevent my BA Avios from expiring and that worked just fine. Perhaps they have made a change in the rules?
It must have been a misinformed agent. Alex points out that it isn’t the case per the rules.