Upon a recent transfer of AmEx MR to BAEC Avios, American Express opened a new BAEC account for me to which they deposited the Avios. I contacted AmEx about this and was advised to contact BAEC as they could merge my accounts. I promptly contacted BAEC using their online webform:

“I recently made a transfer from my American Express Membership Rewards account to my British AIrways Executive Club account. Unfortunately AMerican Express somehow seem to have created a new BAEC account for me despite the fact that I already have had a BAEC account for many years before that.

The new account created by American Express to which they transferred 40,000 Avios has the number 789. However, my actual BAEC account has number 123.

Is it possible to merge these accounts so that I have only one single account, namely the original older account 123?

Many thanks in advance for your help!”

About a week later I got the following response by email:

“Thank you for getting in touch with us.

Following the merging of your duplicate Executive Club accounts, we would like to confirm that your valid membership number is 789.
In future, please quote this number in any bookings to receive the relevant Avios and Tier Points awards, and when accessing your Executive Club account online.

If you are collecting Avios through any of our partners, including our financial card partners, you may want to make sure that they have your valid membership number on their records.”

So basically BAEC have done exactly the opposite of what I requested: they’ve deleted my original BAEC account and kept the new one created by AmEx. All my Avios are present in the new account, though a 2-4-1 voucher from my old account was missing but has now been re-instated after I raised this issue. The real problem with this is that my original BAEC number 123 is stored and used by numerous third-parties such as AmEx BAPP, travel agents, existing flight bookings etc etc. I’ve been in touch with BAEC several times, requesting them to re-instate my original account number but they refuse/are unable to do so. During my contact with BAEC I have got three different versions with regards to what happened:

1. In case of merging accounts, the oldest account number is retained in the merged account. As such it appears that a mistake was made in my case.
2. In case of merging accounts, the newest account number is always retained in the merged account.
3. In the case of merging accounts, the account number to be retained is chosen at random by a computer.

The inconsistent information coming from BA in this case does not fill me with any confidence, and I call upon the FT BAEC community for advice. Has anyone else experienced this? Should I keep trying to get BA to re-instate my original BAEC account number, or should I just accept the situation and move on with new account number?