Originally Posted by
laura711
Three questions:
1. Does anyone know if it is possible to "transfer" from a MR card to a BA premium CC card? Are there any offers at the moment to waive the first year BA premium CC fee?
There is no transfer process between the cards you mention, as they are different reward cards. As someone has mentioned, you can just transfer from MR into your BAEC avios account and close the MR card. However, if you are waiting on a transfer bonus to come along, and someone else in your house has an MR card, on closure of your MR card you can ask amex to transfer your MR points to that card. This is stipulated in the T&C
2. Am I still entitled to the sign on bonus? The small print seems to suggest that I would not be entitled "if you currently hold or have held any other British Airways American Express Cards in the past 6 months", so would imply that I WOULD be entitled.
Holding the MR card has no bearing on your eligibility for the bonus, only holding a BA card within the last 6 months would make you in-eligible.
3. Does anyone think that this decision goes against common sense?!
As you have stated you are only converting your MR to Avios, then the flexibility of being able to send MRs to other reward programs isn't relevant to you.
BA card is free and gets you 9K Avios for £1000 spend
BAPP card costs £150 and gets you 25K for £3000 spend, plus a companion voucher if you spend £10k in a year.
(the above assumes you don't get a referral, a referral gets you an extra 1K points on each card.)
Spend £3000 on the free card and you end up with 12K avios.
Spend £3000 on the BAPP card and you end up with 29.5K
A difference of 17.5K avios, for £150. You can see that if you value an avios at 1p per point, you are getting better value than that.
Clearly, the BAPP makes increasingly more sense if you are spending more than £3K a year, and if you feel like £10K in a year is doable, and you sometimes don't fly alone, then the companion voucher that the £10K provides would make it silly NOT to go for the BAPP card.
Even discounting the companion voucher:-
a new free card with £10K spent on it in a year generates 19K avios.
a new BAPP card with £10K spent on it in a year generates 40K avios.
That's an extra 21K avios for your £150.