Are the Avios.com/Ba.com eStores trying to rip you off?
 

I have been using the eStores whenever possible to make online purchases for a few months now.

I find that around 1/2 the purchases I make never show up in my history meaning that I have to fill in the missing avios form in order to claim them retrospectively from Avios.com/Ba.com.

Annoyingly their online forms will not accept submissions until 35/40 days has passed since the purchase date.

The way I handle this is by creating folders in my email for the retailers receipts, one called "Avios.com receipts" and one called "Ba.com receipts".
I then make a note in my calendar for when they should be chased so that I don't forget.

If I'm lucky the purchases show up in the history and points are issued no problem.

When the points are not issued I fill in the form and one of 2 things happens.
I either get a response within a 2-3 days asking me for a copy of the receipt, or a week goes by and I hear nothing.

If I don't hear anything, I forward the receipts along with the click ID directly to:
Cashback Airmiles (UK) <[email protected]. uk> or
Cashback British Airways <[email protected]>

I then get an email back saying the points will be credited and they appear on my account as pending immediately and changed to paid a few days later.

Whilst I have always managed to get the points I am owed as I am persistant and don't give up on these kind of things easily, I feel the tracking failure rate is simply unacceptable.

I wonder how many people simply forget to chase their points, or can't be bothered?

What concerns me the most (as an IT person), is that there is no attempt made to try to diagnose/reproduce the error which causes purchases not to track, so that it can be fixed and doesn't happen again in future.

Maybe they don't want to fix it?

What do you think?

Is there something fishy going on here?

Is it worth all the effort for a handful of Avios? ;)

If you buy a lot of stuff online, YES IT IS! ;)

The point I'm trying to make is that it shouldn't be "an effort".

It should "just work"!!!!! :mad:

No. It is uttelry standard for the cashback industry.

And if there was something fishy going on, it would not be BA profiting from it but the merchants themselves.

Serious tracking problems will be identified, etc, and both the eStore marketing company (BA/Avios) and the platform provider WILL be interested in failed tracking that should have tracked - as that is the merchant profiting that their expense (they sent the customer).

But, where tracking is working generally with a merchant, assisting users with issues that are caused by either their or their computers behaviour (deny cookies, competing cookies) or due to them browsing the site in a very abnormal route to purchase that breaks the tracking - they will NOT be interested.
The value is not in it.

Cashback is never or rarely guaranteed.

And if it is small sums, nobody will investigate it. Utterly normal.

I agree on both accounts, namely (a) it's clearly worth it and (b) it should not be such a hassle; the systems should be designed to signal the transactions properly.

Are the store visits shown in your "click report" history on the BA eStore shopping screen?

I have shopped a few dozen times and never missed points nor bonus points, but always check the shopping history to ensure it's been logged.

PanG - please keep up your chasing and feedback; quite inspiring really ^.

The short answer in my experience is almost ALL these 'loyalty' tracker thingies are poor. Maybe you can send a separate note to BA IT once a year with a summary of all the failures? Maybe an FTer can PM you who to send such to.

As an aside. Thank you for the advice on Worldpoints. I called them re the champers promo and 2nd lot of bonus points were added. Whisky will also work more than once but no bonus til end of promo period. Worldpoints at least have a good helpline.

As another aside. Hotels. A certain brand has failed to track my last 3 stays correctly; due to rubbish IT as above. This time backed up by below average phone service agents. Spent a hour chasing on Thursday, and basically did all I can to indicate they need to sort the problem, not just my points. I will not give up ;).

So, in summary, BA's systems can be poor. It seems commonplace though. I'd be glad to hear of any Airline. Hotel. Car Rental brand that gets this right 100%. They'd get my interest.

But the problem with the BA e-store and/or associated merchants is that it frequently does not track properly under normal usage conditions.

Yes the click report works perfectly, it's just the purchases which don't track.

I forgot to mention when I email them I always include the click ID in the email with the forwarded receipt. (edited OP)

I'll admit I rarely use the BA/Avios eStores myself, I prefer the ones paying cash (in most circumstances). However with all of them some merchants work better than others with tracking.

However, I stand by my 3 main general points:
- It will not be BA profiting from this.
- Low value txns will be under T&C that can not be investigated.
- BA and the platform provider should be interested in serial problems under expected usage.

If the final one is not correct, that surprises me!

Thanks littlefish :)

I'm glad you find my posts useful!

It's inspiring to me that you do :)

I'd like to make it clear, incase people thought this was a dig at BA or Avios.com that the eStores appear to be run by a 3rd party so it's not BA/Avios.com's IT which is at fault.

BA/Avios.com will also be losing out in these cases as I would imagine the purchases would need to be reported to them in order for them to obtain their kickback and issue points.

I'd make an educated guess and say that the problem is most likely to be with the individual retailers.

We must never forget that points = money. If you are losing points, you are losing money.

"why bother collecting your change when you shop at the supermarket, it's only a few coins?" :rolleyes:

Doesn't surprise me at all, but then I see bad designs and implementations on a daily basis. ;)

If the problem is tracking at the start, the platform provider will ALSO be loosing money.
They could have a role in the tracking problems or the might not.

The question is whether it is failing to track to the whole platform provider, or just failing to track to individual accounts with the provider (i.e. you Avios/BAEC memebers accout on their system).

Yes. But assuming it is a problem of fundamental tracking (i.e. not going back to the platform provider), then that is lost income to them as well. If however it is just tracking to the sub account ....

PanGalactic - you are correct, it's run by a 3rd party company, and are the same one that Virgin Atlantic use whom I had the same troubles with when I was collecting their miles for a while.

It would be nice if they fixed it (I'm an IT guy myself so also find it frustrating), but it's been that way for so long it's untrue. I end up doing the same as you and noting things in my calendar, keeping receipts in a dedicated folder etc

I fully agree that as a service, it should work as advertised and all users should be credited the avios they are entitled to, with minimal effort required.

However, I look at this as follows. Unless it is a significant number of avios you are missing out on a month (i.e. more than 5k per month) it is not worth investing the time to chase the Avios for me.

How many avios are you not being credited?