Jan 1, 2014, 5:45 am
Last edit by: EsherFlyer
Current sign-up, referral, spend promotions and retention offers
New member sign ups
British Airways American Express Premium Plus Card:
Collect 25,000 bonus Avios when you spend £3,000 within the first three months of card membership.
British Airways American Express Credit Card:
Collect 9,000 bonus Avios when you spend £1,000 within the first three months of card membership.
Referrals
If you are already a BA American Express card holder (either BA card) and introduce a friend to the BA American Express card, you'll receive a 4,000 Avios bonus once your friend's application is approved.
If you are already a BA American Express card holder (either BA card) and introduce a friend to the Premium Plus card, you'll receive a 9,000 Avios bonus once your friend's application is approved.
If your friend achieves the spend required for the welcome offer on either card they'll receive an additional 1,000 Avios. I.e. 26,000 or 10,000 total bonus Avios for the Premium Plus and Credit Card respectively.
Promotions
Retention offers
Voucher eligible spend
Pretty much everything counts towards the £10,000 (or £20,000) required to earn a 2-4-1 Companion Voucher, including the following which might be unexpected:
A few things that don't:
The online total to the right of the card summary is pretty up to date, and far more useful for tracking spend than what the statements show.
Insurance
Both standard and Premium Plus cards include insurance benefits for goods and services purchased on the card. Full details here and here respectively. Summary of Premium Plus benefit are shown here, with standard card offering same cover unless alternate figure is shown in parentheses:
New member sign ups
British Airways American Express Premium Plus Card:
Collect 25,000 bonus Avios when you spend £3,000 within the first three months of card membership.
British Airways American Express Credit Card:
Collect 9,000 bonus Avios when you spend £1,000 within the first three months of card membership.
Referrals
If you are already a BA American Express card holder (either BA card) and introduce a friend to the BA American Express card, you'll receive a 4,000 Avios bonus once your friend's application is approved.
If you are already a BA American Express card holder (either BA card) and introduce a friend to the Premium Plus card, you'll receive a 9,000 Avios bonus once your friend's application is approved.
If your friend achieves the spend required for the welcome offer on either card they'll receive an additional 1,000 Avios. I.e. 26,000 or 10,000 total bonus Avios for the Premium Plus and Credit Card respectively.
Small print:
You must refer your friend via the referral link provided above to be eligible for this offer.
You may recommend as many friends or family members as you wish but you can only receive a maximum of 45,000 Avios per calendar year for those approved for a Card.
You will receive 4,000 bonus Avios if your friend applies and is approved for the British Airways American Express Credit Card. Your friend will receive 4,000 bonus Avios after they have been approved and spent a minimum of £1,000 on goods and services purchased and charged to their Account within three months of Account opening.
You will receive 9,000 bonus Avios if your friend applies and is approved for the British Airways American Express Premium Plus Card. Your friend will receive 19,000 bonus Avios after they have been approved and spent a minimum of £3,000 on goods and services purchased and charged to their Account within three months of Account opening.
When completing the referral form, you must
(i) select the Card you hold from the list at Step 1 and
(ii) select a card to recommend from those listed at Step 2. If you do not follow this process, you and your friend will not be eligible for the bonus.
If your friend has already applied for any of the British Airways American Express Credit Cards without using this referral, you and your friend will not be eligible for the bonus Avios.
All introductory offers are subject to change, can be withdrawn at any time and are not available if your friend currently holds or has held any other British Airways American Express Credit Cards in the past six months.
You must refer your friend via the referral link provided above to be eligible for this offer.
You may recommend as many friends or family members as you wish but you can only receive a maximum of 45,000 Avios per calendar year for those approved for a Card.
You will receive 4,000 bonus Avios if your friend applies and is approved for the British Airways American Express Credit Card. Your friend will receive 4,000 bonus Avios after they have been approved and spent a minimum of £1,000 on goods and services purchased and charged to their Account within three months of Account opening.
You will receive 9,000 bonus Avios if your friend applies and is approved for the British Airways American Express Premium Plus Card. Your friend will receive 19,000 bonus Avios after they have been approved and spent a minimum of £3,000 on goods and services purchased and charged to their Account within three months of Account opening.
When completing the referral form, you must
(i) select the Card you hold from the list at Step 1 and
(ii) select a card to recommend from those listed at Step 2. If you do not follow this process, you and your friend will not be eligible for the bonus.
If your friend has already applied for any of the British Airways American Express Credit Cards without using this referral, you and your friend will not be eligible for the bonus Avios.
All introductory offers are subject to change, can be withdrawn at any time and are not available if your friend currently holds or has held any other British Airways American Express Credit Cards in the past six months.
Promotions
Retention offers
Voucher eligible spend
Pretty much everything counts towards the £10,000 (or £20,000) required to earn a 2-4-1 Companion Voucher, including the following which might be unexpected:
- Foreign transaction fees
A few things that don't:
- Annual membership fee
- Interest payments
- Transactions under £1 (although you can earn the single Avios
)
The online total to the right of the card summary is pretty up to date, and far more useful for tracking spend than what the statements show.
Insurance
Both standard and Premium Plus cards include insurance benefits for goods and services purchased on the card. Full details here and here respectively. Summary of Premium Plus benefit are shown here, with standard card offering same cover unless alternate figure is shown in parentheses:
- Purchase protection: £2,500
- Refund protection: £300 (£200) per item
- Flight delay / cancellation / overbooking / missed: £200 (£0)
- Baggage delay (6+ hours): £750 (£0)
- Baggage delay (48+ hours): £1,000 (£0), additional to 6 hours benefit
- Accident: £250,000 (£75,000)
- Hijack (24+ hours): £1,500
- Hijack (72+ hours): £3,000, additional to the 24h benefit
BA American Express credit card
Jun 9, 2020, 10:33 am
#2087
Join Date: Apr 2020
Posts: 7
Question about negative balances and card years, I will potentially end this card year with a -£2000 balance. When the next card year rolls round, will I need to spend £12k to trigger the 2 for 1? Or does the companion voucher 'counter' reset to £0?
Jun 9, 2020, 10:45 am
#2088
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: UK
Programs: Lemonia. Best Greek ever.
Posts: 2,274
Savvy - BA Amex points transfer automatically, if both your numbers are entered correctly.
JPCU - I would like to know that too! I have a 2 for 1 that was issued just before lockdown and it is still there, but I have a largeish negative spend.
JPCU - I would like to know that too! I have a 2 for 1 that was issued just before lockdown and it is still there, but I have a largeish negative spend.
Jun 9, 2020, 11:10 am
#2089
Join Date: Apr 2017
Programs: BA Silver
Posts: 1,387
The balance at year end- positive or negative- is not used to calculate the spend in the year needed to trigger the 241. All that counts is the cumulative sum of all the transactions from the start of each year.
Jun 9, 2020, 11:58 am
#2090
Join Date: Jan 2018
Location: London
Programs: BAEC Gold, Accor Live Limitless Gold, Hilton Honours Gold, Avis Preferred Plus
Posts: 1,807
I know that I should know this, but if I get a supplementary card for Mrs Wilsnunn, who gets the Avios for spend on the supplementary card, her or me?
Jun 10, 2020, 7:04 am
#2092
Join Date: Sep 2019
Location: London, UK
Programs: BAEC Silver
Posts: 136
I posted this under a new topic recently and didn’t get much response , probably as I should have posted it on this page. So my fault.
I have a huge negative balance due to cancelled refunded flights and like does my wife. So whenever imp sending on the premium plus card it just brining down the negative balance and therefore not earning me Avios. The only way around this I found was singing of for the gold card and turning them points into Avios, while cancelling my premium plus card. 2 questions, is this the only option? What happens when I cancel the premium plus card with a negative Avios balance – would I need to wait year before singing up again?
The wife has the same issue and to answer someone else question regarding the 241 on a negative balance it still works. Although she spends on the card and doesn’t receive Avios the 241 voucher is gradually building up the points.
I have a huge negative balance due to cancelled refunded flights and like does my wife. So whenever imp sending on the premium plus card it just brining down the negative balance and therefore not earning me Avios. The only way around this I found was singing of for the gold card and turning them points into Avios, while cancelling my premium plus card. 2 questions, is this the only option? What happens when I cancel the premium plus card with a negative Avios balance – would I need to wait year before singing up again?
The wife has the same issue and to answer someone else question regarding the 241 on a negative balance it still works. Although she spends on the card and doesn’t receive Avios the 241 voucher is gradually building up the points.
Jun 10, 2020, 7:23 am
#2093
Join Date: Nov 2017
Programs: BA, Hilton
Posts: 2,091
I posted this under a new topic recently and didn’t get much response , probably as I should have posted it on this page. So my fault.
I have a huge negative balance due to cancelled refunded flights and like does my wife. So whenever imp sending on the premium plus card it just brining down the negative balance and therefore not earning me Avios. The only way around this I found was singing of for the gold card and turning them points into Avios, while cancelling my premium plus card. 2 questions, is this the only option? What happens when I cancel the premium plus card with a negative Avios balance – would I need to wait year before singing up again?
I have a huge negative balance due to cancelled refunded flights and like does my wife. So whenever imp sending on the premium plus card it just brining down the negative balance and therefore not earning me Avios. The only way around this I found was singing of for the gold card and turning them points into Avios, while cancelling my premium plus card. 2 questions, is this the only option? What happens when I cancel the premium plus card with a negative Avios balance – would I need to wait year before singing up again?
To recap - and correct me if I'm wrong - the situation is that you bought some expensive flights, earned a bunch of Avios from that spend (let's say 10k for arguments sake) which transferred to BA. Then the flights were cancelled, you got a refund and now your BA Amex is at minus 10k Avios. All the spend you are currently doing on Amex is simply bringing that down towards zero, rather than earning you new Avios.
I would suggest that most people think that's fair, and is how it should work. If you don't ultimately spend the money, why should you get to keep the Avios associated with the spend? And in fact, they haven't even clawed back* the Avios, they're still in your BA account and could be spent tomorrow.
And if we set aside any questions of fairness, and declare that it's all up for grabs in the Points game and anything legal is fair game then I very much doubt that anyone who does know of loopholes in this area is going to share them in such a public place, as further exposure and exploitation of them is likely to get them closed off. Let's say a loophole does exist that you could reset a negative balance, then as long as you have sufficient cash flow you could trivially buy a fully refundable F ticket, wait for the Avios to hit your BA account, refund the ticket to get your money back, exploit the loophole to "reset" your negative balance and then rinse and repeat.
* tho I will admit that this is possibly more to do with their being no obvious mechanism to do so, and maintaining a negative balance achieves the same ultimate effect in most cases.
Jun 10, 2020, 7:47 am
#2094
Join Date: Nov 2017
Programs: BA, Hilton
Posts: 2,091
As some additional thoughts, if you do want to go down this route, I think some sort of card shuffling is likely to be the only (publicly known) way of doing it. I find the Head For Points site usually has some pretty decent articles and coverage on what AMEX combinations you can get, after how long, and if you get bonuses etc, I'd maybe start with one their articles such as:
https://www.headforpoints.com/2020/0...ards-you-have/
However, I have no idea if AMEX will factor in your current cards with them, including any negative Avios balance. You could cancel your BA AMEX PP (with the negative Avios) and apply for a Gold AMEX only to be declined?
If you can share, just how many Avios are we talking about here? (My own BA Amex is about -4000 Avios at the moment). I mean, if it's something like 10k Avios, during promotions you can usually buy that amount for a little over £100 if memory serves? That may be a useful way of comparing the possible hassles and pitfalls in what you need to do against the potential value/savings of doing it?
https://www.headforpoints.com/2020/0...ards-you-have/
However, I have no idea if AMEX will factor in your current cards with them, including any negative Avios balance. You could cancel your BA AMEX PP (with the negative Avios) and apply for a Gold AMEX only to be declined?
If you can share, just how many Avios are we talking about here? (My own BA Amex is about -4000 Avios at the moment). I mean, if it's something like 10k Avios, during promotions you can usually buy that amount for a little over £100 if memory serves? That may be a useful way of comparing the possible hassles and pitfalls in what you need to do against the potential value/savings of doing it?
Jun 10, 2020, 8:04 am
#2095
Join Date: Sep 2019
Location: London, UK
Programs: BAEC Silver
Posts: 136
BertieBadger this is great advice and thank you for taking the time to respond.
Completely agree with you – it’s completely fair and just, we got the full refund and they were excellent during a challenging time. I just thought that someone may know a loop hole but also didn’t think of the ramification’s that this could potentially cause. So all makes sense now.
Were talking of a balance of 9000 on my card and 8000 on the wifes. Ive actually applied for a Gold card and was accepted and received it today. So what I may actually do is try what I said and put everything through the gold card and turn them into Avios at the end of every month.
However didn’t know about the promotions and doing it for as little as £100 to clear such a balance of 4000. Defiantly will read more up on that as that could save me cancelling the card. Thanks also for the links above to head for the points.
Completely agree with you – it’s completely fair and just, we got the full refund and they were excellent during a challenging time. I just thought that someone may know a loop hole but also didn’t think of the ramification’s that this could potentially cause. So all makes sense now.
Were talking of a balance of 9000 on my card and 8000 on the wifes. Ive actually applied for a Gold card and was accepted and received it today. So what I may actually do is try what I said and put everything through the gold card and turn them into Avios at the end of every month.
However didn’t know about the promotions and doing it for as little as £100 to clear such a balance of 4000. Defiantly will read more up on that as that could save me cancelling the card. Thanks also for the links above to head for the points.
Jun 10, 2020, 8:12 am
#2096
Join Date: Nov 2017
Programs: BA, Hilton
Posts: 2,091
There is no way I know of to clear down the negative balance other than continuing to spend on the AMEX.
What I meant was that you may have felt you "missed out" on e.g. 10K Avios, in that your spend necessary to clear that negative Avios would have in normal times earned you 10k more Avios. So my comparison was by way of "well, what would it cost me just to go and buy 10k Avios", and during the promotions that BA run Avios can often be bought for a little over 1p hence 10k Avios ~ £100.
It was attempt to put a value on the "lost" Avios that you won't earn from AMEX until the negative balance is cleared. It's not much fun having these negative balances, but you can take solace from the fact you won't be the only one. I imagine some here have 5 figure negative balances!
Edit: Also, it bites particularly badly when the refund is for BA spend, because obviously they earn at 3 Avios/£, so your "ordinary" spend at only 1.5/£ takes twice as much money to clear it off
But I do think it's fair overall, and you could view it as you loaned AMEX some money for a bit, and they loaned you some Avios for a bit 
Jun 10, 2020, 12:24 pm
#2097
Join Date: Jul 2014
Location: London, UK
Programs: Nandos Chillis
Posts: 196
I think this is happening to a few people through no fault of their own.
Amex's system of deducting Avios for refund transactions isn't robust enough to protect against refunds that take place in a subsequent statement period. It's up to them to find a way to plug that loophole. They could simply permanently blacklist people who do take advantage of the situation, or require them to pay for the Avios at cost.
I've never been a fan of using refunds as an earning mechanism personally. I ended up with a negative balance on one of my cards and spent my way out of it, not worth upsetting them for a few quid in my opinion.
Amex's system of deducting Avios for refund transactions isn't robust enough to protect against refunds that take place in a subsequent statement period. It's up to them to find a way to plug that loophole. They could simply permanently blacklist people who do take advantage of the situation, or require them to pay for the Avios at cost.
I've never been a fan of using refunds as an earning mechanism personally. I ended up with a negative balance on one of my cards and spent my way out of it, not worth upsetting them for a few quid in my opinion.
Jun 11, 2020, 2:40 am
#2098
Join Date: Jun 2018
Location: LHR/AMS
Programs: BAEC Gold, FlyingBlue Gold, Boots Meal Deal Valued Customer
Posts: 19
For what it is worth, another data point regarding downgrading the card (and to actually post something after years of just reading the forum!): Being stuck at home, with no business or personal travel lined up in the foreseeable future, and two 2-for-1s still on my account anyway, I decided to downgrade the BAPP card to the blue one yesterday. Took a while of arguing with the voice-activated menu to get through, but once I had an actual person on the phone the change was made swiftly, no questions asked. Received the pro-rata refund this morning. I will miss the 3x Avios on BA, but realistically I do not see myself flying much this year
Jul 24, 2020, 2:14 am
#2099
Join Date: Dec 2012
Location: MAN, PSP
Programs: BAEC
Posts: 208
British Airways owner IAG extends partnership with American Express
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iag-american-express-partnership/british-airways-owner-iag-extends-partnership-with-american-express-idUSKCN24P0HV
" Under the agreement, American Express will make a payment to IAG Loyalty, which is a unit of IAG that offers a widerange of services to airlines and business-to-business clients, of about 750 million pounds ($955.58 million)."
" Under the agreement, American Express will make a payment to IAG Loyalty, which is a unit of IAG that offers a widerange of services to airlines and business-to-business clients, of about 750 million pounds ($955.58 million)."
Jul 24, 2020, 2:40 am
#2100
Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: London
Posts: 489
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iag-american-express-partnership/british-airways-owner-iag-extends-partnership-with-american-express-idUSKCN24P0HV
" Under the agreement, American Express will make a payment to IAG Loyalty, which is a unit of IAG that offers a widerange of services to airlines and business-to-business clients, of about 750 million pounds ($955.58 million)."
" Under the agreement, American Express will make a payment to IAG Loyalty, which is a unit of IAG that offers a widerange of services to airlines and business-to-business clients, of about 750 million pounds ($955.58 million)."