Octavian Antony

Hi guys,

There's an offer from Lloyds for an Amex and a Mastercard Avios CCs. The Mastercard offers 1.25 Avios/£.

More interesting, if you spend £7000/year, you receive 2 upgrade vouchers on BA flights (from ET to CE, WT to WT+ and WT+ to CW). The WT+ to CW upgrade itself is of great value, worth at least hundreds if not thousands of £s.

The thing is I already have the Chase Card, which gives better value for Avios ( 1.25 Avios/$ or 2.5 Avios/$ if bought on ba.com). The Chase CC also gives you the 10% discount on return BA metal flights originating from the USA.

Now, I assume you can not have both cards linked to your account at the same time. If you were me, would you apply for the LLoyds cards?

Cheers,

O

Gold77

In the UK you can simultaneously have the BA Amex, the Tesco clubcard that gives Avios and the Green/Plat/Cent Amex that give you membership rewards. Can't see why you could not add the Lloyds cards as well (I have not tried).

One potential catch is that the UK cards must be linked to a UK BAEC account so if your Chase card is in the US and linked to a US BAEC address, the Avios may not transfer. In that case, you can still get the Lloyds card but the Avios will accrue and will only be transferred into your account when you change your BAEC to a UK address (you can change your BAEC address every 6 months).

Calchas

Actually I think it is 1.25 Avios/£ on the Amex card. The MC is much worse. However you get 2.5 Avios/£ for the first six months on the Amex card.

The Lloyds card is not a BA nor BAEC card, it is an Avios card. The points go into your Avios.com account. You do not need to be a member of BAEC to use it. If you do have both accounts, you can move Avios freely between your Avios and BAEC accounts at any time instantly.

I don't believe there are per-country restrictions so perhaps you can continue to hold your BAEC account in the US, have an Avios account in the UK and move points between them—but perhaps someone else can advise you on this.

The Lloyds upgrade voucher only applies to Avios bookings made on Avios.com; sometimes availability there differs from BA but it is usually better not worse.

The best part of the Lloyds cards for me is the 0 FX fee and spot rate FX transactions.

What is your reasoning for this assumption?

johnspenceruk

This is not true, you get 0.25 Avios per £ on the Mastercard.

sorp222

Also worth noting that the double points on the Amex for the first six months is limited to £2.5k per month.

johnspenceruk

But the good thing about these cards is that there are no foreign transaction fees.

Raffles

Note that it is NOT strictly an upgrade voucher.

What happens is that you can book in CW for the Avios required for WTP, or WTP for the miles required for WT. (You cannot book F for the miles required for J).

There does not, therefore, need to be availability in both classes, which would be the case if it was technically an upgrade.

Note that the 2 upgrades need to be used in the same booking. You can upgrade you and a colleague one way, or yourself in both directions.

You CANNOT upgrade yourself one way and then use the voucher again on another occasion to upgrade yourself again one way.

The maximum 'value' of the voucher is therefore 25,000 Avios on most routes - ie those routes that are 100k in J return. The absolute maximum value would be 50,000 Avios in the unlikely event you could get J to Australia!