CaroFos

Hello..
I'm organising some friends into BA mode (off to Sydney in W+ for xmas) and was going to suggest they wait til late November to open their account to keep the TP's and miles (380 TPs / 22250 avios each) in the bank for as long as possible.. however, one member recently went to GCM (almost 3 months ago) which would have been worth 140 and some 8,000 miles. so a cheeky upgrade on a forthcoming AGP would see her get to Silver on the final leg of the Oz trip in Jan...

But ... need to just know how long you have to claim the Avios and miles when opening up an account as we may have missed it.. (literally by a day or two) if its done on outbound flight... ... so may have to revert to Plan A...

Does anyone have any experience or thoughts on this?

C

londonba2014

I think your well within the claim period!

I think Avios will last forever, just so long as you earn 1 Avios every 36 months (3 yrs) and RFS is available as long as you have earned 1 Avios in the last year and have sufficient funds.


Hope that helps

Prospero

Three months is the limit for new members.

CaroFos

Thanks Prospero... I think we might just sneak in and i would say worth it to get the 140 TPs.. they're not that easy to come by for the average leisure traveller..

Cheers
C

CaroFos

One last question.. if she joins and they don't allow the GCM trip.. can she cancel it and open up a new account nearer the time of the Big SYD trip?

Thanks so much

GarynotJerry

if she does, and BA pick up on it, they will just merge it to the oldest account, unless she has the existing account formally closed first. Also, the back office will often waive the three month limit, but you might need you write in to get past the contact centre. They won't let you keep the tier points, though, for flights more than three months before she enrolled.

FlyingPhoenix

Same for six month limit, if you can get past the contact centre, the back office will generally waive this up to a year, I find

GarynotJerry

In general, if you can get past the Contact Centres or the ba.com web form people (WNS, apparently), the rest of the agents can be much more flexible.

OkayThen

Except for the partners, it's good to keep escalating for a lot of things. Expired Avios, Tier upgrades, BA flight claims, extending upgrade vouchers, etc.

FlyingPhoenix

Even with the partners, it's worth escalating until you at least get a response from a "two-named" person, if you start with ba.com, or have convinced the contact centre agent to submit your issue to the back office, if you have called.