"Migrated" avios.com accounts can't use BA household avios for upgrade vouchers
Nov 27, 2018, 8:01 am
#1
Original Poster
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: London, England
Programs: MUCCI -- What else matters?
Posts: 1,089
"Migrated" avios.com accounts can't use BA household avios for upgrade vouchers
My wife and I have a BA household account (along with our three kids), and I had an avois.com account containing two Lloyds upgrade vouchers. In the household account, we have enough avios to make a redemption using these vouchers (a one-way redemption US->UK for four people, upgrading from WT+ to J). In my personal BA account, I am short some 4000 avois from the goal.
My avios.com account was migrated to BA. The migrated BA account was merged with my BA account. I therefore now have a BA account containing two avios.com vouchers, and my BA account is part of a household account. You'd think, therefore, that I could redeem the vouchers using the avois in the BA household account.
Not so! It turns out that in order to redeem the vouchers, you have to call the avois.com hotline. They will then "reactivate" your "old" avios.com account temporarily, transfer avois from your BA account to your old closed avios.com account, redeem the vouchers, issue you a PNR and tickets, and then "deactivate" your "old" avios.com account again. Since they are leeching the avois from your personal BA account, you cannot use household avios.
This is very irritating. I've transferred 4000 avios from my Amex membership rewards (no idea how long I'll have to wait for that to go through, it's been a few hours already, I thought it was meant to be instant), and hopefully the dates we want for redemption will still be available when they go through. But it's galling that we have the avios in the household account, yet cannot use them for this redemption...
So - beware! These so-called 'migrated' avios.com accounts aren't really full BA accounts when it comes to using the vouchers you may have saved in them...
-simon
My avios.com account was migrated to BA. The migrated BA account was merged with my BA account. I therefore now have a BA account containing two avios.com vouchers, and my BA account is part of a household account. You'd think, therefore, that I could redeem the vouchers using the avois in the BA household account.
Not so! It turns out that in order to redeem the vouchers, you have to call the avois.com hotline. They will then "reactivate" your "old" avios.com account temporarily, transfer avois from your BA account to your old closed avios.com account, redeem the vouchers, issue you a PNR and tickets, and then "deactivate" your "old" avios.com account again. Since they are leeching the avois from your personal BA account, you cannot use household avios.
This is very irritating. I've transferred 4000 avios from my Amex membership rewards (no idea how long I'll have to wait for that to go through, it's been a few hours already, I thought it was meant to be instant), and hopefully the dates we want for redemption will still be available when they go through. But it's galling that we have the avios in the household account, yet cannot use them for this redemption...
So - beware! These so-called 'migrated' avios.com accounts aren't really full BA accounts when it comes to using the vouchers you may have saved in them...
-simon
Nov 27, 2018, 2:33 pm
#2
Join Date: Jul 2018
Posts: 42
I had exactly this issue last week - I needed points from my wife’s BA account in addition to my own, to use 2 x Lloyd’s upgrade vouchers.
i got around this by creating an Avios account in my wife’s name via the aer lingus website and was able to book without a problem.
i got around this by creating an Avios account in my wife’s name via the aer lingus website and was able to book without a problem.
Nov 30, 2018, 9:45 am
#4
Original Poster
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: London, England
Programs: MUCCI -- What else matters?
Posts: 1,089
You cannot use BA Household Avios. You can only use the avios in your own account to book. Fortunately I didn't lose the seats I wanted in the two days it took me to transfer 4000 avios from Amex MR points.
Nov 30, 2018, 12:43 pm
#5
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: London, England
Programs: BA Silver
Posts: 3,772
While I can see this is frustrating, it is surely no different than how it has always worked? If you had a Lloyds voucher and booked using the old system, you couldn't transfer in miles from other members of your BA HHA, the miles had to come from your BA account only, so I guess they are sticking to the same old rules now.
That said, thanks for the heads up as it would be reasonable to think that after the change you could now use miles from your HHA!
That said, thanks for the heads up as it would be reasonable to think that after the change you could now use miles from your HHA!
Nov 30, 2018, 1:30 pm
#6
Join Date: Jun 2003
Programs: BA, IHG, 5C
Posts: 4,413
While I can see this is frustrating, it is surely no different than how it has always worked? If you had a Lloyds voucher and booked using the old system, you couldn't transfer in miles from other members of your BA HHA, the miles had to come from your BA account only, so I guess they are sticking to the same old rules now.
That said, thanks for the heads up as it would be reasonable to think that after the change you could now use miles from your HHA!
That said, thanks for the heads up as it would be reasonable to think that after the change you could now use miles from your HHA!