cat3appr

Hello,

I have the AMEX - BritishAirways program and I've asked both of them some explanation about the program but they keep on passing the buck to one another so I'm asking here :

I have 3000 AVIOS in my BA account, while in my AMEX card I need to spend £12,288 by 29 May 2020 to receive your Companion Voucher ( i've already spent 7700GBP ) questions:

- what will happen if I won't manage to spend £12,288 by 29 May 2020 ? Will I lose what ive done so far and it will start counting again from zero?
- I've been earning AVIOS only by using my AMEX card so far, and after reaching about 15000AVIOS, ive spent 12000 to upgrade on an emergency seat, so now I have 3000 AVIOS left. How will this impact the Companion Voucher , upon reaching the 20000GBP expenses threshold in my AMEX card?
- I still don't understand what is this Companion Voucher ? I was told it is a free flight anywhere, in Business class with a +1 , is this correct?
- can I earn AVIOS if I will withdraw cash at an ATM using my AMEX?

many thanks!
Alex

AJA_

Hi welcome to FlyerTalk.

This thread will answer all your questions:

BA American Express 2-4-1 Voucher Discussion

That said you appear to have the basic BA Amex Card where if you spend £20,000 in your card year you earn a companion voucher meaning you can spend your Avios and redeem them for a flight for you and a companion on any BA operated flight in any class providing you have enough Avios for the class of travel and the flight has Avios redemption availability. BA guarantees 2 seats in Club and 2 seats in Economy on every flight but they may already have been redeemed.

If you don't spend £20,000 you won't earn the voucher but you will.keep all the Avios you've earned.

I would recommend upgrading to the BA Premium.Card which has an annual fee of £195 but you only have to spend £10,000 to get the companion voucher which is then valid for 24 months. The voucher on the free card is only valid for 12 months.

DYKWIA

And note... The flights are not free. You still have have to pay taxes and surcharges, and these can be substantial. That may come as a surprise.

konagirl2

If you only have 3000 Avios, and you are only collecting through spend, I really would not recommend you spend any money on Amex fees. You would trigger the voucher with just 5500 Avios!

OP read the wiki of the post linked in the first reply. You buy one redemption ticket (Avios + takes, fees and surcharges in £) and get a second ticket in the same class for zero Avios (but you do pay taxes, fees and surcharges again). I suspect when you come to use it you will be sorely disappointed you really don't get free flights with BA. The best value of the voucher is if you earn a lot of Avios (e.g. by flying) and want cheaper flights to places that are otherwise expensive in business class or above.

fransknorge

You will not lose any Avios earned so far, they will stay. Your counter to get the 2-4-1 voucher will reset to 0 £ and you will have one year again to try to spend 20 000£ to earn it.

No impact whatsoever.
I would point out that using 12 000 to upgrade for an emergency seat is not a good use of those Avios. For comparison 4 500 Avios is the cost of a one way to Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam or a domestic flight (plus around 20£ taxes).

This voucher means that you can pay a ticket for 2 person, on BA metal, with the amount of Avios needed for one person. You will still have to pay for taxes and surcharges and typically, for a business class return to Asia or the US, the amount is several hundreds, possibly above 1000 £.

​​​​​​​No.

mmxbreaks

In terms of the 20,000 for voucher acquisition, yes, it'll reset to 0 annually. You keep the Avios you earn regardless of whether or not you achieve the voucher.

It will be more or less useless to you with such a low amount of Avios, so there's not much point in you pushing to acquire it.

No, not at all.
You 'double' the amount of Avios in your account for you an a companion. If you have 3,000 now and don't expect to fly a lot, even an extra £12,000 spend on the card will give you around 15,000 Avios total, which might get you a short-haul return within Europe.
If you are flying a lot then you may end up with more Avios at your disposal, which expands the possibility of use, i.e. to farther destinations.

No.

In summary:
Don't force yourself to spend. Using Avios isn't always particularly easy either due to limited availability.
Plus there's costings associated with all this. As an example, if you had 100,000 Avios that would be enough for you to book a return from London to New York in Club World (business class) [assuming off-peak timings].
However, the taxes would be several hundred pounds. I've just priced it up and it would be £667.52 (which is more than it used to be, but I'll assume it's not an error).
If you had a companion voucher you could send two people - yourself and your companion - for that 100,000 Avios. But you'd have to pay said costings twice, i.e. £667.52 x 2 = £1,335.04 total.
Nothing in this world is free. If you're not going to achieve 100,000 Avios minimum I would advise against forced spend to acquire a voucher that may be of little use to you.

mikeyfly

There's plenty examples OP of flying to JFK / LAX from another starting point in Europe, buy WTP using cash (even sometimes UK!) and then using a modest amount of Avios to upgrade to Club World. Same price as the free flight booked direct into Avios plus circa £700 per person in fees. Better off than using the voucher and not having to sweat over the spending threshold.