PUCCI GALORE

I have just jumped in on the LUX-MIA/BOS - BRU fare for next August that has been touted in the Premium Fares thread. I booked this and it priced into Euros. No problem. I used Avios to get the cost down to £1470 for the two of us. However when I came to pay I got the above message. I paid with my BA Amex. I had to enter this manually. When the payment cleared (and it did seems slower than usual), it told me that payment had been taken but that I could not store the card. The card is stored and has been for some considerable time. I checked when the payment cleared.

Has this occurred to anyone else and does anyone know why it did this? Why could I not use a stored card and yet pay with the exact card manually. It seems bizzare. Any advice would be gratefully received.

corporate-wage-slave

Random glitch, which happens from time to time, I wouldn't worry about it. It gets even more tricky if you get a POUG since it's greyed out and there's nothing you can do about it. I think it's an Amex specific issue.

I can't resist pointing out that it doesn't make sense to use an Amex card (which earns Avios) and then depleting the ticket cost by using Avios to reduce said cost. To misquote Gordon Sumner, it's God telling you that you have too many Avios. You are aware, I'm sure, that you are giving BA 0.6p per Avios, when you should be able to extract a minimum of 2 pence per Avios. It also gets much more sticky if you want a refund.

krispy84

My mother had exactly the same when booking an LHR - IST return 2 weeks ago. Unsure what the problem was. I put it down to IT gremlins.

ThatT1Feeling

Deleted as it appears that this may be a LUX-specific issue based on other responses.

Tiffywren

I've had exactly the same thing happen with both my ex-LUX bookings. I've also had it when using a FTV on the phone where the agent said "I can't use your stored card on this booking." I just quoted my card number (the same one they have on file) and it went through fine.

MarkFlies

I think this is to do with countries and I’ve seen it happen when making redemption bookings with a foreign-to-me city of departure.

You were booking ex-LUX and presumably your BA home country is not there.

Usually if you scroll down to the credit card details, the system will probably have auto-selected that you have a Luxembourg credit card. So it doesn’t offer your saved cards.

Had you changed this card country to your home country, it’s likely your saved card would have been shown.

EDIwanderer

Talking about LUX specific issues, I was trying to price up a BA Holiday using the current fare bargains and got the following:
Sorry, we don't offer hotels or car rental from this location.

BRU however allowed me to price one up, albeit in €.

PUCCI GALORE

Thank you all - most reassuring.

layz

I think it has to do with the following:
In the UK they still charge a surcharge if a corporate card, but it's not allowed to for personal cards.
So in the drop down you get American Express Corporate and American Express Personal as it needs a way to determine whether or not to charge a card fee.
Your card will be saved as 'American Express Personal'
Now if you do a POUG your card is never charged a fee and so the dropdown just says 'American Express', therefore as your saved card is 'American Express Personal' it doesn't match the list of accepted cards.
However, it also won't allow you to save that card as 'American Express' as there's a card with the same number saved as 'American Express Personal'.
So it's the same when starting ex-EU, there's no card fees on these routes so the dropdown shows 'American Express'

I had two Amex cards saved, one as 'American Express' which would appear unavailable when booking a ticket from the UK but was available to POUG. The other card saved as 'American Express Personal' was only available for booking from the UK and not POUG or ex-EU bookings.

corporate-wage-slave

This sounds quite plausible. When you said you had two Amex cards saved, were they two cards issued against the same underlying account? Amex is quite happy to issue two separate cards to one person, perhaps to separate personal and claimable expenses, they get different sections on the bill.

81romeo

Not LUX related I guess - had the same issue yesterday when I had to pay for the fare difference for moving forward a flight to BRI

layz

Different underlying accounts. One no longer used so I can't say whether this still happens for me.