mjellis99

I’m planning to cancel my BA Amex membership. For various reasons it’s just not worth the hassle to me anymore. But, I have some reward / redemption flights booked in October where I’ve also used Amex 2-4-1 vouchers. All taxes and fees are paid, The bookings were made some time ago. Do you think there’s a clause somewhere stating that I need to be an Amex member to fly using these bookings? Are my future bookings safe if I leave Amex now?

mikeyfly

Yes they’re safe, whatever you do. Although if you shut down Amex altogether (rather than downgrade to the free blue) I am not sure how easily you would get the refund should you / the airline cancel

mjellis99

Oh great, and good point about the potential refund issue. Thanks.

Prospero

Its pretty straight forward. Amex will post a paper statement showing the credit, then give you options on how to process the refund.

mikeyfly

I’d say there’s no hassle at all in maintaining the blue card even if it just sits doing nothing.

Confus

Apart from preventing the two-year ‘no Amex’ period from commencing, should OP want a bonus in future.

ESFLYER95

Hi,

Jumping onto this.

I have a Premium BA amex at the moment with 2 x 2-4-1's still to use. They will not let me downgrade to the blue card. If I cancel the card altogether can I still use my 2-4-1's? I do have another MR amex.

Thanks

mikeyfly

Why won’t they let you downgrade? I’ve never heard this

HoneymoonFlyer

I heard this happen to a colleague recently so he decided to just close the card entirely and leave Amex. Amex then changed approach to get him to stay, believe offered him some free points, which he duly accepted.

I recently went to downgrade to the Blue and was offered a new spend bonus on the Premium.

To answer the question - once the companion vouchers are in your BA account they are yours BUT the rule is that you need a BA Amex (either blue or black) to spend the requisite surcharges on. I.e you need to use your BA Amex to redeem your voucher, so afraid you can’t cancel BA Amex altogether and still use your voucher.

Back to the OP - I’m sure as you have flights booked it will be fine - though unless I’m mistaken there is some small print somewhere that you may be asked to show the card that you booked with to fly. For those of us who change credit cards often that would be a problem, so it clearly happens very rarely/almost never, but I have read about it on this forum. I am sure a true expert will be along to clarify about that shortly.

louie-m

In practice, you can use ANY Amex in anyone's name.

vintagepilot

In practice, you will probably be ok, but in theory I suppose they could be hard-nosed about it.

Some time ago we had a fully paid 241 trip which we wanted to change - they processed it as a refund and re-booking - the refund went back to a closed amex account (which was easily solved by Amex) and BA happily took the additional taxes using another card. However, we have also had them specify that the card used had to be in the name of the voucher owner.

I think it is probably worth reading the Ts&Cs - https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb...amex-companion

Which includes:

and the slightly more wooly statement that:

DelTroon

This weekend I contacted AMEX to downgrade our two household Premium cards to blue. I got transferred to a retention team (I suspect because of my spend level) who tried very hard to talk me out of the decision but I explained that I have already lost a number of vouchers, we currently have 6 to use with expiry dates through to 2024 and given our preference is to travel in First, there is simply no availability to anywhere we want to go. Eventually she gave in and my card was downgraded. My partner called some time later but did not get transferred to the retention team and his card was downgraded with no hassle. I suspect vast numbers of people are doing this.