Gismoman

Greetings:

My BA membership expires soon and I needed to deposite some miles in the account to keep it active, without flying. Any ideas would be helpful.

Thank you.

dnw

Starwood points?
AMEX Membership Rewards?

oyster

If it is just speed you are after and not value for miles, then the quickest way is to fly.

Book a £60 cheapo economy to Edinburgh. You'll get 250 miles and will post in 2 to 3 days.

710 77345

Is that fare from LAX or SFO

Globaliser

[Deleted - bobnick beat me to it.]

[This message has been edited by Globaliser (edited Feb 17, 2004).]

Gismoman

AMEX Does not work! and i have already transfered my Starwood to NWA :-(

AMEX Airline Programs

ANA Mileage Club
AeroMexico Club Premier®
Continental OnePass®
Delta SkyMiles®
EL AL Frequent Traveler Club, "Matmid"
Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles®
LatinPass®
Mexicana Frecuenta®
Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards®
US Airways® Dividend Miles®
Virgin Flying Club

Globaliser

Rent a car?

oyster

errrr. If speed of writing my post was more important than accuracy then I did the right thing!!!


I guess an AA flight would post pretty quick.

skippythelizard

If you have Amex points, you can route them to BA through Starwood. The conversion is normally pretty lousy, but there is a promotion (for US/Canada BA members) at present, which makes it reasonable.

You can convert 999 Amex points to 333 Starwood points.

Currently, you can transfer Starwood points to BA, and BA doubles them. Plus, Starwood adds another 5K for every 20K when transferring to an airline ... meaning 20K Starwood points becomes 25K when transferring to an airline. BA then doubles it during this promotion to 50K.

End result, approx. 60K Amex points can become 50K BA miles. But that doesn't sound like what you're looking for.

Other alternatives ...

Stay at a Hilton family hotel ... and present your BA card at check-in. Those points usually post pretty within a couple of weeks. BA also partners with various other hotels ... check the partner info on the BA web site.

Apply for a BA Visa ... you'll also get 15K bonus miles.

Take an AA, AS or HP flight (beware, only 25% miles for most discount economy fares), but it will give activity to your account).

Order flowers from the Flower Club (http://www.britishairways.flowerclub.com) ... note that it usually takes about a month for points to post.

Rent a car at Avis or Hertz.

See http://www.britishairways.com/travel...g/public/en_us

710 77345

Is there any route through which you can convert UA miles to BA miles?

dnw

Yes it does.

Amex > Starwood > BA

Bad overall conversion rate, but for the minimum transaction to keep the account open its probably worth it.

Stefan Daystrom

"Soon" is not specific enough. You have a lot of options if you mean 3 months from now, very few if you mean 2 weeks from now.

Also, what do you mean by your "BA memembership" expiring soon? Miles expire 36 months after last activity, but membership YEARS expire annually. Those two things are not connected, and if you've confused them you might be panicing unnecessarily.

If you have at least a couple months, go to:

http://ecdining.idine.com

click on become a member, and register a credit card (Visa or MC is best, but Discover or Amex will also work at SOME restaurants) you don't already have registered in another iDine program. It's pretty instant. Then you can search for participating restaurants near your zipcode (or by named region if you prefer), and within a week or so of eating there the miles should be computed at EC Dining, and around the second week of the next month they should show up in your BA EC account.

And you have to eat anyway (and you earn 5 to 10, sometimes even 20, miles per dollar spent, tho at many restaurants only for the first visit each month), so for most people in/near (or often visiting) big metro areas in the US it's by far the easiest way to keep BA miles alive without "wasting" money, as well as an easy way to "top off" an account when you're close to the amount of miles you need for some award.

Stefan Daystrom

With Diners Club (at least in the US; double check if UA can convert into UK Diners). I think you're limited to transferring 50k UA miles into Diners a year, but I'm not sure. Each UA miles will turn into 1 Diners point in the US. (You normally earn 2 Diners points for each dollar spent in the US.) So if you immediately transfer to BA miles, you lose half the mileage. But if this year is like previous years, come this summer Diners will have (at least in the US) a double-miles transfer offer for BA (and that's the only airline they do double transfer offers, the other airlines they only do 25% bonus offers), and if you wait for that you get 1:1 UA to BA transfers!

Furthermore, you may get a sign-up bonus from Diners (it's 2k points -- and thus normally 1k miles but during that promo 2k BA miles -- per month for your first 12 months with minimum spending in the US) which will add even more BA miles.

Here's the site for Diners Club in the UK:

http://www.dinetclub.co.uk

Just looking around quickly it seems their point system (Classic Card) works very differently in the UK (it's 1 point for every 5 pounds, but then ratios like 1000 miles for 600 points), and the website doesn't seem to offer as much info on transfers as the US site (http://www.dinersclubus.com), so I'm not sure how/if it'll work for a UA->DC->BA transfer!

[This message has been edited by Stefan Daystrom (edited Feb 17, 2004).]

BearX220

Man, just send some flowers (www.flowerclub.com). Much less hassle and you'll have the miles posted in six weeks or so.

mith

how about donating miles... is it possible to donate like 1 mile?