Raffles

... but (on the positive side):

* BA cannot book BA Miles income as revenue until a redemption flight is booked, under the new IFRS accounting rules. The quicker NickPowell77 books his tickets, the quicker BA can transfer £1k or so to the P&L account from its balance sheet reserve.

* There is a good chance that you may end up paying Amex interest on the £5k ticket, assuming you don't have the cash to clear your balance immediately.

So there are potential upsides for both sides here!

Compared to (for example) spending £3,000 on travellers cheques at Gatwick, paying £3 commission and causing Travelex to pay out £60-90 to BA for the 9,000 miles earned during the 'triple miles' promo, this is very small fry.

(And how come no-one every criticises those people who move their BAEC accounts to a European address to get Silver early?! Surely these people are falsely gaining access to lounges - and thus free food, drink, net access etc - and the Silver miles bonus because they have not earned enough points to get Silver officially as a UK resident?!)

jchand

I totally agree.

Why cant people see the bigger picture rather than enjoying inflated status in the eys of people that they will probably never even know their real name let alone meet.

By all means encourage people to take advantage of promotions etc etc but why keep encourage people the cheat the system ??? That will surley lead to a clampdown on mile earming opotunities for all of us ??? Is that what you want ???

SLF

I'm sure BA will fix that if it becomes an issue. Wait, what was that thread by BA Employee about yesterday? Too many golds? hmmm.

SLF

Surely BA don't actually get that £15k, until sometime after you've paid it to Amex?

pauldb

Okay, maybe "never actually having to pay Amex for it" is a bit overzealous but in any case I doubt Amex really care about this. In fact I don't think they'd ever be able to spot a handful of people doing this among normal fully-flex cancellations. As for changing the creditcard/airmiles system, yeah right.

On the other hand, I see you're a regular tesco code user. i) You're reliant on others sharing the codes and ii) this is more likely to result in a simple, effective change in Tesco's policy (i.e. these codes drying up, as they appear to have done). So, while I do the same and am therefore not being critical, I don't think that to "encourage people to take advantage of promotions" is necessarily any less self-defeating.

aristoph

No, they would get it shortly after you charge it. They pay a fee for the transaction (which is, of course, refunded when you refund the flight). To make them wait a long period for the cash would render credit cards pretty much unwelcome, which they clearly are not. Besides, in this scenario it is likely to take most people a number of months to spend the £15k before they refund the ticket so BA will be sitting on the cash long enough to turn a pretty profit on the whole deal.

aristoph

Pots and black kettles spring to mind.

SLF

OK then, so Amex are out of pocket then instead of BA...because Amex don't get the money from the purchaser until a month or two later.

BAGoldBoy

I have to agree with SLF - we should be dealing with BA and their partners in an acceptable manor. If a few people are obviously abusing the system and this comes to light then loop holes will be closed. The only people that would suffer from such changes are ourselves. My mantra is treat others as you wish to be treated yourself - so no "fraudulent" transactions for me

pauldb

aristoph

indeed. Obviously "ripping off" Tesco doesn't count, does it?

SLF

I suspect once Tesco decide to, these 1000 point offers will be targeted (and enforced as such); in any sense it is something completely under Tesco's control. Buying £15k of tickets and refunding them involves multiple companies, real processes and real money. I guess it comes down to where you draw the line between black & white.

aristoph

"Ripping off" Tesco involves two companies - Tesco and BA (once you convert those points into BA miles). Buying and refunding tickets involves two companies - BA and Amex. The Tesco scam also involves real money which Tesco hands over to BA in exchange for your miles. Quite a lot of it actually. I would suspect the loss to Tesco is substantially higher than any costs incurred by Amex, especially since the refunded ticket presupposes that you then spend at least that £15k on the card generating nice revenues for them. Tesco scammers can walk away with their miles and leave Tesco with nothing.

SLF

I'm why you're

First, I'm not defending Tesco scammers...however, I don't see why BA would care. BA are selling the miles to Tesco. Tesco issue the codes. If Tesco don't like paying BA for the miles, then they'll stop issuing the codes. That's all there is to it. (Whether "scamming" Tesco is moral or not, and to what extent something is a scam is a debate being conducted in another thread.) Tesco do use the CC points to achieve their own ends; witness the 1000 point bonus & low price for them to dump a whole lot of end of line Samsung DVD recorders.

My point with the fares refund thing is that it has other impact and consequences, and it's not easy for BA/Amex to stop activity of this nature without impacting the way that "normal" business happens - e.g. as I suggested, they could get together and withhold miles until after flights are taken. Or change the whole BA miles scheme in some other way.

aristoph

Ok, I understand your point now (no more ) but, to be fair, that's not what you said when you implied that the Tesco scam does not involved costs, real processes and real cash.