wedding96

I consider myself pretty savvy when it comes to dealing with airline programs but I have to say I have been continually frustrated with Iberia Plus.

Three years ago, I set up two Iberia Plus accounts for myself and my partner and transferred Avios from BA in order to redeem two award tickets on Iberia. I had no activity in my Iberia account after that and recently tried to login unsuccessfully. I emailed Iberia and asked them to reactivate my account so I could do another Avios transfer from BA. After 1 week, this was accomplished.

I have read online posts which indicated that transferring 1000 Membership Rewards points to my Iberia account would then make it possible for me to do the transfer of Avios points to Iberia. (We currently have 0 points in each Iberia Plus account). I have been confused about this process and have called Iberia Plus to get questions answered . Unfortunately, I have found their responses to be less than reliable and contradictory to what I have read online about this process. Here are my questions:

1)Even though I had an Iberia Plus account for the past thee years, it had to be reactivated. Does the long period of inactivity make it necessary for me to wait 90 days before I can do the Iberia redemption? When I called Iberia Plus, they said I did not have to wait 90 days and that the Iberia account just needed to register activity.

2) When I told The Iberia Plus rep that I would be transferring Membership Rewards points to register activity, she said that I would actually have to take an Iberia flight and that a transfer of points would not meet the activity requirement. I told her that I thought she was incorrect, but after putting me on hold for a few minutes to investigate this matter, she came back telling me the same thing. Is she incorrect?

3) I then told her that when I was testing out my ability to login to my Iberia account on BA.COM to do a transfer , the system did not recognize my Iberia login information. When I asked her how to remedy this, she said that perhaps my name was listed differently on BA when compared to my Iberia account (which it is not). I don't believe her response was accurate. Have other people had problems logging in to their Iberia accounts through BA.COM? Is it possible that I was unsuccessful because I still have 0 points in my Iberia account?

Any help/advice that you can provide would be very much appreciated. Thanks!

CapitanSalami

I had the same problem but the other way around. That is, I had several avios in Iberia Plus and I wanted them to be transfered into my account in BA.com. My account in BA.com had no avios at all but it was open more then 3 months ago. When I tried to do the transfer myself I got a system error. The only way to solve this is to get in touch with a hot line phone either from BA or IB plus. Most of the times the reason for this mistake comes from the fact that data from both accounts mismatch ( take into account that Spaniards (Iberia Plus ) uses different ways to deal with middle names, surnames and so on. In addition , Spaniards own 2 surnames which makes all this fuss even worst ). In my case, the reason for the mismatch error, was just a comma instead of a period in my address, so we aware of . Humans make mistakes and computers do not.
If you have a tier level your BA agent will help you better unless you speak proper Spanish and try to deal with an IberiaPlus agent.
Good luck.

craigthemif

AFAIK she is incorrect. An Amex transfer should count as activity, although I am not quite sure if frozen, inactive accounts can accept credit card transfers.

It definitely wouldn't need to be a flight though. Any hotel stay or car rental would do the trick.

In the future, you should always try to have some kind of occasional activity on your IB+ account and not just try to bring it out of mothballs when you want an award.

If you are sure that you can log in to iberia.com directly, then you need to ensure that your name and email address are identical between BA and Iberia. Even the tiniest difference (such as with Spanish dual surnames) and you cannot Combine your Avios online and have to call BA.

It is also possible that, if your Iberia account is inactive, ba.com will not allow you to log in to check its balance.

wedding96

Thank you all for your input! I forgot to mention that I have a household account which makes the transfer more complicated. A BA rep told me I needed to change my household account to an individual account before I could transfer. But then I found this excellent article online and found another solution (see choice 3 in article).

http://frequentmiler.boardingarea.co...itish-airways/

Yllanes

The advantage of avios.com is that you can do the transfer online yourself, but you should be able to transfer to a HHA if you call (you will have to call every time, though).

craigthemif

I'm not sure that, even by calling, you're allowed to move IB+ Avios into a BAEC HHA or vice versa. That's why OP was advised to dissolve the HHA.

You need the avios.com route, which is theoretically only open to UK residents, although I'm sure there are lots of accounts out there with fake addresses. (just make sure you remember which one you used!)

j2k

Is there a way to move avios from my BA account into a friend of mine Iberia account?
Thsu due to the fact my IB is too young and I cannot proceed. Definetely want to purchase a good fare i found on Iberia, that is not even present on BA.
Thank you guys!

tobsw

The answer is no. You can only Combine my Avios if the name, dob and address is the same. Also, your IbPlus accounts needs to be 80 days (or 90 days?) old and activated (at least earned 1 Avios).
Alternatively, buy your flight with cash or buy Avios points with your IbPlus account

j2k

Thank you. So no way for me to book that flight with my avios

pointspinnacle

Dumb question, is there anyway around the 90 days thing? Like perhaps calling the customer service line of either airline? My wife has some ba avios id like to trnsfer to Iberia but her account is only a few weeks old. Or is 90 days set in stone?

craigthemif

Set in stone.

You will also want to make sure that her IB+ account is activated by crediting something to the account.

pointspinnacle

Ok, thanks. Yeah its active alright. I just transferred about 60k Amex points to her account thinking i could combine her avios to make a booking for three business class seats. Now they are stuck there for 90 days and im sure the seats will be gone by then

At least if they (the seats) are gone I can transfer them to BA i think for safe keeping/ future bookings i think.

ExGateAgt

OK, probably a stupid question, but I just got off the phone with Membership Rewards, and transferred 1000 points each into my wife and my accounts each. These Iberia Plus cards were issued 7 months ago. The MR Guy assured me that the Points would go thru. Now what is my next step in booking flights for several months out? Any help would be appreciated. I have 300K BA Avios that I need to burn without the Fuel S.C.!

rrgg

You have BA Avios and you transferred MR to Iberia. Is that right? You'll want to combine them all into either the BA or IB account. Go to https://www.britishairways.com/trave...club/_gf/en_us to combine them. Then ticket something at https://www.britishairways.com/trave...club/_gf/en_us or at Iberia.com . If using Iberia just click the Pay with Avios button after entering the desired flight information. Is that what you're asking?